The Trillion Dollar War Machine That Barreled Toward Iran

Donald Trump campaigned against “endless wars.” Yet in late February, he launched a war against Iran that has already killed over one thousand people, including at least 175 in a strike on a girls’ elementary school. It is also burning through staggering sums of public money. Early estimates suggest the war could cost taxpayers between $1 billion to $2 billion a day. The first two days of strikes alone consumed $5.6 billion in munitions, raising alarm among lawmakers about depleted stockpiles and the mounting financial toll of another Middle Eastern war with no end in sight.

For decades, the United States has pursued “security” with bombs, missiles, and Pentagon budget increases, often with disastrous results. In The Trillion Dollar War Machine, foreign policy analysts William Hartung and Ben Freeman argue that this pattern is the result of a vast, entrenched military-industrial complex that has grown richer, more politically powerful, and more deeply embedded in American life over time. Since World War II, the U.S. has built a sprawling permanent war economy that links weapons manufacturers, lobbyists, think tanks, politicians, Hollywood, universities, the video game industry, and, increasingly, Silicon Valley tech companies. The result, Hartung and Freeman contend, is a system that pushes the country toward war while draining resources from urgent needs at home.

At a moment when the United States once again finds itself in a costly and escalating conflict in the Middle East, their argument carries renewed urgency. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, Hartung and I spoke about who stands to profit from a war with Iran, how militarism has seeped into American politics and culture, and what it would take to build something like a peace movement powerful enough to confront it.

Indigo Olivier: If Americans want to understand why the United States seems perpetually drawn into new conflicts—from Iraq to Afghanistan to now Iran—what is the single most important structural factor that they should be paying attention to?

William Hartung: Our elected officials are almost de facto lobbyists for this industry because they benefit from campaign contributions, for catering to contractors in their states, almost like servicing the arms industry instead of servicing us. That means there’s not real debate on almost anything, but there’s a lot of bragging about steering money to one’s state, or defending a dysfunctional weapon built in one’s state.

There’s misguided ideology and American exceptionalism, about how the United States should dominate the globe. But I think that the money part is another obstacle to putting that aside and thinking about what defense would be versus dominance.

I.O.: Who is most likely to benefit from war with Iran?

W.H.: I think it’ll be broad. In the short term, it’ll be the munitions companies, which are already asking for all kinds of special favors because [the U.S. has] been, you know, consuming at large quantities for Ukraine and Israel and so forth. It’s yet another sort of ongoing war where they’re going to be using steady quantities. The level of the stockpiles is classified, but people who have been there say it is indeed low at this point because they used up a lot of the stocks that are sitting around in Ukraine. They have to build stuff, and the contracts will flow to these various companies.

I.O.: You write that the “war machine” today is far bigger than the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about. What’s changed since then?

W.H.: Part of it is the money we spend now is almost twice what we spent when Eisenhower gave his speech, adjusted for inflation. I think also, once they got over the so-called Vietnam syndrome in the 1990s, the buildup has been pretty relentless. The first 10 years after 9/11, Pentagon spending went up every year, which had never happened before. Also, I think, they’ve de-emphasized other tools of foreign policy, diplomacy, foreign aid. They’re making a big bet on weapons, even though they have not been able to really succeed in Iraq or Afghanistan, despite over-matching the folks that are fighting. And then I think the lobbies are more intense because in the ’90s a lot of these companies merged into gigantic companies.

Lockheed Martin gets $40 or $50 billion a year from the Pentagon. Some years, it’s bigger than the State Department budget. So they’ve got a lot of money. They’re spread all over the country, so members [of Congress] don’t want to vote against jobs in their district.

There’s only been a handful of members of Congress who have stood up—[Representatives] Ro Khanna, Mark Pocan, [Senator] Bernie Sanders—but they don’t have anything approaching a coalition to turn this thing back.

I.O.: One of the most striking sections in your introduction links militarism to everyday culture—sports, video games, Hollywood, and universities. Why is it so important for the Pentagon to be part of people’s daily lives?

W.H.: It’s their equivalent of soft power. They have a liaison office in Hollywood. If you use anything from the Pentagon, they get script approval. All the weapons that are dogs in real life do amazingly in Hollywood movies. Then, in sports, you’ve got flyovers. And of course, in flyovers, everything looks great because nobody’s getting killed. It’s just the awe of the technology.

We dedicated $8 trillion to the post-9/11 wars. We could have decarbonized our whole electric grid. They could have canceled all the student loan debt.

And gaming: The Army even has a gaming team that competes with civilians. It’s apparently one of their best recruiting tools. And they even did a study after 9/11, when everybody’s saying, “Oh, these kids. They’re slackers, playing games all the time and can’t focus.” The Pentagon’s reaction was, “These kids are great. They’re multitaskers. Let’s recruit them.” And that’s what they’re doing. They even consulted gamers about how to do the controls for drones, you know, what would be the most efficient way? So they’ve kind of integrated.

I.O.: Recruiting numbers have been falling for years. Do you think the Defense Department’s new cultural messaging under Hegseth—patriotism over diversity, toughness over inclusion—is an attempt to solve that crisis, or is this a deeper ideological rebranding?

W.H.: I think it’s mostly ideological. When they say they’re against DEI, the flip side of that is they don’t want to do anything about racism, misogyny, anti-gay, anti-trans activities inside the military. It’s almost like Hegseth’s ideal military would be like the Michigan militia with better weapons. And that is not representative of the country. Also, there seems to be this notion that they’re supposed to be loyal to Donald Trump, not to the Constitution. So I think his ideal military is going to be weaker, less representative, and less in line with what the military is supposed to be, which is to serve the civilian government and the people in cases where we truly are threatened.

Sending troops to Los Angeles is, at best, a political stunt and, at worst, a way to try to intimidate people from exercising their constitutional rights. Hegseth’s idea that it’s all about the warriors is completely misguided. Soldiers are not supposed to relish violence. They’re supposed to reluctantly defend us when needed, and we’ve never had a perfect situation. But this is going very far in the wrong direction, and I think at some point I’m wondering if some of the folks in the ranks are going to say, enough already.

I.O.: Policymakers often call Pentagon spending “essential,” but we rarely talk about the opportunity costs—what that money could be doing instead. What could those resources fund, and how might that actually make us more secure at home?

W.H.: There are items large and small that could change. According to Brown University, we dedicated $8 trillion to the post-9/11 wars. We could have decarbonized our whole electric grid. They could have canceled all the student loan debt. They could have doubled Biden’s investment in green technology and still have money left over. So unfortunately, that money is gone.

In the budget now, there is more money for the F-35—which is not a very good airplane—than for the Centers for Disease Control. Lockheed Martin gets more money than the State Department. But it’s a complicated matter because Congress can’t just take money from one place and move it to the other. You need a strong lobby for domestic programs, at the same time as a lobby to scale back the Pentagon.

And, of course, then the Pentagon plays the jobs card. There’s a lot of people doing research for them who would rather not, but that’s where the money is. They’re kind of siphoning a lot of our scientific and engineering talent.

I.O.: Your final chapter is titled “From War Machine to Peace Machine.” What would a “peace machine” actually look like in practice?

The Black Lives Matter movement, immigration reform, movements dealing with police violence—they’re all fighting some part of militarism, some piece of it.

W.H.: The first thing we need is a stronger public movement. The traditional peace movement is at a relatively weak point. On the other hand, the movements that are getting traction, that are growing—be it the Black Lives Matter movement, immigration reform, dealing with police violence—they’re all fighting some part of militarism, some piece of it. And so I think there could be at least a loose network where we work together on specific things without people having to give up their primary issues. That would mean a lot of relationship building and trust building among the different movements and a strategy as to when to use our combined power.

And then, we would need a better breed of Congress member, who’s willing to fight on these things. Now Congress really is barely participating in crafting foreign policy. Therefore, the executive branch can pretty much have its way. So I think it has to start with public education, a cultural shift, before you can get the political benefits.

It comes back to culture and people, in the sense that they can make a difference by acting politically. And I think a lot of people don’t believe that right now, not just on militarism but many other issues. So the thing I will say is that fighting back against this stuff is much more energizing and fulfilling than just assuming it’s going to go on forever.