The Pentagon's acquisition reformers keep saying the quiet part loud: the government wants to own its data, not get locked into a vendor's database forever. DoD's "Rebuilding the Arsenal of Freedom" acquisition transformation push, and the DFARS Subpart 227.71/227.72 data-rights framework it leans on, are explicitly designed to stop contractors from holding warfighting data hostage inside proprietary formats. That sounds like bad news for software incumbents. It isn't — because the clause everyone reads as "government owns the data" says nothing about who owns the platform that ingests, fuses, and operationalizes that data. Own the workflow layer and you get paid every time the underlying contract vehicle gets rebid, renamed, or reassigned to a new prime, because ripping out the platform means ripping out the interface every operator already knows. That's a switching cost policy reform can't legislate away.