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The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home
A hard-hitting investigation into how the Pentagon’s runaway spending embroils America in foreign wars, squanders its wealth, and enriches a privileged elite
America spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on its military. This extraordinary spending not only detracts from our ability to address pressing social problems but compels us into foreign wars to justify our vast arsenal. Sold to us in the name of “security,” our military industrial complex actually makes us far less safe.
Top policy experts William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman follow the profits of militarism from traditional Pentagon contractors, which receive more than half of the Pentagon’s budget, to the upstart high-tech firms that shamelessly promote unproven and destabilizing technologies. They unmask the enablers of the war machine—politicians, lobbyists, the media, Hollywood, think tanks, and so many more—whose work enriches a wealthy elite at the expense of everybody else, spreading conflict around the world and embroiling America in endless wars.
A damning tour de force, The Trillion Dollar War Machine shows who is pulling the strings and pushing for war, and offers a blueprint for how we can shut down the war machine and restore American security and prosperity.
America spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on its military. This extraordinary spending not only detracts from our ability to address pressing social problems but compels us into foreign wars to justify our vast arsenal. Sold to us in the name of “security,” our military industrial complex actually makes us far less safe.
Top policy experts William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman follow the profits of militarism from traditional Pentagon contractors, which receive more than half of the Pentagon’s budget, to the upstart high-tech firms that shamelessly promote unproven and destabilizing technologies. They unmask the enablers of the war machine—politicians, lobbyists, the media, Hollywood, think tanks, and so many more—whose work enriches a wealthy elite at the expense of everybody else, spreading conflict around the world and embroiling America in endless wars.
A damning tour de force, The Trillion Dollar War Machine shows who is pulling the strings and pushing for war, and offers a blueprint for how we can shut down the war machine and restore American security and prosperity.
336 pages, Hardcover
Published November 11, 2025
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July 17, 2026
Brave New World War
Against all Enemies, Created and Imagined
Add to this that many high-ranking uniformed military officers who take the oath to “…support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” end up in the service of repressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates after leaving military or government service and/or end up in the direct pay of U.S. military contractors.
An Arms Dealer Masquerading as a Country
A militarized, weaponized, and tyrannized America is a successful business model. The U.S. is a giant arms manufacturer and exporter of violence masquerading as a country, like the 19th century joke about Prussia being an army with a country. This book also reminds me of the movie ‘Lord of War’, from 2005 with Nicolas Cage, a film about global arms trafficking after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The ending sequence of the movie highlights the role of the U.S. as the world’s leading supplier of weapons. In fact, U.S. firms lobby to provide weapons to regimes acting contrary to U.S. interests for the profit such sales provide. Many U.S. lobbying firms advocate for both the arms manufactures and foreign governments. Arms manufactures and foreign governments are better represented in Congress than constituents. Sales of U.S. arms abroad do not defend allies and enhance stability. They undermine stability, cause civilian casualties and delegitimize American diplomatic efforts and cultural exports. U.S. weapons are found in most of the world’s conflicts. In many cases, they are found on both sides of the same conflict. This reminds me of the German army in WWI using artillery made by Krupp only to find out that the Belgium forts they were attacking were firing back with Krupp made artillery and guns.
The Arsenal of Democracy is now the Armory for Tyranny
A large proportion of U.S. arms sales and military training go to support repressive regimes, not to protect democracies. What was once characterized as “the arsenal of democracy” by FDR has morphed into the leading supplier of arms to antidemocratic repressive regimes the world over. The arsenal of democracy is now the armory of tyranny for the merchants of death. The U.S. supplies many the world’s worst human rights abusers. War is the lifeline for the American ‘defense’ industry, better thought of as the war industry. The massive amount of investment in the ‘defense’ industry creates its own imperative for endless war. A vast confluence of profit and power propel never ending war. Even genocide, the crime of crimes, is acceptable if it drives sales, e.g., Gaza. A perpetual war industry means perpetual war, big surprise. The only thing the U.S. now produces well and provides to all is weapons and bombs. There is no self-correcting mechanism here, just a self-reinforcing loop.
Enter Trump
Trump, the politician who campaigned on ending endless war wants to increase the U.S. ‘defense’ budget to $1.5 trillion (after this book was published) to cover the continuous cost overruns for ongoing flawed programs and to fund the brazen new AI ambitions when there is allegedly no money for education, healthcare, infrastructure, scientific research, and childcare. But it is not all due to the comically stupid brain addled Trump, every U.S. president since Eisenhower has prioritized military spending and the inertia it creates for fighting ruinous foreign wars and disastrous military interventions in place of domestic wellbeing. The cost in life is criminal. But with the Trump administration, U.S. firms can now operate free from U.S. laws and Justice Department enforcement against foreign corrupt practices. Profits come first, U.S. security comes second and of course, human wellbeing is not even considered on the part of arms manufactures or the U.S. government who often aid and abet oppression and mass murder by foreign governments with U.S. made weapons. Foreign influence is a highly lucrative industry on its own.
Cultural Poison
In addition to military spending becoming its own imperative, the inertia is perpetuated by the pervasive way military glorification has insidiously poisoned the culture making it acceptable, desirable, and glorious. This can be seen in movies showcasing weapons, flyovers at sporting events, air shows, and video games. It is socially fashionable to thank military personal for their ‘service’, for doing their part to extend American military hubris. It is almost an indiscretion not to express gratitude for their individual contribution to the well-funded efforts at genocide and corruption. Militarism is now the county’s leading cultural export as a militarized foreign policy has been normalized. The U.S. military certainly is not for the protection of the American people or the sovereignty of the U.S., but it has become embedded in U.S. society and makes the country less safe by provoking responses by other countries to U.S. military aggression. Endless military spending also results in stockpiles of surplus military equipment available for the use of force and the threat of force, which is now the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy. Domestically, the result is militarized police which have become paramilitary forces in many jurisdictions. At the federal level there is I.C.E. which is a well-funded criminal gang of thugs empowered by militarization to commit domestic acts of terror in U.S. cities. The “war on terror’ and the “war on drugs’ are now bylines for suppression of minorities, promotion of authoritarianism, destruction of democracy, and human rights abuses all around. The military capabilities developed to fight overseas conflicts are being used to murder, oppress, and control Americans at home. This is to say nothing of military personnel who are themselves victims of (suffering with problems such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, and psychological damage) the same system they support. It turns out the killing people and causing suffering is detrimental to the normal or typical human brain.
Infinite Feedback Loop
Military contractors rely on the defense budget for most of their sales and profits, they then use the profits to fund think tanks (who pretend to be objective) and lobbyists to keep the budget increasing. This is done by retaining failed and out of date weapons systems, creating new weapons systems of dubious value, advocating arms sales to repressive regimes, conducting foreign wars, and militarizing domestic police. There is also the incestuous and self-reinforcing collaboration loop of government policy, military enthusiasm, university research, think tank propaganda, and corporate funding. Think tanks produce propaganda and perform lobbying activities funded by domestic arms manufacturers and foreign governments to promote military adventurism. This loop creates a distorted view of reality. There is no longer any accountability for lies, distortions, or misrepresentations - so the assumptions, attitudes, influence, and power continue. The war machine also continues due to the collaboration of Hollywood and the gaming industry with the military. Military equipment is literally glorified in movies and games. Many movies are primarily product placement ads for military equipment. Gaming serves a multifaceted purpose of military glorification, brain washing, recruitment, and skill development. The military-entertainment link is also crucial to cultural poison.
Bait and Switch Economics
Americans are living under the austerity of a permeant wartime economy without realizing it because it has become normalized. Poverty has been personalized with faith, family, and hard work touted as the only remedy. Poverty is really a collective problem driven by material conditions, not distorted spiritual personal shortcomings. Americans have been convinced that poverty is a personal moral failing rather a systemic flaw in the U.S. economy. This allows the austerity of a permeant wartime economy to continue unchallenged. In a staggering feat of intellectual acrobatics, the military economy has been sold as the path to prosperity. The euphemism of “opportunity cost” does not begin to describe the life and death tradeoffs being made. A key feature in maintaining the bloated military budget is to reframe national defense as industrial policy. This is done by reframing weapons system as jobs programs. The production facilities and subcontracting necessary to build and maintain new systems are located in different states and in many congressional districts. This fact on the ground is then used to maintain weapons systems long past their expiration date and in many cases when the systems are substandard, defective or ineffective. Weapons are also represented in Congress far better than constituents.
Orwellian
Using AI to attack targets was once the stuff of science fiction, now it is a terrifying reality. There is now a messianic belief in the wonders of AI, and the lifesaving wonder weapons its believers claim it provides. In the will to believe, AI weapons supporters have the zeal of religious crusaders. The skewed view of reality held by the tech evangelists is right at home in the U.S. which is a country run by a cult of religious fools and a cable of ideological fanatics. In the new religion, advocates of ceasefire, e.g., in Gaza, are cast as the war mongers but the makers and providers of the weapon are presented as the true peace makers. And what is with the ‘Lord of the Rings’ fetish? This is truly bizarre, but I guess these are truly bizarre people, viz., Peter Thiel with Palantir (an indestructible stone used to predict the future) and Palmer Lucky with Anduril (a sword featured in the very same, ‘Lord of the Rings’), you just can’t make this stuff up. Their achievements in technology, including those of Elon Musk, have led them to suffer from what the ancient Greeks called hubris which leads to catastrophe. As individual tech moguls rise to prominence, their advice and counsel is sought by politicians, military leaders, ands policy makers. This serves to de-professionalize the policy process and personalize it with all their hubristic idiosyncrasies intact. Life imitates art as individuals such as Musk and Thiel, with their skewed view of reality, embody the ego ideal cult of the heroes in Ayn Rand novels.
Seduction
The enthusiasm for the development and deployment of militarized AI reminds me of the Manhattan Project. In both cases, the architects and participants knew the risks and dangers, they knew that the military use of the technology would make the world inherently more dangerous and the U.S. less secure, but with enough wishful thinking and techno-optimism, they were and are able to keep themselves willfully ignorant and blissfully unaware of the dangers because the project itself and its results are so seductive. The possibility of pushing past the known limits of science and exceeding the bounds of current technology is too seductive to resist. Its full speed ahead, but the race to achieve full deployment is creating a dangerous new arms race (with China), but we can’t help ourselves. There is a certain inevitability about it. This is driven by the quest for profits and power which will overcome any attempts at control or safeguards. As with the atomic bomb, automated and autonomous AI weapons will first need to be used, and the catastrophe actualized, before any controls or safeguards are agreed upon. As usual, a taste of Armageddon is needed before it can be avoided, if it can be avoided.
Dare to Imagine
There is not only the direct cost of the bloated and corrupt military budget, but also the opportunity cost of alternative spending/investment and the never-to-be realized benefits of investments in society as well as the direct cost of outright destruction and murder around the world. There is also the opportunity cost of never realizing beneficial relations with other nations. The authors cite a total cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions at $8 trillion. This is to say nothing of the 1 million casualties. Dare to imagine what the same investment in civil society would have accomplished. But I am forgetting that the population has been dumbed down and has become anti-science, anti-expert and anti-intellectual. For example, no money is needed for vaccine research in a country that is anti-vaccination. The money is better spent on flashy military hardware to awe and entertain the ignorant masses at vacuous sporting events or with mindless online games. We now have a military entertainment complex.
Against all Enemies, Created and Imagined
Add to this that many high-ranking uniformed military officers who take the oath to “…support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” end up in the service of repressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates after leaving military or government service and/or end up in the direct pay of U.S. military contractors.
An Arms Dealer Masquerading as a Country
A militarized, weaponized, and tyrannized America is a successful business model. The U.S. is a giant arms manufacturer and exporter of violence masquerading as a country, like the 19th century joke about Prussia being an army with a country. This book also reminds me of the movie ‘Lord of War’, from 2005 with Nicolas Cage, a film about global arms trafficking after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The ending sequence of the movie highlights the role of the U.S. as the world’s leading supplier of weapons. In fact, U.S. firms lobby to provide weapons to regimes acting contrary to U.S. interests for the profit such sales provide. Many U.S. lobbying firms advocate for both the arms manufactures and foreign governments. Arms manufactures and foreign governments are better represented in Congress than constituents. Sales of U.S. arms abroad do not defend allies and enhance stability. They undermine stability, cause civilian casualties and delegitimize American diplomatic efforts and cultural exports. U.S. weapons are found in most of the world’s conflicts. In many cases, they are found on both sides of the same conflict. This reminds me of the German army in WWI using artillery made by Krupp only to find out that the Belgium forts they were attacking were firing back with Krupp made artillery and guns.
The Arsenal of Democracy is now the Armory for Tyranny
A large proportion of U.S. arms sales and military training go to support repressive regimes, not to protect democracies. What was once characterized as “the arsenal of democracy” by FDR has morphed into the leading supplier of arms to antidemocratic repressive regimes the world over. The arsenal of democracy is now the armory of tyranny for the merchants of death. The U.S. supplies many the world’s worst human rights abusers. War is the lifeline for the American ‘defense’ industry, better thought of as the war industry. The massive amount of investment in the ‘defense’ industry creates its own imperative for endless war. A vast confluence of profit and power propel never ending war. Even genocide, the crime of crimes, is acceptable if it drives sales, e.g., Gaza. A perpetual war industry means perpetual war, big surprise. The only thing the U.S. now produces well and provides to all is weapons and bombs. There is no self-correcting mechanism here, just a self-reinforcing loop.
Enter Trump
Trump, the politician who campaigned on ending endless war wants to increase the U.S. ‘defense’ budget to $1.5 trillion (after this book was published) to cover the continuous cost overruns for ongoing flawed programs and to fund the brazen new AI ambitions when there is allegedly no money for education, healthcare, infrastructure, scientific research, and childcare. But it is not all due to the comically stupid brain addled Trump, every U.S. president since Eisenhower has prioritized military spending and the inertia it creates for fighting ruinous foreign wars and disastrous military interventions in place of domestic wellbeing. The cost in life is criminal. But with the Trump administration, U.S. firms can now operate free from U.S. laws and Justice Department enforcement against foreign corrupt practices. Profits come first, U.S. security comes second and of course, human wellbeing is not even considered on the part of arms manufactures or the U.S. government who often aid and abet oppression and mass murder by foreign governments with U.S. made weapons. Foreign influence is a highly lucrative industry on its own.
Cultural Poison
In addition to military spending becoming its own imperative, the inertia is perpetuated by the pervasive way military glorification has insidiously poisoned the culture making it acceptable, desirable, and glorious. This can be seen in movies showcasing weapons, flyovers at sporting events, air shows, and video games. It is socially fashionable to thank military personal for their ‘service’, for doing their part to extend American military hubris. It is almost an indiscretion not to express gratitude for their individual contribution to the well-funded efforts at genocide and corruption. Militarism is now the county’s leading cultural export as a militarized foreign policy has been normalized. The U.S. military certainly is not for the protection of the American people or the sovereignty of the U.S., but it has become embedded in U.S. society and makes the country less safe by provoking responses by other countries to U.S. military aggression. Endless military spending also results in stockpiles of surplus military equipment available for the use of force and the threat of force, which is now the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy. Domestically, the result is militarized police which have become paramilitary forces in many jurisdictions. At the federal level there is I.C.E. which is a well-funded criminal gang of thugs empowered by militarization to commit domestic acts of terror in U.S. cities. The “war on terror’ and the “war on drugs’ are now bylines for suppression of minorities, promotion of authoritarianism, destruction of democracy, and human rights abuses all around. The military capabilities developed to fight overseas conflicts are being used to murder, oppress, and control Americans at home. This is to say nothing of military personnel who are themselves victims of (suffering with problems such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, and psychological damage) the same system they support. It turns out the killing people and causing suffering is detrimental to the normal or typical human brain.
Infinite Feedback Loop
Military contractors rely on the defense budget for most of their sales and profits, they then use the profits to fund think tanks (who pretend to be objective) and lobbyists to keep the budget increasing. This is done by retaining failed and out of date weapons systems, creating new weapons systems of dubious value, advocating arms sales to repressive regimes, conducting foreign wars, and militarizing domestic police. There is also the incestuous and self-reinforcing collaboration loop of government policy, military enthusiasm, university research, think tank propaganda, and corporate funding. Think tanks produce propaganda and perform lobbying activities funded by domestic arms manufacturers and foreign governments to promote military adventurism. This loop creates a distorted view of reality. There is no longer any accountability for lies, distortions, or misrepresentations - so the assumptions, attitudes, influence, and power continue. The war machine also continues due to the collaboration of Hollywood and the gaming industry with the military. Military equipment is literally glorified in movies and games. Many movies are primarily product placement ads for military equipment. Gaming serves a multifaceted purpose of military glorification, brain washing, recruitment, and skill development. The military-entertainment link is also crucial to cultural poison.
Bait and Switch Economics
Americans are living under the austerity of a permeant wartime economy without realizing it because it has become normalized. Poverty has been personalized with faith, family, and hard work touted as the only remedy. Poverty is really a collective problem driven by material conditions, not distorted spiritual personal shortcomings. Americans have been convinced that poverty is a personal moral failing rather a systemic flaw in the U.S. economy. This allows the austerity of a permeant wartime economy to continue unchallenged. In a staggering feat of intellectual acrobatics, the military economy has been sold as the path to prosperity. The euphemism of “opportunity cost” does not begin to describe the life and death tradeoffs being made. A key feature in maintaining the bloated military budget is to reframe national defense as industrial policy. This is done by reframing weapons system as jobs programs. The production facilities and subcontracting necessary to build and maintain new systems are located in different states and in many congressional districts. This fact on the ground is then used to maintain weapons systems long past their expiration date and in many cases when the systems are substandard, defective or ineffective. Weapons are also represented in Congress far better than constituents.
Orwellian
Using AI to attack targets was once the stuff of science fiction, now it is a terrifying reality. There is now a messianic belief in the wonders of AI, and the lifesaving wonder weapons its believers claim it provides. In the will to believe, AI weapons supporters have the zeal of religious crusaders. The skewed view of reality held by the tech evangelists is right at home in the U.S. which is a country run by a cult of religious fools and a cable of ideological fanatics. In the new religion, advocates of ceasefire, e.g., in Gaza, are cast as the war mongers but the makers and providers of the weapon are presented as the true peace makers. And what is with the ‘Lord of the Rings’ fetish? This is truly bizarre, but I guess these are truly bizarre people, viz., Peter Thiel with Palantir (an indestructible stone used to predict the future) and Palmer Lucky with Anduril (a sword featured in the very same, ‘Lord of the Rings’), you just can’t make this stuff up. Their achievements in technology, including those of Elon Musk, have led them to suffer from what the ancient Greeks called hubris which leads to catastrophe. As individual tech moguls rise to prominence, their advice and counsel is sought by politicians, military leaders, ands policy makers. This serves to de-professionalize the policy process and personalize it with all their hubristic idiosyncrasies intact. Life imitates art as individuals such as Musk and Thiel, with their skewed view of reality, embody the ego ideal cult of the heroes in Ayn Rand novels.
Seduction
The enthusiasm for the development and deployment of militarized AI reminds me of the Manhattan Project. In both cases, the architects and participants knew the risks and dangers, they knew that the military use of the technology would make the world inherently more dangerous and the U.S. less secure, but with enough wishful thinking and techno-optimism, they were and are able to keep themselves willfully ignorant and blissfully unaware of the dangers because the project itself and its results are so seductive. The possibility of pushing past the known limits of science and exceeding the bounds of current technology is too seductive to resist. Its full speed ahead, but the race to achieve full deployment is creating a dangerous new arms race (with China), but we can’t help ourselves. There is a certain inevitability about it. This is driven by the quest for profits and power which will overcome any attempts at control or safeguards. As with the atomic bomb, automated and autonomous AI weapons will first need to be used, and the catastrophe actualized, before any controls or safeguards are agreed upon. As usual, a taste of Armageddon is needed before it can be avoided, if it can be avoided.
Dare to Imagine
There is not only the direct cost of the bloated and corrupt military budget, but also the opportunity cost of alternative spending/investment and the never-to-be realized benefits of investments in society as well as the direct cost of outright destruction and murder around the world. There is also the opportunity cost of never realizing beneficial relations with other nations. The authors cite a total cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions at $8 trillion. This is to say nothing of the 1 million casualties. Dare to imagine what the same investment in civil society would have accomplished. But I am forgetting that the population has been dumbed down and has become anti-science, anti-expert and anti-intellectual. For example, no money is needed for vaccine research in a country that is anti-vaccination. The money is better spent on flashy military hardware to awe and entertain the ignorant masses at vacuous sporting events or with mindless online games. We now have a military entertainment complex.
September 10, 2025
Whether "fate" or whatever you want to call it, the day before I started reading this book I had a conversation with an acquaintance about how it feels like war and the military are the religion of the United States of America. This is essentially the central thesis of the book.
The authors offer a comprehensive deep-dive and analysis into the centrality of military in American culture, ranging from government spending, policy, tech, academia, and media. Some key talking points that stuck out include:
-Since the Eisenhower era, presidents from both political parties have increased federal budget allotted to the military (oh, the illusion of choice). Thanks to some nice little loopholes, the Big 5 gets to influence a lot of policy thru lobbyists (and the constitution? can be easily bypassed. The law doesn't matter when money is involved).
-After Americans became disillusioned with the idea of "sending our own boys to die abroad" during the Vietnam War, Carter ushered in this new era of supplying local entities to fight proxy wars for the US.
We have spent trillions supplying some ruthless dictators with weapons to fight democratically elected candidates in various regions of the world (and yet somehow the government claims we spend more on social security, even when the US has the worst welfare and life expectancy of any developed nation).
-A lot of the military spending isn't going towards creating new jobs for regular-degular Americans, like Biden asserted as an excuse to justify all the weapon$ sent to Ukraine. In fact, most of it goes towards funding defunct projects at the Big 5 (Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics) like the infamous F-35 or the Sentinel program.
-If you thought academia was safe, think again! As an engineer in academia, it's always frustrating to see how the labs that do research for the military get bottomless pits of money compared to even the average NIH/ NSF-funded labs. That's not even mentioning the amount of predatory recruiting the Big 5 do on campuses, going as far as to host "Lockheed Day"-type dystopian events.
-The military also blows a lot of money on sporting events and movies. Your first-person shooter videogames are not harmless either.
Overall, this book was incredibly well-researched and structured. The language was accessible to a lay audience and the authors don't assume large amounts of prior knowledge to understand the concepts brought forth. I appreciated how recent it is, highlighting how this all plays out in US involvement in the genocide happening in Gaza, and highly recommend everyone who's concerned about how their tax dollars are spent reads it.
The authors offer a comprehensive deep-dive and analysis into the centrality of military in American culture, ranging from government spending, policy, tech, academia, and media. Some key talking points that stuck out include:
-Since the Eisenhower era, presidents from both political parties have increased federal budget allotted to the military (oh, the illusion of choice). Thanks to some nice little loopholes, the Big 5 gets to influence a lot of policy thru lobbyists (and the constitution? can be easily bypassed. The law doesn't matter when money is involved).
-After Americans became disillusioned with the idea of "sending our own boys to die abroad" during the Vietnam War, Carter ushered in this new era of supplying local entities to fight proxy wars for the US.
We have spent trillions supplying some ruthless dictators with weapons to fight democratically elected candidates in various regions of the world (and yet somehow the government claims we spend more on social security, even when the US has the worst welfare and life expectancy of any developed nation).
-A lot of the military spending isn't going towards creating new jobs for regular-degular Americans, like Biden asserted as an excuse to justify all the weapon$ sent to Ukraine. In fact, most of it goes towards funding defunct projects at the Big 5 (Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics) like the infamous F-35 or the Sentinel program.
-If you thought academia was safe, think again! As an engineer in academia, it's always frustrating to see how the labs that do research for the military get bottomless pits of money compared to even the average NIH/ NSF-funded labs. That's not even mentioning the amount of predatory recruiting the Big 5 do on campuses, going as far as to host "Lockheed Day"-type dystopian events.
-The military also blows a lot of money on sporting events and movies. Your first-person shooter videogames are not harmless either.
Overall, this book was incredibly well-researched and structured. The language was accessible to a lay audience and the authors don't assume large amounts of prior knowledge to understand the concepts brought forth. I appreciated how recent it is, highlighting how this all plays out in US involvement in the genocide happening in Gaza, and highly recommend everyone who's concerned about how their tax dollars are spent reads it.
April 19, 2026
A very informative exploration of the rise of the military, industrial, congressional, and cultural complex the mandates the Trillion dollar and more military budget. The corruption of all of these aspects of militarism and the new aspects such as video gaming, AI, and the influence of the new technocrats
.
.
June 22, 2026
book club book we all agreed was a little meh
March 26, 2026
Leftist screed masked under a veil of concerned journalism.
To be clear, the Shah was in power from 1941 onwards; it is wholly inaccurate to describe him as a "deposed prince" seizing control from Mossadegh. Furthermore, the supposedly "democratic" prime minister was a megalomaniac who tried illegally grabbing the property of his political opponents and drove Iran's economy into the ground.
Suggesting the 1979 revolution would not have happened if not for the 1953 coup is typical, low-IQ liberal/libertarian claptrap. The mullahs did not emerge randomly, nor did their Soviet-backed allies.
To be clear, the Shah was in power from 1941 onwards; it is wholly inaccurate to describe him as a "deposed prince" seizing control from Mossadegh. Furthermore, the supposedly "democratic" prime minister was a megalomaniac who tried illegally grabbing the property of his political opponents and drove Iran's economy into the ground.
Suggesting the 1979 revolution would not have happened if not for the 1953 coup is typical, low-IQ liberal/libertarian claptrap. The mullahs did not emerge randomly, nor did their Soviet-backed allies.
July 25, 2026
Very, very damning.
Many of America's political decision makers are in the pockets of the big 5 Pentagon contractors (Lockheed, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, RTX, and General Dynamics).
Many of America's political decision makers are in the pockets of the big 5 Pentagon contractors (Lockheed, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, RTX, and General Dynamics).
May 19, 2026
American life has become expensive. Only two months ago, the national economic gains were dwarfed by the historic national debt. The cost of national debt now exceeds defense spending. President Donald J. Trump, who ran on an "America First" agenda to end the forever wars and bring manufacturing jobs back, has failed spectacularly. Weakening ties with NATO, kowtowing to Chinese leaders abroad, embedding our country in another Middle Eastern quagmire, and supplicating for Putin's approval — Trump continues to betray his MAGA base and the American values he swore an oath to protect. He is the personification of America's decline. The consequences of his weak leadership are beginning to be felt at the pump and in the grocery lines. And to think, his Marie Antoinette ballroom isn't even complete yet.
The prophetic "Chance for Peace" speech from Eisenhower is the battle cry of William D. Hartung's The Trillion Dollar War Machine. The military-industrial complex has only consolidated and become more enmeshed with Congress. Both parties have blurred the lines between their governing congressional bodies and the lobbyists and think tanks that essentially write policy. Whether it's the Reagan "Mandate for Leadership" or the Trump "Project 2025," the policy initiatives both influence and are influenced by the five major defense industry firms. The belligerent spending has come to the domestic sphere too. Americans have faced assault and extrajudical murders by ICE and militizared police. The Brookings Institution only this week stated that some 145,000 children have been seperated from their parents; many of which endure in barbaric detention centers that Americans pay the cost for. Many deaths and sexual assault cases are being stymied from prosecution. These are just some of the abuses of the Trump doctrine; and a reminder that a sycopthantic congress and compromised Supreme Court will not stand up against authoritarian criminality.
Numbers can overwhelm, but they can also give us a sense of the scale of the issues created by the war machine. Some of the numbers that shocked me: the 30,000 suicides by soldiers returning from the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts; the $2.9 trillion spent on Iraq and Syria over the last twenty years; the $250 billion spent to support Israel since its founding in 1948; and one other number — not in the book, but one all Americans should know — the unprecedented $1.5 trillion that the disgraced Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is requesting. When Americans are foreclosing on homes and struggling to pay inflated consumer goods prices, why should they foot the bill for the Pentagon's $6.9 million budgetary line for lobster tails, and another $15.1 million for ribeye steak?
In the wise words of libertarian Representative Ron Paul on the Iraqi invasion: "Violent anti-Americanism has engulfed the world. Because the phenomenon of 'blowback' is not understood or is denied, our foreign policy is destined to keep us involved in many wars that we have no business being in." Our country's greatness can be measured by its economic output, its melting pot of immigrants, or the liberal Enlightenment writings of John Locke and our founders — but it cannot be measured by bloodshed and ceaseless trillion-dollar wars.
The prophetic "Chance for Peace" speech from Eisenhower is the battle cry of William D. Hartung's The Trillion Dollar War Machine. The military-industrial complex has only consolidated and become more enmeshed with Congress. Both parties have blurred the lines between their governing congressional bodies and the lobbyists and think tanks that essentially write policy. Whether it's the Reagan "Mandate for Leadership" or the Trump "Project 2025," the policy initiatives both influence and are influenced by the five major defense industry firms. The belligerent spending has come to the domestic sphere too. Americans have faced assault and extrajudical murders by ICE and militizared police. The Brookings Institution only this week stated that some 145,000 children have been seperated from their parents; many of which endure in barbaric detention centers that Americans pay the cost for. Many deaths and sexual assault cases are being stymied from prosecution. These are just some of the abuses of the Trump doctrine; and a reminder that a sycopthantic congress and compromised Supreme Court will not stand up against authoritarian criminality.
Numbers can overwhelm, but they can also give us a sense of the scale of the issues created by the war machine. Some of the numbers that shocked me: the 30,000 suicides by soldiers returning from the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts; the $2.9 trillion spent on Iraq and Syria over the last twenty years; the $250 billion spent to support Israel since its founding in 1948; and one other number — not in the book, but one all Americans should know — the unprecedented $1.5 trillion that the disgraced Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is requesting. When Americans are foreclosing on homes and struggling to pay inflated consumer goods prices, why should they foot the bill for the Pentagon's $6.9 million budgetary line for lobster tails, and another $15.1 million for ribeye steak?
In the wise words of libertarian Representative Ron Paul on the Iraqi invasion: "Violent anti-Americanism has engulfed the world. Because the phenomenon of 'blowback' is not understood or is denied, our foreign policy is destined to keep us involved in many wars that we have no business being in." Our country's greatness can be measured by its economic output, its melting pot of immigrants, or the liberal Enlightenment writings of John Locke and our founders — but it cannot be measured by bloodshed and ceaseless trillion-dollar wars.
February 12, 2026
Stiglitz and Bilmes in their book The Three Trillion Dollar War were thorough, unrelenting and on-point in their criticism of the Iraq invasion. I wish that was the case with this examination of the massive machine behind the Pentagon's nearly trillion dollar annual budget. The authors propose stripping funds from the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), only to add to the Welfare Industrial Complex (WIC) and the Global Warming/Climate Industrial Complex (GWIC). Both the WIC and GWIC use many of the same tactics as the MIC to ensure that their taxpayer financed gravy train keeps rolling.
The book presents to the reader ideas almost never discussed, the most interesting of which is eliminating the land-based ICBMs from the nuclear arsenal. They argue that a two pronged (submarines and aircraft) nuclear capability is more than adequate, much safer and much less expensive than the nuclear triad in place since the 1950s.
It describes at length how the financial tentacles of the MIC reach into Hollywood, universities, research think tanks, the news media, gaming and endless lobbying of Congress by both government personnel and military contractors. The MIC prevents opposing viewpoints through exercising financial and access pressure points. The MIC also pollutes discourse by recipients of its largesse failing to disclose their conflicts of interest. For example, a retired general or admiral will spout off on television in a very authoritative manner, without disclosing that he or the research foundation which employs him are financed by the manufacturer of the weapon he is promoting.
Unfortunately, the authors rather extreme leftwing politics frequently limit the solutions they propose. The Poor People's Campaign largely socialist proposals are recommended, but the libertarian Cato Institute is nowhere to be seen. Moving money from defense to social programs is proposed, but not reducing spending to slow growth of the $38 trillion national debt. And green energy is frequently hyped, without acknowleding that windmills and solar panels do not supply persistent power and require oil and gas backup.
Alleged systemic racism, water in Flint Michigan, wages in West Virginia, Martin Luther King, inequality, lbxyz rights, charging House Speaker Mike Johnson with claims of racism, all take a star turn in a book that is promoted to be about the Pentagon's budget and how to bring it under control. The books authors and editors should have pruned about 50 pages of kooky leftwing jibber jabber and ad hominem attacks and stuck to the subject matter.
The book presents to the reader ideas almost never discussed, the most interesting of which is eliminating the land-based ICBMs from the nuclear arsenal. They argue that a two pronged (submarines and aircraft) nuclear capability is more than adequate, much safer and much less expensive than the nuclear triad in place since the 1950s.
It describes at length how the financial tentacles of the MIC reach into Hollywood, universities, research think tanks, the news media, gaming and endless lobbying of Congress by both government personnel and military contractors. The MIC prevents opposing viewpoints through exercising financial and access pressure points. The MIC also pollutes discourse by recipients of its largesse failing to disclose their conflicts of interest. For example, a retired general or admiral will spout off on television in a very authoritative manner, without disclosing that he or the research foundation which employs him are financed by the manufacturer of the weapon he is promoting.
Unfortunately, the authors rather extreme leftwing politics frequently limit the solutions they propose. The Poor People's Campaign largely socialist proposals are recommended, but the libertarian Cato Institute is nowhere to be seen. Moving money from defense to social programs is proposed, but not reducing spending to slow growth of the $38 trillion national debt. And green energy is frequently hyped, without acknowleding that windmills and solar panels do not supply persistent power and require oil and gas backup.
Alleged systemic racism, water in Flint Michigan, wages in West Virginia, Martin Luther King, inequality, lbxyz rights, charging House Speaker Mike Johnson with claims of racism, all take a star turn in a book that is promoted to be about the Pentagon's budget and how to bring it under control. The books authors and editors should have pruned about 50 pages of kooky leftwing jibber jabber and ad hominem attacks and stuck to the subject matter.
June 14, 2026
Actual Rating 7.5/10
First, let me start by saying that as someone who has worked with and/or knows both authors personally, I am so thrilled that they were able to collaborate and put out this important book.
Here are my complaints:
- Quite redundant
- Assumes readers understanding/positions a bit
- Didn't go in as in depth as I would have wanted (especially knowing how much detail and research both authors put into their work)
Now, complaints aside, what an important addition to the literary work of so many anti-war, anti-intervention, etc. authors, thinkers, and activists. I particularly appreciate how much focus is placed on the economics of the whole damn MIC as opposed to a history lesson (which, obviously, I love those books as well). I think especially as more people become curious about why we spend so much on war and/or why we don't have enough money to fund social services, it is books such as this one which will be a first step for those people to become more engaged in the subject matter.
First, let me start by saying that as someone who has worked with and/or knows both authors personally, I am so thrilled that they were able to collaborate and put out this important book.
Here are my complaints:
- Quite redundant
- Assumes readers understanding/positions a bit
- Didn't go in as in depth as I would have wanted (especially knowing how much detail and research both authors put into their work)
Now, complaints aside, what an important addition to the literary work of so many anti-war, anti-intervention, etc. authors, thinkers, and activists. I particularly appreciate how much focus is placed on the economics of the whole damn MIC as opposed to a history lesson (which, obviously, I love those books as well). I think especially as more people become curious about why we spend so much on war and/or why we don't have enough money to fund social services, it is books such as this one which will be a first step for those people to become more engaged in the subject matter.
June 24, 2026
I can't recommend this book enough for anyone even mildly interested in the future of American foreign policy. Even as someone who works in foreign policy and is a vocal critic of the Military Industrial Complex, I found that Hartung and Freeman offer numerous fresh angles and critiques of how the MIC has completely infected daily American life. The most useful part of the book is not the criticism of American foreign policy, but their ideas for how to orient our foreign policy away from such a militant posture. Suggestions to improve transparency in think tank funding and news commentators are interesting, but I really enjoyed their takes on how to adjust American nuclear policy. I will admit I am a perfect audience for the book, being a firm believer in their central thesis, but I also was surprised at how many new ideas and angles I read here. Further, it's a quick and easy read - there's not too much technical jargon, and the ideas are broken into easily digestible segments.
Read
June 28, 2026I guess nobody who has at all paid attention would be surprised at what Hartung lays out here - the title pretty much sums it up. The details about some of the failed plane and ship projects, and how they get perpetuated even in failure were helpfully dismaying, and you come away with an understanding of how cynical the folks in the arms industry are, and how little they actually car about the country, the planet, and doing the right thing. It probably should go on any antiwar activists shelf, even if it is not a classic.
July 3, 2026
Really good look at the United States defense department, its military contractors, the swamp, and the politicians. The insane amount of spending will eventually bankrupt our nation. There are so much better ways to spend money and most importantly pay down our insane public debt.
I would like to know who funds the think tank the two authors work for. The talk about think tank bias but what about theirs? Some of their positions I do not agree with, but this is still an intriguing and important book.
I would like to know who funds the think tank the two authors work for. The talk about think tank bias but what about theirs? Some of their positions I do not agree with, but this is still an intriguing and important book.
May 10, 2026
A fresh look at the $1 trillion war machine as we move from a handful of primes that had cornered the market (government contracts) to the entrance of tech giants with connections to the administration. A thorough examination of what we forgo as a nation to fuel this system and am accessible intro for anyone looking to learn more
May 7, 2026
Somewhat boring, repeating same story too much
The author is repeating almost the same story too much. somewhat boring. It would be better to be in short context.
The author is repeating almost the same story too much. somewhat boring. It would be better to be in short context.
June 10, 2026
They have their thumb on theproblem.
Next question: What do Americans plan to do about it?
Next question: What do Americans plan to do about it?
June 13, 2026
Eye opening book, wouldn't recommend unless you're interested in Pentagon and military spending. But I enjoyed it. The war in Iran has already made the book in need of an update
August 12, 2026
Great look into the military industrial complex and the gears of the war machine.
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