As long as we're talking about which government spending Republicans are and aren't willing to cut, it's worth remembering that today is the 50th anniversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address, in which he warned about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex." An excerpt from James Ledbetter's book on the subject, posted by Reuters, provides some of the historical context of the speech. The story is worth reading, but not because it's unfamiliar: America gets caught off-guard by a new threat -- in this case, the Soviet Union's launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 -- and panics. Congress becomes susceptible to shoddy intelligence that overestimates threats -- in this case, the Gaither Report, which claimed that the Soviet stockpile of intercontinental ballistic missiles had "probably surpassed" the U.S.' -- and responds by allocating serious money to military contractors. As Ledbetter writes:
The period following the Sputnik-Gaither crisis demonstrates Eisenhower's military-industrial-complex critique in its early stages. After all, who was behind the faulty intelligence and calls for military buildup in the Gaither Report? The leadership consisted of known and trusted Eisenhower advisers, but there could be no hiding the fact that the billions in increased military spending called for by the panel would benefit many of the very people making the recommendations. Two of the report's principal directors were Robert C. Sprague, who headed his own business of military electronics, and William C. Foster of the Olin-Mathiesen Chemical Company, a producer of gunpowder and ammunition.
Despite contemporary congressional Republicans' allergy to defense cuts, Defense Secretary Robert Gates' desire to slow the rate of military spending is a legitimately hopeful sign that the military-industrial complex might not run quite so far amok over the next 50 years. But the private contractors Eisenhower saw "as a self-interested, malign actor in the budget process" have diversified their portfolios over the last five decades, and the defense budget isn't the only one in which they've stuck their fingers. The cash-flush and underorganized Department of Homeland Security contracts with 318 private companies, according to The Washington Post's Top Secret America Report -- more than any other entity except the NSA and two branches of the armed forces (Navy and Air Force). The "virtual" border fence, recently scrapped after DHS spent $1 billion on a pilot program, was a Boeing contract. Extending the "virtual fence" across the border would have cost $7 billion; instead, DHS will spend a mere $750 million to deploy drones it already has in its possession (and has already paid for, above and beyond the $750 million) thanks to contractor General Atomics.
Military spending is still king: The DoD's 2011 budget was 10 times bigger than DHS'. But if Eisenhower were leaving office today, and warning about emerging powers with undue influence over the allocation of funds for the public interest, would he also be warning Americans about the "security-industrial complex"?
-- Dara Lind
