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THE US MILITARY WILL ENJOY A RECORD-BREAKING BUDGET IN 2026  
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Veronica Riccobene
December 23, 2025
Jacobin
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_ Just one in ten American voters supports greater spending on the
military. That didn’t stop the US Senate from joining the House of
Representatives last week in voting to pass a record-breaking $901
billion defense budget for next year. _

The US military will, for the first time, enjoy more than $1 trillion
in annual funding next year, Aris Martinez / AFP via Getty Images

 

Last week, the US Senate joined the House of Representatives and voted
to pass a record-breaking $901 billion
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defense budget, in addition to the $156 billion
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in military spending allocated by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in
July. This means that the US military will, for the first time, enjoy
more than $1 trillion in annual funding next year, even though the
United States already spends more on its military than the next nine
nations combined
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This comes after the editorial board of the_ New York Times _— the
(generally liberal) paper of record — recently published
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military-focused op-eds in a single week, some of which explicitly
called for more military spending. Parroting potentially exaggerated
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claims of China’s military threat, the _Times _board contended
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that, to “prevent wars from starting and winning them if they do,”
the United States must expand its military budget and “[keep] pace
in these 21st-century arms races.”

“Half a percentage point more, or around $150 billion, spent on
[defense] manufacturing capacity would represent a major effort to
rebuild our industrial base,” the _Times _board wrote
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Compare that to recent polling, which shows just one in ten
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voters supports
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defense spending.

Where does this vast disagreement between Americans, their elected
officials, and their media come from? Experts have pointed, in part,
to the far-reaching influence of defense-industry-backed research
groups that help legitimize and justify militarization.

“The [defense] industry’s greatest asset . . . is the vast troves
of seemingly independent research that supports interventionist
foreign policies and loose weapons export regimes,” writes
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Shana Marshall, director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at
George Washington University.

Meanwhile, of the twenty-five public policy institutes most frequently
cited by US government officials, media, government officials, and
academics, twelve are funded
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manufacturers.

Research and analysis produced by the defense-industry-backed blob is
relied on by many corporate media outlets to color their coverage and
is frequently cited uncritically.

For example, a 2023 Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft
analysis
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of coverage of US interventionism in Ukraine found that American media
outlets cited think tanks with defense-industry backing in 85 percent
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of articles. These articles rarely disclosed the conflicts of interest
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posed by citing so-called experts who stand to financially benefit
from increased militarization.

 

 
According to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a media
accountability group, between 2015 and 2016, the_ New York Times_
published op-eds written by or citing staffers from the national
security think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies at
least ten times
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Later the _Times_ accused
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the think tank (funded by groups including weapons manufacturers,
fossil fuel giants, the Pentagon, the United Arab Emirates, and more)
of soft corruption.

That article’s title was “How Think Tanks Amplify Corporate
America’s Influence.”

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This article was first published by the _Lever_
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investigative newsroom.

Veronica Riccobene is a reporter with the Lever based in Washington,
DC. She has experience in live television, long form, and vertical
video as well as reporting.

* US Military Spending; New York Times; Defense Industry;
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