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ENTERING A GOLDEN AGE FOR WAR PROFITEERS  
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William D. Hartung
August 27, 2025
TomDispatch
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_ Trump's Washington Breathes New Life into the Military-Industrial
Complex _

, Shutterstock

 

When, in his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower
warned
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.

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Buy the Book
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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
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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
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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_
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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
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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 [[link removed]] 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
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a way to live forever to Elon Musk’s desire to enable the mass
colonization
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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
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to spread jobs [[link removed]] 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
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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
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missile defense scheme, which could incorporate hardware from the Big
Five with software from the emerging tech firms, to Boeing’s new
F-47
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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
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to the employment, mentoring, and financial support of Silicon Valley
militarist Peter Thiel. And don’t forget that a substantial cohort
of former employees
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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
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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
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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
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to target the militarization of universities writ large. In addition,
environmentalists need to double down on criticisms of the immense
energy requirements
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needed to power AI and crypto, while labor leaders need to reckon with
the consequences of AI destroying jobs
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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
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— 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.

_WILLIAM D. HARTUNG, a TomDispatch regular
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fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the
author, with Ben Freeman, of The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How
Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and
Bankrupts Us at Home
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(forthcoming from Bold Type Books). _

_Tom Engelhardt launched TomDispatch in October 2001 as an informal
listserv offering commentary and collected articles from the global
media to a select group of friends and colleagues. In November 2002,
it gained its name and, as a project of the Nation Institute (now the
Type Media Center), became a web-based publication aimed at providing
“a regular antidote to the mainstream media.” In the 18 years
since, TomDispatch has regularly published three original articles
weekly on subjects ranging from the American way of war and this
country’s “forever wars” to economic inequality to the climate
crisis._

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