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Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s senior adviser, has been photographed arriving in Downing Street with a copy of a 1986 letter on the importance of modernizing defense infrastructure.
Cummings was photographed Tuesday morning carrying the document, discovered, largely visible, and in front of the cameras, suggesting that he intended to be viewed.
The February 1986 letter was written by Bernard Schriever, a then retired general in the US air force who had been a leading advocate for modernizing the US military, especially its ballistic missiles.
It was addressed to David Packard, the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, who at the time was chairing a commission established by then-President Ronald Reagan to examine spending and governance within the US defense department.
The letter brandished by Cummings is an apparent plea from Schriever for continued investment in weapons technology, which the former general said was, after personnel, “the most important ingredient for our national security.”
Cummings is aware that he admires Schriever’s work. In a Jan. 2 post on his personal blog, calling for “weirdos and misfits with strange abilities” to consider working for the government, he cited Schriever’s work on ICBMs among examples of “phenomenally successful practical managers.”
In July, it emerged that Cummings was going to visit a number of sensitive Defense Ministry sites, at a time when the government is conducting a defense capabilities review.
On Monday, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace laid out plans for the review saying he believed hostile countries had “adapted much more quickly” than Britain to the changing world of conflict.
Wallace said the review would create a military that would be “fit for the battles of tomorrow, not yesterday.”
Defense Chief of Staff Gen. Sir Nick Carter added that UK opponents “no longer distinguish between peace and war, between foreign and domestic policy or, for that matter, between public and public. private”.
