To be fair, if the taxpayers are going to be victims of bureaucratic inefficiencies, I'd prefer that the beneficiaries be disabled veterans vs. that money going to Boeing or Raytheon or Palantir or whoever.
Keep in mind that the definition of "disabled veteran" for the purpose of government contracts, while often involving actual disabled veterans, can also be very different, as in the case of Braulio Castillo, who legally obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in disabled-veteran contracts because he once injured his ankle playing football at a military prep school, despite having never served in the military at all.
I still can't believe someone named a company Palantir. In Lord of the Rings, the palantíri fell into the wrong hands and were used to do literal, honest-to-god evil. It's like naming a company Death Star.
The Palantir were "good" objects in The Lord of the Rings. (As opposed to the Ring, which was inherently evil) The Palantir were used for thousands of years to protect the kingdom. Even during the time of the books, when being used by the most powerful evil bad guy, the right good guy could take back control of the Palantir "network".
These policies do not affect the revenue of Boeing or Palantir, who are able to arrange whatever exceptions they need to do business. Usually, minority purchasing rules come into play when a government is purchasing commodity/low-differentiated products and services.
Unfortunately, that's usually not how it works. Boeing et al will just subcontract to the veteran-owned small business and the net effect is a slight increase in price for the government, a slight increase in paperwork all around, and some profits for the small business owner for being a small business owner.
Boeing, Raytheon, and Palantir are not bidding on $300K projects. That's just background noise. I can't even figure out why IBM was interested; things must be tighter there than they used to be.
Why? The money is ultimately just going to pay some individuals - they can be upwardly mobile elites from good schools (Palantir), stodgy defense establishment types (defense contractors), or groups that traditionally get less of this kind of attention. Why not?
Are the down votes because of the content or style of my comment? Ultimately, it's a matter of the capital those companies have invested. These companies can more efficiently allocate the extracted wealth toward research and other projects that there is demand for. I'd rather have an efficient organization running off with my tax money than an individual who might go buy a yacht with that money. A corporation has little incentive to spend money the same way an individual would.
