AIBRIEF
Deputy Secretary of War Stephen Feinberg's Aug. 20 memo pushes API level access to cost and pricing data on every $10M+ supply chain tier, but the rules of the road are still being written.
Deputy Secretary of War Stephen Feinberg, the Pentagon's No. 2, signed a Supplier Cost and Pricing Transparency memo on Aug. 20 that orders the department to build an automated, API-based pipeline pulling cost and pricing data straight from defense contractors' enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other financial systems (Breaking Defense, ExecutiveGov).
The directive reaches "every tier of the supply chain" on contracts worth $10 million or more, whether or not the contractor would normally have to provide certified cost and pricing data under the existing Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) regime (Defense Tech Acquisition). Feinberg's own bottom-line-up-front calls the goal "maximum insight into cost and pricing data to negotiate the best price for weapon systems and other contracts" (the memo, PDF).
The Pentagon already had on-demand audit rights under CAS. What changes is the entry point: machine-readable pulls directly from the contractor's books, rather than a new round of contractor-prepared submissions.
Breaking Defense congressional reporter Valerie Insinna flags scope, sub-tier visibility, and compliance burden as unresolved on The Break Out podcast, and the defense industry has not yet put a public posture on the record (Seeking Alpha).