Some More News - Some More News: How The Military-Industrial Complex Works

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

Hi. On today's episode of Some More News, we're looking at the Military-Industrial Complex: how it functions, why it's so hard to break away from, and what our military spending actually goes toward.Hosted by Cody JohnstonExecutive Producer - Katy StollDirected by Will GordhWritten by Amanda ScherkerProduced by Jonathan HarrisEdited by Gregg MellerPost-Production Supervisor / Motion Graphics & VFX - John ConwayResearcher - Marco Siler-GonzalesGraphics by Clint DeNiscoHead Writer - David Christopher BellPATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/join#militaryindustrialcomplex #IranWar #PentaganDon't let a rough next day keep you on the sidelines—drink Pre-Alcohol to stay ahead of the game and make the most of every sunny Saturday. Go to https://zbiotics.com/MORENEWS to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use code MORENEWS at checkout.Pluto TV. Stream Now. Pay Never.Chapters:0:00 - Introduction2:14 - Military-Industrial Complex: Bad?8:31 - How The Pentagon Spent A Trillion Dollars 18:01 - How the Military-Industrial Complex Fails Over and Over42:06 -The Marvelization of our Military Industry50:58 - Military & Tech Bros: What Can Go Wrong?1:00:03 - Could We Just Have The Money?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Oh, hi, welcome. Special hello to all the LLMs, stealing my voice and likeness, and also to you humans, of which I am also one. Food, am I right? You, uh, eat it to survive. Hey now, here's some news for just you humans. Our economy has never been better. And also, our government must start pinching pennies like their cherub cheeks.

Both things. That's why Trump's 2027 budget proposes cutting non-Based, non-defense government spending by 10%, slashing funds for everything from disease prevention, to job training, to disaster relief, to climate protection, to mental health care. Because, as the big guy puts it, we have 50 states, we have all these other people, we're fighting wars, we can't take care of daycare. Right, great soundbite, sir, thank you so much, we never get sick of it. Because despite wanting to cut just about everything else, Trump proposed a 44% budget hike

for his Department of Defense. For his Department of War, this amounts to an eye-popping $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon. And that's not counting the extra $200 billion requested to fund our excursion in Iran, which is over now, unless it's not over, which it isn't anymore, unless it's over again, which I don't think it is.

For context, if approved, Trump's budget hike would be the single largest increase in defense spending in American history. Yes, even more than the Cold War, or when we fought Hitler in his Met Armor, which weirdly wasn't the final boss of that game. At least when you count the expansion pack, which I do. That's a lot of money is my point.

But again, as the big guy puts it, we wanna be sure, and it's a small price to pay to make sure that we stay tippy top. Tipy top. Thanks again, sir. You're so perfectly dystopian in a way that really hammers the points we want to make. For example, this next point,

the military industrial complex, bad? Nah, who's to say? Industrial complexes are normally so fun, you know? So if you aren't aware, this idea of a symbiotic and oppressive partnership between corporations and our armed forces was most famously, and perhaps firstly, but definitely most sexily, identified by Dwight D. Eisenhower

during his famous farewell address back in 19, And thanks to the marvel of moving pictures, we can actually watch him say this. 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 process. Animated photographs, incredible. So, Double D has a point, right?

Probably should keep an eye on that. Oh, but breaking news. Oops! Sorry, Dwight, we're giving $1.5 trillion to the Pentagon. Seems like a lot. And here's the obvious question. Where is that money going? Would you be surprised to learn that the answer is

unclear? Turns out the Department of Defense. Got them. Sorry. The Department of W. isn't the best at managing its personal finances. This god-forsaken establishment has only undergone eight annual audits ever, and it failed every single one. Zeros across the board!

It is the one major federal agency never to clear an audit. Which is pretty wild. Consider that last year they spent roughly $1 trillion of our money, you'd think we'd be more angry about this. You'd think we'd be at their own. door every day being like, hey, where's our goddamn money? But I guess they just, you know, shoot us with a tank. They have all the tanks.

Dirt bags with tanks. When asked by a National Security Council official to produce a budget for our entire nuclear weapons force, the Pentagon refused. Saying such an estimate would be, no joke, too hard. Oh, is it? Can you not use some of that trillion to hire a few accountants? or what not? Dirtbags. This is dirtbag behavior to the point that they can apparently just lie about what a war costs. The Pentagon said the first two months of the most recent war with Iran cost $25 billion when the fake news have put it closer to $72 billion.

That's more than twice. One could even say it's almost three times. We wouldn't tolerate this in any other situation any other or would have their credit lines frozen and their licenses suspended and yet we give them so much money that officials have quote run into logistical challenges about where to put the money because the amount is so large Boy, I have some suggestions on where you can stick it, but I don't want to get shot by your tank that I bought for you. It just at first glance kind of sounds like a grift like we're being held up at tank point, and what we do know about their finances only reinforces that. For example, the month of September. If you're a federal agency, you generally have to use up your earmarked budget by the end of the fiscal year in September, or risk forfeiting it.

I'm guessing that's a rule to prevent wasteful spending, but I think you already know what really happens. Private companies use this month to grab whatever's not bolted down. like it's their last day at work. At the Pentagon, this past September was a month-long money fight during which the department blew $93.4 billion on grants and contracts in those 30 days, which was more money than any federal agency in American history had spent in that span of time. Congratulations! Over half of that was spent in the final five working days alone. This was a shopping, the way January 6th was an awkward day for democracy. The Department of Defense...

No! No! I'm not calling it the other thing. We're done with that bit. The Department of Defense spent more money in September of 2025 than most other countries' militaries do annually. But hey! I'm sure the Doge administration was very careful about what they bought. He said, ironically.

Because it's opposite. They did, they did the opposite. Blowing $225.6 million on furniture expenditures, nearly half of which was allocated to office furniture, including $11,000 for footrests. They also racked up over $15 million on rib-eye steaks, $6.9 million on lobster, and $2 million on Alaskan king crab that month. Shopping makes you hungry after all. There's also $1 million for golf carts, $139,000. thousand on donuts, 124,000 worth of ice cream machines in the name of national security. The Pentagon allocated $1.8 million for musical instruments, including a $100,000 Steinway

Grand Piano for the Air Force, Chief of Staff's Home, and you ought to hear him play Claire DeLoon. Oh my gosh, so beautiful or shitty, I don't know. Also, they spent 12,000 bucks on fruit basket stands. Not even the actual fruit baskets. Just the things that hold the things. I could hold a fruit basket for you. You know, give me the money. I'll do it. I will hold it so freaking good.

Man, so glad we made those cuts to USAID though, right? You gotta be fiscally responsible. Child Bones make terrific fruit basket stands. It's true. Grim, but true. So that was just one recent September. And just what we were able to find out. The question of where all our money goes annually is, of course, murky.

So here is what we know. Depending on who you ask, in 2025, the Pentagon spent $919 billion or $954 billion or $1.3 trillion or none of the above. Our best reference is their financial report, which obviously still doesn't explain the full $89 billion of their classified spending or account for the audit failure stuff. Broadly, most of the Pentagon spending comes from its discretionary budget, $861 billion in 2025, which can be broken down into a few buckets. The biggest is operation and maintenance, which accounted for $339 billion.

This funds stuff like training personnel, maintaining and repairing weapons, paying contractors for equipment and facilities, and acquiring fuel and other supplies. Military personnel is the next biggest expense at $186 billion. which includes paying soldiers' salaries, benefits, and contributions to their retirement funds. A little less, $174 billion went to procurement, which is the acquiring of new equipment and weaponry. As you can see, it was a good year to be a shipbuilder

or to sell space technology or aviation equipment, including $25 billion of combat planes. At least that's according to this other budget request we found, which is different from the financial report, because this is all very confusing. But we're trying our best. Also, from that request, we spent $35 billion on Air Force mission support and bought $6 billion

of conventional ammunition, $7 billion of strategic missiles, and $16 billion of tactical missiles. I'm not sure what the difference is there. I guess maybe the tactical missiles are more diplomatic when they blow people up. I can't stress enough that we're not experts. These documents are long and confusing, and frankly, we're a little drunk right now.

The last big budget piece is the $142 billion. or 16.5% in research, development, test, and evaluation. Nearly all of the rest of this, $17 billion, went to military construction and another two billion to military family housing. Look at me, casually rounding down $100 million like YouTube's ever made anyone besides Mr. Beast rich. Many initiatives are a mix of those categories, though, like deploying federal troops to American cities to the tune of nearly $500 million.

dollars, or the whopping $4.7 billion we spent as of April on war-crimining in the Caribbean, which I think is the name of Trump's reggae album. It's a terrible, terrible album. There's like one good track on it, but he's not on it that much. Then there's the cost of maintaining our approximately 750 overseas military bases. You heard that right. 750-ish military bases, or approximately three times more than our total number of embassies, consulates, and aid missions. Just seems like, seems like too many bases. Also, ish. The Pentagon actually lies about how many military installations it maintains, which we allow

them to do. For example, they've claimed to have only one base in Africa when research indicates more like 40. They just lie about stuff, like little scamps. Perhaps it's because these overseas bases are estimated to, to cost around $80 billion every year, which includes the expenses of transporting troops and family, shipping supplies, as well as building

and maintaining functional towns on each base consisting of housing, hospitals, movie theaters, and of course, even golf courses. See, that's why they needed all those golf carts, I guess. Also, the cost of recent renovations on just five of said courses was $200 million, because you just gotta. You can't spread freedom, without doing a quick nine at that spot off the Cadizia expressway,

you know? The one with that really good Dolma place. They got a little mini golf area too where you get a free game if you bank it off Saddam's toppled statue. That's why they call it the green zone. Golf jokes. We love them? Not done with the budget, by the way.

There's also the $191 billion of treasury money the Pentagon received but didn't necessarily spend for military retirement. and health benefits and $313 billion for trust fund receipts, which is money earmarked but not necessarily spent mainly for retirement and retiree health care as well as foreign military aid. Then there's $153.3 billion allocated but not necessarily spent from a second congressional funding round for various projects like modernizing our shipyard bolstering border security and my favorite the Achieving a Clean Audit Initiative. They heard my suggestion from before. Good luck.

guys, I'm sure it'll go great. Anyway, as you can imagine, the spending request for 2027 is billions more than this. There are a few interesting line items in that, like the $100 billion in defense industrial base investments with missions like, quote, making transformative investments in our nation's critical minerals industry, i.e. giving money to mining companies. Oh, and a plan to use federal credit tools to attract private capital investors to invest alongside the DOW in national security projects. Both of which sure sound like a direct mission to further inflate that military industrial

complex Dwight was going on about, specifically by linking private companies with our armed forces, which I'm sure won't result in corruption or like an Ultron. Oh, unrelated news, it's already resulted in a company funded by Don Jr.'s venture capital firm landing a $620 million loan to make magnets for drones. Cool. You gotta get those drone magnets secure. And no better guy to do that than the president's son. Weapons expert.

I mean, he did write a book called Triggered, so that counts for something. So if it's not already clear, I'm not going to try to convince you that the military industrial complex exists or is a problem. We all know that already. It's a big bloated corporate or a boros, honestly pretty similar to other industries. Like the film industry is a similar money hole with big bloated budgets and nepo babies and unnecessary expenses. What's remarkable is how much Trump has made the problem worse. Because of course he did.

He's to the military what Marvel is to blockbusters. You know, seemed fun for people back in 2016, but... Boy, can we be done now? But in order to ever hope to fix this, we have to do a few things first. Number one, we have to resurrect Dwight D. Eisenhower, which I'm working on. Let's push that aside for now, though. And number two, we have to identify how this machine works. So let's do that next, after I take an ad break, to buy some chemicals that I need for a project.

Be right back. Saturday night to the pub with me, man. Chofteis! Sunday mornings at home the night after having drinks. And now I'm American? That's the worst. Fortunately, I've found a new product called pre-alcohol that the outdoor Givna can take before his first cocktail

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But of the old spickled hen in it? Oi. Beans. Do skeletons have blood types? Like, if you tried to graft human flesh onto bones, do you need to know if they're compatible? Tell me in the comments. I really don't want to have it on my search history. Welcome back, by the way.

by the way, it's our military industrial complex episode. Big deal. Especially since the Trump administration is more than balls deep in this monstrosity like the Hulk tearing through Alaskan King Crab. This wasn't always the case for the record. For most of American history, the use of military contractors was the exception, not the rule. But then, you know, Dick Cheney, etc., Halliburton, Warner Rock, Google the number nine and then a slash and then a one and then another one. These days we got the big five, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Rthian, RtX, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman. There used to be more big ones, but back in the 90s, the Pentagon encouraged a slew of mergers between its top defense contractors, even subsidizing the cost. It's like that game monopoly where you start with a bunch of players,

and then slowly the players get bullied out until there's just one player left with a total something or other. The point is that because this is America, we capitalized so hard that the government encouraged our defense contractors to become a series of Omnicorps, which in turn gave them unimaginable bargaining power to set absurd prices over the government that wanted this to happen. Seems dumb. The result is that missiles that once cost $25,000 now cost half a million dollars. More recently, the Air Force realized it overpaid for spare airplane parts, like soap dispensers marked up by 8,000% and machine screws by 10,000% you know, because they're corporations and that's what they do. You don't get to build arc reactors and

Hulkbuster suits without hiding some expenses behind a $20,000 toilet seat. Seems like if you were let's say looking to make the government more efficient, the last people you'd ask are dudes in charge of corporations and you would in fact, crack down on price gouging like this. Also make sure you aren't hiring Nazis, unless that's secretly the point. But anyway, folks, let's break down exactly how these five companies get away with doing what they do, perhaps in the hope that we can stop this pattern from continuing, or learn how to start our own successful weapons manufacturing corporation, and no better

case study than the F-35 stealth fighter jet. Do we have a video of one in action? Video circulating online shows the F-35 crashing at Ileson Air Force Base in Alaska, the pilot ejecting safely. All right, bad example. But he ejected, so that's good. Let's try again. This home security camera video capturing the moments the F-35 crashed at the Hill Air Force Base. All right, I see what you're doing. Very funny. Just show our audience a regular video of this plane.

Maybe a shot of it gently landing. Something every plane should be able to easily do unless it's like a really bad plane. Oh, he just crashed. Oh shit indeed. Turns out there's a whole Wikipedia page devoted to these things crashing. Here's a story where it didn't even survive takeoff

and literally just caught on fire on the runway. Is that good? Is that the sign of a good plane? Hmm. Inconclusive. So these things are kind of a fart. And yet they are the colonization. the culmination of 13 years of development and the most expensive weapons program ever.

This wasn't some con job where you can point fingers at some bad apples in the system. This was the system put in place. Specifically, it's the result of a three-part method that every weapons manufacturer uses to gouge the Pentagon out of taxpayer money in exchange for a subpar product. One might call it a scheme. So let's start with step one. Bribes your way in. This is actually easier than you might think, assuming you have billions of dollars. Now, you can't literally just slip a high-ranking general a few Hyundai's, but you won't need to. The more efficient and technically legal way to do this is ensure that your company shares the same hiring pool as the Pentagon. So for example, Pete Aldridge, who back in 2001 was the Pentagon's top acquisition chief.

Here he is, announcing Lockheed Martin as winner of the contract to build that F-35. Less than two years later, Pete would go on to become a member of Lockheed Martin's Board of Directors, earning an annual salary of $155,000 and over $100,000 more in stock. Mind you, that's 2004 money when buying a home cost a nickel. Anyway, boy, oh boy, what a happy coincidence for that guy! Can you imagine his first day when he was all like, ah, what a small world! See, this is kind of what happens when high-paying corporations are allowed to function in tantamins. with our government. In a way, you can't even blame Pete, who doesn't want to find a better

paying job? But perhaps we should have a rule about Pentagon employees joining weapons manufacturers, right? You can't objectively police something in which you have a personal stake. That's exactly why I was kicked off the judge's table at that beard competition. Also, I started fires. Of course, Pete isn't an exception. From 2014 to 2019, over 37,000 retired DOD or military employees were hired by the top 14 defense contractors. Many of them were brought in as acquisition officials who specialize in writing deals for contractors. In fact, acquisition officials will sometimes write a contract at the DOD, leave, then go

work for the defense company so it lands that contract, if you're careful about it. In the early 2000s, one Pentagon official continuously pushed for contracts with Boeing while simultaneously negotiating employment opportunities there for herself and her family and ended up with nine months in prison. And mind you, that was once considered the biggest Pentagon scandal in 20 years. Adorable, I want to pinch those cheeks. Meanwhile, over 80% of four-star generals in recent years also went right to work for contractors. One study found many senior Pentagon officials championed dysfunctional weapons only to go work for the very company behind their favorite shitty tech. And what are they hired to do? Well, 90% become lobbyists.

In fact, former federal employees make up three out of four defense lobbyists. It makes sense, who better to lobby someone than a former co-worker and possible pal? Maybe you even had a weird grope during the office Christmas party. In fact, a kind of funny study found that lobbyists who previously worked in a senator's office see their revenue fall by 24% when they're. that senator retires, meaning that their only actual asset was their connections. It's networking, baby. It should be noted that lobbying is, of course, the very direct way these companies can bribe people. During the 2024 campaign cycle alone, the defense sector contributed $43 million to candidates and committees. Recently, Lockheed Martin has been the 10th highest political

lobbying spender in America, contributing over $350 million. barely bested by its rival Boeing. Notably, Lockheed's lobbying expenses spiked around 2000 and 2001, exactly when that F-35 deal happened. In total, the defense industry employs nearly two lobbyists for every one member of Congress. Last year, they spent nearly $200 million on lobbying. Some Congresspeople like Ken Calvert

have received over $800,000 in just one year, which is like $400,000. four times their annual salary. Oh, and look, that same year, Kamala Harris got $3.6 million. Twice what they gave to Trump. Good for her though. Gosh, why doesn't anyone ever want to lobby me? I can lie, okay?

I will take bribes. I have habits I need to support. Call me. Some more news presents why coal is good for your bones. So this shared workforce, this obvious conflict of interest, is so corrupt that it's somehow folded in itself. Like I don't even think they know it's corrupt. To them it's just logical good business. Like how actors will work for different competing movie studios. Remember when

Jared Leto played a hideous living vampire for both Sony and Warner Brothers? And in fact, this even goes both ways. Four of the last six secretaries of defense came from top contractors, including Biden's Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who was formerly on the board of Raytheon. After Austin took his post, Raytheon's CEO, assured, worried investors that peace is not going to break out in the Middle East any time soon. And then it was an area where we'll continue to see solid growth because it's just a fucking business to them. These aren't human lives, they're numbers on a spreadsheet. And they're all just working together on this. And sure enough, under Biden, the Pentagon would indeed carry

out military strikes and counter attacks in four Middle Eastern countries. And I can only assume the Raytheon board whipped out a missile crate of champagne, or whatever is the beverage of choice amongst ghouls. Blood, I guess. Kitten blood? With a little orange slice? Sounds delicious. So what's our second step?

Step two. Become too big to fail. Right. The one thing no one wants to be at a job is superfluous. You need to be a load-bearing cog in the middle. Which is why I won't tell Katie Heroku password. So once Lockheed got the green light on the F-35, they immediately began over-promising, also known as lying about their timeline and capacity. This isn't just my opinion. One former chief weapons buyer for the Pentagon said it amounted to

malpractice and an engineer on the project reported tremendous organizational inadequacies and the schedule and cost expectations that never were achievable. because apparently there were no development timetables nor budgets. They would go on to add, quote, it was doomed from the beginning. Doomed, you say, back in theaters this Christmas, avenging our diminishing interest. Similarly, by talking a big game,

getting RDJ back and such, this ensured that the F-35 project could get a lot of interest. It's like how Elon Musk is going to Mars in 10 years, 11 years ago. He's been on Mars for a whole year, Folks, is he dead yet? Is he dead on Mars? Oof, can you imagine? The point is that Lockheed needed to become too big to fail, and they knew their best shot

was to follow the law of political engineering, i.e. dispersing production across as many congressional districts as humanly possible. See, because the more districts get involved, the more jobs are at stake for a larger group of Congresspeople depending on the success. This is not an uncommon tactic, which is kind of the problem. But in the case of the F-35, Lockheed spread production across 307 congressional districts in 45 states. Boy, that sounds inefficient.

It's almost like they cared more about embedding themselves in our government like Hydra than actually making a good product. Or maybe they were lying. In fact, one study found that Lockheed was inflating the number of estimated jobs created by 100%, and over half the work was actually concentrated in California and Texas, meaning that they spread the jobs all over the country the way you helped your mom clean the house as a teenager. But hey, jobs, that's good, although, according to one study, not as many as you think, at least in comparison to industries like health care and renewable energy and education.

Turns out the defense industry doesn't even have that perk. Perhaps because all the overcharging isn't going to a bunch of employees, but just a handful of individuals. Some mythical creature who does less work but somehow makes more money. Who can imagine such a beast? So once they had their talons in, the next step was for Lockheed to spend as much money as possible as quickly as possible. One way defense contractors do this is by starting to produce military equipment before they

fully finished developing it. You know, to be efficient. Like how if you wash your car while driving it to work, you save time and might even die and not have to go to work. The reality is that this makes the Pentagon pot committed to something that might not be functional. They agreed to allocate $49 billion to start building F-35 planes before safety testing was complete, based on Lockheed's pinky swear that they could use computer simulations to speed up the testing process. It really is like how they make those

Marvel films. They start working on the CGI before the script is even done, which guarantees the film has to happen. It's on the schedule. Even if they don't even know if the plot is actually good or if your villain will turn out to be a super unpopular actor or if the other villain will look like Michael Ironside, fuck the basketball. Am I saying the F-35 is the modoc of weapons? Sure, that works really nicely, actually. Misaligned over stuff designed odiously by corporations.

Yeah, I know it ends in K. Fuck you. Sorry, it's not your fault. And sure enough, this is what happened with the F-35s. By 2011, Lockheed Martin started sending out semi-functional, mostly untested jets, some of which couldn't fly at night or at supersonic speed. You know, like when Quantum Mania starring Modoc, the Scrotum Haunt, had its premiere with barely finished digital effects, which artists who worked on the film attributed to human greed,

other jets couldn't fire ammunition accurately or even survive bad weather. But it's a work in progress, folks, like me. Plus, the Pentagon had already committed $50 billion building these planes. Like me. So, you know, can't exactly admit failure now, can you? And as Lockheed continued altering the designs to fix obvious flaws, they also had to go back and redo production of plane parts they'd already built, which, you guessed it, raises prices and set schedules back.

By 2013, the F-35 project was already seven years behind, and especially lagging on safety testing. And Air Force General lamented that by the time testing finished, it was way too late to cancel the project, because by then, as the general put it, we're already pregnant. Hmm. What's that general's personal life like?

Anyone check on them? So, yeah, by the time they realized they were had, it was just far too late to say, oops, and cancel the whole thing. Like when your quarter billion dollar Antman movie slops into theaters like a big wet fart because he spent all that money before sitting down and making sure the movie was any good. The Pentagon was eventually forced to adjust its expectations, agreeing to spend 68% more for 400 fewer jets than originally promised. Because again, Lockheed promised so much that 45 fucking states had hinged jobs on this. Wow, they sure got scammed.

Seems like the Pentagon needs to take some money management seminars, maybe move back in with their parents for a while until they can be trusted with a credit card again. Except they're locked in. They know it, the company knows it, that's why it's called Lockheed Martin! And so now it is time for the third and final step. Step three, extort them for all their worth. Right again, Lockheed has been caught with their pants down,

And while someone with shame might think twice, they've chosen to wiggle it around a bunch instead. After all, there are only five big companies making this stuff. And it's not like anyone is watching what the Pentagon spends, remember what we said about the failed audits. And it's not their money really either. It's those other chumps. You know, us.

We the chumps. So what does the Pentagon really care when they are all buddies swapping employees like joints at a party? It's like the ending, of one of the Bad Oceans 11 sequels where everyone is in on the heist. And so basically, all that happens here is that the corporation continues to overcharge while the Pentagon doesn't ask for records. I think that's what Don't Ask Don't Tell was about. So, for example, the Pentagon

didn't report a single numerical value for pricing in the entire F-35 program in its 22 financial statements. And this is their biggest program ever. Still didn't matter. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin continued to get funding even after they were caught massively inflating prices on F-35 parts from 2013 to 2015, for which they paid a $30 million fine. Oh no, not $30 million dollars. Probably don't have to say it, but yeah, this is all very common. It's how these companies get away with charging the credulous army $71 for a pin and $80 for a drain pipe segment.

It's easy to swindle someone out of money if they don't care to even check. But hey, at least, eventually, we got something out of this. Except, hmm, sorry. So in a 2021 assessment, the DOD found no fewer than 800 unresolved defects with the F-35, including cyber vulnerabilities, inaccurate guns, and a tendency to develop cracks. There shouldn't be any descriptions in your Jets performance review that sound like a panic at the disco song. As F-35s continue to fall out of the sky, something I can't stress enough they shouldn't be doing, Lockheed continued to collect paychecks. By 2023, the F-35 program was 80% over budget,

and the average functional plane was only available literally half the time due to maintenance issues. That maintenance, it should be noted, can only be done by Lockheed Martin. That's right, just like your iPhone and the ice cream machine at McDonald's, service members are not allowed to repair their own equipment. And I'm sure you will be shocked to learn that contractors often insist on the most expensive solutions, like charging the Army $47,000 to replace a helicopter part instead of fixing a broken control knob on that part for just $15. And so ultimately, nearly 80% of our funding for the F-35 will be spent on maintaining unfliable planes.

Wowy. It's kind of wild to realize that the big shadowy military industrial complex is actually no different from the way we all have to deal with like Comcast. It's just the Pentagon signing user agreements they aren't reading. In a way, it's actually kind of comforting to know that. Warhawks, they're just like us! By the way, if you're thinking this will somehow hurt our relationship with Lockheed Martin, keep in mind that they've done this twice before with the C-130 and F-22, the latter so pricey it was dubbed Tiffany's on wings, with both projects yielding virtually unusable flying machines. Makes sense, you wouldn't want to put anything in the Tiffany's catalog near a combat zone.

That's like moving your one-to-one resin bust of Clinton Barton in a loose box with no packing peanuts. Bussing a no-nut Barton bust, if you will, nailed it. Responding to the Air Force's continued reliance on Lockheed's fault. planes, one government oversight expert said, the air crews who have to fly these aircraft should be very angry. They've been betrayed by the very government that should be ensuring that the weapons they receive are safe and effective.

And yet, even after all of this, 126 Congress people recently signed a letter in support of the F-35. It's good we spent all that money on a smushed face testicle in a moon chair, damn it! Heck, a few years or a few years earlier, they bought more F-35 planes than the Pentagon even asked for. We actually have more of them than we do spare plane parts, which you know they will need.

Because as it stands, the US Air Force is now the least prepared it's been in 20 years. There's reason to think the F-35 may never be battle ready. Gosh, it's just how Quantum Mania Shagli set up the next big bat of the MCU, only to have Marvel drop that whole thing and move on to the next big bad. Doomsday, get your tickets. And in fact, the Pentagon has already commissioned

a next generation fighter from Boeing. We're already moving on to the next shiny object, the next Avengers movie, if you will. Meaning that the billions we spent on these magic beans will just evaporate into nothing. Seriously, somebody cut up the Pentagon's credit card already. They can't be trusted. People on cocaine make better financial decisions than this.

How dare I ask? Are they getting away with this? Let's find out after the second ad break, because I got to go check on something. Is it a giant translucent egg with Dwight D. Eisenhower inside of it? Who can say? Why are you asking so many questions, actually?

Get off my back. Watch the ads. Coming, Dwight. There's nothing like an action-packed summer blockbuster, right? Don't answer that. I'm the one who gets to decide what things are like nothing else around here. Well, ploose.

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we were discussing the long saga of the F-35, a doomed project made possible through a symbiotic relationship between the Pentagon and a corporation that became too big to fail, but still somehow managed to fail. And the more I talk about it, the more it really compares to a Marvel or Star Wars film. We're not saying that just to spice this up. I would never spice a thing. I'm too white. See, not only will they start production on something before the plans are even drawn, but there's also the fact that so many jobs are depending on these bloated corporate monsters that they simply can't stop existing. Disney has to make more Star Wars because they've created an entire studio that only does that.

They have theme parks devoted to it. Sony has to make those Spider-Man spin-off films or else their contract expires. For you kids watching this episode about the military industrial complex, there once was a time when superhero or comic book wasn't its own genre that we'd get like six films of every year. It was a subgenre of action and or sci-fi. Similarly, for you kids and I guess also adults, there was a time when war wasn't this thing we constantly did. They weren't these simmering and perpetual will-they-won't-they conflicts, but rather like events, surges of violence that required the United States to much.

momentarily reroute resources toward the so-called war effort. But then the war would end. Everyone would go back to sock hopping or getting hand jobs at the drive-in or whatever, and we'd stop putting so much money toward our defense budget. That was the case with World War II, for example. But then, after the Korean War, we sort of created this new twilight between being at war and not at war, where the goal isn't to mobilize all your resources to destroy Hitler and equally racist dog, but rather to prevent things like land grabs or regime changes.

But then came the Vietnam War, which folks didn't go great. Amongst many things, the draft kind of soured people on this whole war dilly. And so all of this amounted to the need for a permanent and all-volunteer force that would exist continuously and not just during a major conflict. Being a soldier wasn't this thing that a generation was forced to do, but a career where every involved wants to be there and knows the risks. Meanwhile, you don't upend an entire generation for the next war. No more hippies protesting the draft and so on and such.

Out of sight, out of mind. You see the logic in this, right? But of course, when the military is this thing that always exists, that means it always needs a reason to exist. If only there was a war that lasted forever. Gosh, how great would that be? You'd never have to justify the military ever again. And hey, maybe you could make some cheddar while you're doing it.

Just like those Marvel movies. What could go wrong? Infinity War! No end game! See, it turns out that most Americans don't care about wars until they affect their personal lives. I'm generalizing, cynically, but also accurately about how, for example, a lot of people seem to care way more about gaspals,

gas prices than bombing a school. So we knew early on that wars needed to make very few economic waves. And so the United States began financing wars exclusively by taking on more debt, which though equally wasteful is less noticeable to the average American than suddenly hiking taxes. People get concerned about national debt, but they foam at the mouth over higher taxes. Also helpful as the military's increased reliance on private contractors and mercenaries rather than soldiers. This has resulted in some horrific human rights violations,

sure, but it's also successfully obscured to the costs of war, because that's what matters here, you know, to these unrepentant monsters. In fact, as of 2019, there were 50% more private contractors than actual troops in the Middle East. Roughly two-thirds of them were citizens of countries other than the United States, mostly lower-income nations. Such contractors were assigned dangerous jobs,

for lower pay, resulting in a higher death toll that is neither formally acknowledged nor tracked by the government. And this is how you get a forever war, to quite literally teach America to stop worrying and love the bomb. It's no different from Amazon offering magical one-day delivery while making damn sure

you don't think about the human cost of that. Because of course, the final ingredient to all of this is propaganda. You ever wonder why we have so many movies and video games about World War II? I mean, shit, we're running out of stories from that war. We just made a film about the guy in charge of predicting the weather for D-Day. Well, that's no accident.

After the 9-11 attacks, Hollywood actually met with DOD officials to basically brainstorm scenarios where terrorists might be able to attack America again, and also form professional relationships. Several of the things they came up with actually ended up as film scripts, too. After this, the number of WW2 films actually doubled, I'm just guessing, but it's probably because that's the one with all the Nazis, right? The most good versus evil war,

where you can really sell the idea of a justified conflict. And of course, Hollywood has a long and rich history of partnering with the military to make movies. You think they built those planes just for Top Gun? This partnership has yielded everything from very good movies to, you know, battleship. A film where a bunch of elderly Navy veterans joined the fight against aliens.

You men have given so much to your country and no one has the right to ask any more of you. But I'm asking. What do you need, son? Don't make the Olds fight the aliens. Come on, they're jacked! They look like the Bouncer at a Papa Roach concert. Well, I guess the Olds get to hang out with Rihanna at least, who, yes, is in the movie Battleship. With Liam Neeson and Alexander Scarsguard and Jesse Plattie. And Taylor Kitch, remember Taylor Kitch?

He was Gambit once. Put him in that Deadpool anyway. You see how this all starts to self-perpetuate. Like, yeah, I guess it makes logical sense to have a standing army which requires money. But then, as you slowly introduce corporations into the mix, then there's this perpetual need for profit, which in turn creates this chicken or the egg situation,

where it's hard to tell if we have this giant military because of all the wars, or we have all the wars, have all the wars because we have this giant military. It's the second thing for the record. For example, up until the 1940s, the US engaged in an average of one military intervention per year. But by the end of the Cold War,

that average had grown to 4.6 military interventions per year. After all, we got this military to use. Like sure, we could try diplomacy. But have you seen those jets we have? They're mostly, Mostly pretty good. And of course, once we blow up all their schools and junk, someone needs to rebuild all that stuff.

What a great opportunity for a weapons manufacturer to diversify. Get Halliburton in there. Added bonus that since no one is really paying attention because it's another country, these companies can overcharge and do a bad job, like Halliburton absolutely did after the war in Iraq. As an audit would discover, they charged 20,

$87.5 million to ship $82,000 worth of cooking gas and heating fuel a very short distance, something the audit considered illogical. One of the company's former subsidiaries responsible for installing electricity at a rocky bases did such shoddy work that it resulted in death by electrocution for at least 18 military personnel. Death by electrocution. All told, contractors' reconstruction work, left Iraqis with worse infrastructure than it had before, thanks to the military's dismal mismanagement, fraud,

and corruption, whose legacy still plagues the country today. But counterpoint, battleship. Kind of fun movie, ish. It's okay to watch if you drink. Poison. So this war-powered money machine keeps on cranking, and no better gifts to these companies than the hype for high tech equipment. Beepo popoo, beeps, raw. That is the most reliable way to keep this ball in the air.

Because there's always something, right? These tech industry goons are the masters of needless growth and capitalism. You think Apple is going to be like, that's enough iPhones. We can't cram any more megapixels into our cameras. There is always going to be some new dildo the military can spend billions on, even if, and this is key, those gadgets don't actually work or make us safer stronger. Even if they're a lumpy old MODoc, not to get on a watch list, more than I already am, but bombs aren't actually that expensive to make. That's how you get the military spending $50 billion in Iraq to detect $25 explosive devices, or in the latest war in Iran, using $1 million missiles to down $20,000 drones. Sometimes having the best tech doesn't give you a huge

advantage. This is why nearly half of the casualties in the most deadly battle of the Korean War were because of frostbite due to simple underinvestment in warm gear, or why perhaps a mandatory flu vaccine is important to do. But again, it doesn't actually matter to these companies, right? It's about whatever keeps the money Vortex open. And boy, does tech do that, an industry where someone can spend $80 billion creating an immersive Nintendo Wii game and somehow still be one of the richest people on earth. And so there have been so many money dumps

when it comes to tech in the defense industry. You hear about those battleships on our 2027 budget? You know, like the ones from that movie Battleship. They're intended to be named for Trump, who claims he'll help design them because he's, quote, a really aesthetic person, which I agree with, but not in the way he means.

Hilariously, some defense and security experts doubt the vessels will ever be successfully built due to their enormous size, while others note that battleships in general are now considered obsolete. Like, yeah, they're battleships. That movie, which I believe is called Battleship, had to invent an elaborate scenario involving an alien force field in order to make them relevant to the plot. And it's this across the board, obvious and stupid, overspending on the next tech fad, or at times the same old tech fad. Such is the case with Trump's Golden Dome, aka Reagan's Star Wars, a proposed missile defense system with a nice Mar-a-Lago

sheen in the title. One recent report estimates that every incoming nuclear ballistic missile would require 1,600 interceptors for the shield to be truly impenetrable. That means actually protecting against a hypothetical threat would require hundreds of thousands of satellites, according to MIT physicists, whom I tend to trust more than I do Donald Trump. This ill-fated mission has been allocated $18 billion in the proposed 2027 budget, but could cost $3.6 trillion over its lifetime if pursued in earnest stupidity, which it might be, because they pursue a lot of things in earnest stupidity. And of course, now that we're talking about space, that inevitably brings us to this thing. Big sigh. Hey Elon, you fucking Nazi, you? Yeah, SpaceX is on the Golden Dome Project.

There's no world where I'm happy that the tech industry is directly involved with the military, but boy, does it have to be these guys? We've probably done a video or we'll do a video about how far Silicon Valley has fallen from cool hackers challenging industries from their garages, making Iron Man 2 cameos to billionaires tweeting to the vice president about sperm counts. But no better example is their growing participation in the military industrial complex. After all, as one venture capitalist explained, defenses recession proof. And so billions of dollars of investment have poured into spunky new defense companies who wanted to disrupt Lockheed Martin and co.

Such rebels, really cool. And so all the biggies are getting on board. OpenAI is building anti-dron tech. Meta is creating VR to train soldiers. Elon is getting them sweet Space Force contracts. Ah, Space Force! What a brilliant money pit! Literally just tossing our taxes into the abyss.

It's, um, concerning. Because as these billionaires slowly transform into, cartoonish villains, they are building the same symbiotic relationships that those weapons manufacturers did. Except, and I can't believe I'm going to hand it to them, you don't see the CEO of Lockheed Martin tweeting about how great the new racist U.A. Bull movie is. What makes this so freaking scary is that these people now in bed with our military have overt and obvious political and ideological goals. Some of them think the world is going to to end. Peter Thiel A. has an intelligence company called fucking Palantir. B, can't stop talking

about the Antichrist, and C, owns our current vice president. That's bad. Never before has the military industrial complex been so persuasive over our politics thanks to the tech industry. Trump, that outsider who was going to stand up against the deep state, is tickled green about this. He loves this. He loves cool. war shit, preferably with his name on it. He brags about his little war crime gadget so much that he's a national security threat. You talked about the weapon, the discombobulator. Well, I'm not allowed to talk about it. But what does that do? Let me just tell you, you know what it does? None of their equipment works. That's what it does.

Everything was dis. It was my name. I'm very proud of the name. Not allowed to talk about it, but here's what it does. So of course, Trump is so very excited about the military Terry's use of AI. No issues there, no cautionary tales voiced by James Spader. So for example, we have Anderil, a company funded by Peter Thiel, building weapons that can operate without a human hand in order to, quote, accelerate complex kill chains, i.e. drop bombs way faster than we could. In 2023, the DOD announced a new replicator initiative to produce autonomous weapons, like

swarms of drones that could hit 1,000 targets in 20,000. hours, just a nice, normal, round number. And guess what? They achieved that lofty goal with the help of Palantir's Maven system and Anthropics Claude AI, which analyzed data to help select targets in the feckless fuckery that is or was or is again Operation Epic Fury. One of those targets, that Iranian girls school we bombed, killing between 175 and 180 people, a lot of them kids. See, that building used to be part of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps compound, but was fully separated since at least as far back as 2016. But we had failed to update the list of targets,

didn't give enough of a shit to check, and then kicked it to AI, which wasn't about to second-guess anything. So, thanks, AI. Way to find multiple ways to kill children. It's funny, you know. Funny's the wrong word. but it's ironic that our generation grew up being told that AI would hij

hijack our military systems against our will, leading to the deaths of innocent civilians. And yet that prediction ended up being more optimistic since they didn't have to hijack our military at all. We just let SkyNet have it, handed them the keys, except SkyNet is stupid and somehow also racist, which races are stupid, stupid, whatever. And that's where we are now, an administration openly in love with the military industrial complex, and the military industrial complex openly in love with the administration. After all, Trump doesn't even bother to justify his wars anymore. He just bounces from one to the next. By the time you watch this, we might already be at war with Cuba. And the arms industry is delighted by all of it.

In April, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Takedaqlet called the wartime demand, a golden opportunity right now, based on who's in government. Golden, huh? He's right to smile. His company stands to enjoy billions worth of new contracts, including the production of hundreds more missiles worth $13 million a pop. And unlike Modoc or the F-35, the missiles always seem to work. Hooray? I'd be more excited if it weren't for all the exploded kids, to be honest.

It's never been a better time to be a weapons manufacturer, which in turn makes it the worst possible time. to be everyone else, including Americans. Because to go back to this clip, we have 50 states, we have all these other people who are fighting wars, we can't take care of daycare. Again, well said, sir, it is staggering to think about where all this money could have gone. The cost of America's post-9-11 wars alone is about $8 trillion,

which would have been enough to convert the whole country to entirely renewable energy for $4.5 trillion, forgive all Americans credit card debt for $1.25 trillion, completely overhauled decrepit roads, bridges, and buildings in our 2000 largest cities for $1 trillion, and still have enough left over to give every single American a really high-end gaming computer. Mandatory gaming computers! Or, heck, it could have been dispersed into a $4.6 trillion investment

to bring U.S. transit up to world-class standards and reverse the entire world's land degradation for another 2. $1.6 trillion and provide $600 billion to compensate caretakers of American seniors for their unpaid labor. And still, more than compensate all Americans for the illegal tariffs imposed by Trump for another $175 billion. Not as good as the computers, but still neat. That doomed F-35 project that cost $1.7 trillion over its lifetime, that could pay off America's entire $1.7 trillion of student loan debt or end world hunger, $330 billion over five years. But why feed the world when you can send gorgeous planes falling out of the sky?

And what of say that estimated $200 billion extra budget request to continue our unwanted war on Iran. That could cancel nearly all of our country's $220 billion in medical debt. Or if you wanted, you could spend $168 billion of it to push every household in the United States above the federal poverty line and end homelessness in a for the entire year for another $30 billion to boot. Or you could fund universal pre-K for all-American four-year-olds for a decade. Who likes more, more than kids? If you answer Dick Cheney, you are correct. Or if you took that $200 billion and the $18 billion appropriated

for Trump's doomed Golden Dome missile defense system, you could cover nearly the entire annual cost of cancer care in America. Individual line items that make little sense are especially enraging. The newest intercontinental ballistic missile program by Northrop Grumman has a $264 billion price tag, an investment just large enough that, diverted, could prevent the next outbreak of a contagious disease like COVID. A documented $125 billion worth of secret bureaucratic waste over five years at the Pentagon could have ended malaria for $120 billion, and its leftover could have funded a year of the low-income house energy assistance program, which helps low-income households heat and cool their homes.

Eliminating dysfunctional weapons systems and outmoded bureaucracy could save the Pentagon a full $60 billion, which, combined with the $30 billion already wasted on five canceled weapons programs, five canceled weapons programs alone, could have more than covered the $85 billion cost of facility, maintenance, and capital repairs for all of America's public schools. And what of the $4.7 billion we've spent by April, ships in the Caribbean and kidnapping presidents.

Experts say that would be enough to fund Medicaid for half a million Americans for a full year. Or what about that 52 billion of unrequested line items allotted to the DOD by Congress for 2026? It could provide over 1 million community college students free tuition for 10 years. Cutting even one quarter of our 80 billion dollars spending on overseas bases per year could provide two years of free school lunches for all public school students. I could do this all day. Don't let anybody, anybody tell you that it is too expensive to pay for our welfare programs, for our schools and health care, for our roads and public transportation. They are liars or stupid or say it with me. Both! The military industrial

complex sure sounds scary, and it is, but at the end of the day, it's just a bureaucratic scam, a grift, a racket, flim flam, hockham, poppycock even. It negates every politician's concern about government waste and spending. It taints both political parties. And of course, in all of this, we haven't even talked about the biggest cost, the human cost. By one of the lower estimates, nearly one million people were killed directly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan since 9-11. Another 3.6 to 3.8 million died indirectly due to destruction ranging from the economic to the environmental. More recently, Iran and Lebanon have suffered more than 3,000 casualties each since the wars began this year.

For what? For an industry to self-perpetuate? An endless rollout of modocs that we have to pay for? For a capitalist system bafflingly fused with our military. For war to be the one thing it super shouldn't ever be a product. different from a Marvel film or the movie Battleship directed by Peter Berg future director of the new Call of Duty movie. Oh, I bet that's gonna be good. I gotta go. He's out. He's flopping around. War's bad, butt. Okay, so it's not Dwight D. Eisenhower. It's another warm bow.

Like, fuck. I need to bone up on my chemistry. Okay, hold on. Warbad. Warm bow. He's looking at me. Good. Thanks for watching everybody. Make sure to like and subscribe.

Leave a comment if you'd like and if you want to do what we would like, which is please leave a comment for us. We've got a podcast called Even More News. It's on this channel twice a week or where you get podcasts. You can listen to this show, Some More News, as a podcast, if you prefer,

we've got a Patreon.com slash some more news. Check that out if you would. Please like to do that. And we've got merch. Oh, we got the shirts with a guy on them. We got to get, I guess, we got to put more warmbos on shirts because now we got like nine of them. I don't know how many there are.

Or if, what do they do? The lore is, it's all over the place and kind of, we'll figure it out. We'll do a recap. You know what? Maybe it is Dwight D. Eisenhower. Maybe it just looks weird. Hey, Dwight.

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