Beware
the Pentagon’s Pandemic Profiteers
Hasn’t the Military-Industrial Complex Taken Enough of
Our Money?
By Mandy SmithbergerMay 05, 2020
"Information
Clearing House" -
At this moment of
unprecedented crisis, you might think that those not
overcome by the economic and
mortal consequences of
the coronavirus would be asking, “What can we do to
help?” A few companies have indeed pivoted to making
masks and ventilators for an overwhelmed medical
establishment. Unfortunately, when it comes to the top
officials of the Pentagon and the CEOs running a large
part of the arms industry, examples abound of them
asking what they can do to help themselves.
It’s
important to grasp just how staggeringly well the
defense industry has done in these last nearly 19 years
since 9/11. Its companies (filled
with ex-military and
defense officials) have received trillions of dollars in
government contracts, which they’ve largely used to
feather their own nests. Data compiled by the
New York Times
showed that the chief executive officers of the top
five military-industrial contractors received nearly $90
million in compensation in 2017. An investigation that
same year by the Providence Journal discovered
that, from 2005 to the first half of 2017, the top five
defense contractors spent
more than $114 billion
repurchasing their own company stocks and so boosting
their value at the expense of new investment.
To put
this in perspective in the midst of a pandemic, the
co-directors of the Costs of War Project at Brown
University
recently pointed out
that allocations for the Food and Drug Administration,
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the
National Institutes of Health for 2020 amounted to less
than 1% of what the U.S. government has spent on the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone since 9/11.
