The transition to a second Donald Trump administration brings with it many of the same risks and issues as any other transition.

There are also unique issues that come with Donald Trump’s style and how he governs.

In some cases, this will mean opportunities for the industry. In other cases, it could make business more difficult.

That was the consensus of an unattributed conversation I had with a group of industry executives from large, small, and mid-sized government contractors.

The discussion grouped the issues into two buckets, short-term and long-term.

In the short term, the group expressed concern that this transition will be slower and perhaps more chaotic than previous transitions.

One of their major concerns is that Trump officials have not participated in transition planning activities that take place before the presidential election.

Team Trump is just now beginning transition activities. One executive pointed out that no one was authorized and no one was doing the work to get briefings from all departments.

There are also very few people from the first Trump administration who are stepping in.

“It’s a fresh batch so we don’t have any legacy,” said a second person. “It’s going to be miserable for a while.”

All of Biden’s appointees will be gone on Trump’s first day in office.

“The party doesn’t matter, but every senior leader will be gone,” said one executive. “It’s a massive brain drain.”

Another executive warned against talking to political appointees when they come on board.

“Do you know what the average tenure is? A year and a half so they don’t know what I’m doing,” said that person. “I don’t care what the administration is, stay away from the so-called political people.”

One executive expressed concern about Trump’s plan to roll back the Biden administration’s executive order on artificial intelligence.

“It’s not that there aren’t good ideas, they’re just not my ideas,” said the same executive when reflecting on how the new administration views the AI ​​executive order.

“They want to start over, so we’re thinking about things like, what will our position look like on the ethics of AI? What will governance look like? What will the regulation look like?” the executive continued. “We don’t know because we don’t know what the new people will do.”

Longer term, the group expressed concern about the expected chaotic nature of the Trump administration. This will be exacerbated by Trump’s plan to remove civil service jobs from 50,000 career bureaucrats.

One executive said that if the Trump administration compels these people, “we’re talking about a large segment of decision makers.”

The Supreme Court also expanded presidential immunity with its ruling involving Trump’s prosecution for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.

There were allegations during Trump’s first term that the president meddled with purchases for the border security wall and the Defense Department’s JEDI cloud computing contract.

When considering the Supreme Court’s decision, some executives said Trump could intervene in individual purchases and there would be no recourse.

“From an industry perspective, this is a concern because the reason we succeed and innovate is because we compete,” said one executive.

But there could be a benefit for an administration that wants to push the envelope on rules.

“What will be interesting and compelling is if he does what he has threatened to do and brings in Elon Musk to do a massive transformation,” another executive said.

One of two things will happen – career bureaucrats will huddle and wait, or the Trump administration will really blow things up.

The Defense Department is a target, one executive said.

There have been complaints for years about how procurement processes have calcified, making it difficult to bring about large-scale change.

“If we’re going to make a leap and get to the next generation of technology, maybe a massive reset is needed,” one executive said.