The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives

by Nick Turse

"Fascinating, no matter where you place yourself on the ideological spectrum."--"Wired"

Now in paperback, a stunning breakdown of the modern military-industrial complex--an omnipresent, hidden-in-plain-sight system of systems that penetrates all our lives.

From iPods to Starbucks to Oakley sunglasses, historian Nick Turse explores the Pentagon's little-noticed contacts (and contracts) with the products and companies that now form the fabric of America. He investigates the remarkable range of military incursions into the civilian world: the Pentagon's collaborations with Hollywood filmmakers; its outlandish schemes to weaponize the wild kingdom; its joint ventures with Marvel Comics and NASCAR. Similarly disturbing is the way in which the military, desperate for fresh recruits, has tapped into the "culture of cool" by making "friends" on MySpace.

A striking vision of this brave new world of remote-controlled rats and super-soldiers who need no sleep, "The Complex" will change our understanding of the militarization of America. We are a long way from Eisenhower's military-industrial complex: this is the essential book for understanding its twenty-first-century progeny.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, War, American History, The United States Of America, American

304 pages, Paperback

First published March 18, 2008

Reviews

[Grey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts of this book were good. The sections on recruiting and propaganda are particularly informative and disturbing.

The intro didn't work for me. Why should I (or a fictional character) care if I buy toothpaste from a company that the military also buys toothpaste from? If I shop at the same grocery store as some guy who beats his wife, am I supporting domestic violence?

If the military buys a lot of food, is that part of a vast military-food conspiracy? Or is it just inevitable that people in the military need to eat something?

Also, while some of the research discussed is indeed disturbing, other discussions of research bear hints of an anti-scientific attitude that's all too common in this country.

[Carl · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an interesting book in that it did delineate many connections between corporations and the military, but it left me wanting a fuller description of the nature of the relationship. Does selling shampoo to the military because you are a shampoo company constitute the same level of immersion as a company that develops the next warfare simulation for a video game meant to pre-train the next generation of potential soldiers? I don't think it does, and Turse doesn't play that up very well.

Lots of good information, but needed to be pulled together better and be given a better focus.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book that has good intentions but goes off target more quickly than a North Korean missile. The author promises a discussion of how the military industrial complex has insinuated itself into the economy and the culture, and the book does a good job of that, but then the discussion turns toward the military's excesses, and I just don't really care how many golf courses the pentagon owns.

[Miroku Nemeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a teacher and adjunct English professor for a decade and a half, I have taught on war and literature, and the military-industrial complex and war profiteering for years. I show Eugene Jarecki's excellent documentary "Why We Fight", assign readings from King's April 4, 1967, "Beyond Vietnam" speech, Howard Zinn on Thoreau, poets and writers from Aeschylus to Tim O'Brien, etc., and have students, many of whom are actually veterans, research and write on war and its consequences. This book was recommended to me by the journalist Jason Coppola, after he had seen that I had read Nick Turse's powerful and painful "Kill Anything that Moves", and I am thankful that I received the recommendation, for it is an important work that I will use for years in my teaching. For someone like me, who has read Chomsky for nearly two decades and follows alternative media like Democracy Now! regularly,very little of this is new to me, but I learned much reading this and meditating on the truly ubiquitous reach of the many tentacled beast for which the "military-industrial complex" only conveys a partial naming. It is sinister. And reaches into almost every aspect of our lives, from the obvious range of militant children's toys and other cultural phenomena that we rarely question, however much they shape us, to the multudinous range of corporations which have contracts with the US military, from oil companies to media conglomerates to sunglasses companies like Oakley, clothing corporations, food suppliers, and Starbucks. There is a military-industrial academic complex, and so much more. As far as readibility, I will admit that it gets bogged down in numbers in the first 50 pages or so, but get through it--it is worth it. I also feel that a newer version needs to be put out, for we have seen a new issuing of movies sponsored by the military, like "Red Dawn", and new movies and so many aspects of our society that train us to think about our troops being involved in "urban warfare". Think the new version of "Judge Dredd" when one thinks of scenarios, armor, etc. And the material on the history of the development of video games as training for the military is very important (especially in relation to how it trains civilian children to want to become soldiers, etc.). Anyone who has read the father of "killology", Dave Grossman, (whether "On Killing" or "On Combat" should know how he warns of this effect on the psyches of young people. As a teacher and a father, in the last couple of years, I have seen teenage boys infinitely more knowledgeable in aspects of the US military arsenal and tactics, especially through games like the manifold reconfigurations of "Call of Duty". I wish that there was more of this in this book, but it was written before this became the trend, which is perhaps one of the most successful tricks for indoctrination and training pre-enlistment the US government has pulled off. And, by the way, all of those insect-size drones, and plans for interning US citizens that you see on the Internet used to scare you into believing that whatever page or demagogue knows the sinister conspiracy plan that will do us all in--well, don't fall for the groups, but those drones and those plans ARE actually real. And much more that should scare you and anger you if you are truly an American (I don't mention other countries here as most of them are usually wise enough to fear America and what is happening, though, of course, somnolence and complacency are not a particularly American attribute unshared by the rest of the world, just something I care about combatting here).

“Certainly, the day is not far off when most potential U.S. troops will have grown up playing commercial video games that were created by the military as training simulators; will be recruited , at least in part, through video games; will be tested, postenlistment, on advanced video game systems; will be trained using simulators, which will later be turned into video games, or on reconfigured versions of the same games used to recruit them or that they played as kids; will be taught to pilot vehicles using devices resembling commercial video game controllers; and then, after a long day of real-life war gaming head back to their quarters to kick back and play the latest PlayStation or Xbox games created with or sponsored by their own, or another, branch of the armed forces.
More and more toys are poised to become clandestine combat teaching tools, and more and more simulators are destined to be tomorrow’s tools, and more and more simulators are destined to be tomorrow’s toys. And what of America’s children and young adults in all this? How will they be affected by the dazzling set of military training devices now landing in their living rooms and on their PCs, produced by video game giants under the watchful eyes of the Pentagon? After all, what these games offer is less a matter of simple military indoctrination and more like a near immersion in a virtual world of war, where armed conflict is not the last, but the first—and indeed the only—resort.”

Nick Turse “The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives” (140)

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A review of the questionable ways that the Pentagon spends money. Enter into the world of massive corporate contractors that enjoy defense funds to create products that they later sell to the public (when you see the sheer scope of companies that enjoy these contracts, the idea of a free market in any form is a joke because many, many, many of the largest ones earn large minorities of their profits from taxpayer money); the revolving door between the boards of multi-billion dollar military contractors and high level Pentagon positions, including Dick Cheney and Halliburton... the list of blatant conflicts of interest within the system is a mile long; money is spent by the military so quickly that it doesn't even know where it goes (they think about 2.3 trillion dollars are missing, but they can't even get things together enough to be audited by the General Accounting Office); the immense lobbying power of defense contractors to pass bills that keep their cash cow healthy, even when a set of projects worth 100s of millions are overbudget by a third and have been demonstrated to be useless. The Pentagon's accounting system is so abysmal that spending abuses are rampant - first class airline tickets, dropping 50 or 100 grand at posh European hotels, buying a thousand dollar nacho cheese warmer, etc. They own and run at least 234 golf courses around the world, some worth over $13 million, and continue to build more on bases that already have two. The sheer volume of money spent by the military every year (about a trillion dollars) and how it's spent give you the picture of a flat-out blank check and zero accountability. No one can explain exactly why tax payers should be footing the bill for all of this. No other agency could get away with even 10% of these abuses without getting slammed.

Did you know that video games were invented more or less by the defense industry as combat simulators, or that they like to recruit hardcore Xboxers because they have less qualms about pulling the trigger and are good at eye-hand coordination?

The author goes into the questionable recruiting practices enacted by the military to gain new guys, now that the wars are so unpopular. You no longer have to pass the ASVAB test by any stretch, or technically pass a mental health exam, or worry about a criminal record. Several thousand gang members, skinheads and felons are now in the military, where they tag military equipment, are trained in combat, and have even stolen weapons and got them back home. Only a few years ago, the military would not have been desperate enough to hire these people on. They even added a policy under Bush that allows you to become an American cititzen after only one day in the service to hopes of tapping into our large illegal immigrant population.

The tone of the book is sort of annoying, but the information is absolutely fascinating, if disturbing.

[Ammar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an essential book to understand the workings of the military and its growing association with our society and culture. You learn many things, (if you are as ill-informed as I was) like the servitude of universities for research that is sometimes controversial including trying to make "guiltless soldiers" and creating a robotic force that does not discriminate between the combatant and child, the lavish lifestyle and gross custom of waste in the military and CIA (from a $1,800 pillow and minigolf in bases to rendition in Gulfstream jets), and the current desperate and unethical ways to recruit soldiers including allowing people with criminal pasts or giving recruiters a pimped-out hummer with a few sexy girls to grab attention to the military...this book, for me, was endless in its regrettable surprises revealed, but it informed me about the sloppy framework and disorganized system of the military which is adding disorder to regions worldwide. this book was truly an eye-opener should be a must-read, especially for those considering joining the military...and it was praised by such people as Dahr Jamail of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unimbedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq and Chalmers Johnson of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic in addition to William Hartung and Mike Davis.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is an ever increasing militarization of our society. Even if you are a relatively socially aware and concerned citizen its hard to avoid being drawn in. One problem, Turse never sufficiently proves that by purchasing products from any given company which also happens to have contracts with the military you are falling prey to the Complex. If I buy something from someplace and the seller turns around and uses that money to buy guns which are used to kill the innocent I am directly supporting those actions by buying products from that seller. In the cases that Turse presents I would only be buying products from a company that also sells to the Military. In no way would my money be helping the military. This logic applies to almost every other case that Turse presents in this book, almost three hundred pages of them. Obviously the most direct way that we help support the Complex is through our taxes, this should go without saying. I would only recommend this book to those who might be interested in reading lists of what the military likes to buy, it is amusing in its own way I guess.

[Smiley III · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrifying. You see farther, with this book, and stop lingering on ideology, right-or-wrong, left or right; this is the book that led me to conclude that "Lockheed-Martin's a planet" in a story of mine. Read it and be chilled! So many, many things are just not within a person's reach ... welcome to realism, American-style, where "scope" is the keyword, and "opinion" is dwarfed by scale. Probably not optional for anyone who consumes stuff in America, including oxygen.

[Caroline Rowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting look at the spiderweb of involvement that the US military has across all elements of society. From influencing research and academic studies, to running golf courses (who knew?), as well as having unaudited spending at 5-star hotels, and overpaying suppliers and contractors at exorbitant cost inflation, this book is a fascinating look at where American taxpayer dollars are really spent.

[Brent · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has a good premise, unfortunately the author has a rather obvious ax to grid and is in no way objective on this issue, making this little more than a screed against the DoD. Basically, the author claims that any company the DoD buys anything from is a member of the MIC and that's such a foolishly broad brush that it cut the credibility of the entire book. Do not recommend.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goes on a bit too long, too many numbers, but a good quick read nonetheless.

[Leah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Useful for showing just how embedded the US economy is in the military. A little repetitive at times.

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was excellent. It wove together the different strands of the military-industrial complex and showed us how the military-industrial complex is part of everything we buy and do. I especially liked the material about Kevin Bacon and how many military-sponsored movies he's been in. The writing style was pretty good as well. Turse has novelist's habit of diction upswings at the end of chapters and sections.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important information, well researched and documented. A star deleted as it's now time dated. I'm certain the military industrial complex has not become more ethical. In that respect it's worth the read.

[Kevin McAllister · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seems like they decided to change the subtitle of this book to something a bit more attention grabbing. The sub title of the book I have is How The Military Invades Our Everyday Lives. Sounded like a very interesting topic to me so I picked up a copy. Unfortunately there wasn't anything very original between the covers, and very little I didn't already know. The one chapter I did find interesting was the chapter on recruiting. I wasn't really aware of just how low the military has sunk, not only in the losers they accept, but in the downright disgraceful, methods they use to attract those losers.

[Kimberly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Can I give a book NEGATIVE stars?! Wow, did Turse feel anti-military. Or just that the military is to blame for so many wrong things in our world. I could barely flip through this. I thought it was just me, but my husband did the same--after 10 minutes of looking through the book, he asked me "what the heck is this? Why does this guy hate the military? Did you BUY this??" Unfortunately I did--and in a bookstore ON a military post.

[Kandachamy Vijayakumaran · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book unravelling the nexus between corporate giants and the DoD and its cascading effects on the common man's life. It is a serious book which make he reader uncomfortable with truths and vicious circles so horrible and inescapable. You may feel happy for the life this far, for you cannot predict when you will become the victim of some of the experiments. Nick Turse is bold, his writing clinically precise, and beautiful too.

[sonny singh suchdev · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a freaky book - very important for folks to read and begin to further understand how deeply entrenched the military is in ALL aspects of our society. it's super easy to read and accessible and packed full of information we should all know. (p.s. nick turse the author wrote the first review of Outernational in the village voice many years back!)

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting and in some aspects rightly terrifying, this is undone by Turse's overdone righteous indignation. Copy editing isn't great and the collection of essays seems less focused than the work could have been.

I suspect that at some points the author has been on the verge of using the word "sheeple": it's that feeling of smugness through the work that ultimately stays with you.

[Gregg A. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am sorry I wasted my time reading this book. The book was filled with satirical over the top comments that I would expect from only a very very liberal view of the military. I expected more information on how the military is connected to our lives - I received that but only on a general level. I suppose I expected a text that would allow me to make my own conclusions.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

the amount of numbers turse puts forth in relation to Pentagon spending is a bit dizzying, but he does a good job of demonstrating how the military is connected to everything around us--even Silk Soymilk!

[Ryan Koncar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definately an eye-opener. A pretty quick read. There are a few levels to the book, so even if it's a little over-the-top for you, there's still value to be found.

[John Petersen]

Excellent idea for a book, and important information for Americans to know, but I agree it was written rather flatly.

[Oakhands · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting insight but a bit preachy.