Ideally, Warren’s report would precipitate a much larger congressional investigation of the military-industrial complex modeled after the 1934 Nye Committee hearings. At the end of April, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Chair of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, released an investigative report: “Pentagon Alchemy: How Defense Officials Pass Through...
The Pentagon has awarded the defense giant Raytheon Technologies, the second largest weapons-maker in the world, over $30 billion in government contracts since Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III’s confirmation on January 22nd, 2021. Austin was on Raytheon’s board of directors prior to his confirmation. Austin at the time had made...
Dennis Bernstein: We are honored to have Daniel Ellsberg here, the man who blew the whistle on the corrupt and illegal Vietnam War and has been blowing whistles and inspiring others ever since. Daniel Ellsberg gained notoriety in the early 1970s by leaking the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department's top-secret history...
Pay no attention to all those nasty left-wing allegations about how military contractors collude and conspire with the Pentagon to warp our economy, impoverish our citizens, pervert our national goals, and foment needless bloody wars that slaughter millions in order to fatten corporate profits. The truth is actually much...
This Military Paradox Could Very Well Lead to Nuclear Armageddon In 1949 the U.S. War Department changed its name. Branches of the armed forces were then administered under a new name: the Department of Defense. This newly defined mandate of defending the United States should have been a relatively easy and inexpensive task. Geography...
In early January 2009, a thirteen-year-old girl named Almaza Samouni watched in horror as 30 members of her family were killed while her home in Gaza was shelled by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) during Operation Cast Lead. Among the victims was her brother, who was struck by a...
Arms Industry and U.S. Government Have Now Practically Merged The United States’s imperial foreign policy has been evident since day one, but especially starting with the Gilded Age and the arrogant doctrine of Manifest Destiny of the mid-19th century. The imperial “cause” continued through the decades leading up to today.  And...
The military’s deep penetration into all aspects of American life has hampered the development of a strong anti-war movement—at a time when it is desperately needed. Tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets across the U.S. in the last few years to decry police brutality, to oppose...
U.S. President Donald Trump has signed off on the first-ever trillion-dollar military budget. When the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its budget request for fiscal year 2026 in May, it included a base defense request of $892.6 billion, plus a $119.3 billion allocation of additional resources...
The village of Endicott, New York, is where the computer age began. International Business Machines, or IBM, has roots in Endicott back to 1916 as a time clock company. It later became the acclaimed leader in the design and building of business machines and, in 1981, introduced to the...