Military members, government employees, and defense contractors all receive their money from the same source - the defense budget. The government is already paying people super high salaries, just indirectly through a layer of contracts. So its not about the money.

Yes, and it's imperative that we do.

Even then an O-9/O-10 gets $17,675.10 a month[0] in base pay and $3,963 a month[1] in *tax exempt*[2] housing allowance for the DC metro area. That's $259,657.20 a year in salary. While maybe not high by C-suite or Silicone Valley standards, that ain't bad at all.

0. https://militarypay.defense.gov/Portals/3/Documents/2023%20B... 1. https://veteran.com/bah-rates-state/district-of-columbia-dc/ 2. https://militarypay.defense.gov/Pay/Tax-Information/Exempt/

What does O-9/O-10 correspond to in terms of rank, and what does that correspond to in the private sector? If that's equivalent to VP/c-suite at a large company, then $260k is pretty low.

O-9s are Vice Admirals/Lieutenant Generals. Three-star officers. O-10s are full Admirals and Generals. Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, service heads, combatant commanders.

O-10s are almost all direct reports of the Secretary of Defense and skip-level reports of the President. Many O-9s are direct reports of an O-10 and skip-level reports of the Secretary of Defense.

3 and 4 star generals/admirals. These would be C-suite executives and LoB level VPs in the private sector. Yes, compared to their private sector counter-parts $260,000 is low, and they also can only get compensated in pay; there is no equity , stock, or bonus options.

It's not so obvious I think. Since you mentioned one extreme, lets look at both: staffed by monkeys, or staffed by psychopaths who might prioritize personal gain over American interests. That's not a recipe for a clear winner if we're eliminating nuance.