Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/19/22 William Hartung: The Arms Industry is Scamming You

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

Scott speaks with William Hartung from the Quincy Institute about ways the arms industry is ripping off American taxpayers. They take a close look at a few cases such as the F-35 and the Littoral Combat Ship. Both weapons systems don’t work, but have made the manufacturers and their friends a lot of money. Scott and Hartung also take a step back and examine the overall dynamics of the military-industrial-congressional complex and how they use threat inflation and bad economic arguments to keep the money flowing into their pockets.   Discussed on the show: “How the Arms Industry Scams the Taxpayer” (Antiwar.com) The Iron Triangle by Gordon Adams Scott’s interview with Michael Tracey William Hartung is a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex. Find him on Twitter @WilliamHartung. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, you guys, on October the 15th, I'm doing a Defend the Guard rally in Somerset, New Jersey. Find out all about it at defend the guard.us. All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton's show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com. of the book, Fool's Aaron. Time to end the war in Afghanistan. And the brand new, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more the 5,500 interviews since 2003. Almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there. And the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show.

All right, you guys, introducing Bill Hartung. He wrote this great piece, how the arms industry scams the taxpayer with Julia Gledhill. And we ran it at anti-war.com. And I forget, was this originally at Tom Dispatch? Yeah, Tom Dispatch. Great, the wonderful Tom Englehart, who we all love so much and keep so many great writers there.

And we republish all this great anti-war stuff at anti-war.com. and so welcome back to this show bill how are you doing sir as good as you can given the state of the world you know yeah i'll tell you what things are unraveling a little bit but you know what i find more and more people understand that war is a racket you don't have to be in any particular spot on the political spectrum to look at washington dc and say oh i get it it's all just a big corrupt imperial court and when people ask me about those kinds of topics, you know what I do. I tell them read Bill Hardtong, because that's where you get not, you know, the kind of innuendo you get from me. That's where you get the breakdown of exactly how this machine operates.

Look, everyone, this money goes from here to here to this guy to that guy, and they get this in exchange and exactly how it works. Second to none. So, and this article is an absolute excellent example of that. how the arms industry scams the taxpayer. So I guess we just start with the sum total of the budget. It's how much? And where's that money going, Bill? Well, if Congress gets their way,

because they want to add tens of billions to what the Pentagon even asked for, it'll hit $850 billion or more for the Pentagon and the nuclear warhead work at the Department of Energy. So that's way above what we spend at the peaks of Korea and Vietnam. where the height of the Cold War, comparable to Obama peak spending in Iraq and Afghanistan when they were happening at the same time.

So it's huge by historic standards. It's about 10 times what Russia spends, 2 and a half to 3 times what China spends, more than the next nine countries combined, most of which are U.S. allies. So there's no shortage of money, but a lot of it's, of course, being wasted on things that the industry would like to build, not things that are related to what would make people safer. You know, everyone always says the tail wagging the dog, but my friend Adam, I think he was talking about Israel, but same difference, the flea wagging the dog. I like that. It's such a great kind of visual, you know, I just see it in Pixar sort of tones. So that's what it is. It's what

you just said. How did you just put it something about what the Congress wants, not what the Pentagon even wants. But why would Congress want things that the Pentagon doesn't want when it comes to arms for the Pentagon? Well, it's all about pork barrel politics. It's really a form of corruption. The leader in the House for the add-ons was a representative from Maine, and he bragged in a press release that $2 billion of what was being added was for Bath Ironworks, the shipyard run by General Dynamics in Bath, Maine. So they're not even trying to hide it.

Elaine Lauria, who co-sponsored the increase, has her district right near Newport and the shipbuilding, which makes aircraft carriers and attacks submarines. And she wants a whole commission that would gin up reasons to spend tens of billions more on the Navy over the next decade. So it's really about that. of course, it's reinforced by campaign contributions to the key members. It's reinforced by the

fact that they hire lobbyists who come from Congress and from the Pentagon who not only know how the sausage is made in the budget, but also know the people that they need to lobby. So there's kind of this kind of series of reinforcing mechanisms. And so when the Congress says you know, let's add these huge amounts of money. It's not because they sat down and said, oh, yeah, this is what we need to deal with China. And oh, yeah, this is what we need to do with Russia. Oh, that's always the cover story. But if you scratch the surface, it's really pork braille politics and legalized corruption that makes it happen.

All right. Now, so, yeah, that's a great example, of course, the ships. And it really is, I mean, and you've noticed this over the time, right, is this kind of shift from what could be called like penny ante kind of spending in the terror wars to the opportunity provided by great power conflict in terms of these real big ticket items. Submarines and aircraft carriers, long-range bombers and all this stuff. Can't really justify too much of that in the name of fighting the Taliban in the Helmand province, you know? But for building up against Russia and China, well, that's the real ticket, right? Oh, yeah. It's a bonanza for the big weapons makers, the threat inflation about China and Russia, because, like you said, bigger Navy, more long-range aircraft, just

another justification for the huge nuclear weapons build up, some arguments that you need more troops. You know, not all of that was really in play when the war on terror was the primary rationale they were using. So, you know, the contractors couldn't be happier. And in fact, there was a National Commission, National Defense Strategy Commission that Congress put together to critique the Pentagon strategy. And they said, oh, yeah, we should add three to five percent above inflation every year forever, which would have pushed the budget over a trillion dollars in five years or so. And then you look at that commission as the project and government oversight did. The majority of them were on the boards of weapons contractors

who were at think tanks that were heavily funded by weapons contractors or were consultants to the weapons company. So this whole idea about shifting to the great power threat as the reason to spend money, the fingerprints of the industry are all over it. Yeah. You know, I'm curious, certainly, you know, my entire adult life it's been like this, Bill, that I wonder if, was there a time where there was any shame whatsoever, like in the post-World War II era, where they sort of pretended to try to avoid these conflicts of interest? Or you simply just always have? You know, hey, Congressman, I got some H-bombs for sale, and let me tell you, you know,

what color or H-bomb we're putting in your driveway this afternoon kind of thing, and it's just business this whole time, in that blatant of a fashion? I think it's existed since the start of the military industrial complex, and in fact, there was a brief period at the end of World War II where there was a significant demobilization, and the companies started ginning up the Soviet threat as a reason to go back to higher levels. Then they piggybacked on the Korean War, never cut back after that war. to any significant degree. The head of the arms industry association back then became a big player in the Pentagon. The Secretary of Defense under Eisenhower was from General Motors, which then was big in the weapons industry. And he had this famous quote, which is, I'm paraphrasing, but basically he said,

what's good for General Motors is good for America. And all of this and the services lobbying, everybody should have. their own nuclear weapon, is what led Eisenhower to give his military-industrial complex speech. But I think it may be more severe now because the companies are so much larger, and therefore they've got their tentacles reach more of the country, their contributions are larger, the numbers of people they bring in from government that, you know, the industry has over 700 lobbyists, and most of them came from government. So I think the seeds of it were always there,

and it sort of gave lift off to the post-Cold War buildup, but I do think it may have gotten worse. And that's the real thing right there, right? As you say, all those lobbyists coming from government and then taking money to turn right around to influence the government that much. And I guess in most industries it's called the revolving door, but, and I don't know if it was Richard Cummings who coined this or where this originally comes from, Chuck Spinney or somebody, in the Pentagon and the Congress and the media and all this, called it the iron triangle of, you know, the revolving door on steroids, so to speak, where, and they just have an iron lock on every narrative in the public consciousness in terms of America's relationship with the rest of the world.

and there's nothing anybody could do about it, right? Yeah, well, my colleague and mentor in this field, Gordon Adams, did a book called The Iron Triangle, which I don't know if that was the first use of it, but it's sort of popularized it. And this was back in the late 70s, early 80s. Okay. And I'm sorry, what was his name again? Gordon Adams.

Okay. And he emphasized the role of Congress, which Eisenhower allegedly took out of his speech. Some say that he originally wanted to call it the military, industrial, congressional complex, but he didn't want to offend members of Congress. So he took that out. Others say, well, the evidence is less clear, but that the concept stands, I think, that he under-emphasized that piece of the puzzle. And if I understand it right, even then his whole strategy was, man, I have, because there's another quote from him, not from that speech, where he says, God help a president that doesn't have the same experience with the military that I do.

But he was a five-star general who won World War II and all this stuff. Nobody had the influence over the army compared to him. No other president ever would have the influence he had. But the way I read it was he essentially launched this massive nuclear arms buildup in order to face down the army. They were demanding an unlimited amount of new divisions. And he was saying, no, we don't need that. because we're just going to buy a bunch of H-bombs instead. And so that was his new look program.

And that was his actually, in his mind, that was facing down the military-industrial complex by emphasizing, well, we're just going to empower the Air Force instead of the Army because those guys are nuts or whatever his thinking was, I guess. Yeah, he wasn't a peacemaker, which some people, because of his speech, think about it, or other speeches that he gave,

because he had a two-prong approach. One was massive retaliation with nuclear weapons, and the other was covert operations, like overthrowing the Mosaddegh government in Iran and the Arbent's government of Makata Mala. So he was sort of doing the high end of nukes and the lower end of these covert operations and trying to hold off having to do a big buildup of the army or other non-nuclear forces. And it was because they were, you know, they were concerned about deficits. They were sort of budget hawks in a way, and his people really did battle with the military over things like,

do we need a new bomber, do we need to increase the size of the army? So there was that tension there, even though he was by no means peace because they meant for you. Right. Well, and, you know, favor in the Air Force, three-stage missiles and long-range bombers and all these, that's a massive vested interest, got to be worse than anything the Army's doing.

I mean, how many artillery pieces can they tow around? But, so anyway, and here we are, and the biggest scandals I think of our time revolve around probably the F-35, or at least as you document in your article here, the F-35 as well as the literal combat ship, both Lockheed projects and both complete disasters. Is that really right? Totally worthless? Yeah, I mean, you know, if they spend another 50 years, they might make them workable, it would be. At this point, they won't be relevant. You know, because the F-35 doesn't do as well in aerial combat as existing planes. They can't keep engines running, so they may be down to half of the force or less being able to even operate by 2030. There's huge maintenance costs.

Their ability to communicate with troops on the ground has been interrupted at various points. they've been grounded periodically they can't carry as many bombs as other aircraft you know so it's

it's kind of double edge because of course the underlying point is we don't need as large an air force and we shouldn't be bombing people all over the globe so

you know the fact that it doesn't work in that sense might be a good thing in the first way yeah I saw that they gave a bunch of 35 to the Israelis and I thought aha take it

that, Israel. You're going to have to fly these pieces of junk around. That's revenge for Linus into war with Iraq. Their argument is there'll be like these kind of central factors in kind of coordinating combat, including by other aircraft. But their software is also very problematic and the ability to maintain the software. So it's a huge program. It's $1.7 trillion over its lifetime, which is the largest program ever undertaken by the Pentagon. And again, you know, Project and Government Oversight has done very fine-grained analyses of all the problems with the plane to the point where the Pentagon's actually releasing less information than they used to

about the performance of these things, claiming that it's sensitive information. The Trinick almost as if it's classified, but it's what the Congress and the public need to figure out whether these things actually work. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audio book of my book, Enough Already. Time to End the War on Terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books,

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but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expandesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom instead.

Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level, and it's all very reasonably priced. Just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org. Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom. Real history, real economics, real. education. Yeah. It's just amazing to read. I followed your link and read about how they're restarting the F-15 lines because bottom line, hey, we need planes we can rely on. I mean, we, of course the whole thing is a giant grift, but we need something that can fly. So we're going back to this

plane that was, as I understand it, a giant turkey in the first place that was sort of the F-35 of its day that's sort of like you said, well, after 50 years, they got it pretty good. And so now they're already abandoning the F-35 and going back to the F-15, which they don't even pretend it's stealthy, which the F-35 isn't any way. So I don't know what difference it makes. But, I mean, that's really telling, isn't it? They're not really slowing down the F-35 that much, but they're ramping up the other one. And Congress is trying to keep them from retiring some of the planes that the Pentagon says it doesn't even need. And so that's part of why it builds up so much because they never make any choices.

It's like, you know, the Pentagon budget is like an archaeological dig. You know, there's the new stuff, there's the older stuff, there's the older stuff. And they rarely get rid of it. Right, that's a good way to put it. Now, can you tell us about the literal combat ship? That's L-I-T-O-R-A-L. Is that right? Something, it ain't literal.

It's literal. So what the hell does that even mean? And what is this stupid boat? Well, it's supposed to be able to operate close to shore on the literals of the ocean, which are the shallower or closer to shore parts. And it's kind of like the F-35 in the sense that again, multiple missions. It's supposed to be operating in legal combat and be able to clear mines

and a number of other things. And it's not good at any of them. And, in fact, it's very vulnerable on combat, couldn't really support itself without supporting ships. And even the Navy had to, was forced to acknowledge this and started retiring them early. Some of them had only been in service

for, you know, six years or so. So they were trying to get rid of nine of those and Congress put back five of them. And again, it's because, you know, Lockheed Martin builds down. They've had a presence in Wisconsin and Alabama. So, you know, they've got the members to back them up to make this happen. And there's also this thing in Congress like, you support my weapon system and I'll support yours. You know, sometimes they call it log rolling, but it's basically, you know, it's like the coalition

of pork you know it's like well let's you know let's work together on this jacking up the budget all right now you know i'm such a critic of this stuff and and so many of us are and we pick on of course like these corporate overlords receiving all of this corporate welfare but their argument is jobs jobs jobs this isn't about them this is about labor and and there are millions and millions and millions of American jobs depending on this kind of industry. And if we abolished the empire, never mind all this stuff we're supposedly, you know, whatever advantage we're supposedly getting from dominating the world, if we weren't making all these weapons, why our what's left of our industrial economy would fall apart and it would

be a disaster. And, you know, Donald Trump famously made this argument in the most over-the-top kind of fashion, claiming the Saudis spend 400 or are spending $450 billion on weapons worth millions of jobs, quote unquote, millions of American jobs, trying to make us feel like we just have no choice here. So what is the real truth of that, Bill Hartton? Well, there's sort of two angles on it. One is that they, you know, as you suggested, they vastly exaggerate the number of jobs involved. So the now, National Defense Industrial Association, which is the big trade association for the weapons industry, even their own reports, they do an annual assessment kind of of the industry.

30 years ago, they said there were three million jobs in arms making. Now they say there's about a million. So even by their standards, it's diminishing returns. And partly because the production is more high-tech. There's high-end. employment for engineers, much less for production workers. They're also farming out a lot of the work overseas on things like the F-35. They've got assembly plants in Italy and Japan. So there's that factor. And also they're trying to get out from under the unions. So for example, they moved the F-16 from Texas to South Carolina. South Carolina is one of the most anti-union states in the country. And then they pick up the supportive wins of Graham while they're at it.

That's something I would want, but probably helpful if you're looking for money from the government. And then, of course, if you invest in anything else, similar amounts, you'd get one and a half to two times as many jobs. And then another angle is that they monopolized government are in D money. So that research isn't going to green manufacturing techniques or developing new vaccines or things that would make people safe for healthier and also would stimulate new industries. You know, the global industry for environmental technology is going to dwarf global military spending in the next five or ten years. And the U.S. is in danger of being out of the game for lack of the way.

investment. So it's, it's, they're holding us hostage economically. It's like the money's there now and unless there's a move to shift investment, then they've got that, that weapon politically available to them. Well, you know, there's that great mythology from World War II that, well, we were in the Great Depression until finally the World War pulled us out of it so everybody and their mama knows that war is good for the economy. It doesn't matter how broken. It we are after 20 years of this straight. It seems like we'd all be stinking rich by now, huh? No, I guess not.

You know, a couple million dead. They just revised the suicide rate. The veterans, it's not 22 a day, it's 24. They say now. It doesn't feel like we're all profiting to me. Seems like a disaster all the way around.

But they continue, I guess they point to some communities that, you know, and many communities, right, I guess, you know, this is a big part of what you're talking about here is the way they divvy up even really small projects into much smaller projects to spread them all throughout the country to make, even if a county is not really dependent on that money, the congressman is, and that kind of thing, because he has to represent that company and its narrow interest. in that county. So even if it's like the population of that county didn't give a damn either way if that company stood or fell, the fact that it's there is enough to keep that congressman invested in keeping it. Yeah, sometimes it's a relatively small project, but no member of Congress wants to be tagged as voting against jobs in their district. And sometimes it's a ridiculously small number and they're still on board.

F-35 has a caucus in the house, about 40 members, all of whom have some piece of the weapon in their district. But some of them are little widgets, you know. That is amazing. Martin says they're in 40. They have a caucus, the F-35 caucus, just like the nuclear

caucus in the Senate. They're not even embarrassed. They're just here to make money for these companies back in their district. That's it. And they let their constituents know. I added money for this plane and we're going to benefit and nothing about whether it has a security benefit. Well, one really important jobs program is the big, fat, bald-headed, ridiculous eggheads of the Washington DC think tanks. And they get paid

big bucks sometimes to write these studies about how we need more weapons. Isn't that right? Yeah, my colleague, Ben Freeman, has done a study when we were both at the Center for National Policy on Pentagon and contract of funding of think tanks. And it's millions of dollars, and it's, you know, you don't see any of them calling for reductions in the Pentagon budget. Occasionally, they'll have an analyst who makes a contrarian point about a specific system or something. but it kind of sets the table for the Washington debate. And there's a revolving door into the think tanks as well as into the industry. So you get people, you know, it's kind of the reverse. You get people from government going into these think tanks and shaping their views.

Well, I'll tell you what, I just interviewed Michael Tracy the other day about his attendance at the America First Policy Conference in D.C. I guess it was a couple months ago or something. a month ago, where he went and met all the America Firsts. So this is unlike PNAC, the neocons, and CNAS, the neoliberals, these are the Trumpians. And their new, you know, sort of CNAS and waiting, you know, government-in-waiting type situation they're building here. And they're all a bunch of hawks.

America First, nothing. They're hawks on Russia. They're hawks on China. Their hawks on everything. And Lindsey Graham was there, and nobody kicked him out. And it's just, yep, they're the same tough guys who supported whatever. George Shuby Bush was doing back when it was the tough guy thing to do. So, but something to keep an eye on, you know, because it's not exactly the old CFR establishment. It's this kind of new proto

establishment trying to be built up on the populace right. And there are a lot of good instincts there among the people. But when it comes to the power, I mean, I guess there's just no escape in it in the Republican Party, you know? Well, Trump, when he came to, campaigned. Of course, he talked about the Iraq War being a disaster, which was sort of forbidden in the Republican Party for years. And it was partly because he wanted to beat up Jeff Bush and Hillary with it. He also made some statements about how the weapons companies are ripping us off to make missiles we don't need and people would cheer. So there is something there in the Trump base, a critical view of all this. But it doesn't really translate into, well, and transcendence to what Trump did, really, and also, you know, the kind of political leaders of that faction are not reflecting those views so much. Yeah. And I don't know what the percentage chance is, but there is one that he's going to be

the president again. So it's not a real. We'll see how it goes. Oh, yeah, I'm not ready for that. But, I mean, regardless of who's in, you've got to fight these. issues, but, you know, on the other hand, let's avoid World War III while we're at it. Yeah. Well, you know, I have, and yeah, speaking of World War III, you know, steady old Joe Biden's got us on the precipice in a couple of different places right now. But, you know,

I have some quotes enough already where Donald Trump, because he is Donald Trump, when he says the right thing, he says it so, you know, over the top, so well, really, if it's something you agree with, it's great, where he says, you know, the Iraq War is the worst decision. any American president ever made, stuff like that. I like that. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I like the tone. And he would say about the military industrial complex. Hey, there's some people in this town who really love war, okay?

They're the military industrial complex, and they're getting, you know, he would talk the way a regular American human would talk, not the way a D.C. politician would talk, ever. But then there's also a quote where he says, I want Lockheed and Boeing and Raytheon to build these magnificent weapons and to create these jobs and all these things. So he can just turn right on a dime and be, in fact, just as over the top and hyperbolic, you know, naming the brands involved, right? And trying to promote them in that kind of a way when he's doing his tough guy routine. So, you know, you have both worlds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,

And the anti-war things he said, the pro-war things he meant and did. So, you know, there's that. All right, well, listen, I appreciate you coming back on the show, Bill. It's this great stuff, as always. And, you know, in fact, can I ask you one last thing here? Is there anybody doing anything about this other than just, you know, you and I kind of complaining? And you are the best of the best at covering these. issues.

There are any good congressmen with any power who really would like to see something done about this or any major lawsuit to force them to admit X, Y, or Z, or any kind of thing, you know, for us to sink our teeth into here? Well, there's a coalition called People Over Pentagon that's working with, Representative Barbara Lee, Representative Mark Polkhan. They're trying to get a bipartisan group. And they've, last year, 140 members of the House voted against this ridiculous add-on to the Pentagon budget. So there's a little core group that's trying to increase in size.

And then the Poor People's Campaign has made this a central component of their work. And then libertarian groups like Cato have written quite extensive studies about how much we could afford to cut. And there's groups like our National Taxpayers Union and Taxpayers are common sense that are more either conservative or more focused on fiscal responsibility that have been pushing against it. But it's, you know, it's up against this big machine of the military industrial company. So it's a little bit of a David and Goliath thing. But I think David won, eventually. So, you know, I think we just got to keep pushing. Sounds good.

well you're the best we'll keep following your lead bill thank you so much thanks a lot all right you guys that is william hardtung the article is at anti-war dot com how the arms industry scams the taxpayer and of course uh he is and i should have said this at the beginning sorry he is senior research fellow at the quincy institute and his most recent book is pathways to pentagon spending reductions removing the obstacles The Scott Horton show, an anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.