John Deere, Garmin, and Philips may have undermined military right to repair

Last year, Congress dropped widely supported military right-to-repair provisions from the annual defense policy bill — and now we may know who was pushing them to do it. Recently released lobbying reports reveal that companies like John Deere, Garmin, Philips, and many others have collectively spent millions of dollars on lobbying efforts related to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), in some cases specifically regarding repair issues.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, in addition to leaders in the Army and Navy, signaled that they’re on board with military right to repair in the months leading up to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) vote last December. The NDAA included language from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tim Sheehy’s (R-MT) Warrior Right to Repair Act, which would provide all branches of the military with the information they need to repair and maintain their equipment.

But lawmakers removed this provision and a contractor-backed alternative that would implement a “data-as-a-service” model for access to repair materials. And now, Lobbying Disclosure Act reports submitted to Congress show that military contractors like RTX, Rolls-Royce, and BAE Systems weren’t the only ones contributing funds toward issues related to right to repair and intellectual property.

Between October 1st and December 31st, 2025, John Deere, a major opponent of the right-to-repair movement, spent more than $700,000 on lobbying efforts related to the NDAA and a trio of individual right-to-repair bills: the Freedom to Repair Act, Fair Repair Act, and the REPAIR Act. Meanwhile, Garmin paid a firm $60,000 to lobby on the NDAA and right to repair. Philips also spent more than $1 million on NDAA lobbying efforts in the second half of 2025, and specifically called out the “requirement for contractors to provide reasonable access to repair materials. The Verge reached out to John Deere, Garmin, and Philips with a request for comment but didn’t hear back by publication time.

“This legislative fight isn’t over,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) says in a statement to The Verge. “I’ll keep pushing to root out the corrupting influence of money in politics and deliver right to repair for our military into law.”

As it stands, it seems like the military right-to-repair movement is on hold. As pointed out by the Federal News Network, the version of the 2026 NDAA mandates the creation of a “digital system” to track, manage, and assess technical data and software for repairing or maintaining equipment. Greg Williams, the director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, told the Federal News Network that this provision doesn’t push the right-to-repair movement forward, as it “only addresses cases in which the contractors have failed to deliver or make available the data that is already in their contracts.”