REVEALED: The INSANE Money Spent On War Contractors | Harry Berger & William Hartung

## The arithmetic of modern war: money, opacity, and consequence What emerges from the conversation is a stark reminder that contemporary war-making is as much a financial and bureaucratic project as it is a political or moral one. The discussion traces how billions in U.S. taxpayer funds flow to foreign governments, to on-the-ground military operations, and into the coffers of private defense firms—often in ways that are hard to track and simple to justify as security necessities. Rather than a dispassionate ledger, this is a story about incentives: who benefits, who decides, and how public promises to rein in military spending are repeatedly reconciled with expanded commitments and fresh arms offers. The consequence is a sprawling, semi-hidden system that mortgages future budgets and public accountability to present geopolitical choices. ## Counting the cost: the invisible bill for foreign wars A central line of the exchange focused on the monetary tally of U.S. support for foreign partners during acute conflicts. The conversation pointed to tens of billions of dollars in direct and pledged arms transfers in only a few months, with additional, more opaque costs arising from deployed troops, logistics, and contingency operations run on behalf of foreign governments. Importantly, these are not just one-off expenditures: offers of weaponry create future liabilities. Arms can be promised or prepositioned before tax dollars are appropriated, meaning fiscal commitments accumulate ahead of explicit budgetary approval. This creates a crucial distinction between “offers” and “payments.” An offer of arms—announced in the headlines—can be large and politically consequential, yet the cash outlay may lag. Still, the policy effect is immediate: allies are reassured, adversaries see commitments solidified, and domestic political narratives about leadership and deterrence are reinforced. Over time, the aggregate impact on U.S. taxpayer liabilities becomes very real, even if the precise accounting is muddled by timing and classification. ## How bureaucracy obscures spending A recurring theme in the discussion was the deliberate and bureaucratic opacity that surrounds many arms transfers and related operations. The conversation described tactics that make it difficult to track final costs: splitting deals to fall below congressional reporting thresholds, delaying disclosure of transfers from regional stockpiles, or locating weapons in allied warehouses where transfers occur without immediate public notice. Such mechanisms reduce transparency and complicate oversight, turning what should be straightforward democratic scrutiny into a sleuthing exercise for journalists and human-rights monitors. This administrative obfuscation has practical effects. When deals are broken into smaller parts to sidestep reporting, Congress—and through it, the public—loses the ability to debate the aggregate strategic choice. When weapons are drawn from regional storehouses, delivery dates and end-use become murky. And when oversight data are incomplete, independent accountability organizations cannot fully assess compliance with legal and ethical constraints. The cumulative result is a system that favors speed and executive discretion over deliberation and accountability. ## Corporate welfare and the defense industrial base Another major strand of the conversation examined the symbiosis between government procurement and private defense firms—a relationship often described as corporate welfare. Over the past decades, the defense sector has received extraordinarily large sums through direct contracts, foreign military sales, and government-backed financing. The conversation stressed that a substantial portion of foreign aid and security assistance ultimately returns to these corporate pockets when purchases are earmarked for domestic suppliers. This dynamic breeds predictable incentives. Firms lobby vigorously to sustain and expand procurement streams; they tout job creation in districts and states to secure congressional support; and they cultivate networks of former officials who rotate between government posts and industry jobs. The result is a powerful interest group that operates across party lines, normalizing high defense spending as both economically beneficial and strategically necessary. The conversation emphasized that this normalization weakens the force of critiques that question whether such spending actually delivers security benefits relative to its cost. The scale is striking: the discussion referenced multi-trillion-dollar flows over recent decades concentrated in a handful of major contractors. The corporate rewards are not only contractual; executive compensation, stock buybacks, and political influence follow. That concentration of resources and power raises questions about democratic control over foreign policy choices that carry massive fiscal and human consequences. ## The Silicon Valley turn: technology, hype, and military ambition A particularly pointed observation in the conversation concerned the ascendancy of tech firms and venture-backed companies as prominent players in the military ecosystem. New entrants promise game-changing capabilities—artificial intelligence for targeting, advanced surveillance, and other high-tech tools that are sold as decisive force-multipliers. The rhetoric echoes past decades: a techno-optimism promising that better sensors, algorithms, and systems will reset the balance in conflict. Yet the conversation cautioned that these claims are often more narrative than evidence-based. Historical analogues—ranging from high-profile missile-defense projects to earlier waves of “revolution in military affairs”—show that technological promise frequently meets the stubborn realities of politics, human behavior, and adaptive adversaries. Low-cost countermeasures, complex environments, and ethical constraints mean that sophistication does not necessarily translate into strategic advantage. Moreover, the new breed of tech militarists behaves differently from legacy contractors. They are more visibly ideological, more willing to advertise their systems’ battlefield uses, and more eager to shape public narratives about capability and necessity. That visibility reduces the anonymizing layer that traditional defense firms used to preserve distance between corporate interests and policy decisions. The effect is to intensify public debate about the ethical and legal uses of advanced tools, even as procurement networks expand to incorporate them. ## Political rhetoric versus institutional reality The conversation juxtaposed high-profile political pledges to cut military spending with the institutional dynamics that keep budgets high. Promises to dramatically reduce defense outlays or to drain the “corporate welfare” feeding the defense industry are politically potent, resonating with constituencies tired of endless war. But the actual practice of governance repeatedly complicates such rhetoric. Several mechanisms explain this gap. First, Congress habitually layers additional funding onto executive proposals, driven by local job claims, lobbying, and strategic framing. Second, promises to restructure or “reallocate” budgets often translate into reshuffles within the defense apparatus rather than wholesale reductions in top-line spending. Third, the political payoff of maintaining procurement streams and employment for certain districts creates a durable constituency for continued or expanding budgets across party lines. The conversation suggested that what is framed as efficiency reform often ends up as a partial rebranding—moving money among sub-programs while overall spending remains stable or grows. This asymmetry between rhetoric and outcome reinforces the idea that systemic change requires more than singular political commitments; it needs durable institutional pressure, transparency, and a public willingness to prioritize alter

REVEALED: The INSANE Money Spent On War Contractors | Harry Berger & William Hartung As the US provides Israel with billions of dollars and deploys its military in Yemen on behalf of that foreign government, the total cost of supporting Israel continues to rise. But how much have Americans forked over to that foreign government so far? At the same time, the Trump administration has promised to use DOGE to take on government spending, of which military expenditures represent 60%. Last month, Trump said that he would cut the Pentagon budget in half. But has that really happened? To help answer these questions, independent journalist Harrison Berger is joined by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft's William Hartung. Check out the cost of war project: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic #M3 As the United States continues to send billions of dollars to Israel and deploy its military on behalf of that foreign government, the total amount spent on that country continues to grow daily. At the same time, Trump and others promise to take on military spending. Last month, Trump said he would cut the military budget in half. But has any of that happened yet? To understand all this, I speak with William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, where he specializes in the arms industry, U.S. military budget, and national security policy. And he's my guest today. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for coming today. Yeah, glad to do it. I want to start with Israel. You co-authored a highly circulated report for Brown University's Cost of War Project late last year, which documented the financial sums that American taxpayers have given to and spent on Israel in the single-year period following October 7th. At that time, the total, which includes the cost of U.S. military deployments on behalf of that foreign government, was at least $22.76 billion. And you say "at least" because it's difficult to find out the true total due to all sorts of bureaucratic maneuvering by the Biden administration, which concealed those numbers. Well, that was five months ago. Since then, the U.S. has announced many billions more spent on Israel and has continued to bomb Yemen on behalf of that country as well. How much do you estimate Americans have spent on Israel from October 7th to today? #M2 It's hard to gauge. I mean, certainly, it's conceivably another $5 or $10 billion. A lot of it is the military operations by U.S. troops in the region. Some of the arms have been offered but not -- 1 of 6 -- delivered yet, and eventually, they will undoubtedly be paid with U.S. tax dollars. But the money's not flowing yet. Certainly, there's been about $30 billion in arms offers to Israel since the start of the Gaza war, and $8 billion are under consideration right now. Senator Sanders is trying to block them. So there's the money, the stuff that we've paid already, and this essentially is mortgaging the future because they're offering the weapons before the tax dollars have come to pay for them. #M3 And what sort of bureaucratic maneuvering are you referring to in your report that makes it much more difficult to find out the true total? Can you give us some examples? #M2 Yeah, well, probably the biggest thing the Biden administration did was there's a certain value of a deal that has to be reported to Congress. So they chopped up the deal so they'd be below that threshold, and they didn't have to tell Congress. The Washington Post got word of it, and essentially they had made, you know, 100 arms deals with Israel over the first five or six months of the war, none of which had been reported to Congress. And then they have various storehouses of weapons, including one in Israel, where they can transfer weapons from that. And they don't often report immediately when they've done that. And then there's also things like gun sales, which are very hard to track. So although in a strange way, the U.S. system is a little more open than some other countries, the things you really want to know are hard to find out, like when was it delivered? How are the weapons being used? That's a job mostly for journalists, human rights people on the ground, and so forth. The U.S. government barely keeps track. And when they do, they don't share that information with the public. #M3 So you've been following the military-industrial complex for a long time. And just to show our audience how long you've been studying this, defense contractors have basically been mooching off the tax base. I want to point to an article that you wrote for the Cato Institute in 1999. It's called "Corporate Welfare for Weapons Makers: The Hidden Costs of Spending on Defense and Foreign Aid." First, can you just explain what the corporate welfare state is and how it has evolved, especially in the last 25 years? #M2 Well, there are huge subsidies to the big weapons contractors, often to build weapons that are not making anybody safer, but rather sparking and accelerating conflict. Back then, one of the things I looked at was that arms sales are often paid for with U.S. tax dollars. There are multiple different ways that they do it. They often sell arms sales as some sort of economic benefit, but in fact, most -- 2 of 6 -- of our foreign aid goes back to the big companies. For example, when Israel buys from Lockheed Martin, our foreign aid to Israel goes back to them. So in addition to what the Pentagon sells, a lot of the arms sales are also paid for by taxpayers. But I did a report for the Brown Cost of War Project around the 20th anniversary of 9/11. It ends up that contractors had received $7 trillion from the U.S. government over those 20 years. And $2 trillion went to just five companies: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, which now calls itself RTX. So just huge chunks of our tax dollars go to these companies. They use some of it to pay their executives $20 million a year or to bid up their own stock prices. Then they claim they need more when they're not even spending the money they're being given on the projects they're supposed to be doing. So I don't think people realize just the amount of dollars that go to these companies and the influence it gives them. Usually, when they lobby for the Pentagon budget, they say it's for the troops. But actually, more money goes to private companies than to support the troops. And they're not necessarily the ones pushing war. There are all kinds of hawks and neocons. So they're interrelated with the industry, but the execs are not on the front line, except for this new breed of militarists out of Silicon Valley, like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. They actually are much more vocal about their weapons helping us beat China. They'll restore U.S. military primacy. They're much more vocally hawkish and kind of have a chip on their shoulder, thinking they're the ones who can solve the world's problems if only the government would get out of the way. Whereas the head of Lockheed Martin is a little more buttoned down, works with both parties, and cashes the checks when they come. But he would never do what Palantir did; they had a board meeting in Israel during the Gaza war to show their support. So this new breed of militarists that's kind of on the scene and is very embedded in the Trump administration, I would say, is in some ways more dangerous even than the prior iteration. #M3 Right. And Palantir, which is the company founded by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, reportedly supplies Israel with AI tools to do the targeting in Gaza. You've written about Palantir before, and you've compared their ideas to plans in the 1980s, such as the Star Wars program. What is it about those interests that are so concerning to you? #M2 Well, there's this notion that seems hard to put to rest that military technology will save us. Going back to Vietnam, they had this thing called the electronic battlefield, which allegedly was going to find Viet Cong fighters in the jungle, target them, and so forth. The Viet Cong came up with very simple countermeasures, and they had to junk the whole system. Then Reagan said, oh, we're going to have this impenetrable shield, Star Wars, that'll protect us from any kind of missile coming from -- 3 of 6 -- anywhere. It turns out that wasn't possible. Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb, even had this idea that you could put lasers in space that would zap the incoming missiles. And the physics just didn't work. But in the meantime, Time magazine put an artist's representation of that system on their cover, and I think a lot of people thought it was feasible. In fact, they've spent probably hundreds of billions of dollars on this idea of an impenetrable shield to no good effect. And now, you know, Trump is basically doubling down on that with this idea of the Golden Dome, which is more of a catchphrase than an actual thought-out weapon system. And then finally, they had this notion of the revolution in military affairs. We were going to have more precision weapons, better communications. We were basically going to run circles around our adversaries because we had better surveillance and so forth. But the kind of wars they were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, that was not decisive. It harmed a lot of people, but it didn't overcome people who knew the local terrain, had different morale, different, you know, approaches. They used things like improvised explosive devices, which are kind of simple countermeasures. So almost every time they've said, oh, yeah, this technology is going to make the difference, it ends up human factors, social factors, political factors kind of get in the way of that notion that that's going to happen. And the Silicon Valley folks now are selling that same kind of argument. And I think it's going to have the same result, you know. #M3 I want to go back to your article from 1999 in the Cato Institute because I think that so many of the themes you explore continue to be relevant today. You navigate through the billions of dollars that defense contractors received from the American government at the time and explain the cesspool of lobbying interests driving foreign military sales. One aspect you allude to is the role of arms industry executives like Bruce Jackson, who was a vice president at Lockheed Martin. While Jackson was an executive at Lockheed Martin, he was also the president of the highly influential U.S. Committee to Expand NATO. And so that kind of incestuous relationship between American foreign policy and defense contractor interests obviously continues today. I mean, our last defense secretary was a Raytheon executive. How influential have these defense executives been in influencing U.S. foreign policy? And does the amount of influence those defense contractors have change whether or not a Republican or Democrat is president? #M2 Well, they're almost embedded in the policymaking process because you have major industry executives going into policymaking positions in government. You have government officials going to lobby for these companies and kind of twisting the arms of their old colleagues to give them a good deal. You've got people tied to industry serving on government commissions that shape policies. You've got them funding think tanks that help set the debate in Washington. So I would say their influence is as great or greater than when I was writing back then, especially with their kind of PR -- 4 of 6 -- strategy of standing at one remove, at least the big companies, letting these hawkish think tanks make the case. Because the head of Lockheed Martin saying, "Let's have a war," is not a good look. Although I guess the Silicon Valley folks didn't get the memo because they are quite open in their approach to bragging about the way their weapons are used, be it in Ukraine, Israel, or in a potential war with China. The industry now has about 90