{"id":148394,"date":"2025-03-08T15:56:46","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T22:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=148394"},"modified":"2025-03-08T15:56:46","modified_gmt":"2025-03-08T22:56:46","slug":"donald-trump-and-the-military-industrial-tech-complex-the-warfare-state-paved-the-way-for-autocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2025\/03\/08\/donald-trump-and-the-military-industrial-tech-complex-the-warfare-state-paved-the-way-for-autocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump and the Military-Industrial-Tech Complex: The Warfare State Paved the Way for Autocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

TOMDISPATCH<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Posted on February 27, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hey, it\u2019s the MIC, right? I\u2019m thinking, of course, about the military-industrial complex. In this century, it\u2019s taken more taxpayer dollars than perhaps any other part of the government, with a Pentagon budget\u201d that\u2019s now heading for $900 billion a year. At this moment, President Trump has dispatched<\/a> Elon Musk to do some cutting there (as at so many other places<\/a> in the government) and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is planning to lend him a hand<\/a>. I have no doubt that they\u2019ll find some immediate funds to slash and staff to obliterate. Still, I\u2019d count on something else as well: Musk is a tech billionaire in an administration that simply loves tech billionaires \u2014 and this country\u2019s tech billionaires like Peter Thiel of Palantir and Palmer Luckey of Anduril<\/a> are clearly planning to make further fortunes off the MIC, as they provide<\/a> the latest drone and AI weaponry<\/a> to the place whose greatest skill in this century has been spending money while losing wars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, by the way, the Republicans in Congress recently released<\/a> a blueprint for adding a future $150 billion to that very Pentagon budget! And count on one more thing: significant parts of that sum will undoubtedly go to producing futuristic high-tech weaponry. So don\u2019t for a second think that the Pentagon will truly be cut back (no matter what future headlines may tell you), not \u2014 as TomDispatch<\/em> regular<\/a> Norman Solomon, author of War Made Invisible<\/em><\/a>, suggests today \u2014 while the MIC is transformed into the MITC (for military-industrial-tech complex).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Solomon makes clear, this country has become a warfare state (even if it\u2019s been incapable of winning a war in this century) and that is indeed one way to pave a path to greater authoritarianism. Tom<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How the Warfare State Paved the Way for a Trumpist Autocracy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A True Cost of War<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By Norman Solomon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donald Trump\u2019s power has thrived on the economics, politics, and culture of war. The runaway militarism of the last quarter-century was a crucial factor in making President Trump possible, even if it goes virtually unmentioned in mainstream media and political discourse. That silence is particularly notable among Democratic leaders, who have routinely joined in bipartisan messaging to boost the warfare state that fueled the rise of Trumpism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump first ran for president nearly a decade and a half after the Global War on Terror\u201d began in the wake of the 9\/11 attacks. The crusade\u2019s allure had worn off. The national mood was markedly different than in the era when President George W. Bush insisted<\/a> that our responsibility\u201d was to rid the world of evil.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working-class Americans had more modest goals for their government. Distress festered as income inequality widened and economic hardships worsened, while federal spending on war, the Pentagon budget, and the national security\u201d state continued to zoom upward. Even though the domestic effects of protracted warfare were proving to be enormous, multilayered, and deeply alienating, elites in Washington scarcely seemed to notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donald Trump, however, did notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pundits were shocked in 2015 when Trump mocked<\/a> the war record of Republican Senator John McCain. The usual partisan paradigms were further upended during the 2016 presidential campaign when Trump denounced his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as trigger happy<\/a>.\u201d He had a point. McCain, Clinton, and their cohort weren\u2019t tired of U.S. warfare \u2014 in fact, they kept glorifying it \u2014 but many in non-affluent communities had grown sick of its stateside consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Repeated deployments of Americans to war zones had taken their toll. The physical and emotional wounds of returning troops were widespread. And while politicians were fond of waxing eloquent<\/a> about the fallen,\u201d the continual massive spending for war and preparations for more of it depleted badly needed resources at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status-Quo Militarism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton represented the status quo that Trump ran against and defeated. Like them, he was completely insulated from the harsh boomerang effects of the warfare state. Unlike them, he sensed how to effectively exploit the discontent and anger it was causing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obama was not clueless. He acknowledged some downsides to endless war in a much-praised speech during his second term in office. Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,\u201d he affirmed<\/a> at the National Defense University. But this war, like all wars, must end. That\u2019s what history advises. That\u2019s what our democracy demands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Yorker<\/em> journalist Jane Mayer hailed that instance of presidential oratory in a piece<\/a> touting Obama\u2019s anguish over the difficult trade-offs that perpetual war poses to a free society.\u201d But such concerns were fleeting at the White House, while sparking little interest from mainstream journalists. Perpetual war had become wallpaper in the media echo chamber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Bush\u2019s messianic calls to rid the world of evil-doers\u201d had fallen out of fashion, but militarism remained firmly embedded in the political economy. Corporate contracts with the Pentagon and kindred agencies only escalated. But when Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, being a rigid hawk became a negative with the electorate as pro-Trump forces jumped into the opening she provided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six weeks before the election, Forbes<\/em> published an article<\/a> under the headline Hillary Clinton Never Met a War She Didn\u2019t Want Other Americans to Fight.\u201d Written by Doug Bandow, former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, the piece exemplified how partisan rhetoric about war and peace had abruptly changed. Clinton almost certainly would lead America into more foolish wars,\u201d Bandow contended, adding: No one knows what Trump would do in a given situation, which means there is a chance he would do the right thing. In contrast, Clinton\u2019s beliefs, behavior, and promises all suggest that she most likely would do the wrong thing, embracing a militaristic status quo which most Americans recognize has failed disastrously.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clinton was following a timeworn formula for Democrats trying to inoculate themselves against charges of being soft on foreign enemies, whether communists or terrorists. Yet Trump, deft at labeling his foes both wimps and <\/em>warmongers, ran rings around the Democratic nominee. In that close election, Clinton\u2019s resolutely pro-war stance may have cost her the presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community\u2019s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump,\u201d a study<\/a> by scholars Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen concluded. Our statistical model suggests that if three states key to Trump\u2019s victory \u2014 Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin \u2014 had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House.\u201d Professors Kriner and Shen suggested that Democrats might want to reexamine their foreign policy posture if they hope to erase Trump\u2019s electoral gains among constituencies exhausted and alienated by 15 years of war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But such advice went unheeded. Leading Democrats and Republicans remained on autopilot for the warfare state as the Pentagon budget kept rising<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the War Train with Donald Trump<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018, the top Democrats in Washington, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, boasted that they were fully aligned with President Trump in jacking up Pentagon spending. After Trump called for an 11% increase over two years in the already-bloated defense\u201d budget, Pelosi sent an email to House Democrats declaring<\/a>, In our negotiations, congressional Democrats have been fighting for increases in funding for defense.\u201d The office of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer proudly stated: We fully support President Trump\u2019s Defense Department\u2019s request.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By then, fraying social safety nets and chronic fears of economic insecurity had become ever more common across the country. The national pattern evoked Martin Luther King\u2019s comment<\/a> that profligate military spending was like some demonic destructive suction tube.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, recurring rhetoric<\/a> from Joe Biden in his winning presidential campaign went like this: If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever alter the character of our nation.\u201d But Biden said nothing about how almost 20 years of nonstop war funding and war making had already altered the character of the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"https:\/\/tomdispatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-2023-05-23-at-10.26.33-PM.png\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy the Book<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first glance, President Biden seemed to step away from continuing the war on terror.\u201d The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan by the end of August 2021. Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly weeks later, he proclaimed<\/a>: I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years, with the United States not at war.\u201d But even as he spoke, a new report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University indicated that the war on terror\u201d persisted on several continents. The war continues in over 80 countries,\u201d said<\/a> Catherine Lutz, the project\u2019s co-director. The war\u2019s cost to taxpayers, the project estimated, was already at least $8 trillion<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden\u2019s designated successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, displayed a traditional militaristic reflex while campaigning against Trump. In her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention she pledged<\/a> to maintain the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.\u201d Such rhetoric was problematic for attracting voters from the Democratic base reluctant to cast ballots for a war party. More damaging to her election prospects was her refusal to distance herself from Biden\u2019s insistence on continuing to supply huge quantities of weaponry to Israel for the horrific war in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supplementing the automatic $3.8 billion<\/a> in annual U.S. military aid to Israel, special new appropriations for weaponry totaling tens of billions of dollars enabled<\/a> mass killing in Gaza. Poll results<\/a> at the time showed that Harris would have gained support in swing states if she had called for an arms embargo on Israel as long as the Gaza war continued. She refused to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post-election polling<\/a> underscored how Harris\u2019s support for that Israeli war appreciably harmed her chances to defeat Trump. In 2024, as in 2016, Trump notably benefitted from the unwavering militarism of his Democratic opponent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overseas, the realities of nonstop war have been unfathomably devastating. Estimates from the Costs of War Project put the number of direct deaths in major war zones from U.S.-led actions under the war on terror\u201d brand at more than 900,000<\/a>. With indirect deaths included, the number jumps to 4.5 million and counting<\/a>.\u201d The researchers explain that some people were killed in the fighting, but far more, especially children, have been killed by the reverberating effects of war, such as the spread of disease.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That colossal destruction of faraway human beings and the decimation of distant societies have gotten scant attention in mainstream U.S. media and politics. The far-reaching impacts of incessant war on American life in this century have also gotten short shrift. Midway through the Biden presidency, trying to sum up some of those domestic impacts, I wrote in my book War Made Invisible<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, the country is gripped by war\u2019s dispersed and often private consequences \u2014 the aggravated tendencies toward violence, the physical wartime injuries, the post-traumatic stress, the profusion of men who learned to use guns and were trained to shoot to kill when scarcely out of adolescence, the role modeling from recruitment ads to popular movies to bellicose bombast from high-ranking leaders, and much more. The country is also in the grip of tragic absences: the health care not deemed fundable by those who approve federal budgets larded with military spending, the child care and elder care and family leave not provided by those same budgets, the public schools deprived of adequate funding, the college students and former students saddled with onerous debt, the uncountable other everyday deficits that have continued to lower the bar of the acceptable and the tolerated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the warfare state seems all too natural to most politicians and journalists, its consequences over time have been transformational for the United States in ways that have distinctly skewed the political climate. Along the way, militarism has been integral to the rise of the billionaire tech barons who are now teaming up with an increasingly fascistic Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Military-Industrial-Tech Complex<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While President Trump has granted Elon Musk unprecedented power, many other tech moguls have rushed to ingratiate themselves. The pandering became shameless within hours of his election victory last November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congratulations to President Trump on a decisive victory,\u201d Meta\u2019s CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote<\/a>. We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration.\u201d Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, Whole Foods, and the Washington Post<\/em>, tweeted<\/a>: wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amazon Web Services alone has numerous government contracts<\/a>, including one with the National Security Agency worth $10 billion and deals with the Pentagon pegged at $9.7 billion. Such commerce is nothing new. For many years, thousands of contracts<\/a> have tied the tech giants to the military-industrial complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and smaller rivals are at the helm of corporations eager for government megadeals, tax breaks, and much more. For them, the governmental terrain of the new Trump era is the latest territory to navigate for maximizing their profits. With annual military outlays at 54%<\/a> of all federal discretionary spending, the incentives are astronomical for all kinds of companies to make nice with the war machine and the man now running it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Democrats in Congress have long denounced Trump as an enemy of democracy, they haven\u2019t put any sort of brake on American militarism. Certainly, there are many reasons for Trump\u2019s second triumph, including his exploitation of racism, misogyny, nativism, and other assorted bigotries. Yet his election victories owe much to the Democratic Party\u2019s failure<\/a> to serve the working class, a failure intermeshed with its insistence on serving the industries of war. Meanwhile, spending more on the military than the next nine countries combined<\/a>, U.S. government leaders tacitly lay claim to a kind of divine overpowering virtue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As history attests, militarism can continue for many decades while basic democratic structures, however flawed, remain in place. But as time goes on, militarism is apt to be a major risk factor for developing some modern version of fascism. The more war and preparations for war persist, with all their economic and social impacts, the more core traits of militarism \u2014 including reliance on unquestioning obedience to authority and sufficient violence to achieve one\u2019s goals \u2014 will permeate the society at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the last 10 years, Donald Trump has become ever more autocratic, striving not just to be the nation\u2019s commander-in-chief but also the commandant of a social movement increasingly fascistic in its approach to laws and civic life. He has succeeded in taking on the role of top general for the MAGA forces. The frenzies that energize Trump\u2019s base and propel his strategists have come to resemble the mentalities of warfare. The enemy is whoever dares to get in his way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A warfare state is well suited for such developments. Pretending that militarism is not a boon to authoritarian politics only strengthens it. The time has certainly come to stop pretending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright 2025 Norman Solomon<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Featured image: Pentagon<\/a> by Thomas Hawk<\/a> is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0<\/a> \/ Flickr<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow TomDispatch on <\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/a> and join us on <\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer\u2019s new dystopian novel, <\/em>Songlands<\/a> (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky\u2019s novel <\/em>Every Body Has a Story<\/a>, and Tom Engelhardt\u2019s <\/em>A Nation Unmade by War<\/a>, as well as Alfred McCoy\u2019s <\/em>In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power<\/a>, John Dower\u2019s <\/em>The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II<\/a>, and Ann Jones\u2019s<\/em> They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America\u2019s Wars: The Untold Story<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Norman Solomon<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Norman Solomon<\/strong> is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include War Made Easy<\/em>, Made Love<\/em>, Got War<\/em>, and most recently War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine<\/em><\/a> (The New Press). He lives in the San Francisco area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TOMDISPATCH Posted on February 27, 2025 Hey, it\u2019s the MIC, right? I\u2019m thinking, of course, about the military-industrial complex. In this century, it\u2019s taken more taxpayer dollars than perhaps any other part of the government, with a Pentagon budget\u201d that\u2019s now heading for $900 billion a year. At this moment, President Trump has dispatched Elon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}