Angry Planet - What, Exactly, Is the Military Industrial Complex?

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

When President Dwight David Eisenhower left the stage as president of the United States in 1961, he warned of the military-industrial complex he was leaving behind. Sounds ominous, right? And that complex has had 60 years to harden in place since Eisenhower’s farewell address.But what is the military-industrial complex? Is it a war-mongering machine out to kill us all at a profit? Is it a bunch of old boys networking to sell $700 hammers to the Pentagon through no-bid deals? Was Eisenhower overstating a problem that only he could see?We spoke with Emma Salisbury, who just finished a Ph.D. thesis on the subject. As with virtually everything on Angry Planet, the truth was more complicated than you might think.Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeAngry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. So, yeah, actually, I was in London a few years ago. Oh my God. I don't like to think about how many years ago it was. It's not the last time I was in London, but it was the last time I was there with my child who was four years old. And it was after September 11th. So it gives you an idea of how long ago it was. And I went because I said, you know what? First of all, I'm not going to be scared. And second of all, boy, the fares are going to be cheap. It did. And everybody at that moment loved Americans.

It was a very brief moment. So it was right around now. And the weather was so awful. The sheeting rain, as you said, the cold. It was impressive. Yeah, and London just gets very gray when the weather's gross. It's like the dominant color is just gray. Well, Emma Salsbury, thank you so much for coming on Angry Planet.

And do you mind doing a brief introduction for yourself? Sure, yeah. So my name's Emma Salsbury. I've just finished up my PhD on the military industrial complex. with a focus on the United States. I'm a staffer at the UK Parliament where I've worked for about 15 years. And I also am a fellow at the Council on Geostrategia Strategy, which is a think tank based in London. Well, I got to say, this is a, to me, this is an exciting opportunity because, you know, the military industrial complex makes me think of Eisenhower and one of his last speeches as he walked off the stage as president. And that was a, a million years ago in 1960. But, okay, so what is the military industrial complex for real?

I mean, not just the buzzword. What is it? Well, this is exactly what I wrote my dissertation about, because I think everybody knows what it is. If you say military industrial complex, people will not and be like, oh, yeah. But actually, I think people are working from different definitions. And there isn't actually an agreed, definition of what the military industrial complex is. And if we don't have that, then I think a lot of

the times we're talking past each other when we're discussing kind of deeper questions about how it works, what incentives are in there, what affects it produces and so on. So what I've really tried to do is figure out exactly that question, what is the military industrial complex? You know, no pressure. It's a good question. So I found that what people tend to think of, I think, is something around the kind of iron triangle idea. So that's the government, the military and industry in kind of a triangle shape and the interplay between them around matters of war defense, that kind of thing. What I found is that that's actually far too rigid of a way to look at it. It doesn't allow you to bring in other players that may

have an impact. So particularly things like academia, think tanks, the media, that kind of thing. And it also means that you're looking at those players as a monolith, which is also not true. So the military, for example, you cannot look at it as just one player because there are different services within the military, which will have different incentives, different priorities. The Joint Chiefs may have a different opinion to the Department of Defence. We may have a different opinion to the Navy, to the Air Force, and to different parts within those services. So having this very monolithic approach to it actually means that we're not really getting down into the nuance of how the complex works. So essentially, I've made it more complex,

which is always a good thing. Yeah, exactly. Especially for a podcast, that's exactly what you want to make things more complex. Sure, yeah. I think people have an idea and correct me if I'm wrong, that it's not just the monolith, but that there's a goal in mind and that the goal is more and more war, you know, more and more death so you can sell more and more weapons and the military can justify its existence. Not true? Not true. What do you think? I think true in a way, but I don't, I think a lot of times when people think that way, it all becomes a bit too conspiratorial. It's a bit too kind of men in Sigism, filled rooms laughing maniacally as they plot their next war in the Middle East or whatever.

And that is a very tempting picture. But I don't think it's correct. I think what's actually happening is that each of the players within the military industrial complex is simply acting in their own interest. So the industry, like their motive is to make profit for their shareholders and to get more orders on their books. the political representatives, their incentive is to get re-elected and to fulfil their duty to protect the nation. The military, the same. They want to protect the nation, fulfil the missions that they've been given.

So each of these players is acting in their own interest. And what happens from that is kind of an emergent behaviour. So the way all of these interlink with each other, that produces the incentives. towards a bigger military to expanding the defence budget, to all of these effects of the military industrial complex that we wouldn't necessarily want to plan, but nevertheless exist. I believe those kind of emerge from the complex as an effect, but are not actually planned. And given that so much of the military industrial complex actually produces bad outcomes for national security, I think that's actually proof that it's not planned, because I think it would be planned a bit better if it will plan.

So, well, talk a little bit about those bad effects. I mean, are we talking about something as horrible as people being killed or, I mean, just more money being spent for no good reason? I think a lot of it is waste. And when you're wasting money, especially money, you are then not spending it on something useful. So in the context of the United States, that could mean. that that's money you could be spending on education, on healthcare, on, you know,

anything else domestically that would do good for the American people. But also, even if you are only spending your defence budget on defence, you are not spending it in a way that produces the maximum amount of security for the US because there is money being wasted. So it's about things like buying too much of something that you don't actually need, keeping programs going for longer than is necessary, not getting the best deals you can out of industry. So you're spending, you're getting the planes, for example, that you want, but you're getting them at a price that is so high because the price has been ratcheted up. And it's also about, are you buying the correct capabilities? So there could be something else that you could better be spending your

money on to get the best air power or sea power that you can, that you're actually not spending the money on those things because you're already committed to another program that does not fulfill those opportunities. Right. And some of these programs, I mean, we've talked about it on the show and you hear it everywhere. They're too big to fail in a sense. And you can't really turn them around once they get to, you know, a certain point. Like the F-35 program, I think is one of the are famous in that, you know, there was over a trillion dollar price tag over the lifetime of the program. And I think that number is very, very frightening. And there have been reports all along that we're not getting the best possible jet. I mean, is that a good example of what you're

talking about? Or, I mean, is the F-35 really fine and nothing to worry about? So the F-35, I think, has produced a decent plane that will be very useful. And I think also the foreign military sales aspect of it is incredibly useful for the security of allies and partners, which is obviously hugely important, especially right now. The price tag is vast. I mean, the program is years over schedule, billions over budget. I'm not even sure I could name you a program that isn't. years over schedule and billions over budget. But the F-35 definitely is. But at least you're getting

you're getting a good plane at the end of it eventually. Problem, I think, is particularly acute with the F-22 because that was a plane created for a specific task towards the end of the Cold War. So dog-fighting, essentially dog-fighting Soviet planes. And the program was continued up until 2012, despite the fact that the reason for its existence had vanished. And you didn't really need a dogfighter for the world as it was then. And the F-22 is a gorgeous plane. I adore it. It's beautiful.

It's ultimately useless. It's never been used in combat, apart from shooting down that balloon. And I'm not going to take that away from it. But I don't think, I think the US could have stopped. I tell it like it is, you know. Right. I mean, and so it's a dogfighter. It's not a fighter bomber, which is what we tend to use.

Right. Right. Okay, so that's the main point. And it would have been wonderful against Soviet dog fighters, but we didn't need to fight Soviet dog fighters after the fall of the Berlin Walls. So if the program could have been stopped the first time they tried to stop it in 1999, that would have been fine, I think, and you would have had something like 180 of them,

but it just carried on and on because Congress refused to defund it. So the DOD didn't want it, the Air Force didn't want it, and actually in the end, Lockheed Martin, who were building it, didn't really want it because they had the F-35, and it was Congress that kept pushing for it and kept funding it.

And for Congress to fund a plane that nobody wanted is just such a bizarre state of affairs. I think is a really, really good example of how these perverse incentives can create something that cost billions of dollars that could have been spent on pretty much anything else, really. Yeah, I mean, you still, whether anybody wants it, you need the infrastructure, you need to pay for it to be built. You have to have people, the oversight, you know, and all of the infrastructure that goes into a program, right? that is bizarre, but it's not the only case. I mean, there have been, I remember it was a while ago, but there are artillery systems that nobody wanted mobile artillery system, nobody wanted, and that went on and on and on and on. So is this an old problem?

I mean, it seems like it's an old problem. I mean, does it date back to the American Revolution? I mean, I actually, even, and of course the UK had similar issues, dating. back to the Napoleonic Wars. I know that because I read Patrick O'Brien. And we all know that Patrick O'Brien never made up anything and it's all 100% accurate. But so, I mean, it is. It's as old as time, so to speak.

Absolutely. I think the earliest reference to something approximating this I found in a play by Aristophanes in ancient Greece. So this is definitely something. that has always been a constant. When you have war, you have politicians deciding where you go to war, and you have people who make things that are used in war, there's going to be some kind of this into play with the incentives. I think the military industrial complex, as we could recognize it properly today,

really came through with the Second World War. You can see bits of it before that, but a lot of the time before that you tended to have, have quite a lot of weaponry and platforms produced by the government in government arsenals, which sort of changed the way it looked. But kind of World War II onwards, it all moves much more into the private sphere with industry. And I think it's that shift that really creates the military industrial complex as we recognize it today. But its antecedents have stretched back far beyond that.

Is there any particular figure, an individual who sticks out in the? in the history of the military industrial complex or a, you know, number of figures who really, I'm not saying are responsible, but perhaps that enormous influence. Well, it's got to be Eisenhower. I mean, he coined the phrase in his farewell address in 63. And I think he was the first person to really recognize that this is something that it is how America is defended, but that doesn't mean that it's not something to worry about. and if you read his farewell address, he's really flagging that this is something that we need to be aware of and we need to watch.

And the American people need to be watchful and mindful of this because it's something that he saw over his tenure as president was only getting more and more of an issue. So I think Eisenhower, in being the first person to really contextualize it, I think has a huge influence on it. And it's, you know, his speech is really the first expression of the military industrial complex coherently. So I'd definitely pick Eisenhower. And beyond that, the, there are just so many people that I don't really think I could pick someone out. I think it would be unfair of me to pick a particular senator or representative who's particularly in the pockets of Lockheed Martin or something. like that. I was thinking more like, you know, maybe someone who worked for Lockheed Martin or something like that, who got themselves deep into the government. For one name that comes to mind,

and you can tell me I'm wrong because I'm sure I am, Robert McNamara, you know, who came from the auto industry and then became Secretary of Defense under Johnson. I mean, there's no way in in hell that he, you know, lost all of his contacts, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. And that's, I think what McNamara really symbolizes is what I call the revolving door, which is that people are having jobs in industry, jobs in the White House, jobs in Congress, jobs in the military. And when you finish your job, you want to do something that you're good at,

that you have contacts, that you have a skill at doing. So it's natural for people to use those contacts and those skills to get a different job lobbying or etc. So it's not anything sinister again, but it is something that really conceptualises the complex because you have these people who, you know, you may not be overtly saying like, hey, after my tenure in this administration, I want a job at Raytheon, therefore I am going to get Raytheon this contract in order to secure my job in their lobbying office. But that's going to be at the back of your mind. And if that's something you're interested in doing, you might be a little bit nicer to the guys from Raytheon and like try and, you know, get in their good books. And Raytheon

will then be incentivised to be nice to you because, you know, you might add some skill sets to their company. So it's, again, it's not something conspiratorial, but it's very much something that may play like subconsciously on people within that. It's cozy. Definitely. Definitely. And also like, okay,

we all like to be friends with people who talk shop over dinner. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of my friends are academics or military or political. And, you know, it's just kind of a natural thing that you tend to gravitate towards people

who you want to talk about artillery systems. when you're a nerd about artillery systems. So again, it's not necessarily something sinister. But I think McNamara really kind of exemplifies that. And the way he approached his role as Secretary of Defence is very interesting because, you know, he kind of brought in this managerial aspect to it that haven't really been in place before. So it's kind of the influence of industry on government

in a way that probably improve things bureaucratically, but may have had different impacts depending on how you look at it. Is there anything you can point to that's a particular success from the military industrial complex, something that everything all worked together in synergy and created something great? As this is an audio medium, you can't see the face I'm making right now.

I think there's never been anything perfect that has been created by the military industrial complex. I think there's been a lot of good stuff and stuff that has succeeded in what it was meant to achieve. But there's always the counterfactual of what if we could have done it cheaper or quicker. and I don't think there's any project where you could legitimately say, no, this was the cheapest, we could have done it, this is the quickest, this is the best. And even successful platforms are always going to be updated with new technology. So you can't really say they're the kind of the apogee of their class. But I say probably the workhorse that has really carried on for a long time as something like the Ali Burk,

destroyer and the US Navy has tried to build other destroyers and none of them have been as good as the Ali-Birk and so it just keeps going and being updated and that was created by the military industrial complex so like it does create good stuff but you know if you delve into the minutiae of the Ali-Birk project back when it was being developed you could probably find some you know a bit of port barrel spending maybe or you know something that could have been done better and so even though you've got a really great destroyer out of it, there was probably some room for improvement. Yeah, that's actually,

the successor program with the Zumwalt, which I'm not pronouncing right, I don't think, but the fantastic people should go and look at what this ship looks like. The Zimwal is my favorite ship. Yeah? And that's a really stupid thing to say, because there are only three of them.

Right. And they look like a floating building essentially. They're all like flat sides and angles. And I just absolutely love them. And all my friends in the US Navy make fun of me for it. But I think they're gorgeous. But do you think that they're particularly effective? I mean, it has that wonderful prow that looks like, you know, in a big wave.

I mean, it's inverted compared to what you expect a proud to look like. it slopes in and up as opposed to out and anyway. Yeah, it just looks like one wave and that's the end of that. Exactly. But even with the Zemwalt, like the Ali-Burk has just proven to be more useful for the U.S. Navy. And so they're building new Raleigh-Burks instead of the Zunwalt. And the new Constellation class that's coming in will probably replace them because it's probably time for something more modern than a Burke, even with the updates.

But I think the Ali Burke will be in service for a lot longer than those three's and what's will be. It's really, yeah, it's amazing what works and stays in, you know, use. I mean, we were using battleships up until the 1980s. Not broadly, but I remember shelling Lebanon in particular. I can't remember which battleship it was. but it was an actual like World War II style battleship. Right.

And that's just. Yeah. And I would, I would love to see them come back because I think they're stunning. They're probably not too useful for modern warfare. But, you know, just the site of the Iowa, just like steaming towards you is got to be pretty terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. I can't argue.

I've been, you know, I've been aboard, I think one of the battleships just has their docked on the East Coast in other parts of the country and you can actually go visit. And it's, it's an amazing thing. They are phenomenal. And as we've seen from the historical documentary battleship, the film, they are useful when fighting aliens as well.

Oh my God, I forgot about that movie, but you're right. Best film ever made. Recommend it highly to every listener, battleship. It's so bad. It's fantastic. And yeah, I think it has Rihanna in it. It does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. I did not know Rihanna was in the Navy, but there we go.

She's a woman of many talents. Yes. All right, Angry Planet listeners, want to pause there for a break. We'll be right back after this. All right, Angry Planet listeners, welcome back. So, I guess when you're building something, I mean, like an aircraft carrier or long ago a battleship or Zemwalt or any ship that you're building, you're not building them for a couple of years, right? I mean, they're supposed to sit in the water for quite some time.

Right. So how long is that also, I mean, seems like it's a very tough task. It is and it requires an amount of long-term plans. that I think a lot of systems find really difficult. Because when you have democracy, you have governments that are changing pretty regularly. And if those administrations have different priorities, it can be very, very difficult to actually plan

over the kind of time span that you need to when you're thinking about platforms like this. And if you're building an aircraft carrier, A, it's going to take a while to build. B, it's got to be in service for decades. And C, you have to then fit it with an air wing and think about which planes you want to use for that. And there's all these other different things that you have to think about

in order to use an aircraft carrier effectively. So that kind of level of long-term planning, if you have an administration that's like, great, we want to build three new carriers over the next. 10 years or whatever, passes it fantastic. And then the next administration comes in and says, no, this is a waste of money. We do not need three more aircraft carriers. We are canceling these aircraft carriers. And then it's sort of like this snap back and forth. Like we're building them or we not? And there's no long-term planning to be able to think about these questions

over more than the length of an administration. And I think that's a problem that is shared among a lot of democratic nations it certainly is in the UK. You know, when we have a change of government, while a change of party, at least, they tend to be like, right, we're starting again. We're reviewing all of our defence spending and we're going to cut out unnecessary programmes

and reassess our investment and that is necessary, but it can come at the expense of decent long-term planning. And while I don't think that that means that if a bad decision has been made, then it should never be unmade because that's also an issue. But there has to be a balance between oversight of what is happening within defense spending versus being able to plan over more than a four-year term. No, that makes sense. And it's the same.

It's not a great thing to keep poking holes in democracy. But, I mean, it's the same thing with other policies, too. I mean, you know, I mean, when you're fighting a war and like Ukraine, if you're Russia, you know, you sort of want. wonder if you can't just sit back, you know, and wait out the next change in government. I mean, if there's a, if Trump came back, I think we would be dealing with Ukraine very, very, very differently. Absolutely. And this is also actually in the US system, a problem on an even shorter time scale than

a presidential administration because U.S. defense budget is passed every year on a line-by-line vote. And in the UK, our defence budget is part of the budget, which has passed on an up or down vote straight. So there are no amendments. You can't tack on a funding for a programme with a factory in your constituency or anything like that. It is an up or down vote, and then the executive decides what is going to be spent.

And so the US system, there are so many more opportunities for these things to get derailed. Like as we're seeing now with what Congress is doing on Taiwan funding, Ukraine funding and Israel, and, you know, trying to tap things on and then trying to get into a conversation about the border. And all of these things really muddy the waters when it comes to defense policy and defense spending. So I think that makes the picture a whole lot murkier in the US system than it may be in the kind of more European systems where we don't have that kind of back and forth on the minutiae of the defense budget. So that actually really begs the question.

Can you point to a country that does things better? I mean, that got it right with their military industrial complex? Because I'm guessing everybody's got a military industrial complex. It depends what you view as a success. Okay. So, I mean, one could. argue very easily that the Chinese military industrial complex is successful in the sense that they are churning out huge quantities of ships, tanks, planes, etc, etc., etc., on a very

short time scale with no arguments, and it is just getting done. But the thing is that the reason there aren't any arguments is because it's an authoritarian system. So that's one thing. industry is controlled by the state. So the state says, hey, build this plane. And the factory salutes and says, yes, absolutely, and builds the plane. So there aren't any things. There's no contracts. There's no capitalist profit motive playing off against a political motive

because everything is pulling in the same direction. So if you view a successful military industrial complex as one that produces weapons efficiently, then you could probably argue that that's China. But then again, we also don't know how effective those weapons are. So it's very, very difficult to know. I wouldn't say the Russian military industrial complex is particularly successful, given their dismal performance in Ukraine, thankfully. And there are huge amounts of problems in Russia that I think have deeply, deeply hollowed out.

It's military industrial capacity. a lot of the European countries are pretty similar in their military industrial complexes. So I don't think there's much to choose between them on that. But I wouldn't say that any of them are doing monstrably better than the United States, although a lot of the time they have a lot less political influence over it than is the case in America. but it really does depend on what outcome you want to see. And if your outcome is weaponry, then maybe the European model isn't that great

because we're really struggling right now to produce enough munitions for our own mass support of Ukraine, to produce enough planes, to produce enough tanks, etc. So that might show that maybe our model in Europe isn't doing as well as one might think. So it really does depend what your metrics are. And I think it's very difficult to compare military industrial complexes because of the differences between them, but also because none of us are at war at the moment, overtly.

Yes, overtly. I think that might be key. That might be key. and I think the way we look at it in an active conflict scenario will be very different from a nominally peace time. So that transition, like how that military industrial complex transitions from a time of peace in a letter of commerce to a time of war will be vital. And I think it's very, very difficult to predict how that would happen. but if the military industrial complex ultimately is there to defend the nation, that will be the ultimate test. Can it defend the nation at a time of war?

And luckily, we haven't been in that situation for a while. And I really hope we aren't. But that will, I think, be the actual kind of proof is in the pudding moment. Yeah. I think just to go back to China for a second, I would just mention the immense correct. between the various branches and I mean, you know, parts of the Communist Party and the pseudo companies that are actually building stuff, although every once in a while they have a purge based on, you know, corruption or the fact that someone doesn't like somebody else and

they call it corruption, you know, whichever works best. It does seem like even in the United States, I mean, there have been reports that we are not able to make enough shells and other basic war material. Do you think that the United States will be able to get its button gear in any sort of reasonable amount of time? I mean, does the system work well enough to do that, do you think? I think it's a big problem with making that happen is Congress. because of the key central role that Congress plays in every single part of military production in the States, I think that's going to be the issue. And there's no, there isn't enough capacity for Congress to be overridden in that.

And you may very well think that's a good thing. And, you know, I think having a strong Congress is important. But when Congress is a basket case, as it is right now, that's going to be a problem. And when you have certain members of Congress who can hold these things hostage for completely unrelated policy priorities or just because they want to watch the world burn, that I think is this really, really key problem. And I don't think that has been a problem prior to the last 10 years or something. So before that, I think Congress was giving much more oversight from a place of sanity.

And I think that sanity is not there in every member of Congress. I think that's going to be the problem. And I think there is the will there in the administration, in the White House, in the DOD, in the services, and amongst most of Congress to sort this out. And that kind of spoiler faction in Congress, I think, could cause a ton of trouble. And the solution to that is for people to vote them out. And we will see how that goes in 2024.

But while they are still in place and while the incentive of the Republican Party is to pander to them, I think that is going to be the real issue. and until that issue can be solved, I think you're going to have a lot of problems. No, I mean, that makes sense. And it also, it harkens back a bit.

You know, Trump has actually put out a new piece of, I don't know if it's an ad, exactly, but basically saying, you know, number of, it's a meme, you know, number of wars under Obama, number of wars, you know, and then number of wars under Trump, zero, which of course we were fighting everywhere under him too. But it is interesting.

I mean, there does seem to be an beginning. I mean, that isolationism has such historical echoes. I mean, when you go back to World War I and the huge peace effort in this country, I mean, nobody wanted to go to war. And we had the, I think it was the 15th largest, military in the world, something tiny. But I guess if people are looking for hope, and I guess you have many definitions of hope, I'm just going to put hope under the rubric of, you know, being able to defend ourselves if necessary. How about that? I mean, I guess you could say that the United States

has pulled itself together in the past, you know, from great division and protests and all sorts of and, you know, been able to do what needed to be done. I completely agree. I think the U.S. military is the best in the world, and I'm not just saying that to suck up. I think it's true. And especially with the U.S. and the rest of NATO, I think NATO as an alliance is the strongest it's ever been. And as long as America stays in NATO, which is a concerning thing

that Trump has been saying, I don't know if that would actually happen, but it would really worry me and a lot of people if it did. But together, the NATO alliance plus our friends like Japan, South Korea, you know, we have a network of friends, which is something that China doesn't have and Russia doesn't have. They do not have friends. And I think all of our militaries together, if we pull together, if we all keep improving our militaries, improving interoperability, working together, consulting each other, I think any conflict scenario, I don't think we could be beaten. I think it would be horrendous and I don't want to go to war. But if we had to, I think we could all pull ourselves together and I think it would be fine.

this show, just so you know, I don't know whether you got much of a chance to listen. But we usually try to end things on a down note because that's the way the world is. But I think this week, let's make a change. Let's actually say, you know, I mean, that's, that was a pretty positive statement. So let's, let's go with that. Excellent. The British bringing the optimism is always. Yeah, famous for it.

Famously. Well, Emmett Salisbury, thank you so much for coming on and taking us through the entire military industrial complex. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners, as always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin Odell. It's created by myself and Jason Fields. We have a substack, Angry Planetpod.com or AngryPlanent.com.

And kick us $9 a month, get commercial-free versions of the main. and some other things that are coming down the pipe. 2024 is going to be a good year for us, I think. But more on that very, very soon. We will be back soon with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe. Until then.