Justin Fulcher has a phrase he returns to often when discussing why government systems lag behind the private sector: institutional drag. It’s a deliberate contrast with the more common explanation of national decline, and Justin Fulcher uses it to argue that the problem is fixable through better operational design rather than blaming a lack of national capability.
Systems Stuck in the Past
“Across government, healthcare, defense, and infrastructure, our core systems operate as if it were 1975,” Fulcher wrote in an article on institutional renewal, a line that captures his central complaint. Agencies aren’t failing because employees lack skill or motivation. They’re failing because the tools and processes surrounding them were designed for a much slower world, and those tools haven’t caught up with modern expectations.
That diagnosis shapes how Fulcher talks about artificial intelligence. Rather than treating AI as a transformative leap, he frames it as a practical fix for workflow bottlenecks: document review, scheduling, correspondence, and compliance checks that eat up staff time without adding much value. Handled well, automation frees skilled personnel to focus on work that actually requires judgment.
Adoption Has Limits
Justin Fulcher’s career gives this argument some credibility beyond theory. He served as a senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense, where he worked on acquisition reform, and earlier co-founded RingMD, a telemedicine company operating across Asia. Both experiences put him inside organizations where legacy constraints and compliance demands shape what technology can realistically accomplish.
He’s quick to note that enthusiasm alone won’t fix institutional drag. Government agencies operate under data security rules, civil service protections, and public accountability standards that private companies don’t face in the same way. Any AI tool introduced into that environment needs to be auditable, explainable, and built to fail safely, or it simply becomes another layer of complexity stacked on top of the old one. Refer to this article for related information.
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