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general dynamics
How Do We Truly Care for Each Other in the Trump Era?
What are the systems that we need to build to replace the distinctly broken and shattered ones in this world of ours?
Dec 06, 2025
Do you have a silver card? I do. I live in New London, Connecticut, and while I don’t get EBT, or Electronic Benefit Transfers, anymore, I still carry the card as a talisman. It’s nestled in my wallet right behind my driver’s license. It reminds me that there was a time when I needed help and was able to get it. It’s the kind of reminder we all need—and one that’s in ever shorter supply these days.
When I was poorer, that card filled every month with money I could spend on food—fruits and vegetables, oil, spices, and cheese at the grocery store. I marshalled my resources carefully then, never taking them for granted.
When Congress and the Trump White House shut the government down recently, they hit 42 million Americans right in their wallets. They took that stability away. They hit mine too, after a fashion, because suddenly my neighbors and friends had empty cards and wallets. People rushed in to help. The little libraries in our neighborhood were suddenly filled with canned goods and jars of peanut butter and jelly. All the downtown businesses started offering discounts or free things if you showed your silver card. A teenager gave out free hot dogs in a local park, and our food co-op started a drive to pay for $20 gift cards to offer struggling shoppers.
After about a week and in response to calls, emails, and letters—a clamor from so many in the Nutmeg State—Connecticut did the right thing. Hartford used its “rainy day fund” to fully fund cards for residents. Our millionaire governor, who recently announced that he’s running for a third term, insisted that he’d bill the federal government for the cost of the stolen benefits.
Of course, I want to do more than just volunteer. I want the whole system to change.
And the goodwill is still going strong. This was shaping up to be a bountiful Thanksgiving for food pantries and soup kitchens in our area, and I’m already planning my outfit for directing traffic at our local food pantry next Friday. I’ll be head-to-toe in high viz.
This is all beautiful. It’s heartening—and we need more of it. It’s an all-too-human response to the Trump administration’s assault on what was left of good government. His graft machine came into power promising to make the government small enough to drown in a toilet. He unleashed Elon Musk and his army of young bros to smash and trash the bureaucracy. In the first weeks of his new administration, a century—whoops, I mean months—ago, more than 200,000 federal employees were pink-slipped, shown the door, or simply locked out. Foreign aid to the globally needy was left to moulder. Contraception bound for the Global South was incinerated. Effective, long-standing programs were shuttered without warning.
Small Ways to Be Useful
I struggled through all of that, feeling small and far from the power centers where good people were being shown the door. I tried to keep my eyes focused on what my own community needed most and did indeed find a modest way to be useful.
On Mondays and Wednesday mornings, I bundle up, don a high-viz vest, and head out to a nearby corner. For an hour, I walk that intersection, accompanying middle schoolers across the street and standing with little kids waiting for buses. I chat with parents and wave at cars, the trucks of contractors, and city buses. People toot their horns or shout my name from open car windows, waving good morning as they head to work.
I give speeders the stink eye and, when there are lulls, I pick up garbage and think about the day ahead. And then I see more kids coming and plan to casually help without letting them break stride. I greet them with warm respect. It hasn’t taken me long to recognize them all.
You may wonder: How did I get here? Let me back up and tell you the story because it connects to how our community is bulking up its care response network in the age of Trump.
During the last budget session, our town was in a fiscal crisis. Inflation, health insurance increases, and rising costs made for major belt tightening. The People’s Budget Coalition, a network of organizations and individuals I work with, turned out scores of people to fill City Council chambers through the budget season. We signed up dozens of people to speak to the City Council and wrote emails to or button-holed councilors at public events. We had marches and rallies. We met one-on-one with school board members and city councilors. We went to Hartford and demanded more money from the state. We worked so hard!
Sometimes, my two kids, 11 and 13, came with me to those City Council meetings, drawing, reading, and shifting around constantly in those uncomfortable seats as their teachers spoke passionately about the work they did. Again and again, people made the point that it isn’t just a school budget, it’s a community budget. After all, the schools provide breakfasts and lunches, before and after care, health and special-ed services, as well as support for more than a dozen languages. And if that isn’t enough to deal with, there are 300 to 400 kids in our school system who are homeless on any given night, and our schools have to contend with the disruptions such instability wreaks on families and so the ability of their kids to learn.
We went back and forth on this for months, but sadly the upshot was that the City Council flat-funded the schools, while the Board of Education had to cut positions and shave costs. One cut was to eliminate all but one crossing guard position, pushing five guards out of their jobs. Amid the massive disruptions at the federal level, this may seem like small potatoes. But it was an obvious and impactful cut, visible evidence of the whole system under attack.
We live between two schools, and I’ve always admired crossing guards for being steady and stalwart in the heat and the cold. I was ready to help out and the People’s Budget Coalition stepped in to organize us into a volunteer crossing-guard cadre.
But It Isn’t Enough! Tax the Weapons Contractors!
Of course, I want to do more than just volunteer. I want the whole system to change. While the school board shaved positions, the city offered early retirement to people in key jobs, and everyone was called on to economize, there is a gold-plated example of a tax scofflaw right in our neighborhood. General Dynamics is the fourth-largest weapons manufacturer in the United States, with a huge complex in New London. In 2024, it reported profits of $3.8 billion, up 14.1% from 2023. Its CEO, Phebe Novakovic, made more than $23 million in 2024 (with all her stocks and options). However, the company shortchanges its workers, even as it rakes in record profits.
In 2021, General Dynamics-Electric Boat took the city of New London to court to contest its tax bill, according to documents uncovered by the War Resisters League. The city had assessed its New London office park at $78 million, but the company wanted it lower. They eventually settled in court on an assessment of $57 million. That big break saved the company $563,000 a year in local taxes! Add that up for the five years since that decision was made, and you get $2.8 million!
If our tax system were fair, New London would get $6 million more in taxes.
It could have been even more. As local Patch news site reported, General Dynamics bought the complex for $55 million in July 2010—a fire sale price, given that the previous owner, pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer, had spent $300 million to build it less than 10 years earlier. When General Dynamics moved in, the fair market value for the property was $309 million, putting the tax assessment on the property at something like $216 million. So, the company’s fair tax burden to the City of New London should be nearly $6 million a year! How different life would be for New Londoners if General Dynamics were paying that annually.
After laying that out before the City Council, I concluded (all in less than three minutes) by saying: “I offer for your consideration that you stop cutting positions, stop threatening to flat-fund the schools and our kids, and that you tax General Dynamics with the same resolve that you tax the citizens. They can afford it, a lot more than we can.” There was some applause for that last line, even though many people are afraid to criticize General Dynamics, fearing that (no matter the real finances) the goose could stop laying what still passes for a golden egg.
Sandwiches, Not Submarines
The People’s Budget Coalition has begun looking into how we can take this issue on, especially because so much of our housing boom and the gentrification that goes with it (and pushes poorer people out of our area) is related to the US Navy’s massive contract (a whopping $132 billion) with General Dynamics-Electric Boat for a new class of nuclear-powered, nuclear-capable submarines. I mention all of this because it’s the kind of thing I think about while waiting for the next cluster of middle schoolers to arrive at my intersection.
At the end of the school year, as they cut school positions, proud parents put up lawn signs advertising where their kids were headed to college. One common sign was for Electric Boat, not a college. But most of the positions they’re filling with new grads aren’t actually high-paying, fast-advancing ones that will provide future stability for those young people. A recent report by the War Resisters League found that entry-level wages at Electric Boat, even after signing bonuses, were low enough that workers also often qualified for state healthcare and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits!
Imagine that, if our tax system were fair, New London would get $6 million more in taxes. Of course, then there’s the question of what it would be like if we Americans weren’t investing $132 billion for those 12 new nuclear-armed submarines capable all alone of destroying the world. Why is there money for those submarines but not for sandwiches (and other food), housing, and medicine for people who truly need it?
How can companies like General Dynamics-Electric Boat make insane profits with plenty of money left over for stock buybacks and CEO bonuses, while people in my world are digging through their pantries to find cans of food to share with their neighbors?
Planting Figs on the Strangest Planet Around
Only recently, when SNAP ran out of its federal funding during the government shutdown and the Trump crew decided to force millions of low-income people to reapply for their food stamps (supposedly in an effort to stop “fraud”), my social media filled up with images of World War II victory gardens and videos of how to replace such federal support with your own labor and ingenuity. And yes, it made a certain sense to me on one level, though it also couldn’t have been more tone deaf or unrealistic on another.
Here’s what I mean: I grow food in my yard. I devote three or four hours a week to watering, weeding, reseeding, and harvesting. Right there I’m way ahead of the curve, since I’ve got the space and time, two significant privileges. I had a great garlic harvest this year. My blueberry bushes and strawberry patch were both prolific. I lost all my hazelnuts to the squirrels during an ill-timed road trip. Our mushroom patch never came up. My care for the fig tree paid off—finally—and I got a tidy little fig harvest for a week or two in September. An asparagus patch I’ve been developing for a few years took off and, for a few weeks, we ate so much asparagus that we all got a little sick of it.
I can barely share a handful of figs with my neighbors and can’t solve anyone’s food crisis by my occasional neighborly drop-offs of a dozen backyard eggs.
Parsley, basil, collards, kale, and lettuces all did great, and we ate pesto and salads and slaws from May to October, almost turning green in the process. Last year’s jack-o’-lanterns took off in spiky abundance, and I let them take over a whole part of the yard. Eventually, I found five beautiful feral pumpkins that we carved up again, roasting the seeds with tamari and garlic powder for a messy and delicious treat. I grew corn but didn’t water it enough for it to be anything but chicken food. And yes, we have enough chickens to meet our egg needs, but we’re far from being self-sufficient.
You see what I’m getting at, I hope. Gardening is a lot of time and work, while the outcomes are anything but guaranteed. A handful of missed days, a few missteps, and all your work is for nothing. Still, this summer, there were weeks when my family could skip buying vegetables and fruit. That felt good and was nice for our bottom line, but even that depended on my having some free daytime, a luxury all too many of us don’t have.
Our true food system is all about commandeered water and stolen land, subsidized fertilizer and exploited labor, shipping and storage. Every little way I opt out from all of that is undoubtedly a good thing, but I can barely share a handful of figs with my neighbors and can’t solve anyone’s food crisis by my occasional neighborly drop-offs of a dozen backyard eggs.
Maybe it’s different in places where more people grow more food and aren’t dabblers or amateurs like me. But as I think about how to contend with the acute crisis and widening fissures in our whole international food system, with its Trumpian tariffs, excise taxes, and systemic abuses, I wonder how long this can go on.
How long can we live in the strange world of President Donald Trump and his version of what might be thought of as Defeat Gardens before we figure out a better way—how to truly feed and care for ourselves and one another? What are the systems that we need to build to replace the distinctly broken and shattered ones in this world of ours?
Those are some of the questions I ask myself daily as I wait for those schoolkids to get to my corner. But I can’t ask them alone or answer them by myself. Still, it feels meaningful to at least pose the questions and explore how, in this Trumpian universe of ours, not just I but we can try to answer them together.
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Under Trump, War Profiteers Are Entering a New Golden Age
The "garrison state" Eisenhower warned of has arrived, with negative consequences for nearly everyone but giant weapons conglomerates and their competitors in the emerging military-tech sector.
Jul 28, 2025
When, in his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the unwarranted influence wielded by a partnership between the military and a growing cohort of U.S. weapons contractors and came up with the ominous term “military-industrial complex,” he could never have imagined quite how large and powerful that complex would become. In fact, in recent years, one firm — Lockheed Martin — has normally gotten more Pentagon funding than the entire U.S. State Department. And mind you, that was before the Trump administration moved to sharply slash spending on diplomacy and jack up the Pentagon budget to an astonishing $1 trillion per year.
In a new study issued by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the Costs of War Project at Brown University, Stephen Semler and I lay out just how powerful those arms makers and their allies have become, as Pentagon budgets simply never stop rising. And consider this: in the five years from 2020 to 2024, 54% of the Pentagon’s $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending went to private firms and $791 billion went to just five companies: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion). And mind you, that was before Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Budget bill landed on planet Earth, drastically slashing spending on diplomacy and domestic programs to make room for major tax cuts and near-record Pentagon outlays.
In short, the “garrison state” Eisenhower warned of has arrived, with negative consequences for nearly everyone but the executives and shareholders of those giant weapons conglomerates and their competitors in the emerging military tech sector who are now hot on their trail. High-tech militarists like Peter Thiel of Palantir, Elon Musk of SpaceX, and Palmer Luckey of Anduril have promised a new, more affordable, more nimble, and supposedly more effective version of the military-industrial complex, as set out in Anduril’s “Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy,” an ode to the supposed value of those emerging tech firms.
Curiously enough, that Anduril essay is actually a remarkably apt critique of the Big Five contractors and their allies in Congress and the Pentagon, pointing out their unswerving penchant for cost overruns, delays in scheduling, and pork-barrel politics to preserve weapons systems that all too often no longer serve any useful military purpose. That document goes on to say that, while the Lockheed Martins of the world served a useful function in the ancient days of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, today they are incapable of building the next-generation of weaponry. The reason: their archaic business model and their inability to master the software at the heart of a coming new generation of semi-autonomous, pilotless weapons driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing. For their part, the new titans of tech boldly claim that they can provide exactly such a futuristic generation of weaponry far more effectively and at far less cost, and that their weapons systems will preserve or even extend American global military dominance into the distant future by outpacing China in the development of next-generation technologies.
War and a Possible Coming Techno-Autocracy
Could there indeed be a new, improved military-industrial complex just waiting in the wings, one aligned with this country’s actual defense needs that doesn’t gouge taxpayers in the process?
Don’t count on it, not at least if it’s premised on the development of “miracle weapons” that will cost so much less and do so much more than current systems. Such a notion, it seems, arises in every generation, only to routinely fall flat. From the “electronic battlefield” that was supposed to pinpoint and destroy Viet Cong forces in the jungles of Southeast Asia in the Vietnam War years to Ronald Reagan’s failed vision of an impenetrable “Star Wars” missile shield, to the failure of precision-guided munitions and networked warfare to bring victory in Iraq and Afghanistan during this country’s Global War on Terror, the notion that superior military technology is the key to winning America’s wars and expanding U.S. power and influence has been routinely marked by failure. And that’s been true even if the weapons work as advertised (which all too often they don’t).
And while you’re at it, don’t forget, for example, that, nearly 30 years later, the highly touted, high-tech F-35 combat aircraft — once hailed as a technological marvel-in-the-making that would usher in a revolution in both warfare and military procurement — still isn’t ready for prime time. Designed for multiple war-fighting tasks, including winning aerial dogfights, supporting troops on the ground, and bombing enemy targets, the F-35 has turned out to be able to do none of those things particularly well. And to add insult to injury, the plane is so complex that it spends almost as much time being maintained or repaired as being ready to do battle.
That history of technological hubris and strategic failure should be kept in mind when listening to the — so far unproven — claims of the leaders of this country’s military-tech sector about the value of their latest gadgets. For one thing, everything they propose to build — from swarms of drones to unpiloted aircraft, land vehicles, and ships — will rely on extremely complex software that is bound to fail somewhere along the way. And even if, by some miracle, their systems, including artificial intelligence, work as advertised, they may not only not prove decisive in the wars of the future but make wars of aggression that much more likely. After all, countries that master new technologies are tempted to go on the attack, putting fewer of their own people at immediate risk while doing devastating harm to targeted populations. The use of Palantir’s technology by the Israeli Defense Forces to increase the number of targets devastated in a given time frame in their campaign of mass slaughter in Gaza could foreshadow the new age of warfare if emerging military technologies aren’t brought under some system of control and accountability.
A further risk posed by AI-driven warfare is the possibility that the new weapons could choose their targets without human intervention. Current Pentagon policy promises to keep a human “in the loop” in the use of such systems, but military logic runs counter to such claims. As Anduril President and Chief Strategy Officer Christian Brose has written in his seminal book Kill Chain, the high-tech wars of the future will hinge on which side can identify and destroy its targets most quickly — an imperative that would ensure slow-moving humans were left out of the process.
In short, two possibilities arise if the U.S. military transitions to the “new improved” military-industrial complex espoused by the denizens of Silicon Valley: complex systems that don’t perform as advertised, or new capabilities that may make war both more likely and more deadly. And such dystopian outcomes will only be reinforced by the ideology of the new Silicon Valley militarists. They see themselves as both the “founders” of a new form of warfare and “the new patriots” poised to restore American greatness without the need for a democratic government in the war-making mix. Their ideal, in fact, would be to ensure that the government got out of the way and let them solve the myriad problems we face alone. Ayn Rand would be proud.
Such a techno-autocracy would be far more likely to serve the interests of a relatively small elite than aid the average American in any way. From Peter Thiel’s quest for a way to live forever to Elon Musk’s desire to enable the mass colonization of space, it’s not at all clear that, if such goals could even be achieved, they would be generally available. It’s more likely that such opportunities would be restricted to the species of superior beings that the techno-militarists see themselves as being.
The Ultimate Brawl Between the Big Five and the Emerging Tech Firms?
Still, the techno-militarists face serious obstacles in their quest to reach the top rungs of power and influence, not least among them, the continued clout of old-school weapons makers. After all, they still receive the vast bulk of Pentagon weapons spending, based in part on their millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign expenditures and their ability to spread jobs to almost every state and district in the country. These tools of influence give the Big Five far deeper roots in and influence over Congress than the new tech firms. These large, legacy companies also influence government policy through their funding of hawkish think tanks that help shape government policies designed to regulate their conduct, and so much more.
Of course, one way to prevent the ultimate brawl between the Big Five and the emerging tech firms would be to feed them both with ample funding — but that would require a Pentagon budget that would soar well beyond the present trillion-dollar mark. There are, of course, some projects that could benefit both factions, ranging from Donald Trump’s pet Golden Dome missile defense scheme, which could incorporate hardware from the Big Five with software from the emerging tech firms, to Boeing’s new F-47 combat aircraft program, which calls for unpiloted “wing men” likely to be produced by Anduril or another military tech firm. So, the question of confrontation versus cooperation between the new and old guard in the military sector has yet to be settled. If the rival firms end up turning their lobbying resources against each other and going for each other’s proverbial throats, it could weaken their grip on the rest of us and perhaps reveal useful information that might undermine the authority and credibility of both sides.
But count on one thing: neither sector has the best interests of the public in mind, so we need to prepare to fight back ourselves regardless of how their battle plays out.
Okay, then, what could we possibly do to head off the nightmare scenario of a world run by Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and crew? First, we’ll need the kind of “alert and knowledgeable” citizenry that Dwight D. Eisenhower pointed to so long ago as the only antidote to an ever more militarized society. That would mean concerted efforts by both the public and the government (which would, of course, have to be run by someone unlike Donald J. Trump — already a project in itself!).
At the moment, the tech sector is indeed increasingly embedded in the Trump administration and he owes a number of them a distinct debt of gratitude for helping him over the top in the 2024 election. Despite his very public and bitter falling out with fellow narcissist Elon Musk, the influence of the tech sector within his administration remains all too strong, starting with Vice President J.D. Vance, who owes his career to the employment, mentoring, and financial support of Silicon Valley militarist Peter Thiel. And don’t forget that a substantial cohort of former employees of Palantir and Anduril have already been given key posts in this administration.
Creating a counterweight to those new-age militarists will require a full-scale societal effort, including educators, scientists, and technologists, the labor movement, non-tech business leaders, and activists of all stripes. Silicon Valley workers did, in fact, organize a number of protests against the militarization of their handiwork before being beaten back. Now, a new wave of such activism is all too desperately needed.
Just as many of the scientists who helped build the atomic bomb spent their post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki lives trying to rein in or abolish nuclear weapons, a cohort of scientists and engineers in the tech sector needs to play a leading role in beginning to craft guardrails to limit the military uses of the technologies they helped develop. Meanwhile, the student movement against the use of U.S. weapons in Gaza has begun to expand its horizons to target the militarization of universities writ large. In addition, environmentalists need to double down on criticisms of the immense energy requirements needed to power AI and crypto, while labor leaders need to reckon with the consequences of AI destroying jobs in the military and civilian sectors alike. And all of this has to happen in the context of a far greater technological literacy, including among congressional representatives and workers in government agencies charged with regulating the suppliers of new military technologies.
None of that is, of course, likely to happen except in the context of a resurgence of democracy and a committed effort to fulfill the unmet rhetorical promises that undergird the myth of the American dream. And speaking of contexts, here’s one that anybody preparing to protest the further militarization of this society should take into account: contrary to the belief of many key figures from the Pentagon to Wall Street to Main Street, the peak of American military and economic power has indeed passed, never to return. The only rational course is to craft policies that maintain American influence in the context of a world where power has been defused and cooperation is all too essential.
Such a view, of course, is the polar opposite of the bombastic, bullying approach of the Trump administration, which, if it persists, will only accelerate American decline. And in that context, the key question is whether the widespread harm inherent in the new budget bill — which will only continue to wildly enrich the Pentagon and big arms firms of both kinds, while hitting the rest of us across the political spectrum — could prompt a new surge of public engagement and a genuine debate about what kind of world we want to live in and how this country could play a constructive (rather than destructive) role in bringing it about.
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The Rise of the Drone-Industrial Complex
A new force — Silicon Valley startup culture — has entered the fray, and the military-industrial complex equation is suddenly changing dramatically.
Feb 11, 2025
Last April, in a move generating scant media attention, the Air Force announced that it had chosen two little-known drone manufacturers — Anduril Industries of Costa Mesa, California, and General Atomics of San Diego — to build prototype versions of its proposed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), a future unmanned plane intended to accompany piloted aircraft on high-risk combat missions. The lack of coverage was surprising, given that the Air Force expects to acquire at least 1,000 CCAs over the coming decade at around $30 million each, making this one of the Pentagon’s costliest new projects. But consider that the least of what the media failed to note. In winning the CCA contract, Anduril and General Atomics beat out three of the country’s largest and most powerful defense contractors — Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman — posing a severe threat to the continued dominance of the existing military-industrial complex, or MIC.
For decades, a handful of giant firms like those three have garnered the lion’s share of Pentagon arms contracts, producing the same planes, ships, and missiles year after year while generating huge profits for their owners. But an assortment of new firms, born in Silicon Valley or incorporating its disruptive ethos, have begun to challenge the older ones for access to lucrative Pentagon awards. In the process, something groundbreaking, though barely covered in the mainstream media, is underway: a new MIC is being born, one that potentially will have very different goals and profit-takers than the existing one. How the inevitable battles between the old and the new MICs play out can’t be foreseen, but count on one thing: they are sure to generate significant political turbulence in the years to come.
The very notion of a “military-industrial complex” linking giant defense contractors to powerful figures in Congress and the military was introduced on January 17, 1961, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address to Congress and the American people. In that Cold War moment, in response to powerful foreign threats, he noted that “we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.” Nevertheless, he added, using the phrase for the first time, “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Ever since, debate over the MIC’s accumulating power has roiled American politics. A number of politicians and prominent public figures have portrayed U.S. entry into a catastrophic series of foreign wars — in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere — as a consequence of that complex’s undue influence on policymaking. No such claims and complaints, however, have ever succeeded in loosening the MIC’s iron grip on Pentagon arms procurement. This year’s record defense budget of approximately $850 billion includes $143.2 billion for research and development and another $167.5 billion for the procurement of weaponry. That $311 billion, most of which will be funneled to those giant defense firms, exceeds the total amount spent on defense by every other country on Earth.
Over time, the competition for billion-dollar Pentagon contracts has led to a winnowing of the MIC ecosystem, resulting in the dominance of a few major industrial behemoths. In 2024, just five companies — Lockheed Martin (with $64.7 billion in defense revenues), RTX (formerly Raytheon, with $40.6 billion), Northrop Grumman ($35.2 billion), General Dynamics ($33.7 billion), and Boeing ($32.7 billion) — claimed the vast bulk of Pentagon contracts. (Anduril and General Atomics didn’t even appear on a list of the top 100 contract recipients.)
Typically, these companies are the lead, or “prime,” contractors for major weapons systems that the Pentagon keeps buying year after year. Lockheed Martin, for example, is the prime contractor for the Air Force’s top-priority F-35 stealth fighter (a plane that has often proved distinctly disappointing in operation); Northrop Grumman is building the B-21 stealth bomber; Boeing produces the F-15EX combat jet; and General Dynamics makes the Navy’s Los Angeles-class attack submarines. “Big-ticket” items like these are usually purchased in substantial numbers over many years, ensuring steady profits for their producers. When the initial buys of such systems seem to be nearing completion, their producers usually generate new or upgraded versions of the same weapons, while employing their powerful lobbying arms in Washington to convince Congress to fund the new designs.
Over the years, non-governmental organizations like the National Priorities Project and the Friends Committee on National Legislation have heroically tried to persuade lawmakers to resist the MIC’s lobbying efforts and reduce military spending, but without noticeable success. Now, however, a new force — Silicon Valley startup culture — has entered the fray, and the military-industrial complex equation is suddenly changing dramatically.
Along Came Anduril
Consider Anduril Industries, one of two under-the-radar companies that left three MIC heavyweights in the dust last April by winning the contract to build a prototype of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft. Anduril (named after the sword carried by Aragorn in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings) was founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, a virtual-reality headset designer, with the goal of incorporating artificial intelligence into novel weapons systems. He was supported in that effort by prominent Silicon Valley investors, including Peter Thiel of the Founders Fund and the head of another defense-oriented startup, Palantir (a name also derived from The Lord of the Rings).
From the start, Luckey and his associates sought to shoulder aside traditional defense contractors to make room for their high-tech startups. Those two companies and other new-fledged tech firms often found themselves frozen out of major Pentagon contracts that had long been written to favor the MIC giants with their bevies of lawyers and mastery of government paperwork. In 2016, Palantir even sued the U.S. Army for refusing to consider it for a large data-processing contract and later prevailed in court, opening the door for future Department of Defense awards.
In addition to its aggressive legal stance, Anduril has also gained notoriety thanks to the outspokenness of its founder, Palmer Luckey. Whereas other corporate leaders were usually restrained in their language when discussing Department of Defense operations, Luckey openly criticized the Pentagon’s inbred preference for working with traditional defense contractors at the expense of investments in the advanced technologies he believes are needed to overpower China and Russia in some future conflict.
Such technology, he insisted, was only available from the commercial tech industry. “The largest defense contractors are staffed with patriots who nevertheless do not have the software expertise or business model to build the technology we need,” Luckey and his top associates claimed in their 2022 Mission Document. “These companies work slowly, while the best [software] engineers relish working at speed. And the software engineering talent who can build faster than our adversaries resides in the commercial sector, not at large defense primes.”
To overcome obstacles to military modernization, Luckey argued, the government needed to loosen its contracting rules and make it easier for defense startups and software companies to do business with the Pentagon. “We need defense companies that are fast. That won’t happen simply by wishing it to be so: it will only happen if companies are incentivized to move” by far more permissive Pentagon policies.
Buttressed by such arguments, as well as the influence of key figures like Thiel, Anduril began to secure modest but strategic contracts from the military and the Department of Homeland Security. In 2019, it received a small Marine Corps contract to install AI-enabled perimeter surveillance systems at bases in Japan and the United States. A year later, it won a five-year, $25 million contract to build surveillance towers on the U.S.-Mexican border for Customs and Border Protection (CBP). In September 2020, it also received a $36 million CBP contract to build additional sentry towers along that border.
After that, bigger awards began to roll in. In February 2023, the Department of Defense started buying Anduril’s Altius-600 surveillance/attack drone for delivery to the Ukrainian military and, last September, the Army announced that it would purchase its Ghost-X drone for battlefield surveillance operations. Anduril is also now one of four companies selected by the Air Force to develop prototypes for its proposed Enterprise Test Vehicle, a medium-sized drone intended to launch salvos of smaller surveillance and attack drones.
Anduril’s success in winning ever-larger Pentagon contracts has attracted the interest of wealthy investors looking for opportunities to profit from the expected growth of defense-oriented startups. In July 2020, it received fresh investments of $200 million from Thiel’s Founders Fund and prominent Silicon Valley investor Andreessen Horowitz, raising the company’s valuation to nearly $2 billion. A year later, Anduril obtained another $450 million from those and other venture capital firms, bringing its estimated valuation to $4.5 billion (double what it had been in 2020). More finance capital has flowed into Anduril since then, spearheading a major drive by private investors to fuel the rise of defense startups — and profit from their growth as it materializes.
The Replicator Initiative
Along with its success in attracting big defense contracts and capital infusions, Anduril has succeeded in convincing many senior Pentagon officials of the need to reform the department’s contracting operations so as to make more room for defense startups and tech firms. On August 28, 2023, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, then the department’s second-highest official, announced the inauguration of the “Replicator” initiative, designed to speed the delivery of advanced weaponry to the armed forces.
“[Our] budgeting and bureaucratic processes are slow, cumbersome, and byzantine,” she acknowledged. To overcome such obstacles, she indicated, the Replicator initiative would cut through red tape and award contracts directly to startups for the rapid development and delivery of cutting-edge weaponry. “Our goal,” she declared, “is to seed, spark, and stoke the flames of innovation.”
As Hicks suggested, Replicator contracts would indeed be awarded in successive batches, or “tranches.” The first tranche, announced last May, included AeroVironment Switchblade 600 kamikaze drones (called that because they are supposed to crash into their intended targets, exploding on contact). Anduril was a triple winner in the second tranche, announced on November 13th. According to the Department of Defense, that batch included funding for the Army’s purchase of Ghost-X surveillance drones, the Marine Corps’ acquisition of Altius-600 kamikaze drones, and development of the Air Force’s Enterprise Test Vehicle, of which Anduril is one of four participating vendors.
Just as important, perhaps, was Hicks’ embrace of Palmer Luckey’s blueprint for reforming Pentagon purchasing. “The Replicator initiative is demonstrably reducing barriers to innovation, and delivering capabilities to warfighters at a rapid pace,” she affirmed in November. “We are creating opportunities for a broad range of traditional and nontraditional defense and technology companies… and we are building the capability to do that again and again.”
Enter the Trumpians
Kathleen Hicks stepped down as deputy secretary of defense on January 20th when Donald Trump reoccupied the White House, as did many of her top aides. Exactly how the incoming administration will address the issue of military procurement remains to be seen, but many in Trump’s inner circle, including Elon Musk and Vice President J.D. Vance, have strong ties to Silicon Valley and so are likely to favor Replicator-like policies.
Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host who recently won confirmation as secretary of defense, has no background in weapons development and has said little about the topic. However, Trump’s choice as deputy secretary (and Hick’s replacement) is billionaire investor Stephen A. Feinberg who, as chief investment officer of Cerberus Capital Management, acquired the military startup Stratolaunch — suggesting that he might favor extending programs like Replicator.
In a sense, the Trump moment will fit past Washington patterns when it comes to the Pentagon in that the president and his Republican allies in Congress will undoubtedly push for a massive increase in military spending, despite the fact that the military budget is already at a staggering all-time high. Every arms producer is likely to profit from such a move, whether traditional prime contractors or Silicon Valley startups. If, however, defense spending is kept at current levels — in order to finance the tax cuts and other costly measures favored by Trump and the Republicans — fierce competition between the two versions of the military-industrial complex could easily arise again. That, in turn, might trigger divisions within Trump’s inner circle, pitting loyalists to the old MIC against adherents to the new one.
Most Republican lawmakers, who generally rely on contributions from the old MIC companies to finance their campaigns, are bound to support the major prime contractors in such a rivalry. But two of Trump’s key advisers, J.D. Vance and Elon Musk, could push him in the opposite direction. Vance, a former Silicon Valley functionary who reportedly became Trump’s running mate only after heavy lobbying by Peter Thiel and other tech billionaires, is likely to be encouraged by his former allies to steer more Pentagon contracts to Anduril, Palantir, and related companies. And that would hardly be surprising, since Vance’s private venture fund, Narya Capital (yes, another name derived from The Lord of the Rings!), has invested in Anduril and other military/space ventures.
Named by Trump to direct the as-yet-to-be-established Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, like Anduril’s Palmer Luckey, fought the Department of Defense to obtain contracts for one of his companies, SpaceX, and has expressed deep contempt for the Pentagon’s traditional way of doing things. In particular, he has denigrated the costly, generally ill-performing Lockheed-made F-35 jet fighter at a time when AI-governed drones are becoming ever more capable. Despite that progress, as he wrote on X, the social media platform he now owns, “some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35.” In a subsequent post, he added that “manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway.”
His critique of the F-35 ruffled feathers at the Air Force and caused Lockheed’s stock to fall by more than 3%. “We are committed to delivering the world’s most advanced aircraft — the F-35 — and its unrivaled capabilities with the government and our industry partners,” Lockheed declared in response to Musk’s tweets. Over at the Pentagon, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall had this to say: “I have a lot of respect for Elon Musk as an engineer. He’s not a warfighter, and he needs to learn a little bit more about the business, I think, before he makes such grand announcements as he did.” He then added, “I don’t see F-35 being replaced. We should continue to buy it, and we also should continue to upgrade it.”
President Trump has yet to indicate his stance on the F-35 or other high-priced items in the Pentagon’s budget lineup. He may (or may not) call for a slowdown in purchases of that plane and seek greater investment in other projects. Still, the divide exposed by Musk — between costly manned weapons made by traditional defense contractors and more affordable unmanned systems made by the likes of Anduril, General Atomics, and AeroVironment — is bound to widen in the years to come as the new version of the military-industrial complex only grows in wealth and power. How the old MIC will address such a threat to its primacy remains to be seen, but multibillion-dollar weapons companies are not likely to step aside without a fight. And that fight will likely divide the Trumpian universe.
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As Bombs Drop, Weapons Industry Stocks Take Off
One wonders how the executives of these companies feel about their products being used for mass slaughter in Gaza and dangerous escalation in Lebanon.
Oct 04, 2024
It’s a sad but familiar spectacle — as people die at the hands of U.S. weapons in a faraway war zone, the stock prices of arms makers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin soar. A piece posted yesterday at Forbes tells the tale: “Defense Stocks Hit All-Time Highs Amidst Mideast Escalation.”
One wonders how the executives of these companies feel about their products being used for mass slaughter in Gaza and dangerous escalation in Lebanon. For the most part they’re not talking, although they are glad to occasionally inform their investors that “turbulence” and “instability” means their products will be needed in significant quantities by our “allies.”
And, not unlike the Biden administration, they tend to couch their rhetoric in terms of a “right to self-defense.” They act as if Israel’s killing of 40,000 people and displacing millions more — the vast majority of whom have absolutely nothing to do with Hamas, nor any way to influence their behavior — can somehow be white washed by calling it a defensive operation.
No one who steps outside the bankrupt world of official Washington to look at the impacts on actual human beings in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon can take the notion that U.S. weapons are being used for defense in the current Middle East war seriously.
Peter Thiel and his colleagues at Palantir are an exception to the closed mouthed approach of executives at the larger weapons companies. When asked how he felt about his company’s technology to pick targets in Gaza, he said “I'm not on top of all the details of what's going on in Israel, because my bias is to defer to Israel. It's not for us to second-guess every, everything.” And Palantir CEO Alex Karp flew the entire company board to Israel earlier this year to show solidarity with Israel’s war effort in Gaza.
At least Palantir’s leaders are honest and open about where they stand. Leaders of firms like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Boeing that supply the weapons that have laid waste to Gaza and are now pounding Lebanon prefer to hide behind euphemisms about promoting defense, deterrence, and stability, and assisting allies.
But what about when those allies are engaged in widespread war crimes that prompted the International Court of Justice to say that Israel’s war on Gaza could plausibly be considered a genocide? Is it morally acceptable to just cash the checks and avert one’s eyes, or do the companies profiting from this grotesque humanitarian disaster have a moral responsibility for how their products are being used?
A few years ago, during the height of Saudi Arabia’s brutal invasion of Yemen — enabled by billions of dollars of U.S.- and European-origin weapons — Amnesty International probed this very point. In a report entitled “Outsourcing Responsibility,”the group provided the findings of a survey it had done of 22 arms companies, asking them “to explain how they meet their responsibilities to respect human rights under internationally recognized standards.”
Amnesty noted that "many of the companies investigated supply arms to countries accused of committing war crimes and serious human rights violations, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.” None of the companies queried provided evidence that they were doing any sort of due diligence to ensure that their weapons weren’t being used to commit war crimes or human rights abuses. Fourteen companies failed to respond at all, and of the eight that did answer Amnesty’s questions gave variations on the theme of “we just do what the government allows.”
This casts influential arms makers as innocent bystanders who await government edicts before marketing their wares. In fact, weapons manufacturers spend millions year in and year out pressing for weaker human rights strictures and quicker decisionmaking on the sale of arms to foreign clients.
The weapons merchants are right about one thing. It is going to take changes in government policy to stop the obscene trafficking of weapons of war into the world’s killing zones. That will mean breaking the web of influence that ties government policy makers, corporate executives, and many members of Congress to the continued production of weapons on a mass scale. We can’t expect a profit making entity like Lockheed Martin to regulate itself when there are billions to be made fueling conflicts large and small.
Which means the responsibility for ending the killing and the war profiteering it enables falls to the rest of us, from students calling for a ban on arming Israel to union members looking to reduce their dependency on jobs in the weapons sector to anyone who wants a foreign policy driven by what makes us safe, not what makes Palantir and Lockheed Martin rich.
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It’s Time for the US to Kick Its War Habit and Get Mad at MAD
Using the vernacular of the day, perhaps it’s particularly on target to say that our whole country suffers from Militarism Abuse Disorder or (all too appropriately) MAD.
Sep 25, 2024
My name is Frida, and my community is military dependent. (I feel, by the way, like I’m introducing myself at a very strange AA-like meeting with lousy coffee.) As with people who have substance abuse disorders, I’m part of a very large club. After all, there are weapons manufacturers and subcontractors in just about every congressional district in the country, so that members of Congress will never forget whom they are really working for: the military-industrial complex.
Using the vernacular of the day, perhaps it’s particularly on target to say that our whole country suffers from Militarism Abuse Disorder or (all too appropriately) MAD.
I must confess that I don’t like to admit to my military dependency. Who does? In my case, it’s a tough one for a few reasons, the biggest being that I’m an avowed pacifist who believes that war is a crime against humanity, a failure of the imagination, and never (no, not ever) necessary. Along with the rest of my family of five, I live below the taxable income level. That way, we don’t pay into a system that funds war preparations and war-making. We have to be a little creative to make our money stretch further, and we don’t eat out or go to the movies every week. But we don’t ever feel deprived as a result. In essence, I’ve traded career success and workplace achievement for a slightly clearer conscience and time—time to work to end militarism and break our collective addiction!
Those who suffer from Militarism Abuse Disorder can’t even ask the questions, because they’re distracted by the promises of good jobs, nice apartments, and cheap consumer goods that the military-industrial complex is always claiming are right around the corner.
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation estimates that, in 2023, the United States of America spent $142 billion buying weapons systems and another $122 billion on the research and development of future weaponry and other militarized equipment. And keep in mind that those big numbers represent only a small fraction of any Pentagon budget, the latest of which the Pentagon’s proposing to be $849.8 billion for 2025—and that’s just one year (and not all of what passes for “national defense” spending either). A recent analysis by the Costs of War Project at Brown University calculated that, since September 11, 2001, the United States has used an estimated $8 trillion-plus just for its post-9/11 wars. Talk about addiction! It makes me pretty MAD, if I’m being honest with you!
It would be nice to ignore such monstrous numbers and the even bigger implications they suggest, to unfocus my eyes slightly as I regularly drive by the fenced facilities; manicured office parks; and noisy, bustling shipyards that make up the mega-billion-dollar-a-year industry right in my own neighborhood that’s preparing for… well, yes… the end of the world. Instead, I’m trying to be clear-eyed and aware. I’m checking my personal life all the time for compromise or conciliation with militarism: Am I being brainwashed when I find myself cheering for the fighters in that blockbuster movie we splurged on? Am I doing enough to push for a cease-fire in Gaza? Am I showing up with young people in my community who are backing higher salaries for teachers and no more police in schools? And of course, I keep asking myself: How are my daily consumer decisions lining up with my lofty politics?
I don’t always like the answers that come up in response to such questions, but I keep asking them, keep trying, keep pushing. Those who suffer from Militarism Abuse Disorder can’t even ask the questions, because they’re distracted by the promises of good jobs, nice apartments, and cheap consumer goods that the military-industrial complex is always claiming are right around the corner.
But here in my community, they never deliver!
New London: A Profile of Militarism Abuse Disorder
New London is a town of fewer than 28,000 people. The median income here is a little over $46,000—$32,000 less than the state average. We are a very old community. Long part of the fishing and hunting grounds of the Eastern Pequots, Nehantics, Mashantucket Pequot, and Mohegan, the city was founded in the 1600s and incorporated in the late 1700s. You see evidence of our age in the shape of our streets, curbed and meandering, long ago carved out of fields by cows and wagons, and in our architecture—aging industrial buildings, warehouses, and ice houses in the neighborhoods where their workers once lived—now derelict and empty or repurposed as auto repair stores or barber shops.
Sometimes I watch, almost mesmerized by the ferocious energy of all those cars careening up Howard Street on their way to work at General Dynamics. Car after car headed for work at the very break of day. Every workday at about 3:00 pm, they reverse course, a river of steel and plastic rushing and then idling in traffic, trying to get out of town as fast as possible.
As the only nation that has ever used nuclear weapons in war (in 1945) and has tested, perfected, and helped proliferate the technology of ultimate destruction for the last eight decades, the United States should be leading the charge to denuclearize, disarm, and abolish such weaponry.
General Dynamics Electric Boat repairs, services, and manufactures submarines armed with both conventional and nuclear weapons. And it certainly tells you something about our world that the company is in the midst of a major hiring jag, looking to fill thousands of positions in New London, Groton, and coastal Rhode Island to build the Columbia-class submarine, the next generation of nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed subs. Those behemoths of human ingenuity and engineering will cost taxpayers a whopping $132 billion, with each of the 12 new boats clocking in at about $15 billion—and mind you, that’s before anything even goes wrong or the schedule to produce them predictably stretches out and out. The company has already solved one big problem: how to wring maximum profits out of this next generation of planet-obliteration-capable subs. And that’s a problem that isn’t even particularly hard to sort out, because some of those contracts are “cost plus,” meaning the company says what the project costs and then adds a percentage on top of that as profit.
Such a cost-plus business bothers me a lot. I could almost be converted into a hard-nosed militarist if our weapons production industry was a nonprofit set of organizations, run with the kind of shoestring ingenuity that dozens of outfits in New London employ to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and care for the victims of domestic violence.
I break from my traffic-watching fugue on Howard Street to reflect on all that furious effort, all those advanced degrees, all that almost impossible intelligence being poured into making an even better, bigger, faster, sleeker, stealthier weapons-delivery system, capable of carrying and firing conventional and nuclear warheads. Why? We have so many already. And as the only nation that has ever used nuclear weapons in war (in 1945) and has tested, perfected, and helped proliferate the technology of ultimate destruction for the last eight decades, the United States should be leading the charge to denuclearize, disarm, and abolish such weaponry. That, after all, is what’s called for in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
If we are ever going to break our MAD addiction, one place to start is here on Howard Street with people who make their living working on one tiny component of this incredibly complex system. Economic conversion, moving resources and skills and jobs from the military-industrial complex to civilian sectors, is a big project. And it could indeed begin right here on Howard Street.
You Get What You Pay For
Our small town is also home to the Coast Guard Academy and two private colleges. Add the acreage of those three non-taxpaying institutions to the nearly 30 churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship that enjoy tax-free status here; throw in the dozens of nonprofits that do all the good work and you end up with an awfully small tax base. As a result, the municipal budget leans heavily on commercial taxpayers like General Dynamics Electric Boat, the military-industrial behemoth that moved into 24 acres of prime waterfront real estate in 2009 after it was vacated by the tax scofflaw Pfizer.
General Dynamics, like other military manufacturers, essentially only has one customer to please, the United States government. That makes the cost-plus contracting scheme even more egregious, guaranteeing that, no matter what goes wrong, its profits are always assured. Such a bonkers, counter-capitalist scenario passes all the costs on to American taxpayers and allows the privately held corporation to pocket all the profits, while handing out fat dividends to its shareholders. According to Sahm Capitol, “Over the past three years, General Dynamics’ Earnings Per Share grew by 3.7% and over the past three years, the total shareholder return was 62%.”
Am I to understand that spending money on just about anything else creates more jobs and more economic activity, while not threatening the world with annihilation?
For 2024, General Dynamics Electric Boat is paying taxes on property valued at $90.8 million—almost twice as much as that of the next highest taxpayer in our town. But it is also a bone of contention. The company, which paid CEO Phebe Novakovic $22.5 million in salary and stock awards in 2023, has no trouble taking the City of New London to court when they feel like their property is being overvalued or overtaxed. They win, too, so their property valuations yo-yo year to year when New London has been ordered to repay taxes to General Dynamics. Whether they pay taxes based on $90.8 million in property or $57 million doesn’t really matter to the company. It’s literal pocket change to the Pentagon’s third largest weapons contractor, a company that boasted $42.3 billion in revenue in 2023. But it matters a lot in a place like New London, where the annual budget process routinely shaves jobs from the schools, public works, and the civil service to make the columns all add up.
According to a report by Heidi Garrett-Peltier for the Costs of War Project at Brown University, $1 million of federal spending in the military sector creates 6.9 jobs (5.8 direct jobs and 1.1 in the supply chain). That same $1 million would create 8.4 jobs in the wind energy sector or 9.5 jobs in solar energy. Investing $1 million in energy efficiency retrofits creates 10.6 jobs. Use that $1 million to build streets or highways or tunnels or bridges or to repair schools and it will create “over 40% more jobs than the military, with a total multiplier of 9.8 jobs per $1 million spending.”
Wait, what? Are you telling me that, with their lack of transparency, accountability, and their cost-plus contracts, while building weapons systems for the sole purpose of destruction and wasting a lot of money in the process, the military-industrial complex is a lousy job creator? Am I to understand that spending money on just about anything else creates more jobs and more economic activity, while not threatening the world with annihilation?
As I work on a local level in my small town in Connecticut, I see how municipal policy should prioritize small businesses, mom-and-pop stores made of brick and mortar, over multinational corporations or big business. I see the return on investment from a small business in granular and tangible ways: the grocery store owner who starts each day by picking up garbage in his parking lot, the funeral home that sponsors the Little League team, the woman at the art gallery and frame shop who waters the street flowers, or the self-employed local photographer who serves on the board of the cooperative grocery store.
These businesses don’t employ tens of thousands of people, but they also don’t insist on tax abatements that undermine our local budget or fill our crowded streets with commuters hell-bent on getting away from the office and our town as quickly as possible.
You get what you pay for, right? Garrett-Peltier’s Costs of War report goes on to note that “healthcare spending creates more than twice as many jobs for the same level of spending, while education creates up to nearly three times as many jobs as defense spending… The employment multipliers for these domestic programs are 14.3 for healthcare, 19.2 for primary and secondary education, and 11.2 for higher education; the average figure for education is 15.2 jobs per $1 million spending.”
These are numbers I wish my City Council would commit to memory. In fact, we should all know these numbers by heart, because they counter the dominant narrative that military spending is good for the economy and that good-paying jobs depend on militarism.
The United States is investing trillions of dollars in the military, as well as in weapons contractors like General Dynamics, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. Every U.S. president in modern history has prioritized the bottom lines of those corporations over a safe and healthy future for the next generation. Consider all of that as just so many symptoms of Militarism Abuse Syndrome. Isn’t it finally time to get really mad at MAD? Let’s kick the habit and get clean!
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'The Genocide Gentry': Weapon Execs Sit on Boards of Universities, Institutions
"This research provides a view into just how embedded the corporate, profit-fueled war machine is in our higher education and cultural institutions," said one campaigner.
Sep 18, 2024
A trio of human rights groups on Wednesday announced a new interactive initiative exposing what the coalition is calling a "Genocide Gentry" of weapons company executives and board members and "54 museums, cultural organizations, universities, and colleges that currently host these individuals on their boards or in other prominent roles."
The coalition—which consists of the Adalah Justice Project, LittleSis, and Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE)—published a map and database detailing the "educational and cultural ties to board members of six defense corporations" amid Israel's ongoing annihilation of Gaza, for which the U.S.-backed country is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
"Israel has destroyed every university in Gaza and nearly 200 cultural heritage sites since October 2023, using bombs and weapons manufactured by the companies included in the Genocide Gentry research," the coalition said. "As of April, these attacks have killed more than 5,479 students and 261 teachers and destroyed or critically damaged nearly 90% of all school buildings in Gaza."
"Universities across the country including the likes of Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Southern California, and New York University have remained largely silent on Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza," the groups added. "Behind closed doors, these same universities are hosting executives and board members of the companies manufacturing the weapons used in these attacks as board members, trustees, and fellows."
Members of the Genocide Gentry include:
- Jeh Johnson, Lockheed Martin board of directors: Johnson is currently a Columbia University trustee, and sits on the board of directors at MetLife and U.S. Steel. Columbia University notably shut down student protests demanding divestment from weapons companies like Lockheed Martin.
- Brian C. Rogers, RTX board of directors: Rogers is currently a trustee of the Harvard Management Company, tasked with managing the $50 billion endowment. Notably Harvard administrators have cracked down on students demanding divestment from weapons companies like RTX, formerly Raytheon.
- Catherine B. Reynolds, General Dynamics board of directors: Reynolds is a trustee of the Kennedy Center and sponsors a fellowship at New York University, which has also cracked down on anti-genocide protests and recently enacted a policy equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
"Students on university campuses across the country have not only been demanding divestment, but transparency," said Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project. "Transparency about their institutions' investments, partnerships, donors, and decision-makers, and their connections to individuals and companies directly enabling and profiting off war and genocide."
"This research helps provide some of this transparency by illuminating just how embedded the interests of the weapons industry are within our institutions, so we can begin chipping away at the power and influence that they wield," she added.
ACRE campaign director Ramah Kudaimi noted that "as part of its genocide since October 2023, Israel has targeted universities and cultural centers across Gaza, destroying campuses, museums, libraries, and more."
"That this is all backed by the United States means U.S. educational and cultural institutions have a responsibility to consider what their role is in helping end these war crimes, and that starts with reconsidering their connections with the weapons companies profiting from the destruction," Kudaimi said.
Munira Lokhandwala, director of the Tech and Training program at LittleSis, said: "This research provides a view into just how embedded the corporate, profit-fueled war machine is in our higher education and cultural institutions. Through this research, we show how the defense industry shapes and influences our civic and cultural institutions, and as a result, their silence around war and genocide."
"We must ask our institutions: What role are you playing in whitewashing war and destruction by inviting those who profit from manufacturing weapons onto your boards and into your galas?" she added.
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Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund Weighs Divestment From Companies Complicit in Israeli Crimes
The world's largest pension fund recently adopted new ethics rules that could preclude it from owning shares in several U.S. arms firms.
Sep 04, 2024
Norway's $1.76 trillion sovereign wealth fund—the world's largest—could soon be forced to divest from companies including linchpins of the U.S. military-industrial complex due to updated ethics standards for businesses complicit in Israeli human rights violations in occupied Palestine.
Reuters reported Wednesday that the Government Pension Fund Global Council of Ethics informed the Norwegian Ministry of Finance on August 30 that it "believes the ethical guidelines provide a basis for excluding a few more companies" to its divestment list, "in addition to those already excluded."
The ethics council has been investigating whether to blacklist more companies ever since Israel began its bombardment, siege, and invasion of Gaza 334 days ago in response to the Hamas-led October 7 attack.
Since then, Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 145,000 Palestinians, while forcibly displacing, starving, and sickening millions more and obliterating the Gaza Strip. Israel is currently
on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
Also under the council's consideration is Israel's conduct in the illegally occupied West Bank, where occupation forces have killed hundreds more Palestinians and settlers have carried out deadly pogroms under the protection—and sometimes with the participation—of Israel Defense Forces troops.
The fund's ethics rules—which are made by Norway's parliament, the Storting—were updated partly due to the ICJ's July advisory opinion that Israel's 57-year occupation is an illegal form of apartheid that must immediately end.
Companies under consideration include U.S.-based RTX (formerly Raytheon), General Electric, and General Dynamics.
Under its previous policy, the fund divested from nine companies operating in the occupied West Bank. Targeted businesses build homes and roads in illegal Israeli settler colonies, as well as provide surveillance systems for the Israeli separation wall, often called the "apartheid wall," along the Green Line boundary and inside parts of the West Bank.
In June, another Norwegian pension fund, Kommunal Landspensjonskasse (KLP), divested its nearly $70 million stake in Texas-based Caterpillar, citing the use of its bulldozers in ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
"For a long time, Caterpillar has supplied bulldozers and other equipment that has been used to demolish Palestinian homes and infrastructure to clear the way for Israeli settlements," KLP head of responsible investments Kiran Aziz said at the time. "It has also been alleged that the company's equipment is being used by the Israeli Defence Forces in connection with its military campaign in Gaza."
Norway is one of several nations including Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, and
Armenia that have recently joined the nearly 150 countries that have formally recognized Palestinian statehood.
"In the midst of a war, with tens of thousands killed and injured, we must keep alive the only alternative that offers a political solution for Israelis and Palestinians alike: Two states, living side by side, in peace and security," Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said in late May.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz threatened "severe consequences" for Norway, Spain, and Ireland after they announced they would recognize Palestine.
In a move that the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
called an "alarming precedent," Israel last month revoked the accreditation and visas of eight Norwegian diplomats over the Nordic nation's support for Palestine.
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Sanders Says 'Congress Must Investigate' War Profiteering by US Military Contractors
"The greed of these companies is fleecing the American taxpayer and killing Ukrainians," said the senator.
Aug 29, 2024
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday said "there's a name for" the billions of dollars in stock buybacks and dividends that major U.S. defense contractors have doled out to their shareholders while taking taxpayer money, and it's this: "war profiteering."
Sanders, the independent from Vermont who chairs the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Senate, took aim at Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and RTX—formerly known as Raytheon—for taking in $255 billion in public funds since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, only to reward shareholders and executives with $52 billion via the benefits of stock buybacks and dividends.
"The greed of these companies is fleecing the American taxpayer and killing Ukrainians," said Sanders. "Congress must investigate."
Sanders reiterated his strong support for backing Ukraine as it continues to defend against Russia's incursion, but said he does not support military contractors "making huge profits on the weapons systems they produce."
With the companies increasing prices for weapons systems and equipment while showering their shareholders with payouts, he said "our taxpayers pay more than they should, and Ukraine receives less weaponry than it needs."
Following the consolidation of dozens of defense contractors into just five companies in the 1990s, the cost of weapons and supplies have risen dramatically. As CBS News reported last year, a stinger missile costs more than $400,000 at Raytheon, now the weapon's sole supplier—a seven-fold increase over its cost in 1991, even accounting for inflation.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) noted when introducing the Stop Price Gouging the Military Act in 2022 that defense contractors "regularly charge the military excessive prices, including $71 for a pin that should have cost less than a nickel and $80 for a drain pipe segment that should have cost $1."
Sanders said the companies are price gouging "all while saying they need emergency supplemental funding to ramp up production for the war effort."
"I strongly support getting the Ukrainians what they need to defend their country," said Sanders. "What I do NOT support is the war profiteering of major defense contractors."
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With Regards to the Christening of the USS Patrick Gallagher
Because we strongly believe, nay absolutely know, that the U.S. does not need another warship.
Aug 29, 2024
To Whom It May Concern:
Because I have twice visited the West Bank and know the personal stories of 40 year-old Palestinian men who were imprisoned as boys for simply yelling at Israeli soldiers—and beaten and dehumanized for months before being released without trial;
And because I now know that those horrific, forever haunting experiences were and remain commonplace for Palestinian youth and are symptomatic of a world where, “we (Israelis) believe they are worth more than they” (Palestinians);
And because by paying close attention to non-main-stream American and foreign media I know the horrific truth of Gaza;
And because I have a good sense that when thousands are killed under months of ceaseless bombing and thousands more remain buried under the rubble yet to be found, the crime rises beyond war to become, inarguably, a “genocide”;
And because I know of the influence of AIPAC and U.S. defense industry corporations on U.S. Congress members and, hence, on American foreign policy;
And because I know well that the siege of Gaza could not continue without U.S. cover and support;
And because, as not much more than an adolescent, as a consequence of the fiction fed me by a conventional education, I volunteered to go off to Vietnam;
And because I know that, as a consequence of that war of choice, two to three million Vietnamese were killed in defense of their country---and that 2-3 million others are institutionalized today unable to take care of themselves as 2nd and 3rd generation victims of Agent Orange;
And, because I also mourn the 58,281 Americans commemorated on “the wall”, lost in that war, generally, perhaps, believing the same fiction I had;
And because I know that millions, yes millions, of innocents have died in my lifetime, arguably victims of American wars of choice, endorsed and promoted by the American defense industry, in Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Panama, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Syria, Yemen, etc., (hardly an all-inclusive list);
And because I and others, on many occasions since the Berrigan brothers, in a Prince of Peace Plowshares action on February 12, 1997, have returned again and again to protest other
christenings” at Bath;
And because we strongly believe, nay absolutely know, that the U.S. does not need more warships, but rather that General Dynamics ought to be “converting” to the manufacture of “green” technologies.
It is for these reasons, in the spirit of the “Plowshares” movement, we chose to inconvenience the so-called “christening” attendees on July 27th—that they might give pause to consider the merits of our actions. That they too, might join us in a virtual revolution—to turn away from violence, to demand that our country do the same, to be a force for cooperation among the brotherhood of nations, rather than endorsing endless militarism.
For these reasons I chose to join like-minded fellow citizens in our efforts to make more widely known our nation’s reckless conduct. I proclaim my innocence and will be very pleased to have the opportunity to defend that position in court.
Not in my name!
Dud Hendrick
Deer Isle, Maine
USNA Graduate —1963
USAF Officer — 1963-1967
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World-Ending Investments? Inside the $2 Trillion Nuclear Weapon Upgrade Scheme
Considering the rising tide of nuclear escalation globally, is it really the right time for this country to invest a fortune of taxpayer dollars in a new generation of devastating “use them or lose them” weapons?
Aug 07, 2024
The Pentagon is in the midst of a massive $2 trillion multiyear plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. A large chunk of that funding will go to major nuclear weapons contractors like Bechtel, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. And they will do everything in their power to keep that money flowing.
This January, a review of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program under the Nunn-McCurdy Act — a congressional provision designed to rein in cost overruns of Pentagon weapons programs — found that the missile, the crown jewel of the nuclear overhaul plan involving 450 missile-holding silos spread across five states, is already 81% over its original budget. It is now estimated that it will cost a total of nearly $141 billion to develop and purchase, a figure only likely to rise in the future.
That Pentagon review had the option of canceling the Sentinel program because of such a staggering cost increase. Instead, it doubled down on the program, asserting that it would be an essential element of any future nuclear deterrent and must continue, even if the funding for other defense programs has to be cut to make way for it. In justifying the decision, Deputy Defense Secretary William LaPlante stated: “We are fully aware of the costs, but we are also aware of the risks of not modernizing our nuclear forces and not addressing the very real threats we confront.”
Cost is indeed one significant issue, but the biggest risk to the rest of us comes from continuing to build and deploy ICBMs, rather than delaying or shelving the Sentinel program. As former Secretary of Defense William Perry has noted, ICBMs are “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world” because they “could trigger an accidental nuclear war.” As he explained, a president warned (accurately or not) of an enemy nuclear attack would have only minutes to decide whether to launch such ICBMs and conceivably devastate the planet.
Cost is indeed one significant issue, but the biggest risk to the rest of us comes from continuing to build and deploy ICBMs, rather than delaying or shelving the Sentinel program.
Possessing such potentially world-ending systems only increases the possibility of an unintended nuclear conflict prompted by a false alarm. And as Norman Solomon and the late Daniel Ellsberg once wrote, “If reducing the dangers of nuclear war is a goal, the top priority should be to remove the triad’s ground-based leg — not modernize it.”
This is no small matter. It is believed that a large-scale nuclear exchange could result in more than five billion of us humans dying, once the possibility of a “nuclear winter” and the potential destruction of agriculture across much of the planet is taken into account, according to an analysis by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
In short, the need to reduce nuclear risks by eliminating such ICBMs could not be more urgent. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” — an estimate of how close the world may be at any moment to a nuclear conflict — is now set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s been since that tracker was first created in 1947. And just this June, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a mutual defense agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a potential first step toward a drive by Moscow to help Pyongyang expand its nuclear arsenal further. And of the nine countries now possessing nuclear weapons, it’s hardly the only one other than the U.S. in an expansionist phase.
Considering the rising tide of nuclear escalation globally, is it really the right time for this country to invest a fortune of taxpayer dollars in a new generation of devastating “use them or lose them” weapons? The American public has long said no, according to a 2020 poll by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, which showed that 61% of us actually support phasing out ICBM systems like the Sentinel.
The Pentagon’s misguided plan to keep such ICBMs in the U.S arsenal for decades to come is only reinforced by the political power of members of Congress and the companies that benefit financially from the current buildup.
Who Decides? The Role of the ICBM Lobby
A prime example of the power of the nuclear weapons lobby is the Senate ICBM Coalition. That group is composed of senators from four states — Montana, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming — that either house major ICBM bases or host significant work on the Sentinel. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the members of that coalition have received more than $3 million in donations from firms involved in the production of the Sentinel over the past four election cycles. Nor were they alone. ICBM contractors made contributions to 92 of the 100 senators and 413 of the 435 house members in 2024. Some received hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The nuclear lobby paid special attention to members of the armed services committees in the House and Senate. For example, Mike Turner, a House Republican from Ohio, has been a relentless advocate of “modernizing” the nuclear arsenal. In a June 2024 talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which itself has received well over a million dollars in funding from nuclear weapons producers, he called for systematically upgrading the nuclear arsenal for decades to come, while chiding any of his congressional colleagues not taking such an aggressive stance on the subject.
Although Turner vigorously touts the need for a costly nuclear buildup, he fails to mention that, with $305,000 in donations, he’s been the fourth-highest recipient of funding from the ICBM lobby over the four elections between 2018 and 2024. Little wonder that he pushes for new nuclear weapons and staunchly opposes extending the New START arms reduction treaty.
In another example of contractor influence, veteran Texas representative Kay Granger secured the largest total of contributions from the ICBM lobby of any House member. With $675,000 in missile contractor contributions in hand, Granger went to bat for the lobby, lending a feminist veneer to nuclear “modernization” by giving a speech on her experience as a woman in politics at Northrop Grumman’s Women’s conference. And we’re sure you won’t be surprised that Granger has anything but a strong track record when it comes to keeping the Pentagon and arms makers accountable for waste, fraud, and abuse in weapons programs. Her X account is, in fact, littered with posts heaping praise on Lockheed Martin and its overpriced, underperforming F-35 combat aircraft.
Other recipients of ICBM contractor funding, like Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers, have lamented the might of the “far-left disarmament community,” and the undue influence of “anti-nuclear zealots” on our politics. Missing from the statements his office puts together and the speeches his staffers write for him, however, is any mention of the $471,000 in funding he’s received so far from ICBM producers. You won’t be surprised, we’re sure, to discover that Rogers has pledged to seek a provision in the forthcoming National Defense Authorization Act to support the Pentagon’s plan to continue the Sentinel program.
Lobbying Dollars and the Revolving Door
The flood of campaign contributions from ICBM contractors is reinforced by their staggering investments in lobbying. In any given year, the arms industry as a whole employs between 800 and 1,000 lobbyists, well more than one for every member of Congress. Most of those lobbyists hired by ICBM contractors come through the “revolving door” from careers in the Pentagon, Congress, or the Executive Branch. That means they come with the necessary tools for success in Washington: an understanding of the appropriations cycle and close relations with decision-makers on the Hill.
During the last four election cycles, ICBM contractors spent upwards of $226 million on 275 extremely well-paid lobbyists. For example, Bud Cramer, a former Democratic congressman from Alabama who once sat on the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, netted $640,000 in fees from Northrop Grumman over a span of six years. He was also a cofounder of the Blue Dog Democrats, an influential conservative faction within the Democratic Party. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that Cramer’s former chief of staff, Jefferies Murray, also lobbies for Northrop Grumman.
While some lobbyists work for one contractor, others have shared allegiances. For example, during his tenure as a lobbyist, former Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Trent Lott received more than $600,000 for his efforts for Raytheon, Textron Inc., and United Technologies (before United Technologies and Raytheon merged to form RX Technologies). Former Virginia Congressman Jim Moran similarly received $640,000 from Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics.
Playing the Jobs Card
The argument of last resort for the Sentinel and similar questionable weapons programs is that they create well-paying jobs in key states and districts. Northrop Grumman has played the jobs card effectively with respect to the Sentinel, claiming it will create 10,000 jobs in its development phase alone, including about 2,250 in the state of Utah, where the hub for the program is located.
As a start, however, those 10,000 jobs will help a miniscule fraction of the 167-million-member American workforce. Moreover, Northrop Grumman claims facilities tied to the program will be set up in 32 states. If 2,250 of those jobs end up in Utah, that leaves 7,750 more jobs spread across 31 states — an average of about 250 jobs per state, essentially a rounding error compared to total employment in most localities.
Nor has Northrop Grumman provided any documentation for the number of jobs the Sentinel program will allegedly create. Journalist Taylor Barnes of ReThink Media was rebuffed in her efforts to get a copy of the agreement between Northrop Grumman and the state of Utah that reportedly indicates how many Sentinel-related jobs the company needs to create to get the full subsidy offered to put its primary facility in Utah.
Choosing to fund those ICBMs instead is, in fact, a job killer, not a job creator.
A statement by a Utah official justifying that lack of transparency suggested Northrop Grumman was operating in “a competitive defense industry” and that revealing details of the agreement might somehow harm the company. But any modest financial harm Northrop Grumman might suffer, were those details revealed, pales in comparison with the immense risks and costs of the Sentinel program itself.
There are two major flaws in the jobs argument with respect to the future production of nuclear weapons. First, military spending should be based on security considerations, not pork-barrel politics. Second, as Heidi Peltier of the Costs of War Project has effectively demonstrated, virtually any other expenditure of funds currently devoted to Pentagon programs would create between 9% and 250% more jobs than weapons spending does. If Congress were instead to put such funds into addressing climate change, dealing with future disease epidemics, poverty, or homelessness — all serious threats to public safety — the American economy would gain hundreds of thousands of jobs. Choosing to fund those ICBMs instead is, in fact, a job killer, not a job creator.
Unwarranted Influence in the Nuclear Age
Advocates for eliminating ICBMs from the American arsenal make a strong case. (If only they were better heard!) For example, former Representative John Tierney of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation offered this blunt indictment of ICBMs:
“Not only are intercontinental ballistic missiles redundant, but they are prone to a high risk of accidental use…They do not make us any safer. Their only value is to the defense contractors who line their fat pockets with large cost overruns at the expense of our taxpayers. It has got to stop.”
The late Daniel Ellsberg made a similar point in a February 2018 interview with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
“You would not have these arsenals, in the U.S. or elsewhere, if it were not the case that it was highly profitable to the military-industrial complex, to the aerospace industry, to the electronics industry, and to the weapons design labs to keep modernizing these weapons, improving accuracy, improving launch time, all that. The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower talked about is a very powerful influence. We’ve talked about unwarranted influence. We’ve had that for more than half a century.”
Given how the politics of Pentagon spending normally work, that nuclear weapons policy is being so heavily influenced by individuals and organizations profiting from an ongoing arms race should be anything but surprising. Still, in the case of such weaponry, the stakes are so high that critical decisions shouldn’t be determined by parochial politics. The influence of such special interest groups and corporate weapons-makers over life-and-death issues should be considered both a moral outrage and perhaps the ultimate security risk.
Isn’t it finally time for the executive branch and Congress to start assessing the need for ICBMs on their merits, rather than on contractor lobbying, weapons company funding, and the sort of strategic thinking that was already outmoded by the end of the 1950s? For that to happen, our representatives would need to hear from their constituents loud and clear.
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