In his 1961 farewell address, President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of establishing the military-industrial complex [1]. We are seeing the fruits of that now that despite an annual budget over $1T the US has been militarily defeated by Iran (and Afghanistan). We build $13B aircraft carriers that don't work [2].

Defense contracting is nothing more than a wealth transfer from the government to the wealthy. This is what unfettered cost plus contracts looks like. We ridicule the Russian military for their insane levels of corruption (eg paying for tanks that never get built and the generals pocketing the money) but really the same thing has happened here. The things get built but they don't work and the entire industry is built around hiring former Pentagon people who specialize in procurement.

It doesn't have to be this way. Some of the US military's past equipment was legendary. The M1 rifle and M4/M16 family were cheap, reliable and effective. The Jeep was legendary for its reliability. The original M1 Abrams tank is widely considered the best tank the military ever built. If you listen to anyone in the military they'll tell you the vehicles are constantly broken down, hard to repair, expensive to maintain and outright dangerous.

Every dollar spent on the military is a dollar not spent on roads, schools, bridges, hospitals and trains, things that would actually benefit people. We're bankrupting ourselves to enrich the shareholders of Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX Corp and General Dynamics for what exactly?

And the proposed "defense" budget for 2027 is $1.5T, a roughly 50% increase.

This is also why I laugh whenever anyone pushes the idea that China is the Big Bad [tm], for two reasons. First, they don't have to be. We just want their to be a scary enemy to justify all this. Second, if they were, they would destroy us because it would ultimately come down to military industrial capability and we would lose. Orders of magnitude lose.

[1]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh...

[2]: https://www.19fortyfive.com/2026/04/the-ford-class-is-not-th...

> And the proposed "defense" budget for 2027 is $1.5T, a roughly 50% increase

Yeah, this is mind-boggling. The requested increase is roughly the size of the entire 2004 military budget. 2004, when we were fighting two separate ground wars.

There were close to 200k US troops on the ground in combat theaters in 2004. We're proposing to add a "2004 US military" to our military. The unnecessary wars we will start with this capacity[1] will cause havoc in unpredictable places.

>We're bankrupting ourselves to enrich the shareholders of Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX Corp and General Dynamics for what exactly?

We do it to keep manufacturing knowledge and ability in the country. I really cannot stress enough how many thousands of companies exist purely because of the defense budget. It's never going away because it employs so many people. That's why red or blue or independent no one ever cuts it. It's welfare that creates work so the whole ideological spectrum has something to like.

The big names you mention are the names that end up on the final product, but those products often have a couple thousand different (all American) suppliers feeding them. Virtually all of the money in the defense budget flows back into the economy. The sum total of those players profits last years amounts to 2% of the budget, and that's assuming it's all military.

A simple example are screws. You cannot make a living making screws in the US. It makes zero economic sense because it's impossible to compete with 2nd/3rd world countries (read:China). But the military (well contractors with a mandate) will buy your screws at a price that allows you to live a decent life and employ a team of people.

This way when shit hits the fan, the US will still have a supply of screws (pretty damn important), a supply of people who know how to make screws, and in the mean time those people get benefits and careers.

Now take this idea and repeat it for everything from paper cups to tank shells to folding chairs to wire sheathing (the military buys literally everything, always wants American made, and will happily pay a premium for it).