Pressure points on defense companies from their Pentagon customer to invest more and do business differently than before are coming from multiple levels of leadership, including President Trump himself.

Lauren Williams, business editor at our partner publication Defense One, canvasses the perspectives and opinions of industry pros on that matter to help put together the Defense Business Brief newsletter that goes out every Monday.

Lauren joins our Ross Wilkers for this episode to break down those different pressure points, including Trump’s executive order barring companies from stock repurchases and issuing dividends until they invest more in tech development and production.

But as Lauren also explains, that executive order is only one of several examples of the U.S. military customer taking a more direct involvement in shaping the kind of industrial base it wants.

WT 360: Defense One's Lauren Williams on the new world order of acquisition

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Defense Business Brief: Thales’ frigate pivot + 2026 lookahead with Leonardo DRS

Defense Business Brief: Exec order fallout; $1B rocket-maker deal; Acquisition changes, and more

Trump lambastes defense CEOs over pay, stock buybacks

Defense Business Brief: US-made biotech; Rocketdyne; Hegseth’s industry tours

‘Very, very strange time’: After a big 2025, what’s next for the defense industry?

Hegseth hints at higher defense budgets as OMB says another reconciliation bill is possible

Unveiling acquisition overhaul, Hegseth tells industry to get with the program

Why DOD is so bad at buying software

Commercial technology is front-and-center of everyone’s mind across the public sector ecosystem these days, but history shows that agencies have moved slow on the acquisition and adoption fronts here.

Sheila Duffy, founder and chief executive of Greystones Group, views these efforts as grounded in collaboration as customer and contractor both have to agree on the roadmap for development and implementation.

Duffy joins our Ross Wilkers for this episode to go over keys for good collaborations with agencies on rolling out modern tools and how Small Business Innovation Research programs can be a pathway to accomplish that.

Any conversation about commercial tech in government has to include security. This one is no exception.

Post-shutdown recovery is one item carrying over from calendar year 2025 into 2026 and the chance of another funding stoppage happening on Jan. 30 is not zero percent.

That here-and-now is the starting point of this episode where Stephanie Smith, GovCon industry senior analyst and valuation services director at RSM, takes us through some of the major themes and talking points that will shape the ecosystem in 2026.

How do we define the “non-traditional contractor” and what do their prospects look like? As Steph tells our Ross Wilkers, technical definitions and terms for talking about these companies are moving targets.

Steph and Ross also went over artificial intelligence’s impacts to contractors’ business models, key macroeconomics and industrial policy developments for GovCon to monitor, and qualitative drivers of true value in a business.