Military-industrial complex

The expression military–industrial complex (MIC) describes the relationship between a nation's military and the arms industry that supplies it, seen together as a vested interest which influences public policy.

Quotes

  • As Eisenhower delivered his somber address, the foundations of the military-industrial complex were already set and began multiplying and manifesting in different institutions, disciplines, fields of research, and social institutions. The military-industrial complex was but part of a larger revolution bent on remaking American society, Western Europe, and ultimately the entire globe in its own image of power, subjugation, and profit. At the same time, its autonomy congealed within basic paradigms or structures rooted in imperatives of control, domination, efficiency, and profit within various hierarchical systems of rule. In this sense, as Noam Chomsky has described it, the military-industrial complex is "a misnomer . . . There is no military-industrial complex: it’s just the industrial system operating under one or another pretext."
  • These systems, moreover, interrelate and reinforce one another. We can see this, for instance, in how the constellation in which the academic industrial complex does research for the medical industrial complex and Big Pharma, exploiting the nonhuman animal slaves of the animal industrial complex in university, military, and private vivisection laboratories and producing fraudulent research financed by and for pharmaceutical capital. The dubiously researched drugs are patented, typically fast-tracked into market sales by the obliging Food and Drug Administration, and then advertised through the media industrial complex. Up to 115 million animals die worldwide annually to perpetuate this fraud, and the human victims of research-for-profit succumb to the medical industrial complex for costly "disease management" (not "health care") treatment that treats only symptoms to focus on the ultimate objective of profit. The dissent of animal rights activists is criminalized by the security industrial complex, and many are sent off to languish, along with one out of every one hundred adults in the U.S. population incarcerated in the prison industrial complex.
  • 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.
  • What I mean by saying that war is wrong is not only that it is bad but that it ought not to be waged, that governments ought not to declare and fight wars, societies ought not to provide them with the means by which to do so, and individuals ought not to sanction, support and participate in wars.
  • It is not nuclear violence alone that is the threat to mankind. It is the willingness to kill our fellow human beings – the innocent as well as the noninnocent- for political ends. Unless we are willing to redirect our time, energy, and resources away from perfecting the means of mass destruction of whatever sort and into exploring nonviolent alternatives to war itself, our efforts to combat the threat of nuclear war are likely to be of no avail.
  • Sending lethal western capabilities to the front lines has been a direct investment in America’s own security in a number of concrete ways.
First, equipping our friends on the front lines to defend themselves is a far cheaper way – in both dollars and American lives – to degrade Russia’s ability to threaten the United States.
Second, Ukraine’s effective defense of its territory is teaching us lessons about how to improve the defenses of partners who are threatened by China. It is no surprise that senior officials from Taiwan are so supportive of efforts to help Ukraine defeat Russia.
Third, most of the money that’s been appropriated for Ukraine security assistance doesn’t actually go to Ukraine. It gets invested in American defense manufacturing. It funds new weapons and munitions for the U.S. armed forces to replace the older material we have provided to Ukraine.
Let me be clear: this assistance means more jobs for American workers and newer weapons for American servicemembers.

See also

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