Could be, think of Homeland Security and those new(er) airport scanners. Mike Chertoff, formerly Secretary of Homeland Security, was instrumental in making them happen. He also happened to own a huge stake in the company that made them, since acquired by BAE Systems (who later made him a Chairman).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Chertoff

Even with an exclusive contract, a nation such as the US should be able to quickly ramp production of all the test kits, masks, latex gloves, respirators, oxygen concentrators, antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals that we need.

Yet we can't.

That's crazy and it has to change.

Oh we certainly can. "We" have decided not to, for now. One day we might find out the who/why/how of this decision. That will be an interesting day.

The who is pretty much everyone in government, egged on by the business community with the tacit approval or at least disinterest of the public. The when is constant over the past half century. The how is outsourcing much of our productive capability around the globe. The why is the race to the bottom for the cheapest production cost.

I don't think so. This is not a case like where we need a bunch of steal but the steel mills are closed so we have to buy the Chinese steel so (as any good business-folks will do) they raise prices 8-fold (see Oakland Bay Bridge Fiasco). The reagents for these tests are all made in america, or would take a few days to ramp up. I once made enough Taq polymerase in 12 hours to supply a lab for 12 years doing 200 PCRs a day. A single person can make gram quantities of the required oligos (enough for 100,000 PCR reactions) in any one of 500 labs in the Bay area alone in 12 hours. RT takes an hour. Amplification takes 4 hours. The readout for a sample can be done 1500 at a time in one second. There are no excuses.

> exclusive contract for a personal friend

Similarly in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, a politically connected one-man "energy company" called Whitefish, with no experience or skills, emerged out of nowhere and was given the contracts to rebuild the entire Puerto Rican grid.

Months later nothing had happened other than he hired a few people as unskilled as himself who were just dorking around down there, while people died.

So they fired that guy and hired another company called Cobra, with the same terrible terms, and the same ineffective response. Eventually it was found out that Cobra people had paid massive bribes to officials to ensure the deal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/us/puerto-rico-fema-arres...

Whitefish was getting stuff done. It was more than one man. It had the needed skill, which was subcontracting. Whitefish got numerous teams operational in Puerto Rico before being yanked off the job by politics.

The whole story of Whitefish being unqualified is just corrupt politics. Subcontracting is a legitimate way to get the work done.