Defense Policy Board (established 1985)

[Report #194] **In plain terms:** the Pentagon's senior outside-advice committee. It gives advice and nothing else — it signs no contract, writes no regulation and directs no operation — and its members keep their private jobs and investments while they sit on it. The engine holds the Schmidt advisory-board lineage (Defense Innovation Board -> NSCAI -> SCSP, Divergence #168) and, until this record, held nothing on the Department's own older board. THE CHARTER, from the renewal notice published at 90 FR 41550 on 26 August 2025. The Department renews the board 'in accordance with chapter 10 of title 5, United States Code (U.S.C.) (commonly known as the "Federal Advisory Committee Act" or "FACA") and 41 Code of Federal Register (CFR) 102-3.50(d).' The charter itself and the Designated Federal Officer's contact details are held at the FACA database, not in the notice. WHAT IT ADVISES ON, verbatim: the board 'provides the Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary of Defense ("the DoD Appointing Authority") independent advice and recommendations on matters concerning defense policy and national security issues. Specifically, the DPB will focus on: (a) issues central to strategic DoD planning; (b) policy implications of U.S. force structure and modernization on DoD's ability to execute U.S. defense strategy; (c) U.S. regional defense policies; and (d) other defense policy and national security issues of special interest to the DoD raised by the DoD Appointing Authority, or the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy as the DPB's Sponsor.' COMPOSITION AND TERMS, verbatim: 'The DPB shall be composed of not more than 20 members who have distinguished backgrounds in defense and national security affairs. These members will come from varied backgrounds including prior government or military service, multinational corporations, academia, or other non-government organizations.' Members 'serve a term of service of one-to-four years with annual renewals', and 'No member, unless approved according to DoD policy and procedures, may serve more than two consecutive terms of service on the DPB, or serve on more than two DoD Federal advisory committees at one time.' THE EMPLOYMENT STATUS, which is the load-bearing structural fact and is stated in the notice itself, verbatim: 'DPB members who are not full-time or permanent part-time Federal civilian officers or employees, or active-duty members of the Uniformed Services, are appointed as experts or consultants, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 3109, to serve as special government employee members.' The notice also states, verbatim: 'All DPB members are appointed to provide advice based on their best judgment without representing any particular point of view and in a manner that is free from conflict of interest.' And: 'Except for reimbursement of official DPB-related travel and per diem, members serve without compensation.' WHAT THIS RECORD DOES NOT ESTABLISH. The special-government-employee designation is the same category the engine already holds at the civilian-advisory layer, where a waiver has been documented bypassing federal conflict-of-interest law (see pcast_2026, verbatim: 'David Sacks (SGE waiver bypassing 18 USC 208 conflict-of-interest)'; see also sacks, reg_capture). Whether any such waiver has been sought or granted for any DPB member is NOT established by any document retrieved for this record, and is not asserted. The notice's 'free from conflict of interest' sentence is the charter's stated standard, not a finding about practice. Confidential financial-disclosure filings, closed-meeting authority and the statutory waiver route are carried in the source report at its own tier and were not verified here. Held. Name no holder. The board is an instrument; what passes through it is a separate question and is not decided here.