from the fix-your-own-shit dept
U.S. consumer protection (or what’s left of it after several devastating Supreme Court rulings and Trump executive orders) is on life support. But one bright spot continues to be the “right to repair” movement, which is working to fight repair monopolies and make it cheaper and easier to repair the tech you own.
Washington state recently became the eighth state to pass right to repair legislation with additional states (like Ohio) looking promising. And the U.S. Army continues to indicate it’s starting to take right to repair reforms seriously after decades of concerns. At least superficially.
Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll recently committed to including right-to-repair requirements in all existing and future contracts with manufacturers, a change, Sen. Elizabeth Warren tells The Verge, that will “put an end to our dependence on giant defense contractors who charge billions of dollars and take months to repair critical equipment.”
In an April 30 memo, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth directed the Army secretary to “identify and propose contract modifications for right to repair provisions where intellectual property constraints limit the Army’s ability to conduct maintenance and access the appropriate maintenance tools, software, and technical data.”
The shift is promising but limited. At the moment, only the Army is interested in embedding such language in their contracts. Assuming they follow through.
There’s also a matter of enforcement: of the eight states that have passed right to repair laws, not a single one has bothered to take any sort of meaningful enforcement action. There’s certainly no limit of bad actors engaging in all sorts of bad behavior (“parts pairing,” obnoxious DRM, making parts and manuals hard to find, actively working to kill or acquire competing repair companies).
But America’s strong suit has never been standing up to consolidated corporate power. That’s going to be increasingly true of states that are facing unprecedented, costly legal challenges during the Trump administration on everything from health care and climate to immigration. Not many are going to be keen to start expensive new battles with corporations with bottomless budgets.
Whether the Trump-managed Army will do any better is an open question. We’ve seen decades of stories where (like the consumer and health care markets) the Army couldn’t repair essential hardware they owned because of weird restrictions imposed by big corporations trying to monopolize repair. Despite this potentially costing lives, it took until 2025 to even consider doing anything about it.
Language in a contract (or a state law) hinting that this sort of thing is bad is one thing. But enforcement and holding companies accountable is something else entirely. And a Trump administration that’s busy utterly destroying the federal government’s ability to hold corporations accountable isn’t going to have the leverage necessary to stop corporate power from being obnoxious on right to repair.
Still, progress is progress, and even having discussions about reforms is progress. But sometime soon activism needs to pivot some of its collective energy on this subject toward complaining about a lack of enforcement, if we’re to take rhetoric and reforms on right to repair seriously.
Filed Under: army, consumer rights, military, military equipment, pete hesgeth, repair, right to repair, state law
