Congress, the Conference.

Suppose there was a conference open to anyone where in less than half a square mile you could hear from leaders in business and government on a regular basis.

It might not seem obvious, but I'd argue that such an "evergreen" event exists in the form of the U.S. Congress.

What's been curious for many years though, particularly as a communications staffer on the Hill, is how little attention these hearings often receive as compared to their conference or podcast counterparts.

Sure, a committee hearing room doesn't have the same cozy armchair aesthetics or great acoustics of most venues, and staff have fewer "brand" or marketing resources, but if you listen to the conversation close enough, the substance is the same.

For instance, this week Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael Duffey testified in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. His eight-page opening statement offered a trove of details about how the Pentagon is looking to change the way it purchases weapons and technology from the private sector. The strategy, aligned with a series of executive orders signed in April 2025, is designed to field new defense capabilities faster than the previous system allowed.

To do this, the Pentagon is executing the largest revision of federal procurement rules in forty years, stripping them down to only what is legally required.

Hastening production requires the Department of War to award bigger and longer-term contracts, giving manufacturers the demand certainty they need to invest in capacity. A January agreement to triple the production of PAC-3 missile interceptor is the model that the Department will build off of.

When it comes to arms sales to allied countries, the new plan is to, first and foremost, strengthen American manufacturing.

According to Duffey's testimony, American defense sales are at an all-time high with nearly 16,000 open Foreign Military Sales cases (essentially foreign countries looking to buy American defense products) worth more than $945 billion, and $226 billion in direct commercial sales authorizations last fiscal year.

The question then is if the bureaucracy is able to keep up with that type of volume. We've often seen that when the government experiences heavy interest or traffic, it breaks.

Alleviating that pressure will require more transactions through direct commercial channels (as opposed to the government acting as a middle-man) and infrastructure modernization to track bottlenecks and predict demand against available capacity.

Duffey also testified that the DoW is ending the previous "partner-first approach," in which countries ordered what they wanted as opposed to what was actually available, which routinely produced backlogs and cost overruns. The new America First Arms Transfer Strategy ties defense sales to domestic reindustrialization so that foreign demand is aligned with U.S. production realities.

This was all mentioned in just one opening statement.

Similarly insightful conversations took place across the Capitol campus this week from electric grid resilience to Coast Guard modernization to the future of the federal government's financing arm.

Washington welcomes business or policy conferences every week that feature government leaders like Under Secretary Duffey. If you are interested in what he, or other government officials might say, you won't have to wait or solicit for a ticket. The answer's already there. You just have to know where to look.

Field Notes