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Military Industrial Complex

What’s Behind The Biden Administration’s New $100 Billion Nuclear Missile System?

March 19, 2021 Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine. , , ,
One of the more important tasks that the Biden administration will undertake this year will be to review the Pentagon’s nuclear weapons budget and modernization strategy. According to a 2019 Congressional Budget Office report, the U.S. is committed to spending $494 billion on its nuclear forces over the next decade, or about $50 billion per year. Over the next three decades, nuclear weapons modernization plans could cost as much as $1.5-$2 trillion. This total includes investment in a $100 billion Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), a land-based nuclear missile, which is slated to replace the aging Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM).

Who Are The Ultimate War Profiteers?

February 11, 2021 Christian Sorenson, Covert Action Magazine. , , ,
The U.S. ruling class deploys the military for three main reasons: (1) to forcibly open up countries to foreign investment, (2) to ensure the free flow of natural resources from the global south into the hands of multinational corporations, and (3) because war is profitable. The third of these reasons, the profitability of war, is often lacking detail in analyses of U.S. imperialism: The financial industry, including investment banks and private equity firms, is an insatiable force seeking profit via military activity. The war industry is composed of corporations that sell goods and services to the U.S. government and allied capitalist regimes around the world.

Eisenhower’s Ghost Haunts Biden’s Foreign Policy Team

December 3, 2020 Nicolas J. S. Davies, Popular Resistance. , , ,
In his first words as President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State, Antony  Blinken said, “we have to proceed with equal measures of humility and confidence.” Many around the world will welcome this promise of humility from the new administration, and Americans should too. Biden's foreign policy team will also need a special kind of confidence to confront the most serious challenge they face. That will not be a threat from a hostile foreign country, but the controlling and corrupting power of the Military-Industrial Complex...

CIA Partners With Google, Amazon And IBM

November 25, 2020 Raul Diego, Mintpress News. , , ,
AWS currently holds the sole contract to provide cloud computing services to a number of intelligence agencies, including the FBI and the NSA. That contract is set to expire in 2023 and this new award – managed by the CIA – will further weaken Amazon’s once privileged position in the federal money sweepstakes, which had already taken a hard hit when Microsoft was unexpectedly chosen over Bezos’ company for the Department of Defense’s own cloud services contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program.

On War, Trump Has Largely Been An Appeaser

November 21, 2020 W. J. Astore, Bracing Views. , , ,
Yes, it’s good news that Trump is withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, though roughly 2500 troops will remain in each country when Joe Biden takes office in January. In short, Trump isn’t ending these wars; he’s merely reducing the number of boots on the ground. His Acting Defense Secretary, Chris Miller, described it as a “repositioning of forces from those two countries.” Repositioning! Perish the thought that the U.S. military might retreat or even withdraw. The answer is to “reposition” those deck chairs on the USS Titanic and its imperial wars, never mind the sinking feeling you may be experiencing.

New Report: More Than $1Billion From War Industry And Government Going To Think Tanks

October 23, 2020 Cassandra Simpson, Responsible Statecraft. , , ,
It’s well known that Pentagon contractors spend hundreds of millions each year on lobbying, but the other powerful weapon contractors wield to influence U.S. national security priorities — think tanks — is often ignored. A report released today from the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative, or FITI, at the Center for International Policy, where I work, reveals more than $1 billion in defense contractor and U.S. government funds flowing to the top 50 most influential U.S. think tanks from 2014-2019. It is part of a think tank’s role to recommend policy, and putting ideas forth into debate can be a public good.

Fortress On A Hill: Understanding The War Industry

October 1, 2020 Danny Sjursen, Fortress on a Hill. , , ,
Christian Sorenson stops by the podcast to discuss his new book “Understanding the War Industry”, a detailed look at contracting within the U.S. military industrial complex and how its giant war chest gets funneled to an endless list of contractors, without question to its necessity or what could have been purchased in its place. Everyone from libertarians to mainstream liberals to anarchists utters the words “military-industrial complex,” often as a catchall for murky forces that press the U.S. government into war. But what is this complex?

The CIA Democrats In The 2020 Elections

August 22, 2020 Patrick Martin, WSWS. , , , ,
In the course of the 2018 elections, a large group of former military-intelligence operatives entered capitalist politics as candidates seeking the Democratic Party nomination in 50 congressional seats—nearly half the seats where the Democrats were targeting Republican incumbents or open seats created by Republican retirements. Some 30 of these candidates won primary contests and became the Democratic candidates in the November 2018 election, and 11 of them won the general election, more than one-quarter of the 40 previously Republican-held seats captured by the Democrats as they took control of the House of Representatives.

UFO Hype Is Probably Just The US Military Lying Again

July 26, 2020 Caitlin Johnstone. , , ,
“No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public” reads a New York Times headline that is understandably attracting a great deal of attention today. True to form, the Times had to hastily issue an embarrassing correction to the article after initially reporting that former Senate majority leader Harry Reid “believed that crashes of vehicles from other worlds had occurred and that retrieved materials had been studied secretly for decades”, when in fact Reid merely believes “crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred”.

Scheer Intelligence: The Unbearable Violence Of Being American

July 24, 2020 Robert Scheer, Scheer Intelligence. , , ,
America’s military industrial complex and multiple presidential administrations have funnelled several generations of soldiers through unwinnable wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq seemingly without qualms. What has emerged from these tragedies are thousands of traumatized young Americans bringing home wars and leaving behind millions of innocent civilians killed, wounded and forced to become refugees. But some of these former soldiers also came home with an urgent new perspective to share with their compatriots.

The War Industry Threatens Humanity

May 30, 2020 David Swanson, World Beyond War. , , ,
I’m adding Christian Sorensen’s new book, Understanding the War Industry, to the list of books I think will convince you to help abolish war and militaries. See the list below. Wars are driven by many factors. They do not include protection, defense, benevolence, or public service. They do include inertia, political calculation, lust for power, and sadism — facilitated by xenophobia and racism. But the top driving force behind wars is the war industry, the all-consuming greed for the all-mighty dollar. It drives government budgets, war rehearsals, arms races, weapons shows, and fly-overs by military jets supposedly honoring people who are working to preserve life. If it could maximize profits without any actual wars, the war industry wouldn’t care.

Trump’s Own Military Mafia

April 9, 2020 Danny Sjursen, Tom Dispatch. , , ,
Every West Point class votes on an official motto. Most are then inscribed on their class rings. Hence, the pejorative West Point label "ring knocker." (As legend has it, at military meetings a West Pointer “need only knock his large ring on the table and all Pointers present are obliged to rally to his point of view.”) Last August, the class of 2023 announced theirs: “Freedom Is Not Free.” Mine from the class of 2005 was “Keeping Freedom Alive.” Each class takes pride in its motto and, at least theoretically, aspires to live according to its sentiments, while championing the accomplishments of fellow graduates. But some cohorts do stand out. Take the class of 1986 ("Courage Never Quits"). As it happens, both Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are members of that very class, as are a surprisingly wide range of influential leaders in...

Rage Against The War Machine Marches To Call Out War Profiteers

October 12, 2019 Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Washington, DC - On Friday, October 11, 100 anti-war activists took the streets of Washington, DC to visit offices of the War Machine as part of Cindy Sheehan's "Rage Against the War Machine" weekend of actions. This is the second annual event by Women March on the Pentagon. This year, the march was planned for a weekday so workers would be present to hear the messages at the stops along the march. The Rage Against the War Machine march started at the site of a principal war instigator of wars, the White House, where the Commander in Chief resides. Over the past decades, successive administrations have enhanced the power of the President's office, including the power to wage war without approval from Congress or the United Nations.

As Charles Koch Cultivates Anti-War Image, Koch Industries Profits From Defense Contracts

July 30, 2019 Alex Kotch, Readsludge.com   , , ,
The right-wing billionaire has teamed up with unlikely ally George Soros on “military restraint,” but Koch Industries subsidiaries make millions by supplying the Navy with circuitry. Libertarian billionaire industrialist Charles Koch has gone to great lengths to paint himself as an anti-interventionist. He has funded foreign policy-focused think tanks and university centers such as the conflict-averse Center for the Study of Statesmanship at Catholic University and the Notre Dame International Security Center, which is directed by anti-NATO professor Michael Desch.

Merger Mania: The Military-Industrial Complex On Steroids

July 17, 2019 By William D. Hartung, Tomdispatch.com , ,
When, in his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the “unwarranted influence” wielded by the “military-industrial complex,” he could never have dreamed of an arms-making corporation of the size and political clout of Lockheed Martin. In a good year, it now receives up to $50 billion in government contracts, a sum larger than the operating budget of the State Department. And now it’s about to have company. Raytheon, already one of the top five U.S. defense contractors, is planning to merge with United Technologies.
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