As reported back in May, the Trump administration’s attempt to streamline federal acquisition via a “Revolutionary FAR Overhaul” inadvertently created problems for another Trump pet project, Katie Arrington’s CMMC certification. The FAR updates would prohibit any Federal purchase from requiring certifications unless a few conditions were met, none of which had been met by CMMC. As it stood, CMMC was silently dead in the water unless DoD did something, fast.
One of the exception conditions was, per the FAR Overhaul, would allow for certifications to be made part of a purchasing contract if the certification was justified by a high-ranking agency executive. For the DoD’s CMMC program, that meant Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Until last week, Hegseth had not issued that justification, effectively ensuring CMMC would never launch.
The usual suspects claimed my reporting was fabricated or my reading of the revised FAR was wrong (go read it here), but as usual, the CMMC shills live in a magical fantasy world where everything they want just materializes in front of them. The rest of us live in a world of laws and regulations.
The problem is that the product of one Trump flunky, Arrington’s CMMC, was now clashing with the product of other Trump flunkies aimed at slashing regulations. Obviously, the right thing to do would have been to kill CMMC, since it’s a designed-to-fail debacle and unfunded mandate, a de facto tax on the entire defense industry with no chance of stopping even the most rudimentary middle-schooler’s hack on DIB companies. But this is the Trump administration we’re talking about, where owning libs is more important than boring shit like national defense.
So, sure enough, Hegseth finally put down his paper bag of Thunderbird long enough to issue his justification. Alongside CMMC, he’s endorsing another (likely disastrous and industry-bankrupting) program called the Software Fast Track Program. Previously called the “Swift Program,” this would require software developers to not only obtain CMMC certification for their company, but also to have each software product individually certified under the SFT. None of this is cheap, either. Don’t expect any of that juicy DoD budget money to be used to offset costs to the DIB, either, unless you’re Boeing or Ratheon. And you’re not.
Here is Hegseth’s announcement, dated July 18th, 2025. Click to enlarge.
Meanwhile, we still have that nagging problem of the DoD handing over control of the entire CMMC program to Mexico. I doubt either Hegseth or Arrington can stay clear-eyed long enough to even find Mexico on a map, so I don’t expect that issue ever to be addressed unless Congress finally gets serious.
See? I made a 2025 joke! “Serious Congress.” Hilarious!
Christopher Paris is the founder and VP Operations of Oxebridge. He has over 35 years’ experience implementing ISO 9001 and AS9100 systems, and helps establish certification and accreditation bodies with the ISO 17000 series. He is a vocal advocate for the development and use of standards from the point of view of actual users. He is the writer and artist of THE AUDITOR comic strip, and is currently writing the DR. CUBA pulp novel series. Visit www.drcuba.world
