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Michael Klare, Droning Washington

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Yes, some of us still remember that the now-famous (or do I mean infamous?) phrase “the military-industrial complex” actually came from the farewell address of former World War II general and then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 17, 1961. But how often do any of us remember the all-too-painfully appropriate context in which he offered it to the American people — as a warning about a future that today is so much ours, as the budget of the Department of Defense (so it’s still called despite the many disastrous and anything but “defensive” wars the U.S. military has fought in this century) heads for the trillion-dollar mark? Here, then, to introduce military expert and TomDispatch regular Michael Klare’s eye-opening account of where the MIC (the shorthand version of that phrase) is heading in the age of the drone and artificial intelligence, is the larger context for Eisenhower’s first use of the term:

“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.”

And more than 60 years later, with Eisenhower’s grimly visionary statement in mind, let Klare suggest just how eerily on target he was. If you don’t believe me, note that tech giant Anduril is now setting up its first factory in the Midwest — Columbus, Ohio, to be exact — at the cost of an initial billion dollars to produce “autonomous systems and weapons,” as artificial intelligence prepares to go to war. Tom

A New Military-Industrial Complex Arises

The Secret War Within the Pentagon

Last April, in a move generating scant media attention, the Air Force announced that it had chosen two little-known drone manufacturers -- Anduril Industries of Costa Mesa, California, and General Atomics of San Diego -- to build prototype versions of its proposed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), a future unmanned plane intended to accompany piloted aircraft on high-risk combat missions. The lack of coverage was surprising, given that the Air Force expects to acquire at least 1,000 CCAs over the coming decade at around $30 million each, making this one of the Pentagon’s costliest new projects. But consider that the least of what the media failed to note. In winning the CCA contract, Anduril and General Atomics beat out three of the country’s largest and most powerful defense contractors -- Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman -- posing a severe threat to the continued dominance of the existing military-industrial complex, or MIC.

For decades, a handful of giant firms like those three have garnered the lion’s share of Pentagon arms contracts, producing the same planes, ships, and missiles year after year while generating huge profits for their owners. But an assortment of new firms, born in Silicon Valley or incorporating its disruptive ethos, have begun to challenge the older ones for access to lucrative Pentagon awards. In the process, something groundbreaking, though barely covered in the mainstream media, is underway: a new MIC is being born, one that potentially will have very different goals and profit-takers than the existing one. How the inevitable battles between the old and the new MICs play out can't be foreseen, but count on one thing: they are sure to generate significant political turbulence in the years to come.

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Rebecca Gordon, A Litany of Horrors in the New Age of Trump

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All I can say is: thank heavens for Bernie Sanders. (If only he had been elected president instead of You Know Who!) Responding to Donald Trump’s recent decision to try to freeze trillions — yes, trillions! — of dollars in federal grants and loans, he said, “If President Trump wants to change our nation’s laws he has the right to ask Congress to change them. He does not have the right to violate the United States Constitution. He is not a king.”

No, indeed he’s not, but it seems that, until Sanders spoke up, no one had told him that and, the second time around in the White House, as TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon suggests today, he feels all too regal and has been acting accordingly. As a climate-change denier of the first order, he’s similarly moved to freeze the Department of Energy’s $50 billion budget, while preparing to cut out of it any funding that might be heading in a climate-friendly direction, part of an effort to halt any climate-positive policies instituted by the Biden administration.

And keep in mind, of course, that those acts, as New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall wrote recently, were just part of “a frenzied week of pardons, executive orders, threatening phone calls, and emergency declarations,” all of which also involved concentrating ever more power in — oh, yes, his hands (or perhaps His hands). And that’s just a start, of course. Where we’re going nobody really knows, not even Donald Trump. (Or do I mean, especially not Donald Trump?) But I can’t help thinking of that classic line attributed to King Louis XV of France: “Après moi, le déluge” (“After me, the flood”).

Whether that deluge proves to be the Trump-aided overheating of the planet or who knows what else, the future is looking anything but cheery right now, as Rebecca Gordon makes so vividly clear today. Tom

King Donald

Or Facing the Rise of Fascism Like Fools for Freedom

This past weekend my partner and I got together with a group of friends. We’ve been meeting every six weeks or so since 1982. Originally, this group of lesbians convened to talk about sex: what we were doing, what we wanted to do, what we fantasized about doing. But you know how it is with any relationship. Over time, it can come to embrace so many other things. That’s how it’s been with the group we call “Group” (or sometimes “A Closed Group with No Name”). We’ve seen each other through breakups, new lovers, job changes, housing worries, ailments, the deaths of lovers, caring for aging and dying parents, and now confronting our own age and the nearness of our mortality.

We’ve been together through an earthquake, several wars (Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the rest of the "Global War on Terror”), the advent of the Internet, and seven presidents. Now, we’re facing the return of the worst of those seven. The Group's latest meeting took place at the end of the first week of Donald Trump’s new term. So many disturbing things had happened in just seven days and none of us really wanted to talk about any of it.

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Todd Miller, Facing the Deportation Industry

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Yes, Donald Trump is distinctly focused on the border and immigration but, of course, he’s anything but focused on the issue that, more than any other in the years to come, will actually drive immigration. I’m thinking, of course, about climate change. Today, TomDispatch regular and border expert Todd Miller, author of Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders, considers a world in which our changing climate — the growing heat — is indeed driving people in Mexico toward the U.S. border.  Of course, if they make it, in a world where Donald Trump has already sent 1,500 more U.S. troops to the Mexican border to join the 2,200 already there — yes, Joe Biden sent troops to the border, too! — and is threatening to dispatch many thousands more, they may be in for a surprise.

After all, thanks to the phenomenon that Donald Trump wants to encourage in a significant fashion through his “drill, baby, drill” policies when it comes to oil and natural gas (not to speak of coal), Phoenix, Arizona, a desert city which is only getting drier and hotter by the year, has already experienced 154 rainless days as it heads for a new record, while this planet comes off yet another record-breaking year of global heat.

With that in mind, let border expert Miller remind you of how this country already put staggering amounts of money into border “security” during the “liberal” presidency of Joe Biden and so many presidents before him while building up a stunning — to use Miller’s term — “border-industrial complex.” Tom

The Mass Deportation Handoff, Biden to Trump

And the Booming Border-Industrial Complex

It didn’t take long for the border and immigration enforcement industry to react to Donald Trump’s reelection. On November 6th, as Bloomberg News reported, stock prices shot up for two private prison companies, GEO Group and CoreCivic. “We expect the incoming Trump administration to take a much more aggressive approach regarding border security as well as interior enforcement,” explained the GEO Group’s executive chair, George Zoley, “and to request additional funding from Congress to achieve these goals.” In other words, the “largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history” was going to be a moneymaker.

As it happens, that Bloomberg piece was a rarity, offering a glimpse of immigration enforcement that doesn’t normally get the attention it deserves by focusing on the border-industrial complex. The article’s tone, however, suggested that there will be a sharp break between the border policies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Its essential assumption: that Biden adored open borders, while Trump, the demagogue, is on his way to executing a profitable clampdown on them.

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