So I'm fascinated with military culture and how systems work on this scale (ie millions of employees). And one interesting aspect is the E4 Mafia [1].

For those that don't know, you're generally either a commissioned officer (with ranks from 0-1 and up) or enlisted (E-1 to E-9). Some branches have warrant officers too but let's ignore that.

So if you join as an enlisted you start off as a private in the Army (it's called something else in different branches). By the time you finish bootcamp you're an E-2 private, possibly an E-3 (Private First Class). If you're not an E-3 it's automatic promotion after ~6 months assumpting you don't have any red flags AFAIK.

By the time you make it to E-4 (Corporal in the Army) you kinda know how things work BUT you're also in the last rank before you're in a leadership position. The next position (E-5, Sergeant in the Army) is a noncomissioned officer ("NCO"). Some people want to avoid that so they kinda hang around E-4 far longer than they should and they build up a body of knowledge on how to get things done. Or they may have been a higher rank and get busted down from an Article 15 (or NJP or whatever the specific branch calls it).

Requisitions can be a huge issue in the military, evne for simple things like office supplies. So you may find that E-4s can "acquire" needed supplies from other units. NCOs, Staff NCOs and command tend to be aware of it but will ignore it because it kinda needs to happen. And those E-4s are called the "E4 Mafia".

This, I believe, is the kind of "rule breaker" this post is referring to.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEgh-w4FIFc

In the US Army an E-4 is a specialist or a corporal. Most E-4s are specialists. The E-4 is the pay grade, and the specialist or corporal designation is the rank. A corporal is a type of lateral promotion from specialist and as a corporal the soldier is then considered a non-commissioned officer.

One thing I think would've been helpful for the article to address are operational and or program leaders that strive to get things done, respect their team's time, and want to be a good steward of resources. These leaders may ask probing "why" questions trying to do what's arguably common sense.

Cutting through red tape can be seen by others as rule breaking, but often it's just asking the questions others haven't and trying to do something in a new, hopefully better way. That means taking a risk that something could go wrong and that's received in different ways by people.

Scavenging is the result of the low pay. In my experience, officers usually look the other way as they understand what it is, until they can't look away anymore. Many enlisted are paid so low, officers actually go out of their way to encourage them to sign-up for food stamps which many are eligible for. When "shrinkage" becomes a problem, they simply pause all requisitions for a while. Many of these items end up in "army surplus" stores surrounding the army base.