Military-industrial-congressional complex

Military-industrial-congressional complex
Unofficial logo
Motto	Profit In Blood And In Chains
Type	informal
Interest of	Barrett Brown, DuPont, Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy, Lucy Morgan Edwards, Dwight Eisenhower, Honeywell, Dave Lindorff, Softpanorama, Edward R. Stettinius Sr.

The phrase Military-industrial-congressional complex was coined in a speech given by Dwight Eisenhower (written by Malcolm Moos and Ralph E. Williams) in his farewell address from the White House on 17th January, 1961. Roughly the same concept is also referred to as the permanent war economy.

Reception

Eisenhower's speech was an important warning not given much attention at the time, presumably since the CIA's Operation Mockingbird had already given the deep state a high degree of control over the corporate media.

Original Reference

“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.”
Dwight Eisenhower (January 17, 1960) 

Variations

Eisenhower's original speech talked of the "Military-industrial-congressional complex", but this was edited out before he gave the speech. The formula is so simple, that it has given rise to various different permutations for expressing a similar ideas, depending upon which elements particular authors wish to emphasise.

Military-industrial-media complex

Some authors refer to a military-industrial-media complex, emphasising the essential role of the commercially-controlled media in promoting war and militarism. Even disregarding known CIA projects such as Operation Mockingbird, the case for deep state control of the corporate media, and their wedding to the interests of the permanent war economy is compelling. General Electric owns 49% of NBC, and is a subcontractor for the Tomahawk cruise missiles and Patriot II missiles, which were used extensively during the Gulf War. GE also manufactures components for the B-2 stealth bomber and B-52 bomber and the E-3 AWACS aircraft which were also used extensively during the conflict. General Electric received around $2 billion in defense contracts related to weapons which would be used in Gulf War and the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Military-industrial-intelligence complex

Many authors such as Mark Gorton, David DeGraw, William Blum and Peter Dale Scott have talked about a Military-industrial-intelligence complex, noting the central place of intelligence agencies in the machinery of the deep state.

Industrial-intelligence complex

Tom Secker produced a podcast on "The Intelligence Industrial Complex".

Other complexes

Sometimes the structure is used to describe different but analagous patterns of malignly interconnected groups, such as the 'Prison-Educational Complex', 'Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex' or the 'Global Banking Intelligence Complex'.

 

Examples

Page name	Description
Aerospace manufacturer	An industry regarded as vitally strategic for great powers
Black site	Black sites are places where a black project or covert operation is executed, organized, or held. Locations can vary from an air force or other military base, plain library, a secret embassy wing to even a jet-plane itself. Some black sites do become known to the general public, although often as a modified limited hangout.
CACI	Major MIC contractor; torture in Abu Ghraib. Often referred to as “Colonels and Captains, Inc.” to indicate the frequent revolving door of senior military personnel in the company. The company also has strong Israeli ties.
Highlands Forum	The Highlands Forum brings together select people interactions between policy and technology. It has played an instrumental role in incubating the idea of mass surveillance as a mechanism to dominate information on a global scale.
Science Applications International Corporation	A company which specializes in complex engineering and technology programs for U.S. military and intelligence agencies

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
"National security"	“Human nature being what it is, the MICC comprises avaricious individuals who seek to gain private benefit at public cost. But the idea that all the players knowingly conspire to mastermind so intricate a system is difficult to prove, and unnecessary. Instead corruption among defence contractors, Representatives in Congress and the military brass is standard operating procedure camouflaged by an incestuous labyrinthine system and the primacy of 'national security'. Not only do the corrupt actors need to be held to account but, as importantly, the system needs to be untangled.<a href="#cite_note-10">[10]</a> To further understand this entanglement. I met Chuck Spinney, a life-long Pentagon insider who experienced this labyrinth on a daily basis for over two decades. He produced a vast body of work explaining how the Pentagon really operates. His efforts culminated in the wrath of all the participants in the MICC but saw him featured on the cover of Time magazine.”	Andrew Feinstein	2011
"Terrorism"	“Terrorism is not really an '-ism'. There's no connection between the Sandinistas who fought the Contras and Al Qaida or Colombia's FARC and fisherman turned pirates in Africa and Asia, yet they are all called "terrorists". That's just a convenient way for your government to convince the world that there is another enemy '-ism' out there, like communism used to be. It diverts attention from the very real problems. Our narrow-minded attitudes and the resultant policies foment violence, rebellion and wars. In the long run, almost noone benefits from attacking the people we label as "terrorists", with one, glaring exception:- the corporatocracy. Those who own and run the companies that build the ships, missiles and armoured vehicles, make guns, uniforms and bulletproof vests, distribute food, soft drinks and ammunition, provide insurance, medicines and toilet paper, constructions ports, airstrips and housing and reconstruct devastated villages, schools, factories and hospitals. They, and only they, are the big winners. The rest of us are hoodwinked by that one, loaded word "terrorist". The current economic collapse has awakened us to the importance of regulating and reining in the people who control the businesses that benefit from the misuse of words like "terrorism" and who perpetrate other scams. We recognize today that white collar executives are not a special, incorruptible breed.”	Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann
1950	“JIC-502 intelligence report titled “Implications of Soviet Possession of Atomic Weapons” drafted in Jan 20th 1950, turned out not to be an intelligence report at all but rather a sales pitch, claiming that a nuclear-armed Soviet Union had introduced the notion that “a tremendous military advantage would be gained by the power that struck first and succeeded in carrying through an effective surprise attack.”	Cynthia Chung	1950
AUKUS	“For $360 billion, we're going to get eight submarines. It must be the worst deal in all history”	Paul Keating	15 March 2023
CIA	“[Bush] wielded this heightened power on behalf of the military industrial complex that president Eisenhower had so famously warned against. Politicising the process of intelligence analysis, he imposed a systematic bias that took a new, harder line towards the communist block. This was a direct reversal of the Nixon-Kissinger policy of detente. Under the guidance of Rumsfeld, Cheney, a young Paul Wolfowitz and others who had ascended in the Halloween massacre, Poppy began finding ways to get around the analysts who did not sufficiently hype the Soviet threat. To that end, he created a second analytical team which produced alarming estimates of Soviet military capabilities. The concept was known as Team A - Team B. In this way, Poppy was the father of the analytical gamesmanship his son would use to justify war with Iraq nearly three decades later, under the guidance of the same Rumseld, Cheney and Wolfowitz.”
Dwight Eisenhower	“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953.”	Dwight Eisenhower	16 April 1953
Mike Gravel	“There’s no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job. And and why is it so unusual? My God, they killed millions and millions of people. Is that a big deal for them to kill 3000? We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What’s so unusual about killing three thousand more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the funding of the military industrial complex? ...So yes, there’s no question in my mind that 9/11 took place in order to radicalize the views and the fears of Americans so that they would accept any abridgment of their democracy in order to sustain the profit motives of the military industrial complex and Wall Street.”	Mike Gravel
Wolfgang Ischinger	“"The need for equipment and ammunition for the Bundeswehr and Ukraine is urgent and huge...Therefore, appropriate priorities must be set." Ischinger also sees a political reason to speak of a "war economy": "Apparently too many have not yet understood that we are only at the beginning of a turning point and that there is actually a real war in the middle of Europe, the end of which unfortunately is not foreseeable.”	Wolfgang Ischinger	21 November 2022
Donald Jeffries	“Historically, the "liberals" of their time were adamantly in favor of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War 1, and World War 2. Most "liberals" during the Cold War managed the exceptional balancing act of supporting the massive military buildup against the new communist "enemy", while simultaneously attacking any aggressive anti-communist.”	Donald Jeffries	2019
Michael Parenti	“Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals.”	Michael Parenti
John Perkins	“My job was to convince heads of state of countries with resources our corporations covet, like oil, to accept huge loans from the World Bank and its sister organizations. The stipulation was that these loans would be used to hire our engineering and construction companies, such as Bechtel, Halliburton, and Stone and Webster, to build electric power systems, ports, airports, highways and other infrastructure projects that would bring large profits to those companies and also benefit a few wealthy families in the country, the ones that owned the industries and commercial establishments. Everyone else in the country would suffer because funds were diverted from education, healthcare and other social services to pay interest on the debt. In the end, when the country could not buy down the principal, we would go back and, with the help of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), “restructure” the loans. This included demands that the country sell its resources cheap to our corporations with minimal environmental and social regulations and that it privatize its utility companies and other public service businesses and offer them to our companies at cut-rate prices.”	John Perkins
Hunter S. Thompson	“Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the military-industrial complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous “trickle-down” theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow “trickle down” to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote.”	Hunter S. Thompson
Donald Trump	“Don’t kid yourself, you do have a military-industrial complex. They do like war… I said I wanted to bring our troops back home, the place went crazy. You have people here in Washington, they never want to leave. … Some day someone will explain it, but you do have a military industrial complex. They never want to leave. They always want to fight. No, I don’t want to fight.”	Donald Trump	May 2019
US/Deep state	“I have come to see that today's Congress itself is dominated by the deep state powers that profit from what I have called "America's Global War Machine." These so-called "statesmen" of America are as dedicated to the preservation of American dominance as were their British predecessors [a century ago].”	Peter Dale Scott	2015
US/Deep state	“When Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex, the values, institutions, and resources that comprised it were still subordinate elements in American society. Today it not only dominates both parties, but it is also financing threats to both of these parties from even further to the right.”	Peter Dale Scott	2015
Henk Vredeling	“Congresses don't buy jet-fighters”	Henk Vredeling	1975

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Abolish Terrorist Agencies	essay	29 July 2019	David Swanson	Swanson characterises Annie Jacobsen's Surprise Kill Vanish as an apology for intelligence agencies. He deconstructs their the official narratives of defending "democracy", claiming that they have "decades of engaging in and provoking terrorism". Citing blowback from their operations as major factors in the growth of the MICC and its climate paranoia and permanent war, he calls for an end to the intelligence agencies.
Document:American War Machine	book introduction	1 November 2010	Peter Dale Scott	A precis of the entire book, an analysis of the hidden mechanisms behind the exercise of real power in the Western World. The book is a culmination and synthesis of all of the author's earlier work on 'Deep Events' and the 'Deep State. Together with the work of Ola Tunander on the same subjects, it is a highly recommended for anyone seeking more than superficial understanding of the predicament of 21st Century humanity.
Document:Death Wish 2023	blog post		Craig Murray	"The practical problem with James Sherr’s call for total war is that Ukraine really does not have the population numbers to sustain to victory a total war against Russia. It is just going to run out of people, as indeed the much trumpeted counteroffensive appears to have done."
Document:F-16 for Ukraine - An open letter to Joseph Biden	open letter	8 May 2023	Anders Åslund Karel Schwarzenberg Eerik-Niiles Kross Jarno Limnéll Andreas Umland Vytautas Landsbergis Nathalie Tocci Alberto Alemanno Roderich Kiesewetter Anton Hofreiter	Open letter to US President Joe Biden from European deep state minions, pleading for an escalation in Ukraine, and NATO membership. Lo and behold, a week after the letter, Biden approved F-16s, indicating that the letter was astroturf to make a decision already decided seem like done by European demand... Includes barely hidden threatening of those that blocked NATO accession in 2008, who bear "a grave responsibility" and "will be careful not to hinder it again."
Document:If War Is an Industry, How Can There Be Peace in a Capitalist World?	Wikispooks Page		Vijay Prashad
Document:Labour left breaks with Jeremy Corbyn over sending weapons to Ukraine	Article	26 February 2023	Toby Helm	The far left wing of the Labour Party has split from Jeremy Corbyn on the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
Document:Sins of Statecraft - The War on Terror Exposed	paper	29 July 2006	Brian Bogart
Document:Truth and Ukraine	blog post	2 March 2023	Craig Murray	Commentator: "Russia didn't fail to take Kiev in March. It withdrew from Kiev because Zelensky agreed to peace talks. The US, UK and EU opposed the peace talks and Zelensky withdrew from the talks."
Document:Twenty Years On, We’ve Learned Nothing From 9/11	Speech	17 September 2021	Ron Paul	20 years on from 9/11, Ron Paul says that The Establishment in the United States has learned nothing since the attacks.
Document:Under Trump, the Israel lobby is a Hydra with many heads	Article	30 May 2018	Jonathan Cook	Since Trump took office, the Israel lobby has mobilised four other powerful lobbies: Christian evangelicals, the alt-right, the military-industrial complex and Saudi Arabia
Document:Why the military-industrial complex went woke	Article	5 March 2021	Paddy Hannam	What is the Military industrial complex doing? They are engaged in a woke propaganda campaign as part of a rebranding of the war industry for the new generation.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.