Military–industrial complex

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Wikipedia

The expression military–industrial complex (MIC) describes the relationship between a country's military and the defense industry that supplies it, seen together as a vested interest which influences public policy.[1][2][3][4] A driving factor behind the relationship between the military and the defense-minded corporations is that both sides benefit—one side from obtaining weapons, and the other from being paid to supply them.[5] The term is most often used in reference to the system behind the armed forces of the United States, where the relationship is most prevalent due to close links among defense contractors, the Pentagon, and politicians.[6][7] The expression gained popularity after a warning of the relationship's detrimental effects, in the farewell address of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 17, 1961.[8][9]

Conceptually, it is closely related to the ideas of the iron triangle in the U.S. (the three-sided relationship between Congress, the executive branch bureaucracy, and interest groups) and the defense industrial base (the network of organizations, facilities, and resources that supplies governments with defense-related goods and services).[10][11]

Etymology

In his farewell address, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned U.S. citizens about the "military–industrial complex".
Eisenhower's farewell address, January 17, 1961. The term military–industrial complex is used at 8:16. Length: 15:30

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower originally coined the term in his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961:

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction... 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 statehouse, 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.[12] [emphasis added]

The phrase was thought to have been "war-based" industrial complex before becoming "military", a claim passed on only by oral history.[13]:111 Geoffrey Perret, in his biography of Eisenhower, claims that in one draft of the speech, the phrase was "military–industrial–congressional complex", indicating the role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry, but the word "congressional" was dropped from the final version.[14] James Ledbetter calls this a "stubborn misconception" not supported by any evidence.[15] The actual authors of the speech were Eisenhower's speechwriters Ralph E. Williams and Malcolm Moos.[16]

While the term military-industrial complex is often ascribed to Eisenhower, he was neither the first to use the phrase, nor the first to warn of such a potential danger.[13]: 15  The phrase rose to prominence in the years following his farewell address as part of opposition to the Vietnam War.[17]: 21 [18]: 10  John Kenneth Galbraith said that he and others quoted Eisenhower's farewell address for the "flank protection it provided" when criticizing military power given Eisenhower's "impeccably conservative" reputation.[19]: 283 

Connotations

Many scholars describe Military–industrial complex as pejorative.[20][21][22] Some scholars suggest that it implies the existence of a conspiracy.[23][24][25] David S. Rohde drew a parallel between American conservative use of deep state and American liberal use of military-industrial complex.[26][27][28] James Ledbetter called military-industrial complex "a rhetorical Rorschach blot" and a "kaleidoscopically unstable" political trope.[29][30]

The MIC and the Cold War

Attempts to conceptualize something similar to a modern "military–industrial complex" did exist before 1961, as the underlying phenomenon described by the term is generally agreed to have emerged during or shortly after World War II.[31] For example, a similar phrase was used in a 1947 Foreign Affairs article in a sense close to that it would later acquire, and sociologist C. Wright Mills contended in his 1956 book The Power Elite that a democratically unaccountable class of military, business, and political leaders with convergent interests exercised the preponderance of power in the contemporary West.[15][32][31]

Following its coinage in Eisenhower's address, the MIC became a staple of American political and sociological discourse. Many Vietnam War–era activists and polemicists, such as Seymour Melman and Noam Chomsky employed the concept in their criticism of U.S. foreign policy, while other academics and policymakers found it to be a useful analytical framework. Although the MIC was bound up in its origins with the bipolar international environment of the Cold War, some contended that the MIC might endure under different geopolitical conditions (for example, George F. Kennan wrote in 1987 that "were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military–industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented.").[33] The collapse of the USSR and the resultant decrease in global military spending (the so-called 'peace dividend') did in fact lead to decreases in defense industrial output and consolidation among major arms producers, although global expenditures rose again following the September 11 attacks and the ensuing "War on terror", as well as the more recent increase in geopolitical tensions associated with strategic competition between the United States, Russia, and China.[34]

Eras

First era

History of the United States
expansion and influence
Colonialism
Militarism
Foreign policy
Concepts

Some sources divide the history of the United States military–industrial complex into three eras.[35] From 1797 to 1941, the U.S. government only relied on civilian industries while the country was actually at war. The government owned their own shipyards and weapons manufacturing facilities which they relied on through World War I. With World War II came a massive shift in the way that the U.S. government armed the military.

In World War II, the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Production Board to coordinate civilian industries and shift them into wartime production. Arms production in the U.S. went from around one percent of annual Gross domestic product (GDP) to 40 percent of GDP.[35] U.S. companies, such as Boeing and General Motors, maintained and expanded their defense divisions.[35] These companies have gone on to develop various technologies that have improved civilian life as well, such as night-vision goggles and GPS.[35]

Second era

The second era is identified as beginning with the coining of the term by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. This era continued through the Cold War period, up to the end of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet Union. A 1965 article written by Marc Pilisuk and Thomas Hayden says benefits of the military–industrial complex of the U.S. include the advancement of the civilian technology market as civilian companies benefit from innovations from the MIC and vice versa.[36] In 1993, the Pentagon urged defense contractors to consolidate due to the fall of communism and a shrinking defense budget.[35]

Third era

A placard saying that war only benefits the military industrial complex is held by a woman who smiles into the camera. Another protestor holds a peace symbol placard saying "Peace with Iran". Protestors are wearing winter clothing and the trees have no leaves. The background is filled with the walls of brick buildings.
Anti-war protestor with sign criticizing the military-industrial complex

In the third era, U.S. defense contractors either consolidated or shifted their focus to civilian innovation. From 1992 to 1997 there was a total of US$55 billion worth of mergers in the defense industry, with major defense companies purchasing smaller competitors.[35] The U.S. domestic economy is now tied to the success of the MIC which has led to concerns of repression as Cold War-era attitudes are still prevalent among the American public.[37] Shifts in values and the collapse of communism have ushered in a new era for the U.S. military–industrial complex. The Department of Defense works in coordination with traditional military–industrial complex aligned companies such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Many former defense contractors have shifted operations to the civilian market and sold off their defense departments.[35] In recent years, traditional defense contracting firms have faced competition from Silicon Valley and other tech companies, like Anduril Industries and Palantir,[38] over Pentagon contracts. This represents a shift in defense strategy away from the procurement of more armaments and toward an increasing role of technologies like cloud computing and cybersecurity in military affairs.[39] From 2019 to 2022, venture capital funding for defense technologies doubled.[40]

Military subsidy theory

A debate exists between two schools of thought concerning the effect of military spending on civilian industry. Eugene Gholz of UT Austin said that Cold War military spending on aircraft, electronics, communications, and computers has been credited with indirect technological and financial benefits for the associated civilian industries. This contrasts with the idea that military research threatens to crowd out commercial innovation. Gholz said that the US government intentionally overpaid for military aircraft to hide a subsidy to the commercial aircraft industry. He presents development of the military Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker alongside the Boeing 707 civilian jetliner as the canonical example of this idea. However, he said that the actual benefits that accrued to the Boeing 707 from the KC-135 program were minimal and that Boeing's image as an arms maker hampered commercial sales. He said that Convair's involvement in military aircraft led it to make disastrous decisions on the commercial side of its business. Gholz concluded that military spending fails to explain the competitiveness of the American commercial aircraft industry.[41]

Current applications

Further information: List of countries with highest military expenditures
Military spending, top 25 countries by % GDP, 2024[42]
Country % GDP spent on military
Ukraine
34.5
Israel
8.8
Algeria
8.0
Saudi Arabia
7.3
Russia
7.1
Myanmar
6.8
Oman
5.6
Armenia
5.5
Azerbaijan
5.0
Kuwait
4.8
Jordan
4.8
Burkina Faso
4.7
Mali
4.2
Poland
4.2
Burundi
3.8
Brunei
3.6
Morocco
3.5
United States
3.4
Estonia
3.4
Colombia
3.4
Latvia
3.3
Greece
3.1
Lithuania
3.1
Chad
3.0
Kyrgyzstan
3.0
Military spending, top 25 countries by PPP, 2024[43][44]
Country $billions spent on military
United States
997
China
555
Russia
412
India
283
Ukraine
188
Germany
97
South Korea
95
Japan
91
France
90
United Kingdom
85
Brazil
69
Poland
61
Italy
60
Turkey
55
Indonesia
47
Colombia
45
Mexico
40
Spain
39
Australia
31
Canada
31
Netherlands
21
Philippines
21
Romania
21
Greece
17
Malaysia
14

U.S. President Joe Biden signed a record $886 billion defense spending bill into law on December 22, 2023.[45]

Political geography

The 20 largest US defense contractors as of 2022 ranked by their defense revenue.[46]

The datagraphic represents the 20 largest US defense contractors based on the amount of their defense revenue. Among these corporations, 53.5% of total revenues are derived from defense, and the median proportion is 63.4%; 6 firms derive over 75% of their revenue from defense. According to the Wikipedia entries for the companies, the headquarters of 11 of these corporations are located in the Washington metropolitan area, of which 5 are in Reston, Virginia.

Similar uses of the term

A thesis similar to the military–industrial complex was originally expressed by Daniel Guérin, in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business, about the fascist governments' ties to heavy industry. It would be defined as "an informal and changing coalition of groups with vested psychological, moral, and material interests in the continuous development and maintenance of high levels of weaponry, in preservation of colonial markets and in military-strategic conceptions of internal affairs."[47] An exhibit of the trend was made in Franz Leopold Neumann's book Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism in 1942, a study of how Nazism came into a position of power in a democratic state.

In The Global Industrial Complex, edited by American philosopher and activist Steven Best, the "power complex" first analyzed by sociologist Charles Wright Mills 1956 work The Power Elite, is shown to have evolved into a global array of "corporate-state" structures, an interdependent and overlapping systems of domination.[48]

Matthew Brummer, associate professor at Tokyo's National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, has pointed out in 2016 Japan's "Manga Military" to denote the effort undertaken by the country's Ministry of Defense, using film, anime, theater, literature, fashion, and other, along with moe, to reshape domestic and international perceptions of the Japanese military-industrial complex.[49]

James Der Derian's book Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network relates the convergence of cyborg technologies, video games, media spectacles, war movies, and "do-good ideologies" into what generates a mirage, as he claims, of high-tech, and low-risk "virtuous wars."[50] American political activist and former Central Intelligence Agency officer Ray McGovern denounces the fact that, as he claims, American citizens are vulnerable to anti-Russian propaganda since few of them know the Soviet Union's major role in World War II victory, and blames for this the "corporate-controlled mainstream media." He goes on to label the culprits as the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex.[51]

In the decades of the term's inception, other industrial complexes appeared in the literature:[48]: ix–xxv 

Tech–industrial complex

In his 2025 farewell address, outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden warned of a "tech–industrial complex," stating that "Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power."[53]

The statement was made following Elon Musk's appointment in the second Donald Trump administration and the public overtures towards Trump by technology industry leaders, including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, as well as the dismantling of Facebook's fact-checking program.[54][55][56]

See also

Economics of national defense efforts
Literature and media
Other complexes or axes
Miscellaneous

References

Citations

  1. ↑ "military industrial complex". American Heritage Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016. Retrieved March 3, 2016.
  2. ↑ "definition of military-industrial complex (American English)". OxfordDictionaries.com. Archived from the original on March 7, 2016. Retrieved March 3, 2016.
  3. ↑ "Definition of Military–industrial complex". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved March 3, 2016.
  4. ↑ Roland, Alex (2009). "The Military-Industrial Complex: lobby and trope". In Bacevich, Andrew J. (ed.). The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II. Columbia University Press. pp. 335–370. ISBN 978-0231131599.
  5. ↑ "What is the Military-Industrial Complex?". Retrieved February 5, 2017.
  6. ↑ "Ike's Warning Of Military Expansion, 50 Years Later". NPR. January 17, 2011. Retrieved March 27, 2019.
  7. ↑ "SIPRI Year Book 2008; Armaments, Disarmaments and International Security" Oxford University Press 2008 ISBN 978-0199548958
  8. ↑ "The Military–Industrial Complex; The Farewell Address of Presidente Eisenhower" Basements publications 2006 ISBN 0976642395
  9. ↑ Held, David; McGrew, Anthony G.; Goldblatt, David (1999). "The expanding reach of organized violence". In Perraton, Jonathan (ed.). Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture. Stanford University Press. p. 108. ISBN 978-0804736275.
  10. ↑ Adams, Gordon; D'Onofrio, Christine; Sokoloff, Nancy (1981). The iron triangle: the politics of defense contracting. Studies / Council on Economic Priorities. New York: Council on Economic Priorities. ISBN 978-0-87871-012-6.
  11. ↑ Nicastro, Luke. The U.S. Defense Industrial Base: Background and Issues for Congress. Congressional Research Service. October 12, 2023. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47751
  12. ↑ "President Dwight Eisenhower Farewell Address". C-Span. January 17, 1961.
  13. 1 2 Ledbetter, James (2011). Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-15305-7.
  14. ↑ Geoffrey, Perret (1999). Eisenhower. New York: Random House. ISBN 0375500464.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  15. 1 2 Ledbetter, James (January 25, 2011). "Guest Post: 50 Years of the "Military–Industrial Complex"". Schott's Vocab. New York Times. Retrieved January 25, 2011.
  16. ↑ Griffin, Charles "New Light on Eisenhower's Farewell Address", in Presidential Studies Quarterly 22 (Summer 1992): 469–479
  17. ↑ Roland, Alex (2021). Delta of Power: The Military-Industrial Complex. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9781421441818.
  18. ↑ Ropp, Theodore (1977). "Chapter 1: Nineteenth-Century European Military-Industrial Complexes". In Cooling, Benjamin (ed.). War, Business, and American Society. Kennikat Press. pp. 100–110. ISBN 0-8046-9156-8.
  19. ↑ Galbraith, John (1972). "Chapter 20: How to Control the Military". In Pursell, Carroll (ed.). The Military-Industrial Complex. Harper & Rowe. pp. 280–285. SBN 06-045296-X.
  20. ↑ Roland, Alex (2021). Delta of Power: The Military-Industrial Complex. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 2. ISBN 9781421441818. Perhaps the most consistent and abiding feature of the term "military-industrial complex" is the pejorative flavor that Eisenhower imparted to it.
  21. ↑ Ledbetter, James (2011). Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex. Yale University Press. pp. 6–7. ISBN 978-0-300-15305-7. It seems fair to say that the term "military-industrial complex" is almost always used as a pejorative (even if its best-known usage was arguably neutral, in that Eisenhower warned not against the MIC itself but against its "unwarranted influence").
  22. ↑ Brandes, Stuart (1997). Warhogs: A History of War Profits in America (PDF). University Press of Kentucky. p. 6. ISBN 0-8131-2020-9. The word profiteering is disturbingly imprecise and nearly as pejorative as the term military-industrial complex.
  23. ↑ Roland, Alex (2021). Delta of Power: The Military-Industrial Complex. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 22. ISBN 9781421441818. The military-industrial complex smacked of conspiracy, and the scientific-technological elite did nothing to dispel the ominous implications of Eisenhower's warning. Six decades later, the opprobrium implied in Eisenhower's language still hangs over the relationship between war, technology, and the state.
  24. ↑ Brandes, Stuart (1997). Warhogs: A History of War Profits in America (PDF). University Press of Kentucky. p. 276. ISBN 0-8131-2020-9. The concept of a "military-industrial complex" suggested a mysterious, clandestine conspiracy against the public purse, but not a deliberate plot to stir up war to fatten profits.
  25. ↑ Sunseri, Alvin (1977). "Chapter 11: The Military-Industrial Complex in Iowa". In Cooling, Benjamin (ed.). War, Business, and American Society. Kennikat Press. p. 158. ISBN 0-8046-9156-8. The term military-industrial complex ... suggests that a conspiracy exists between military leaders and industrialists; one that is designed to protect their vested interests.
  26. ↑ Rhode, David (2020). In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about America's "Deep State". W. W. Norton & Company. p. iv. ISBN 9781324003557. To conservatives, the "deep state" is an ever-growing government bureaucracy, an administrative state that they think relentlessly encroaches on the individual rights of Americans and whose highest loyalty is to its own preservation and power. Liberals are less apt to use the term "deep state," but they fear the "military-industrial complex"—a cabal of generals and defense contractors who they believe routinely push the country into endless wars, operate a vast surveillance state, and enrich themselves in the process.
  27. ↑ Green, Lloyd (April 26, 2020). "In Deep review: Trump v intelligence – and Obama v the people". The Guardian. Retrieved October 19, 2025.
  28. ↑ Gross, Terry (October 19, 2020). "'In Deep' Challenges President Trump's Notion Of A Deep-State Conspiracy". NPR. Retrieved October 19, 2025.
  29. ↑ Ledbetter, James (2011). Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex. Yale University Press. pp. 5–6. ISBN 978-0-300-15305-7. In the half century since Eisenhower uttered his prophetic words, the concept of the military-industrial complex has become a rhetorical Rorsschach blot—the meaning is in the eye of the beholder. The very utility of the phrase, the source of its mass appeal, comes at the cost of a precise, universally accepted definition. As historian Alex Roland succinctly put it in a 2007 essay, the military-industrial complex "was both a historical phenomenon and a political trope." Tropes by definition constantly shift in meaning, and "military-industrial complex" ... is as kaleidoscopically unstable as they come.
  30. ↑ Knowles, Robert (2021). "Delegating National Security". Washington University Law Review. 98 (4). Washington University in St. Louis: 1152. ISSN 2166-8000. Retrieved October 20, 2025. The term "military-industrial complex" later became so popular it devolved into a trope, losing its distinctiveness ... describing the phrase's current meaning as a "rhetorical Rorschach blot"
  31. 1 2 Brunton, Bruce G. (1988). "Institutional Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex". Journal of Economic Issues. 22 (2): 599–606. doi:10.1080/00213624.1988.11504790. ISSN 0021-3624. JSTOR 4226018.
  32. ↑ Riefler, Winfield W. (October 1947). "Our Economic Contribution to Victory". Foreign Affairs. 26 (1): 90–103. doi:10.2307/20030091. JSTOR 20030091.
  33. ↑ Kennan, George Frost (1997). At a Century's Ending: Reflections 1982–1995. W.W. Norton and Company. p. 118. ISBN 978-0393316094.
  34. ↑ Nicastro, Luke. The U.S. Defense Industrial Base: Background and Issues for Congress. Congressional Research Service. October 12, 2023. Pp. 4-5. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47751
  35. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Lynn III, William (2017). "The End of the Military-Industrial Complex". Foreign Affairs. 93: 104–110 – via EBSCOhost.
  36. ↑ Pilisuk, Marc; Hayden, Thomas (July 1965). "Is There a Military Industrial Complex Which Prevents Peace?: Consensus and Countervailing Power in Pluralistic Systems". Journal of Social Issues. 21 (3): 67–117. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.1965.tb00506.x. ISSN 0022-4537.
  37. ↑ Moskos, Charles C. Jr. (April 1974). "The Concept of the Military-Industrial Complex: Radical Critique or Liberal Bogey?". Social Problems. 21 (4): 498–512. doi:10.2307/799988. ISSN 0037-7791. JSTOR 799988.
  38. ↑ Schwarz, Elke (January 20, 2025). "Silicon Valley venture capital blowing up the US defense industry". Asia Times. Retrieved May 7, 2025.
  39. ↑ Sindreu, Jon. "How Silicon Valley and a New Pentagon Strategy Are Breaching the Defense Business". WSJ. Retrieved May 7, 2025.
  40. ↑ Kinder, Tabby (June 20, 2023). "Silicon Valley VCs rush into defence technology start-ups". Financial Times. Retrieved May 7, 2025.
  41. ↑ Gholz, E. (January 6, 2011). "Eisenhower Versus the Spin-off Story: Did the Rise of the Military-Industrial Complex Hurt or Help America's Commercial Aircraft Industry?" (PDF). Enterprise and Society. 12 (1): 46–95. doi:10.1093/es/khq134. ISSN 1467-2227.
  42. ↑ "SIPRI Military Expenditure Database". SIPRI. April 28, 2025. Retrieved April 28, 2025.
  43. ↑ Robertson, Peter. "Military PPP Data". Retrieved July 25, 2025.
  44. ↑ Robertson, Peter (September 20, 2021). "The Real Military Balance: International Comparisons of Defense Spending". Review of Income and Wealth. 68 (3). Wiley: 797–818. doi:10.1111/roiw.12536.
  45. ↑ "Biden signs record $886 billion defense bill into law". Axios. December 23, 2023.
  46. ↑ "Top 100 | Defense News, News about defense programs, business, and technology".
  47. ↑ Pursell, C. (1972). The military–industrial complex. Harper & Row Publishers, New York, New York.
  48. 1 2 Steven Best; Richard Kahn; Anthony J. Nocella II; Peter McLaren, eds. (2011). "Introduction: Pathologies of Power and the Rise of the Global Industrial Complex". The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination (PDF). Rowman & Littlefield. p. xvi. ISBN 978-0739136980.
  49. ↑ Brummer, Matthew (January 2016). "Japan: The Manga Military". The Diplomat. Retrieved October 5, 2025.
  50. ↑ "Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network". Routledge & CRC Press. Retrieved October 5, 2025.
  51. ↑ "Once We Were Allies; Then Came MICIMATT". consortium news. May 8, 2020. Retrieved October 5, 2025.
  52. ↑ Nicholas Freudenberg (2014). Lethal But Legal: Corporations, Consumption, and Protecting Public Health. Oxford University Press. pp. 95–123. ISBN 9780190495374.
  53. ↑ Holland, Steve; Singh, Kanishka (January 15, 2025). "Biden takes aim at 'tech industrial complex,' echoing Eisenhower". Reuters. Retrieved October 5, 2025.
  54. ↑ Falconer, Rebecca (January 1, 2025). "Biden warns against extreme wealth and rise of "tech industrial complex" in farewell address". Axios. Retrieved October 5, 2025.
  55. ↑ Johnson, Ted (January 16, 2025). "Joe Biden Warns Of "Tech Industrial Complex" In Farewell Speech: "Americans Are Being Buried Under An Avalanche Of Misinformation And Disinformation"". Deadline. Retrieved October 5, 2025.
  56. ↑ Green, Erica L. (January 17, 2025). "In Farewell Address, Biden Warns of an 'Oligarchy' Taking Shape in America". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 5, 2025. The Biden version referred to the "tech-industrial complex," in which he warned of the erosion of truth itself, brought forth by unchecked social media platforms — a reference to Meta doing away with fact-checkers this week — and artificial intelligence.

Sources

Further reading

  • Adams, Gordon, The Iron Triangle: The Politics of Defense Contracting, 1981.[ISBN missing]
  • Alic, John A. (2021). "The U.S. Politico–Military–Industrial Complex". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1870. ISBN 978-0-19-022863-7.
  • Andreas, Joel, Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can't Kick Militarism, ISBN 1904859011.
  • Byrne, Edmund F. (2017). "Military Industrial Complex (MIC)". Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer International Publishing. pp. 1–5. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_209-1. ISBN 978-3-319-23514-1.
  • Cochran, Thomas B., William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, Milton M. Hoenig, U.S. Nuclear Warhead Production Harper and Row, 1987, ISBN 0887301258
  • Cockburn, Andrew, "The Military-Industrial Virus: How bloated budgets gut our defenses", Harper's Magazine, vol. 338, no. 2029 (June 2019), pp. 61–67. "The military-industrial complex could be said to be concerned, exclusively, with self-preservation and expansion.... The defense budget is not propelled by foreign wars. The wars are a consequence of the quest for bigger budgets."
  • Cockburn, Andrew, "Why America Goes to War: Money drives the US military machine", The Nation, vol. 313, no. 6 (20–27 September 2021), pp. 24–27.
  • Friedman, George and Meredith, The Future of War: Power, Technology and American World Dominance in the 21st Century, Crown, 1996, ISBN 051770403X
  • Good, Aaron (2022). American Exception: Empire and the Deep State. New York: Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 978-1510769137.
  • Hooks, Gregory (2008). "Military–Industrial Complex, Organization and History". Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict (Second ed.). pp. 1278–1286. doi:10.1016/B978-012373985-8.00109-4. ISBN 978-0-12-373985-8.
  • Hossein-Zadeh, Ismael, The Political Economy of US Militarism. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006.[ISBN missing]
  • Keller, William W., Arm in Arm: The Political Economy of the Global Arms Trade. New York: Basic Books, 1995.[ISBN missing]
  • Kelly, Brian, Adventures in Porkland: How Washington Wastes Your Money and Why They Won't Stop, Villard, 1992, ISBN 0679406565
  • Lassman, Thomas C. "Putting the Military Back into the History of the Military-Industrial Complex: The Management of Technological Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1945–1960", Isis (2015) 106#1 pp. 94–120 in JSTOR
  • Mathews, Jessica T., "America's Indefensible Defense Budget", The New York Review of Books, vol. LXVI, no. 12 (18 July 2019), pp. 23–24. "For many years, the United States has increasingly relied on military strength to achieve its foreign policy aims.... We are [...] allocating too large a portion of the federal budget to defense as compared to domestic needs [...] accumulating too much federal debt, and yet not acquiring a forward-looking, twenty-first-century military built around new cyber and space technologies." (p. 24.)
  • McDougall, Walter A., ...The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age, Basic Books, 1985, (Pulitzer Prize for History) ISBN 0801857481
  • Melman, Seymour, Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War, McGraw Hill, 1970[ISBN missing]
  • Melman, Seymour, (ed.) The War Economy of the United States: Readings in Military Industry and Economy, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1971.
  • Mills, C Wright, The Power Elite. New York, 1956, ISBN 0195133544
  • Mollenhoff, Clark R., The Pentagon: Politics, Profits and Plunder. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1967[ISBN missing]
  • Patterson, Walter C., The Plutonium Business and the Spread of the Bomb, Sierra Club, 1984, ISBN 0871568373
  • Pasztor, Andy, When the Pentagon Was for Sale: Inside America's Biggest Defense Scandal, Scribner, 1995, ISBN 068419516X
  • Pierre, Andrew J., The Global Politics of Arms Sales. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.
  • Preble, Christoper (2008). "Military-Industrial Complex". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 328–329. ISBN 978-1412965804.
  • Roland, Alex (2021). Delta of Power: The Military-Industrial Complex. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9781421441818.
  • Ritter, Daniel P.; McLauchlan, Gregory (2008). "Military–Industrial Complex, Contemporary Significance". Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict (Second ed.). pp. 1266–1278. doi:10.1016/B978-012373985-8.00104-5. ISBN 978-0-12-373985-8.
  • Sampson, Anthony, The Arms Bazaar: From Lebanon to Lockheed. New York: Bantam Books, 1977.[ISBN missing]
  • St. Clair, Jeffery, Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror. Common Courage Press, 2005.[ISBN missing]
  • Sweetman, Bill, "In search of the Pentagon's billion dollar hidden budgets – how the US keeps its R&D spending under wraps", from Jane's International Defence Review, online
  • Thorpe, Rebecca U. The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of Military Spending. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.[ISBN missing]
  • Watry, David M., Diplomacy at the Brink, Eisenhower, Churchill, and Eden in the Cold War, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 2014.[ISBN missing]
  • Weinberger, Sharon, Imaginary Weapons, New York: Nation Books, 2006.[ISBN missing]
From the National Archives