The trillion dollar war.., p.2
The Trillion Dollar War Machine, page 2
Led by the ever-present Musk, whose SpaceX stands to earn tens of billions from the new military-tech revolution, the Silicon Valley militarists have already achieved an unprecedented level of corporate capture of a sitting administration: vetting appointments to key agencies, gaining access to sensitive private and financial information, and winning dismissal of government employees who try to slow down their plans.27 Much of this has been spearheaded by the Musk-directed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but the corporate fingerprints of Silicon Valley reach right into the White House in the person of Vice President JD Vance, who was employed and mentored by Peter Thiel, founder of the increasingly influential military-tech firm Palantir. Thiel also helped finance Vance’s successful 2022 run for the Senate from Ohio.28
Whichever faction of the arms industry wins the budget wars to come, it will be operating in a favorable environment shaped by decades of influence exerted by the war machine. Nearly every facet of American life is touched by militarism. Go to a sporting event, and see a taxpayer-funded flyover of military aircraft designed to dazzle the public with the wonders of US defense technology, and maybe even to convince some fans to join the Air Force.29 Go to see an action movie, and you’re likely watching a film that the Pentagon reviewed the script of in exchange for providing shiny new weapons systems to be used in the film—likewise for action-packed TV shows. Follow foreign-policy commentators on TV, on radio, or in print, and more likely than not you’re listening to someone who has financial ties to the arms industry or works at a think tank that’s funded by it.30 Play a video game, and you could be enjoying a Pentagon-funded product. The military’s reach extends to Kennedy Center plays, social media posts, and on, and on… to the point where Americans are now fully immersed in the military-industrial complex. It’s no longer just about traditional methods of influence like lobbyists, campaign contributions, and the revolving door between government and industry, all of which we discuss in this book. The war machine is now embedded in the very structure of our society.
Arms-industry advocates also regularly point to the jobs created by Pentagon spending to justify the war machine. But this jobs argument—just like the argument that Pentagon spending “supports the troops”—is belied by the facts.31 When the opportunity costs of investing in weapons and war rather than basic needs are taken into account, overspending on the Pentagon actually costs jobs. Research by Heidi Peltier of Brown University’s Costs of War Project has shown that spending on other priorities such as clean energy, health care, or public education creates between 9 percent and 250 percent more jobs than the same amount of spending on the military.32 And the case for Pentagon spending as a job creator is getting worse over time: It’s a classic case of diminishing returns. As we will demonstrate below, direct jobs in weapons manufacturing have dropped dramatically since the mid-1980s because of outsourcing, mechanization, and the production of fewer numbers of weapon systems.
The bottom line is that the US drive for military dominance makes us less safe by increasing the risk of catastrophic wars abroad and by undermining Americans’ needs at home—all of which will hasten a decline of US power and influence. Overspending on the war machine doesn’t increase security, but it does undermine the foundations of our democracy, safety, and prosperity as it enriches big weapons companies and their allies.
The US policy of attempting to amass unmatched military capabilities as the foundation of American global influence was not created at the behest of the arms industry, but its role in shaping Pentagon spending and fostering a “military-first” ethos makes it easier for presidents and members of Congress to launch overseas wars. Elsewhere in this book we will discuss the tools of influence that the arms lobby uses to promote increases in Pentagon spending and reductions in regulations of US global arms sales: corporate political contributions, lobbying, funding of think tanks, serving on government advisory panels, and hiring former government officials to advance their agenda. These activities are critical contributors to sustaining and expanding the war machine that is the foundation of an interventionist foreign policy. The degree to which arms firms are responsible for the US penchant for going to war may be open to debate, but the fact that they profit massively from these conflicts is unquestionable.
In the remainder of this book, we explore all of these topics and more in hopes of understanding why America continues to spend more and more in pursuit of national security while getting less and less of it. We investigate the crisis of the war machine and its perverse incentive structure that enriches special interests while endangering the interests of the American people. We then explore the costs of the broken war machine—from the physical and mental costs of the brave service members who fight America’s wars to the financial costs of America’s hyper-militarized approach to foreign affairs. We next explain how the war machine has hidden these horrific costs from the American people by establishing false narratives about its impacts even as it insinuates itself into nearly every aspect of American life. From the political takeover of the war machine’s lobbyists in DC to its control of media and foreign-policy “experts” to using Hollywood and video games as propaganda, the war machine has immersed Americans in a Matrix-like world that blinds us from the truth—the war machine has made us less safe, not more. Finally, we investigate the future of the war machine. This includes the budding battle between the old-guard Pentagon contractors and their new rivals in the tech sector that seem poised to upend the way the Pentagon does business. And perhaps even more importantly, it includes a look at the military veterans, good-government groups, and other organizations and individuals working against militarism that can come together to form a powerful movement to ensure that US strategy and spending are less focused on the financial security of special interests and more focused on the genuine security of the American people.
Part One
The Broken War Machine
1
“WE DON’T APOLOGIZE”
HOW THE UNITED STATES BECAME THE TOP ARMS DEALER IN THE WORLD
The news from Gaza is heart-wrenching: As of this writing, the direct death toll there is fifty thousand and rising, and the war has spread to the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria. Indirect effects of the war have killed tens of thousands more, including more than sixty-two thousand from starvation.1 The vast majority of those killed have nothing to do with Hamas or its heinous attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. But Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, which some independent experts have deemed a genocide, are not the responsibility of the Israeli government alone.2 This unconscionable slaughter could not have occurred without weapons supplied and paid for by the United States.
The arming of Israel’s war effort has had impacts far beyond Gaza. The war there has prompted responses from Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria and from the Houthi rebels in Yemen that have put US military personnel stationed in the region at risk and increased the prospects of a regional war, prompting hundreds of US air strikes in response. Few arms transfers have done more to undermine stability, enable civilian casualties, or delegitimize US diplomatic efforts around the world than unrestrained US military aid to Israel.
No one knows exactly how much US weaponry has gone to Israel since the start of the Gaza war. And the US government would like to keep it that way. The Biden administration did everything it could to obscure the details. For example, as The Washington Post first reported, the Biden administration struck a hundred arms deals with Israel from October 2023 through March 2024, but the transactions were split up into packages small enough that there was no requirement to report them to Congress.3 Still, investigative reporting has been able to calculate that total US military aid from the time of the October 7 attacks through September 2024 was roughly $18 billion, plus an additional $20 billion in deals for weapons that will be delivered over the next few years.4 The deadly flow of weaponry to Israel has continued. In early 2025 the Pentagon announced a new offer of more than $8 billion in new bombs, missiles, and other munitions to Tel Aviv.5 Reports from the war zone indicate that US aircraft, missiles, bombs, and surveillance systems have been essential to the Israeli offensive in Gaza. It could hardly be otherwise, given that Israel’s entire inventory of combat aircraft was supplied by the United States.
America’s role as Israel’s primary arms supplier goes back decades, to the late 1970s. In fact, since Israel’s founding in 1948, the United States has provided Israel with more than $250 billion in military aid, adjusted for inflation, including billions in new military aid since the start of the Gaza war.6 Large parts of the Israeli arsenal and the Israeli arms industry have been made and paid for by the United States. Simply put, Israel could not wreak destruction on the scale it has done in Gaza and Lebanon without the support of the US government and US weapons makers.
Yet Israel is not alone. Now it is the entire world whose weapons are supplied by the United States. In 2022, for example, there were forty-six distinct conflicts across the globe, and in thirty-four of those conflicts, one or more parties to the war possessed weapons supplied by the United States, meaning that sometimes US weapons were being fired on both sides of a conflict.7 And from 2020 until 2024, the United States controlled over 43 percent of the global arms market, more than three times Russia’s share and six times China’s share.8 The United States has 107 arms clients in all—more than half the nations on the planet.
Why does the United States sell so many weapons? If you asked a Pentagon or State Department official, they would likely say that US weapons enhance stability and help allies defend themselves. But in the real world, US weapons have often led to more, not less, instability. This is clearly the case today with the current US role in enabling Israel’s wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and beyond, and America’s staunch support for the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—going so far as to define it as a “major defense partner”—even as that nation supplies extremist factions and repressive rebel groups throughout the Middle East and North Africa, from Yemen to Sudan to Libya.9 And not only do US weapons fuel the majority of the world’s conflicts, but contrary to repeated claims that they are the “arsenal of democracy,” US arms are too often supplied to undemocratic regimes. From 2019 to 2024 the United States provided weapons to thirty-one countries that Freedom House has defined as “not free.”10 This list included states like Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Egypt, and Nigeria that systematically abuse human rights.11 Therefore, claims that the US defense sector is the “arsenal of democracy” are belied by the fact that the United States has given hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons to authoritarians all over the world.
The costs of these weapons transfers to people in the recipient nations are severe, but they also impair the ability of the United States to influence other nations. US weapons in Israel have tarnished the US reputation in large parts of the globe and rendered rhetoric about US support for a “rules-based international order” laughable.
Not only do US arms sales to repressive regimes and war zones have tragic consequences for the victims, but they also undermine US security and influence. The only clear winners from this deadly trade are weapons companies, led by big US contractors like Raytheon (now known as RTX), Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics. And if you’re looking for evidence that these companies are profiting from war, all you have to do is ask them. In an interview with the Harvard Business Review early in the Ukraine war, Raytheon CEO Gregory Hayes plainly stated that “we don’t apologize for making these systems, making these weapons… the fact is eventually we will see some benefit in the business over time.”12
War and preparations for war are the lifeline of America’s largest defense firms. In the two decades since 9/11, the top five—Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman—split $2 trillion in contracts for sales to the Pentagon and foreign buyers. In all, more than half of the $14 trillion spent by the Pentagon in the twenty years after the 9/11 attacks went to private corporations.13
Today, funding of private firms is only increasing. And the proportion of defense-company profits coming from foreign sales is increasing rapidly as the United States brokers hundreds of billions in new weapons sales to countries in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Big sellers include Lockheed Martin F-35 combat aircraft, Lockheed Martin Javelin and Sidewinder missiles (coproduced with RTX), Boeing attack helicopters and guided bombs, RTX “precision-guided munitions” and attack missiles, and General Dynamics bombs and armored vehicles.14
Of course, such weapons aren’t just deadly; they cost big money as well. Consider how RTX’s Hayes explained his company’s weapons revenues on a call with Wall Street analysts. He was responding to a question from a Morgan Stanley researcher who noted that an arms package for Ukraine and Israel then being contemplated “seems to fit quite nicely with the Raytheon Defense portfolio.” Hayes replied: “I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you’re going to see a benefit of this restocking… on top of what we think is going to be an increase in the [Department of Defense] top line [budget].”15
Such obscene profits alone might make one reconsider the US habit of sending weapons across the globe. But there’s a larger issue: how the industry is exploiting the wars to press for special favors it has long sought. The industry is seeking reductions in protections against price gouging, faster approval of foreign sales, and a faster Pentagon acquisition process that reduces crucial functions like independent testing of major weapons systems before they go into full-rate production.16
Early on, the Biden administration seemed to be reining in America’s militarized foreign policy: pulling all US forces out of Afghanistan, reducing drone strikes, and pledging to end US weapons sales to Saudi Arabia that could be used in its brutal war in Yemen. Ultimately, these pledges were not so much about reducing reliance on military tools in foreign policy but were instead about a shift in military tactics. This point was underscored in a key passage of Biden’s speech marking the end of the US role in Afghanistan: “Today a terrorist threat has metastasized well beyond Afghanistan. Al Shabab in Somalia, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Al Nusra in Syria, ISIS attempting to create a caliphate in Syria and Iraq and establishing affiliates in multiple countries in Africa and Asia. These threats warrant our attention and our resources.”17 Contrary to major media coverage and public perception, the president was saying that the global war on terrorism would continue and that leaving Afghanistan was actually not the first step in pulling back US troops from around the world.
After Biden ended a major military intervention, arms sales came front and center in his foreign policy. Consider, for example, how the United States provided tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Ukraine to fend off a Russian invasion, as well as steadily poured bombs, missiles, and guns into Israel to support its unconscionable war in Gaza. In 2024 the Biden administration reported that major US arms sales hit near-record levels of $145 billion, tied for the highest level of such sales since World War II.18 Indeed, to the very end of his term in office, President Biden continued to step up the US military presence in the Middle East in support of Israel and to protect US troops already in the region. The United States deployed an aircraft carrier and carried out air strikes against Houthi forces in Yemen and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. The strikes were part of an action/reaction cycle in which the Houthis and the militias attacked US troops in retaliation for the US support of Israel’s devastating attacks on Gaza. Looming in the background is whether the Netanyahu government in Israel can lure the Trump administration into joining in a large-scale attack on Iran, which could have disastrous consequences for US security as well as stability in the Middle East.
However, Biden is far from the only Democratic president to talk peace while fueling war. Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama shares this distinction with his former vice president. Specifically, in 2010 the Obama administration made $103 billion in arms offers (which, adjusted for inflation, is equivalent to the arms-sales offers made by the Biden administration in 2024).19 Nearly half of the Obama administration offers went to Saudi Arabia.20 At the time that the Saudi deals were made, the Obama administration claimed that their impacts would be entirely positive and decidedly in US interests.21 Yet starting in 2014, Saudi Arabia used many of those US weapons in a brutal war in Yemen, which—through a combination of indiscriminate air strikes and a blockade on imports of vital food and medicines—has killed nearly four hundred thousand civilians.22
But perhaps the most egregious example of US weapons deals coming back to haunt us lies even further back, when the transnational terrorist groups al Qaeda and ISIS emerged from the fertile ground created by US arms sales and military interventions. In the case of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden served as a fundraiser, recruiter, and construction coordinator for the mujahideen factions fighting to eject Soviet troops from Afghanistan. In that position, he and his cohorts received a portion of the US military aid allocated for the Afghan opposition. The foreign fighters bin Laden recruited to fight in Afghanistan became the base and original members of al Qaeda.23 In the case of ISIS, the leaders of the network met and did their initial organizing in US-run prisons in Iraq, and they gained support partly because of public opposition to the sectarian regime in Baghdad that was installed in the wake of the 2003 US intervention in that country.24 ISIS also captured enormous quantities of US-made weapons from the Iraqi military.
