Posts Tagged ‘military industrial complex’

💥 Defense First, Democracy Second: The Annual Pentagon Budget Story 💸

Posted: December 13, 2025 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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The $900 Billion That No One Voted For

A $900 Billion Decision With Little Public Scrutiny

The U.S. House of Representatives this week approved the annual defense policy bill — the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — authorizing roughly $900 billion in Pentagon spending for fiscal year 2026. The measure passed with broad bipartisan support, continuing a streak that has now lasted more than six decades.

According to reporting from CBS News and Reuters, the bill cleared the House by a 312–112 vote, once again exceeding the administration’s initial budget request and reinforcing a familiar outcome: the Pentagon’s budget grows, regardless of party control or global conditions.

Despite the scale of the authorization — one of the largest federal expenditures approved annually — the vote generated limited sustained public debate. Media coverage focused largely on procedural elements, such as troop pay increases and geopolitical provisions, rather than the broader question of why military spending has become one of the few areas of government effectively insulated from public resistance.

What the Public Actually Thinks

Public opinion data paints a far more complicated picture than congressional voting patterns suggest.

Long-term polling by Gallup shows that Americans are not clamoring for ever-higher military budgets. In 2024, only about 29 % of respondents said the United States was spending too little on national defense, while the majority believed spending was either “about right” or “too high.”

When asked more directly about budget increases beyond Pentagon requests, opposition becomes even clearer. A Data for Progress survey found that 63 % of Americans opposed increasing military spending above the requested level, including majorities of both Democrats and Republicans.

The disconnect is difficult to ignore: voters across party lines express skepticism about increased military spending, yet Congress delivers it year after year with bipartisan consensus.

A Budget That Always Goes Up

The Pentagon budget has become one of the most consistent growth mechanisms in American governance.

Wars begin, and the budget rises. Wars end, and the budget rises. Economic downturns, inflation, and public health crises — none have reversed the trend. Even in years without newly declared conflicts, defense authorizations continue to expand.

According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, defense spending remains the single largest category of discretionary federal spending, often rivaling or exceeding all other discretionary priorities combined.

This growth occurs with remarkably little interrogation of outcomes. While most federal programs are subjected to cost-benefit scrutiny, defense spending is treated as inherently justified — a baseline necessity rather than a policy choice.

The Military-Industrial Complex: Structure, Not Conspiracy

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning about the “military-industrial complex” was not a prediction of corruption so much as a diagnosis of incentives.

Today, more than half of Pentagon discretionary spending flows directly to private defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon), Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman.

These firms spend tens of millions of dollars annually on lobbying, shaping procurement priorities and legislative outcomes in Washington.

This is not a shadowy conspiracy — it is an openly functioning system. Defense spending sustains regional economies, fuels revolving-door careers between government and industry, and anchors think tanks and policy institutions whose incentives align with budget growth.

When peace is bad for business, conflict does not need to be declared to remain profitable.

If Not Defense, Then What?

This is where the numbers stop being abstract.

$900 billion is not just a defense budget — it is a statement of national priorities.

That sum could meaningfully expand healthcare access, address student debt, fund public housing initiatives, modernize infrastructure, or strengthen climate resilience programs. These are not fringe ideas; they are perennial public demands.

Yet unlike military spending, domestic investments are always conditional. They must be negotiated, trimmed, justified, and re-justified. Defense spending, by contrast, is treated as automatic — the one area of government where growth is assumed rather than debated.

What threat, exactly, requires permanent expansion?

The United States increasingly practices defense by spending rather than defense by strategy. Budgets grow while outcomes remain unclear, conflicts multiply, and interventions persist with little accountability for long-term consequences.

America Is the Pentagon Now

At some point, the distinction between institution and identity blurs.

The Pentagon is no longer just a department — it is an economic engine, a political stabilizer, and a defining feature of American global posture. Its budget reflects not only perceived threats abroad, but a domestic system built around permanent militarization.

When Congress passes another massive Pentagon authorization that the public never meaningfully demanded, it sends a clear message: defense is not merely a priority — it is the default.

America does not simply have a military budget.
America is organized around one.

The question democracy must eventually confront is not whether defense matters. It is whether a democracy can remain responsive when its largest annual decision is effectively pre-decided.

That answer won’t come from another bipartisan vote. It will come from whether the public insists on asking why the budget always grows — and who it is really for.

The Defense #Budget is Morally Offensive

Posted: January 10, 2024 in Excess and Algorithms
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“They got money for war, but can’t feed the poor” Tupac Shakur

Anytime I mention the >$845 billion annual budget for the Military Industrial Complex I am always greeted by either confusion, deflection or anger.

Anger is the one that gives me that kind of self mutilating joy. Such sadness and disappointment at my fellow human that they feel the need to take up verbal defense of an entity that literally has more money than any other entity on Earth…for “defense”

What’s worse than an exploited worker in false class solidarity with billionaires? Military Industrial Complex bootlickers.

It’s not their fault. America is the most propagandized country in the history of the world and it’s not even close. Germany? North Korea? Wake up.

Have you looked at a screen ever? What is advertising? What are commercials? Who owns the news? Who owns the media? And why? Exactly.

It’s in our nature to think we’re the good guys. We’ll already justify our own actions to ourselves regardless of their external effects unless we suffer immediate negative repercussions.

You take that part of our nature and subject us to a literal non stop, inescapable propaganda machine in every home, public space, purse, and pocket and how can the masses in America not have the consciousness be corporate captured?

We know in our hearts poverty shouldn’t exist in the world with so much wealth. But what our eyes see and our ears hear, our mind believes. And those two senses are under a never ending attack of seduction by entities that want us to live like donkeys chasing the carrot to avoid the stick.

And if we’re too buys mentally, verbally, and physically fighting each other or buying things or working ourselves to the bone to avoid poverty, then we certainly can’t unite for the greater good of the 99%.

#Manning Finally Set for Freedom

Posted: January 31, 2017 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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By @anarchyroll

What do you call a transgender person in the military who provides Wikileaks with access to one of the largest data collections of the US military to ever be made public?

Her name is Chelsea Manning. When she first made world-wide headlines she was known as Bradley Manning. A person at the center of one of the biggest news stories of all time. Manning will finally walk out of military prison this spring. Barack Obama commuted the sentence on one of his final days in office.

There is something about giving up ones freedom to expose not simply the truth, but the hidden truth. The hidden truth that has been hidden purposefully. The hidden truth that has been hidden purposefully by people in positions of power and authority.

We all see injustice in our lives. Living life means to witness injustice. There is so much good in the world, but there is also a lot of bad. To stare the good in face and actually do something about it is commendable. To do something knowing there will be a negative personal consequence is admirable. When those consequences are solitary confinement in military prison, well, now we’re talking about a whole new level.

Cowardice is the standard in the developed world. Bravery is showcased in clothing choices and mate selection. Passive aggressive no longer aptly fits the abeyant nature of the modern condition.

Many were too scared to even look at some of the video material Manning leaked. Many more don’t have the conviction to read much of the other material manning leaked that shows the true nature and motives of modern warfare. It makes sense that many of those same people would reflect their self-hatred for those failures of character onto someone who has them in spades and is one of those millennial cross dressers to boot.

There are many people who don’t even want to look another person in the eye on the bus, at the coffee shop, or waiting in line at the grocery store. Are people like that going to stare down solitary confinement in a military prison in the face, and still take action to serve the greater good in the face of being called a traitor by their government and fellow (hu)man?

We accept many wrongs as the norm. Chelsea Manning refused to do this. The price for consent or defiance of these norms is the same, freedom. The norm is to accept our gender whether we are congruent with it or not. The norm is to accept what the Military Industrial Complex does regardless of cost or collateral damage. Both of these norms are very powerful and entrenched.

Just as passive aggressive is no longer a suitable term for confrontation in the modern condition, brave is not a suitable term for what Chelsea Manning has done for the global village. A living, breathing dark knight. Hated and maligned for being very ordinary yet willing to do the extraordinary without care for the personal cost she must pay and has paid.

Not a martyr, a harbinger. A symbol of the future. A future where we don’t accept or stay silent about what is wrong regardless of perceived norms. A symbol of hope. Hope for every confused coward that walks through life in a daze that they can tangibly change themselves and the world. An icon of the millennial generation that desperately needs heroes of substance over style.

Not to #Drone On About the US #War in #Syria, But…

Posted: October 2, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
10/2/2014

So is the US at war with Syria or what?

This question and the “counter terrorism campaign” that the United States is engaging in with ISIS/ISIL is a teaching lesson for both entire world. The lesson is that the definition of war is different than it was before the year 2000. War is now, predominately, airstrikes and bombings from remote-controlled, unmanned, flying drones.

The reason President Obama and the media have been using the term “boots on the ground” so early and often recently, is because boots on the ground is how most people think of war. People think of war as ground troops, trenches, tanks, hummers and so on. Men fighting men, or person fighting person on the ground with swords, guns, etc is what people envision when a war is being fought since the beginning of time. That is no longer the case, or perhaps a better way to put it is, ground troops are no longer required for America to be at war.

How/Why? Because America’s wars are now fought with drones.

A formal declaration of war is no longer required to go to war. We have learned that over the past half century with America’s involvement with North Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. What we are learning over the past decade is that human soldiers or boots on the ground, are also no longer required to go to war. We now send unmanned, weaponized, flying drones.

But war is war no matter what we or the government may like to call it. 30 dead school children is not a by-product of an airstrike gone awry, it is collateral damage of a war.

We’ve also learned in the last decade that we don’t need a country to go to war with. That’s not liberal sarcasm. Al-Qaeda is not a country and neither is ISIS. Remember in 2001 when George W. Bush declared a “War on Terror”? Well that wasn’t a metaphor. We were at war in Afghanistan before the end of 2001 and by mid 2003 we were at war in Iraq. Under Obama we have been at war in Yemen and Somalia. The difference between Bush and Obama’s wars? Bush’s involved human soldiers, Obama’s involve drones.

So now in addition to our drone wars in Yemen and Somalia, we are carrying out additional drone wars in Syria and Iraq.

Although those drones are physically unmanned aircrafts, they are still piloted by humans via remote control. Did you know that remote control drone operators suffer from post traumatic stress disorder just like ground troops do? Why wouldn’t they? They’re soldiers engaging in the hell that is war.

Let us not be fooled or fool ourselves, America is at war. America is perpetually at war. America is constantly at war. Why? Well there are those in the world that if left unchecked would commit a 9/11 style attack on our country every hour on the hour. That fact can’t be denied. Pandora’s box has been opened in regards to the militarized, religious radicals of the middle east trying to jihad America until the country is nothing more than rubble and ashes. The other reason we are perpetually at war however, is the Military Industrial Complex.

Make not mistake and don’t let yourself be fooled. There are real threats to America’s safety in the world AND the Military Industrial Complex is in the business of keeping America engaged in military action for the same reason McDonald’s wants as many people to eat hamburgers as humanly possible. Drones help keep the body count down, and keeps the money coming in. Until the latter somehow changes, America will always be perpetually at war regardless of the size or severity of any and all threats against us.