Institutional corruption
Weapon systems the Pentagon itself says it does not want continue to be funded, even though factories are located in key congressional districts.
Whenever the scale of US military spending is questioned, defenders insist the system is merely inefficient, not corrupt. But at this point, it is fair—indeed necessary—to ask a harder question: How much of the US’s defense budget is driven not by national security but by political money and private profit?
The United States does not simply fund a military. It funds a vast defense-industry ecosystem—giant contractors, subcontractors, lobbyists, consultants, think tanks, and political campaigns—all financially dependent on ever-rising Pentagon budgets. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics do not just build weapons; they spend tens of millions of dollars each year lobbying Congress and funding political campaigns. Their business model depends on one thing above all else: government contracts.
And Congress, year after year, delivers.
Weapon systems the Pentagon itself says it does not want continue to be funded, even though factories are located in key congressional districts. Cost overruns are tolerated, even normalized. Programs that repeatedly fail are rebranded rather than canceled. In many cases, lawmakers who vote on defense budgets are among the largest recipients of defense-industry campaign contributions.
This may not always meet the legal definition of corruption, but it unmistakably fits the moral one.
The Revolving Door
Then there is the revolving door—perhaps the clearest embodiment of what President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address, when he cautioned Americans about the rise of the “Military-Industrial Complex.”
Retired generals and admirals routinely take lucrative positions on the boards of defense contractors or as high-paid consultants. Former Pentagon officials slide seamlessly into corporate executive roles. Defense executives, in turn, are appointed to senior government posts overseeing the very companies they once served—or will soon serve again.
The incentives are obvious. A weapons system championed within the Pentagon today can become a seven-figure consulting gig tomorrow. Oversight softens. Skepticism fades. Budgets grow.
This is not hypothetical. It is documented, routine, and bipartisan.
Permanent War, Permanent Profits
The United States has been at war—or engaged in military operations—almost continuously for the past quarter-century. Trillions of dollars have flowed into defense spending since 9/11, often with little debate and even less accountability. When wars end, budgets do not shrink. Instead, they find new justifications: great-power competition, new threats, and emerging technologies.
Fear becomes a funding strategy.
Meanwhile, Americans are told there is no money for universal healthcare, affordable college, modern infrastructure, or retirement security. Social programs are scrutinized down to the last penny. Defense spending is waved through as a matter of patriotism.
Eisenhower Was Right
Eisenhower was no pacifist. He was a five-star general. Yet he warned that the unchecked power of the defense industry posed a grave threat to democracy itself—because when profit and political influence merge with national security, the public interest becomes secondary.
That warning has never been more relevant.
If even 25% of the defense budget were redirected toward education, healthcare, Social Security, housing, and infrastructure, as demonstrated in a recent Progreso Weekly article titled “The US’s trillion-dollar military habit,” the United States would still be the world’s largest military power by far. What would change is who the government truly serves.
The question Americans should be asking is not whether we support the troops. It is whether we are willing to keep supporting a system in which endless spending benefits contractors, campaign donors, and revolving-door elites—while ordinary people are told to accept scarcity.
That is not national defense. That is national distortion.
