The Incredibly Shrinking Defense Industry
The Military-Industrial Circus is a regular column by Pulitzer-prize winning National Security Analyst Mark Thompson for CDI at POGO. More
By Mark Thompson | Filed under analysis | August 01, 2019
When I began covering the U.S. military for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Washington 40 years ago, it was to report on the Texas contractors who built what the Pentagon bought. Tens of thousands of the paper’s readers cared a lot about the fate of the weapons rolling off their assembly lines. Cuts in production ordered by the Pentagon or Congress in faraway Washington could take food off their table; boosts could lead to overtime on the line and a fatter paycheck.
The “military-industrial complex” that President (and five-star Army general) Dwight Eisenhower warned us of in 1961 has funneled down to a few “Walmarts of war.”
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