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Last Supper (defense industry)

1993 dinner at The Pentagon

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

The "Last Supper" was a July 21, 1993, dinner at The Pentagon attended by representatives of major United States defense contractors to discuss industry consolidation in the wake of plans to decrease defense spending after the end of the Cold War. Hosted by then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and Deputy Secretary of Defense William Perry, representatives were told the US government expected to be unable to support the existing number of firms in the industry, and that projections indicated only a few in each sector would survive upcoming budget cuts. The name was coined by Norm Augustine, then the head of Martin Marietta and an attendee at the dinner.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Last Supper (defense industry)” as 1993 dinner at The Pentagon. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Last, Supper and defense.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1993—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Last, Supper and defense providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Last Supper (defense industry)”, the useful work is to connect “1993 dinner at The Pentagon” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1993.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Last Supper (defense industry)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.