The Problem With Jon Stewart - The Military Industrial Complexity

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

On the 80th anniversary of D-Day, we reflect on how the US military saved democracy from fascism. This week, as the Senate marks up next year’s defense spending bill, Jon sits down with Bill Hartung of the Quincy Institute and Roxana Tiron of Bloomberg to investigate whether our arsenal is still bolstering democracy, both abroad and at home. From the active conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza to our rivalry with China, we explore the efficacy of U.S. strategy. Plus, we dive deep into the ballooning defense budget and discuss Jon’s attempts to shine a light on it all.  And you can also check out the tax tool shared with us by a resourceful listener here: https://us.abalancingact.com/2023-federal-taxpayer-receipt Follow The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on social media for more:    > YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@weeklyshowpodcast > Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weeklyshowpodcast > TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@weeklyshowpodcast  > X: https://x.com/weeklyshowpod CREDITS Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart Executive Producer - James Dixon Executive Producer – Chris McShane Executive Producer – Caity Gray Lead Producer – Lauren Walker Producer – Brittany Mehmedovic Video Editor & Engineer - Rob Vitolo Audio Editor& Engineer Nicole Boyce Researcher - Catherine Nouhan Music by Hansdle Hsu — This podcast is brought to you by: ZipRecruiter Try it for free at this exclusive web address: ziprecruiter.com/ZipWeekly   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, everybody, and welcome once again to the weekly show with John Stewart, the podcast that happens once a week because of, well, that's the title. Obviously, I host the Daily Show also once a week. None of this makes any sense, people. None of it will make any sense. But I'm delighted. Hopefully we will have a lovely conversation again. You remember last week, we sort of talked about the soft threats to democracy rather than

the autocracies and the authoritarian's and the demagogues, just the way that democracy functions and what role that plays in making us vulnerable. And today's episode, oh, are we diving into the mama bear of all soft corruption that perhaps puts our democracy at risk? The military industrial complex, I was struck when I was watching all the Normandy celebrations, there was this, you know, kind of exaltation that we had saved democracy through military might. And I think there's there's really no question that that is what occurred during World War II. But I think we may have learned the point perhaps too well and have taken that idea of military intervention as the tip of the spear for any interest for the United States, controlling interest, shaping the world

and the way that we want to and making it more democratic through this incredibly gigantic and perhaps bloated military machine that we've created and then exported to all of these countries. And we're going to talk about two things, really. One is strategy. Is our strategy of military intervention, whether it be Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Ukraine, all these ways that we intervene militarily, is it an effective strategy for protecting American interests, for spreading democracy, for spreading freedom? Is that really the way that any of that is supposed to be done? And the second part of it is more logistical, which is the opaque nature of the multi-tentacled military, industrial complex.

I don't want to say beast. Would beast be the right? And I'm trying to think of octopus? Cracken. I'm going to go with Cracken is the metaphor. But a little bit of housekeeping from last week. I wanted to ask you guys, Lauren, are you there, Brittany? We are here.

Our fabulous producers, Lauren Walker, Brittany Mehmedevic. Hello, John. Was that, is that too fervent in introduction? No, I love it. Yeah. My parents will love it. All right. That's who it's for.

That's the only people I was for. Yeah. So we were talking about sort of the difficulty of tracking money and one of the disconnects with the American form of government is for taxpayers to have any real sense that the money that they're putting into the government has any efficacy for them, has any real effect on their lives. And Jane Mayer, who wrote the book Dark Money, brought up an idea by the New Republic's Michael Tamaski about tracking sort of this idea that your tax contribution is tracked. Am I correct? That that's actually a thing. Well, yeah, we got a ton of like really thoughtful comments from

listeners, but one person wrote in on Twitter that there actually is a website that you can put in, let's say, you know, how much you've paid in federal taxes. And it breaks down the percentage of you so you can see all the different buckets where your tax money is going. And it's and it's, and it's, fun to play with. They're going to link to it in the description of the episode. So basically, we demand that you listen to the episode and then read about it and then click links. But what's fascinating to me about it is, so this is based on a $15,000 tax contribution. The largest portion of it is healthcare. $4,000 of the $15,000 is to Medicare, Medicaid,

affordable act subsidies. So basically the largest share of your tax money goes to a thing that you still have to pay for. Yeah. You pay for it so many times. You just keep you pay for it to the government and then you pay for it on your own when you get sick and you can still go bankrupt if you don't have enough to pay for it. It's really fun. It's it's the first piece of insanity of our tax bill. Boy, right there, if you could disconnect that, that would be.

And then the next tranche is Social Security, which actually does have, I think, a real effect on people's lives, but not until you look like me. So you work your fucking ass off until you look like me

and then they say, have a sandwich on us. But you've been putting the money in the whole damn thing. time. And then the third one is defense. And the fourth one is interest. So we're down four layers before any of the shit that you might want you get from your tax money. Bunkers. It blows my mind. Yeah, it's mind boggling. But thank you to the Twitter follower who sent that to us really valuable and we also got word on there's a few other kinds of groups that are working on very

similar things. And so hopefully we'll get a chance to talk to them in the future. But today is really about for me the disconnect between the aims of American foreign policy, which is to spread democracy and stability and the actual effects of what our foreign policy have sown, which is oftentimes, I think more chaos and destruction. And so we have two, I think, really interesting guests and experts that can speak to that. And I think we'll get to them now. Would that be? Should I do that? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Come on. Who's better than us? All right. Here we go. Let's get them. Okay. So welcome, everybody. We've got with us today, Bill Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for responsible statecraft, which may or may not be an oxymoron, and Roxana Turan,

senior national security reporter for Bloomberg government. I want to thank you both for being here. The series is generally about sort of the soft threats to democracy that come from the kinds of corruption that occur in these larger governmental systems. And today's focus, military, industrial complex. We're going full Eisenhower on this bad boy. So we got a couple of things going on right now. We got the national defense authorization is, I think, being debated right now. But we also had the Normandy celebrations. And I was really struck by, obviously very moving, but this idea that we had saved democracy through our military intervention. And obviously you make the case that we did.

The question is, what then did we do with that saved democracy? And did we take the wrong lesson from World War II in that military might and those kinds of buildups are what keep the world safe for democracy. And certainly we have a lot of things. But I wanted to jump that premise out to everybody first. Did we take the wrong lesson from World War II in that? To a large degree, I think especially the Hawks who say every problem, it's military first. In World War II, we beat an aggressor.

It was one nation against another, convinced a warfare. our industrial might was a big factor, courage of our troops. And, of course, he was doing unspeakable things to the Jewish population. And he looked like he could make good on his threats to dominate the world. Even then, you know, Roosevelt had to do some work. There were the isolationists, America Firsters. A lot of people was like, well, that's Europe's problem. They didn't know how serious it was.

But I think, you know, it was a necessary war and it was appropriate to celebrate it. And we needed to get into it, to be fair, to the world. we needed to be attacked before we jumped in. Right. We were very reticent. We were arming Britain, I guess, and other areas, but we were not in any way jumping in until we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. Right.

It was late in the day. And some members of Congress didn't even want to arm the U.K. So there's really quite a sales that Rosal hit to do. But, you know, the problem is, I think a lot of people now, that's their template. That's right. But not every opponent is Hitler. They don't have that kind of power. Not every war is conventional.

So if you look at Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, although the rhetoric was used, you know, Saddam was Hitler, Putin is Hitler. The Axis of Evil under George Bush was kind of, you know, reminiscent of the Axis Powers in World War II. And I think part of that is motivational, but part of it, it changes your approach. And I think it, you know, they downplay diplomacy as appeasement.

And they often use the wrong tools to fight the war. So, yeah, I think in that sense, we've made the wrong move. I think we need an effective defense, but we have to be more careful about when we use it. It's got to be part of a more... Careful about where we use it. There's a bumper sticker. Careful. Careful about where we use it.

Let's talk about, you know, I was fascinated. The general military spending during World War II was, they say it translates into today's dollars to about $5 trillion. in spending. Over the same amount of time just recently, if you walk back, I guess, four or five years here in America, not in a global conflagration. We've spent almost $4 trillion on our military. Yeah, we have.

Which shows that we don't really have this judicious approach. There was this idea that we're very reluctant to use military force. We have 800 military bases projected around the world. That's probably more than twice the amount of embassies and consulates and all the other things there. The State Department budget is a pittance when you think about, you know, the defense budget might be around $840 billion. The State Department budget probably around to Bill's point, $50 billion in terms of that's our, hey, let's give the carrot. The stick is apparently much larger than the carrot. Is that a new phenomenon for us, Roxanna?

I think you're right about that. And in fact, the national defense budget is $895 billion. What? So, and it will be in the next fiscal year. That's what they're working on right now in Congress. But I do think that it's a very, I think the U.S. has a very complicated relationship with national security. Right. National security is an unassailable term for both Democrats.

And Republicans, you can't go against that. It's really hard. And that's in part for many reasons. But one, the budget, I think, it's very dry. But the reason the budget is so high to a largest extent is that personnel, people, cost a lot of money. And we have a lot of people in the military have a lot of trouble now recruiting people into the military because people have a different value system. They have different life goals. what the military is selling might not be as good for them. But anyways, go back to the cost of it.

And then you have this entire focus on high-powered weaponry, highly developed weapons, stealth fighters. Your smart weapons, your stealth fighters. And what happens is you only have a very handful of companies that can build them. They're the companies that basically cater to the government. They don't have many other customers. They're not commercial companies. And so, So it becomes this giant. Now those companies, you're talking about Raytheon. You're talking about the major contractors, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, bullying, general dynamics, and North of Grumman.

And those companies have gigantic lobbying efforts that go on in Congress. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress to get those contracts, to build those weapons. And we should make clear, out of that, 180, $890 billion defense budget, about half of it goes to defense contractors. You're talking about $400 billion, $450 billion that goes to these defense contractors. More or less. I mean, you still have money that goes on training and operations and logistics. And so that's also very, very expensive to do right. But the contractors, so you have this specific focus, but at

the same time, the bureaucracy at the Pentagon has grown significantly. I was just looking actually recently, just in terms of, you know, the defense authorization bill, for example, that you brought up. Yes. You know, during World War II, it was basically one page long. Now you have like thousands and thousands of pages and millions of dollars. During World War II, it was one page long? Yes. What did it?

It just said fund the war? Yes, basically, this is how much money would go to, you know, to aircraft. This is how much money would go to shipbuilding and all of that. And the rest just like happened, right? So things have changed tremendously since World War II. And the bureaucracy has grown the sort of the interest, you know, the congressional interest in defense has grown as well because all of these companies and not just the major companies, they have, you know, factories and facilities in specific districts. It's a job's program. It is.

The military industrial complex is a jobs program for many districts. And oftentimes those jobs are. much higher paid than other regular, you know, blue-collar jobs. And so they're very attractive. And so you get into a very hard time trying to cancel or cut money and programs because you always take money away from someone else in Congress. And so, and then you have the whole argument about how you endanger national security. And again, it's an unassailable term. At least this is what I have noticed in the years that I have covered this topic. So that's the complexity. Once the tentacles of this military industrial complex start to grow, you can't cut the jobs

because those jobs are purposefully spread out throughout a lot of different districts so that the money can be spread around really well. And people will argue not to do that. National defense is a very loaded term, so you can't do that. So this brings us kind of to the crux of the conversation, which is twofold, I think. One is strategic. is the money that we're spending actually holding up the goal of defending democracy and defending in many respects the interests of the United States?

So we have is our military industrial complex helping us accomplish those goals strategically. And the second part of the conversation is the mechanics and logistics of a department that is not transparent, is the only department within the United States government that has yet to pass an audit. So it's very opaque. We don't really know where a lot of this money goes. Sometimes the weaponry, as it was in Afghanistan, is just lost to history. Sometimes pallets of billions of dollars just kind of disappear. So let's start with the strategic one. Let's think about Afghanistan. Let's roll that back. Afghanistan was attacked by Russia in the 80s. So the United States, in our wisdom and defensive democracy, helped the Northern Alliance and the warriors of Afghanistan

fend off the Russians. And we sent them a ton of military equipment. And we sent advisors over there. And we trained them. And they helped to bog the Russians down. And it bled Russia's war machine and their economy and oh, how successful we were, they were repelled. And then we forgot about Afghanistan. And somehow all the people that we had trained morphed into al-Qaeda, they attack us. And we end up having to go into Afghanistan and not only taking it over, but holding it for 20 years spending tons of blood and treasure on this place that no one really has any sense of where it is, why it's strategically important. And I guess the point is, aren't we caught in kind of

a loop where we are almost creating through our interventions the kind of instability that then we have to go back into and intervene in? Yes, to a large degree. Unintended, but it seemed like a logical thing. you know, we're arming these people expel the Soviets, but a lot of the aid went through Pakistan, and they tended to give it to the most extreme elements within Afghanistan. And then you had people like bin Laden, who was, they were recruiting foreign folks to go in there and fight. And so, you know, they said as much many of the extremists, first the Soviet Union, then America. So even as we were arming them, they had rhetoric about coming after us, But we felt that the defeating the Soviets was more important.

So there's kind of this sense of short-termism. You know, this will work now, but what's going to happen, five, ten, 15 years from now? So there was first kind of not really checking who our alleged friends were. And then there was, okay, if you can disrupt al-Qaeda, do you really have to dislodge the Taliban, which has a lot of nationalist support there? So, you know, some people say, well, a short intervention might have made sense, but a 20-year war did not.

And of course, the Washington Post showed that about 10 years in, many of our military folks knew we were losing, but they put a happy face on it. Well, it almost seems like how could you not lose? How can you go over to a land that is inhospitable? I remember going over there and thinking, oh, this is like fighting a war on Venus. This was probably, I'd say, five years into the war. Everything in the United States was segregated. If you went anywhere, they were in large military caravans.

There was very little integration within the community. communities. And so you very clearly were trying to place this foreign force into a country and hold it together. But I guess my point is we did the same thing with Russia and communism in Vietnam. We did the same thing with a military battle to hold back the forces of communism or to hold back the forces of jihadism or to hold back the forces of. And not only has it never been successful in the long term, it has bled the will of the American people. You know, how can we impose military solutions on other people's cultures and beliefs? But I think also, John, we have to take into consideration that the military, in large part,

right, they could give, you know, the advice and consent to the commander-in-chief, to the president and to Congress. But in large part, the military is being used as a tool. And it's being used as a tool by the politicians, you know, whoever is in the White House and whoever is in Congress. And, you know, they will tell you that they will do what they're told to do. Well, that's terrifying. Well, that's what they would tell you. And the other thing is, don't we have any other tools?

Does anybody have, you know, let's go into the garage. It seems as though every time we find ourselves in a situation where we think we have to defend American values and democracy, the only tool we seem to have is force amplification and projection of American power. Well, sometimes the State Department is just used as an adjunct to clean up the mess of the intervention. Also, for example, when Bush went into Iraq, they purposely got rid of people who knew about the Middle East because they thought they'd be. Yeah, because they thought they'd be soft. They'd be too close to the regimes. So instead, they put a 25-year-old Bush supporter to redo the Iraqi currency, you know, things like that. So it's almost designed to fail.

I think it must be designed to fail and keep things going. But it can't be that cynical. I guess, you know, in Vietnam, I always wondered how many people were true believers that somehow Vietnam was the crux? of the free world's defense against communism, and how many people understood that this was a cynical exercise in American power? Yeah, I think it's always a mix. I think the problem is the dissenters, the people who want to go in a different way, get squeezed between the two, between the true believers and the kind of profiteers. So their voices often don't come out for many years, and even though

it's not that satisfying to be correct after everything's gone south. All right. Let's hold that there. We shall be right back. Okay. Let's jump back in. Why is it so consistently? And Roxanna, maybe I'll get your insight on this.

Why do we consistently make the wrong choice and then after some reflection, make the exact same wrong choice again a decade later? I just think there's like maybe a lack of understanding of, I guess, geopolitics and history in large part as well. I mean, you know, Afghanistan is the best example of that. So I think in large part, the U.S. and particularly the U.S. military is very reactionary. They don't, you know, they react to the situation in front of them. They don't, you know, it's not prospective, right? So I think I think you have, you have lots of that, you know, that kind of, I guess, take to conflict, right? And also, like, I think it would be fair to say that the U.S. hasn't won any wars, right, since World War II.

And it's striking that there have not been more apt lessons from that. Well, not only have we not, you know, what you would consider kind of the win, the battleship, you know, and everybody goes out and they sign the peace treaty. And then we go. And again, not only did we take the wrong lesson, I think, from World War II, I think the Marshall Plan post-World War II also gave America the wrong impression that we can throw a bunch of money at other countries and build them up in a more freedom and democratic and United States friendly image. and we can control the world, not just influence it, but control it to some extent. And so we can look at our interventions. You know, Iraq and Afghanistan, it's been estimated that that created probably 40 million refugees. What do those 40 million refugees do? Well, they sow instability in all the neighboring countries that they go in there.

So now, not only are we defending democracy and defending American interests, we're actually creating more chaos within that region. And then you flip that with, you know, we're all talking about military intervention. What about weapons sales? We sell to over a hundred countries, some of them who are at war with each other. Yeah, well, the, you know, the slogan, you know, democracy or autocracy really falls apart when you look at arms sales, arming Saudi Arabia, army Egypt, army in the Philippines, are we Nigeria. and the reasons are, well, we're fighting, there's reasons. We're fighting terrorism and so forth. But often those cause instability. They enable slaughter. They hurt the U.S. reputation in the world.

But the flip side is, well, you know, it actually keeps our prices down because we're producing more weapons, better scale, and we're going to work better with foreign militaries because our weapons will talk to each other. And, you know, that kind of textbook argument often falls down in the actual reality of what we're doing. There's actually a bureau in the state department. It's it's volume. This is a volume business. Well, actually there's a there's a bureau in the Pentagon that the bureau that brokers these things and they sort of measure their success by how many deals they made, which is really not the way to do it, you know. So there's basically, this is like Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. And there's a bunch of guys in the Pentagon and they've got a big billboard and they're like,

always be closing. And then they, you know, the, the winner gets to keep his job and a set of stake knives. Well, that's more the State Department, actually. Weapons sales go through the State Department in Congress. The Pentagon has obviously, yes. The Pentagon kind of is logistics. It's the logistics part of it. Yeah. So the State Department, not only do they have the smaller budget, but a lot of that budget is spent on them figuring out what our weapon sales will be. It's that we're not even using the soft power to the extent that we're funding it. Some of that funding is going to figuring out how to funnel weapons. Yeah. And, yeah, there is a human rights bureau.

Guys, you're bumming me out here, man. You're bumming me out. We'll come up with a happy ending, but it'll be after the podcast. All right, yeah. The human rights bureau in state often makes good recommendations, but they get overridden by either other parts of state, the Pentagon, because of, quote, pragmatic reasons. When there's pragmatic people often get us in the most trouble, you know,

the so-called pragmatic people. So let's talk about this because, so the United States, the whole idea of the United States is that we are exporting democracy. We are exporting freedom. We are exporting a philosophy of human existence that is more actualized than these autocracies. But democracy doesn't seem to be as vital a product

for the United States to be selling as bombs. It seems like bombs are our most popular sales item. if you look on the Amazon rankings. Yeah, well, there's a couple of things. One is the state of our democracy. We probably need to import one before we export one. You're saying we've got to live up to it first before we can, we got to polish it before we can sell. Yeah, and we're kind of heading in the wrong direction, it seems.

And then, you know, Obama is a concrete thing. You can make it. You can do it to, you know, foster democracy, even if that's your intention, is a very difficult thing to do. I've heard people say America is great because America is good. Is the idea that no matter what we sell, no matter where we put it, it has to be for the greater good because it's us. We're a shining city on the hill. We wouldn't sell weapons to be used in nefarious causes because we're us.

Well, I think a lot of the ideals of America would make sense if we could better live up to them. And there's certainly been positive things done. But yeah, I think a lot of people feel like we're the good guys. And the military is almost like a form of foreign aid. We're helping out these folks. And they don't look so much at the downsides. And you've heard the term peace through strength, right? It's they talk about peace and the strength part is the weapons, right?

But do we believe these strategies are working, I guess, would be my, you know, there are very few metrics that you can place on if these strategies are working. But if one of the metrics is military might not being needed for many interventions, well, we're failing that miserably because I think I read something somewhere. There's been only 11 years in American history where we haven't been at war. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. You know, when you did your interview with David Petraeus, I believe you kind of walked through what a disaster of Iraq was. I think his answer was, what, we're not supposed to try. Right.

And the answer is yes, that was not the thing to try, you know. That's what I meant by, when I was talking to David Petraeus, I said, is America a bit too cavalier when it comes to these interventions and not taking into consideration the catastrophic effects that our militaristic policy may have on those areas? And he said, well, you know, if it weren't for us, we wouldn't be, you know, as successful. I said, well, where are we successful? Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, where, and he goes, well, I think certainly World War II. And I was like, if the last thing we can point to that was a smart, effective use of our military force is World War II, how in God's name have we not changed or shifted policy or direction? Or is this just the inertia and status quo of this giant machine has a gravity of its own? I think it's ideological and there's profit to be had.

I think that notion of America, peace through strength, we're the strongest nation in the world. If we pull back, you know, the kids in the other countries aren't going to behave. You know, all that is very strong. And I think, you know, even, you know, Trump supporters, a lot of them, they like the fact that he was beating up Jet Bush and Hillary about Iraq, even though during Iraq it wasn't clear where he stood. and some of the vets who voted for him, I think they thought he was an anti-war president. So on the one hand, there's that skepticism. On the other hand, some people feel like,

yeah, I'm taking it on the chin, but at least I'm part of the strongest country in the world, kind of part of their identity, you know. Is there any kind of incentive that we can use for the military or the people making decisions for the military that could give us a lighter footprint? I mean, how are we supposed to sustain as a country 800 bases and a force projection all over the globe and into space.

I think one of the bigger test cases, at least in my opinion, would be Ukraine, right? Okay. And that's where I think it's important for the United States to prove its might, to prove its democratic values, and not actually have, you know, U.S. troops on the ground there. I think that is one of the bigger tests in terms of seeing, you know, sort of all the elements of power for the United States, not just, you know, a military operation. And I'm not exactly sure how it's going to turn out, given that, you know, in the House of Representatives, which is run by Republicans, there is a strong reluctance to help out Ukraine. There's a strong reluctance to put money into weapons that are, in fact, needed for the war there. Well, but isn't some of that less about who are we actually allied with? I think there's many people on the right who would suggest, actually, we're allied with Putin.

He believes more in our, you know, woke versus unwoke ideology. He is a defender of Christian orthodoxy. So why would I back Ukraine when really politically I'm aligned with Russia? Yeah, but they're basically taking the autocratic side. they're on the side of autocracy, right? Which we do all the time. Yes, we do like to prop up strongmen. I mean, we give all those weapons to Saudi Arabia.

Yes, that is absolutely correct. Well, that's why Ukraine is sort of a model. There, we're helping somebody repel an invasion. Saudi Arabia, we enables an invasion. Correct. Which was quite damaging. So if there were more consistency, that would be huge. In that sense, also Ukraine, there's much for transparency.

every time they send them a bunch of weapons, you get a list of what they're sending and how many. In the case of Gaza, the president hit 100 deals by going under the threshold to report to Congress. Because I think whatever he says about supporting Israel, somewhere he understands that this is, you know, embarrassing to support this kind of killing, you know. Do they understand it's embarrassing? Because they, as you said, they just keep doing it. I mean, look, there are two avenues to go down here. One is moral. which I absolutely object to the way that American power has been used in that situation morally. But the other is strategic. Are our interventions effective strategically to the idea of strengthening democratic values and strengthening American interest around the world? And I think strategically, I would say, morally repugnant, strategically, seemingly dumb and ineffective. It's definitely been ineffective, John. I mean, that's what I'm saying. I think Ukraine would be a great sort of test case to see whether all of this coming together, where this would

function, whether, you know, we can support democracy, whether we can export our democratic values to a country that is fighting basically an autocrat who invaded them. It's basically everything that the United, that the United States stands again. I'm not suggesting that there is never any room for military intervention or that sometimes it's absolutely necessary and it has been forced. But what it does seem is that, you know, let's look at American strategy over these past years. So the one strategy is we send all of our troops into an area where they're utterly viewed

as a foreign invader or hostile organization being within there. We fight there for 10 years, 15 years, or we take it over. and then try and hold security there. And those just don't seem to work. But the one thing we don't really seem to try is focusing more on statecraft, on diplomacy, on economic incentives, and a much lighter military footprint that, when necessary, can be used to deter.

Well, yeah, exactly. I think as Roxanna noted, it's hard to shift even to build the right well. for that strategy because of the port barrel politics. But the other thing is, you know, every generation there's miracle weapons. Electronic battlefield in Vietnam, the Star Wars impenetable shield. Revolution of Military Affairs achieved some things, but it wasn't relevant to fighting, you know, non-state groups in Iraq and Afghanistan. So there's that thing.

And I think now what we're going to see is a clash between the kind of Silicon Valley high-tech folks. They see Lockheed Martin as this dinosaur this be replaced. And so in theory, they look at AI and technical advances as the new frontier in weaponry and military. We're going to employ the same strategies for our military, but we're going to do it through Siri as opposed to patent. Well, they think we can overwhelm China with technology and swarms of drones or at least intimidate them. But that assumes China is going to sit on their hands instead of, you know, I mean, it's kind of a recipe for an arms reason. And it's a little bit of kind of Silicon Valley mindset. It's like, well, hey, if we can live forever and colonize space, why can't we build weapons

that'll put us back in the driver's seat like we were, you know, maybe in World War II? But see, this is what's so troubling to me, Bill and Roxanna. You know, we come out of Iraq and Afghanistan and there's sort of a humbling, a feeling of, boy, that was 20 to 25 years where we bled out so many of our most valuable resources. and to what end? And what is the lesson that we can take from that? Oh, let's just pivot now and militarize against Russia and against China. And Russia, yes, they invaded Ukraine.

And so that's a very different situation. But with China, isn't a lot of this rhetoric just trying to militarize an economic rivalry. What exactly is, are we trying to achieve militarily? against China, it really seems like, you know, they're one of our best customers. We're one of their best customers. What exactly are we militarizing? So I think with China, it's, it gets a little bit more complicated, right? So like China's been flexing its muscle in the Pacific in the South China Sea. It's going to be a big test actually for the United States strategy here in policy, right? where we're trying to work more on the diplomatic side with the Philippines and try to build up our

allies in the region to basically curb any of China's incursions. But who are we to curb all of China's incursions, I guess, you know, when our interests are over there, I don't think they're high moral ones. It's to allow the allies to do that themselves rather than have the United States be involved. At the same time, China has been... Proxy, like a proxy war. Basically, China has been building up its military. It has way more, probably not the best quality,

but it has way more ships than the United States, which is a big deal for the Pacific. It's putting a tremendous amount of money into their weaponry, into hypersonic weapons, where the United States, unfortunately, because it's trying to test out all this, you know, high-tech, it's not working out for the United States as well as it's working out for China and Russia.

You know, they're developing their nuclear arsenal is getting bigger. Space, you know, they control a lot of things in space as well. So you have China's intent in this area, right? So it's only logical for the United States to say, well, we have to be prepared in case they employ all these tactics and weapons. Well, it depends. You know, prepared for what? I mean, China's not going to attack us. Right.

So it's really what happens in the region. I mean, everything is about Taiwan at this point. Right. And I think for Taiwan, for 40 years, we've kept the peace by having an agreement about how we treat the status of Taiwan. That's changing. I think that's more important to preventing a war than war weapons. And then we do the war games about Taiwan. It's devastating for all concerned. And a lot of the war games don't even talk about what if it goes nuclear. So I think there's got to be a defense system to relate to what's happening in the Pacific. But I think we're too forward-based. There's too many people saying, oh, yeah, we can win. this war as opposed to how do we, you know, deter. So I think that it's a little skewed. And certainly, you know, in Congress, this committee against the Communist Party, you know, the hawkish head of that is going to work for a venture capital firm. So, you know, I mean, look, our Secretary of Defense worked for Raytheon. I mean, there is a revolving door around those contractors and around those things. But I think there is also now, and, you know, in large part, Elizabeth Warren has

fought very hard to try and sort of slow down the revolving door. So there's, there's, you know, they have to basically recuse themselves for any kind of business on the companies that they, that they worked on or worked for. It's the same thing in lobbying as well. You know, there's a cooling period. So, so there are some, you know, reforms that have been put in place. that have straightened things out a little bit more. I mean, what's missing is, and Eric Lipton did a thing of the Times, a lot of the military folks are going to work for venture capital firms that are funding this tech, and there, for the moment, outside of that regulation, I know Senator Warren wants to broaden it to include

them. So there's a, you know, there's still kind of a loophole that exists. And no one is suggesting the United States be naive about the various threats, but it does seem as though much of what we're doing is trying to protect our economic supremacy. And my position is that these wars, oftentimes amoral, are also strategically at odds with protecting American economic supremacy and keeping those supply lines flowing. But I want to get to in our final little bit here, it gets to the next stage of this, which is the military's attitude towards any kind of oversight when it comes to this $880 billion budget and when it comes to the lack of efficacy for a lot of our efforts.

Okay, let's just, we're going to take just a very small break. Let's jump back in, and I want to talk a little bit about they failed a bunch of audits, right, for the military. They failed their audit for the sixth year in a row last November, and it's a very likely that are going to fail it again this November. Correct. Just to put it in context, some of the services actually have a clean audit.

So it's working its way up into sort of more oversight. But you're talking about $3.8 trillion in assets for the Pentagon and $4 trillion in liabilities. So it's a lot. And they didn't do an audit for a long time until they were pressed to do it. Right. So I think there's, you know, there's a lot more work to be. done, but I would push back a little bit on the fact that they are a little bit opaque, but I think there is significant oversight over the Pentagon. As far as, you know, it's sort of like

a little bit of like the wolf watching the chicken coop. But, you know, Congress does do a lot of oversight. And there's like a lot of well-intended lawmakers out there that are trying to keep the Pentagon honest and open and trying to make sure that that money isn't wasted. But, there's also obviously a lot of parochial interest in Congress, and that makes, you know, that makes oversight or preventing waste of money a lot harder as well. You know, there's conflicting forces, but there's also smaller things or less known things like fewer contract officers seeing what they're doing or not enough information to avoid price gouging, all of which is being discussed in Congress, but then you come up against, well,

yeah, as long as I keep getting a piece of the F-35 in my district. So that's got to be battled out. And then it's just priorities. I mean, the F-35 works, what, 20% of the time? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's currently stacked up in a tarmac in Lockheed Martin Tarmac because they can't be, delivery cannot be accepted on them because the software doesn't work. So, yeah, it's the F-35.

And it's, what was it, $1.7 trillion? $1.7 trillion. Yeah, it's like the nominal GDP of Russia over its 66 year lifetime. Right, right, a long time. And we had a child tax credit that cost $94 billion to the child tax credit that reduced child poverty by 30%. You know, we couldn't keep that going as a country. And yet we have this $1.7 trillion boondoggle and they can't, what, get the Sonos to work on it? Like the software doesn't work.

So basically. Exactly, just to build the F-35, right, just to design, research it, produce it, it's over $400 billion. $1.7 trillion is over its entire lifetime, which requires a lot, you know, logistics, maintenance, all of that. So you have all of that in. It's a flight. So obviously, it's a stealth fighter jet, and no one else in the world has, has this amazing technology that they're trying to promote with this F-35. But it is, in fact. It is, in fact, a flying computer. I think people don't realize that. And so they've had,

you know, software refreshes that need to be made for the aircraft to be current. And they're stuck. They're stuck on the latest refresh. And they cannot, the Pentagon cannot accept, you know, the aircraft because it's not doing what it's supposed to do. They can't use it for combat operations. They can't use it for combat training. That's unbelievable. I mean, I think I would like the government to worry about our lifetimes, not the lifetime of this dysfunctional hairplane. I mean, you've seen. I mean, it was a tremendous, you know, crisis when John McCain decided to cancel the F-22 fighter jet program. He would call it a corroding queen because it was corroding, literally, a fresh aircraft that was dealing with corrosion that we had already

spend billions of dollars on. And by the way, you talk to any of the guys that are on the ground. They love the warthog. Yes, absolutely. They don't give a crap about this 1.7. They love the ward hawk. They want the A-10. They want it flying low and they want it dropping as much ammunition as they can to clear the way. But I want to show you this is, and we'll wrap up. I had an opportunity to speak with the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks. I did a little forum out at University of Chicago for this group of kind of rag-tag military reporters called Warhorse, started by this fellow named Thomas Brennan who had served and felt like the rank and file of the military was not being well served by a lot of the military reporting. So he started this warhorse, and it's a

phenomenal organization. They do such good reporting and such quality job. So they asked me to come out. I really didn't prepare it. And I was talking to the Deputy Secretary of Defense. And I just asked about the failing of the audits. And I want you to, I want you to listen, I think, to what I felt like was a remarkably defensive for no reason, attitude about even the prospect of being questioned on this. But don't you think that that does speak to the larger point that we're trying to get at, which is good journalism uncovers corruption?

And... Okay, I mean, good journalism doesn't cover corruption, but I'm not sure these two things are linked. An audit is not... Oh, but they are. Okay, so you need to explain to me. Do you understand what an audit does and the degree to which it is linked to the question that you're asking? I believe so. Okay, go ahead. I don't mind...

I don't mind... I don't mind learning. No, I don't mind learning. So what I would suggest is that the audit that they have in the military doesn't really look at whether or not there's efficacy, it's just whether they got delivered the thing that they ordered. And there are-

That is any audit. That is true. But generally, those audits aren't $400 billion for Raytheon and $1.7 trillion for a plane that doesn't seem to be doing. Like, there is a lot of waste fraud and abuse within a system. Audits, waste fraud, and abuse are not the same thing.

So let's decompose these things for a moment. Then please educate me on what the difference. Sure. So an audit is exactly what you just described, which is, do I know what was delivered to which place? Right. The ability to pass an audit or the fact that the DOD has not passed an audit is not suggestive of waste fraud and abuse.

The conversation goes on to the point where she says to me, you seem awfully concerned about the money. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, first of all, he was amazingly condescending for a public official. And I think it's because she was trying to muddy the waters. But, yeah, the audit itself isn't what causes the corruption, but it can enable it because if you don't know how your money is being spent, how do you know if it's given to being ghost companies or whatever?

Well, that's what I was trying to say to her is. If you don't know where $400 billion is, how do you know it's being spent effectively or the way it was intended? I mean, at the very least, you can argue that there's a waste, because if you can't keep track of where things go and whether they're being delivered and how many, there is a very strong chance that there is a waste. It's just logical. I believe they're spending it on what and in what way, how much is wasted.

Much harder to figure out without that. But, I mean, if we had clean books, we get all the receipts, it could still be a problem if we're building the wrong things. We have the wrong strategy. That's right. But if you're a care about at least knowing how your money spent, then you need that. But I was more struck by, to be quite frank, the attitude of the audacity. Now, look, she's an expert there, and obviously I am not.

So the frustration that she might have with somebody walking in and going, where's that $850 billion? But to be fair, it's taxpayer money. Some of it's my money. So when you say you seem awfully concerned about it, yeah. And I think we could be using this better. But what really bothered me was this idea that even questioning it is seen as a host. still act, that given the history of our interventions, given the record of corruption, given the record of ineffectiveness, given the record of a $1.7 billion plane program where

the software doesn't work, where the software in the VA, the Veterans Administration, doesn't talk to the software and the DOD. Even the idea that you would question that was viewed as how it almost felt like the McCarthy hearing where it was on the reverse where she was saying to me, sir, at last, have you no decency to say to me that we don't know where the money is and that that's corrupt? Well, I think there's an undertone of, it's an anti-democratic strain. It's like, we know about this. You don't know about this.

You don't have standing to ask about this. Just trust us. And given everything you've described, why would you trust it? And now she's a big advocate of going all in on tech, how it's going to be cheaper, better, we're going to do it quicker. That has to be proven. It doesn't fit the history of what we've done. I mean, the F-35 has been going on for 23 years.

She wants to build new drones in 18 months. I need some more proof that that's doable, you know. And that the strategy that, that they're going to be deploying in terms of making these weapons seems considered, not just from a military standpoint, but from a more balanced standpoint of statescraft and other things. Oh, Lord, help us. They had a hearing on this commission that wants to build more nuclear weapons, and I

made the mistake of watching it. Most of the members didn't ask about nuclear strategy. They said, hey, there's this nifty thing that's built in my state, don't we need more? which was kind of shameful. I mean, and then Senator Warren said, oh, by the way, what's this going to cost? And basically the head of the panel, who used to lobby for North of Grimmons said,

cost is no object. So they didn't debate the strategy. They didn't debate the cost. And yet they're getting a little bit of traction. But you see North of Grumman has the contract to basically modernize the one leg of the nuclear triad, the ground base, that's a program called Sentinel.

And it's already over cost. and delayed. The Pentagon is actually reviewing it. It's a non-McCurdy breach, basically, when it goes over the threshold and trying to redo it. So obviously. Well, Roxanna, don't ask about it because they'll get very mad at you. But I do think, like, I do think maybe the Deputy Secretary took issue with the use of the word corruption because it's reminiscent of, you know, you know, worst times for the Pentagon when corruption was indeed a lot, a lot bigger, right? Well, I used word waste, waste, fraud, and abuse. But that's still happening. They're still spending, you know, 4,000 percent above cost for certain items. But beyond that, you're talking about an organization

where, with all the money we're spending, soldiers often live in very poor quality condition housing. And there's also food insecurity on the basis for enlisted people. So if that's not corruption, I don't know what is. You brought up the defense authorization bill. The House Armed Services Committee They made it a priority to boost the quality of life of troops. They are proposing a 19.5% pay increase for the junior enlisted people. They are making changes to allowances so that there's no, you know, no more foot insecurity. But it is, it is astounding that you have generations of people, right, who are volunteering for the military who live in really bad conditions, you know, moldy, moldy. you know, housing.

Sure. They don't have enough money to, to buy food. Or, in your, you know, you, you were a big advocate for, you know, for the burn, the burn pit, you know, victim, they come back and, and they, they get sick from their deployments. Sure. And don't get the, the care that they should be getting. So there's a lot, you know, there's a lot of very good things that I think the Pentagon

and the Veterans Affairs, you know, are doing. but there's also a lot that is astounding, right? Like, how does this happen? Is there anything here in a solutionary sense? How can we bring more attention? Because it feels like this all survives in opakness. It all survives in the dark. And there doesn't seem to be, to Bill's point, an enormous appetite to really talk out strategy

and talk out efficacy of mechanics and the law. logistics and all those other things. It has a lot more to do with the profits and the sending weapons overseas and keeping that circus running. So how do we bring more attention to it? Because that feels like the only way that you can curb some of these baser instincts in this military industrial complex. I mean, I think I'm going to make the case for journalism, right? I think like reporting is extremely important. I think it really is. It's on us. In large part to blow this open and to explain to people how things work and why they work a certain way and what could potentially change. And I also think in large part, right, I mean, I don't know.

I don't have a solution for Congress, but I think you do have a few in Congress who are very well intended who want to blow this open. But I think they need a lot more support. They need their voices amplified. And unfortunately, so far, they get a little bit drowned out by the rest. Do you feel supported, Roxanna, in your newsroom in the way that they amplify your stories on it? I do. I really do. And I think they do encourage us to, the more we blow open, the better. And the more impact we have that can change the situation, the better. Bill, I tend to think you're maybe slightly less optimistic on it, but what are your thoughts? Well, I think one problem is if Roxanna can confirm it is I think there's fewer people covering this than there used to be, right?

Oh, that's interesting. Also, when there's a big scoop, it doesn't seem to permeate the larger media ecosystem. Like, I just think part of it is the public. I think people, even people know some of this, feel like, well, what can I do about it? Right. You know, I mean, it's kind of a question of democracy to a certainty because almost every problem we have, we have a similar issue of are people going to take action? Is it going to be effective? Can they take on moneyed interest? So somehow people need to have, I think, a little more faith in themselves and probably more patience that these things aren't going to

change overnight. I remember, you know, I met some young folks some years ago who were working on a political campaign and they worked for a year and they said, well, yeah, we tried and it didn't work. Well, no, it didn't work. But, you know, you have to be in it for the long haul. I mean, I've done that. And, you know, frankly, if you just looked at the scoreboard, I'm kind of losing. Not at all, Bill. You're winning. But on the other hand, I think there is another generation to carry on. And I think there'll be a turning. There's always moments like when they rolled back Reagan's nuclear buildup or they push Congress to defund Vietnam. But if you look at the time frame, it's daunting.

So people really need to have a longer time frame. And also possibly a different way of looking at our role in the world. you know, that being the having the big stick is not necessarily a sign of strength, you know. Bill, I think that, boy, that gets to the exact crux of it. It's sort of that learning that perhaps the best way to spread democracy and democratic values and stability is not at the working end of a rifle. Let's get out of that World War II mindset. God forbid, there's another Hitler-type leader that takes over, and that has to occur again. and let's hope it never, never does.

But that can't be the strategy to go to for economic rivalries or any kind of incursion of a different ideology that has to be smarter than that. Also, I think about the troops. I think they're skilled, they're courageous, they're committed, but we can't ask them to do impossible things. But we make them do everything. When they were in Afghanistan, we made them do everything and in Iraq as well. You know, some of the isolationists about Ukraine said, oh, yeah, we need the money to militarize the border. Really? I mean, is that really where we want to go? You know.

Well, guys, I really appreciate the conversation. I may be coming to you guys again for we're having some trouble with the K2 veterans at the VA. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We're really getting down to the wire with it. So do you, how do you assess that the VA is handling the burn pits? So actually, they've done a pretty nice job of. of outreach and they've taken in more VBA and VHA claims up to about a million. So they've done a really good job down the line. Look, these bureaucracies are difficult. And I appreciate that once packed past, they really made an effort to implement it. It's unusual in that.

Generally, when the government agrees to a benefit, they create an antagonistic process for you to access it, whether it's a disability payment. or something else. Right, right. It's sort of this idea of we've designed a program to help people, and now we're going to put a lot of obstacles in the way of them to try and access it. So if you're a military contractor, man, the doors are open and it's parties, and it's everybody trying to get a hold of some of the delicious money stream that's coming

down the way. But if you're a soldier looking to access the benefits, they put you through the ringer. That process is utterly antagonistic. But I think one sign of hope is we've pretty much solved everything we talked about today. So now you can focus on that. Done. Thank you guys so much for talking. Bill Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft,

Roxanna-Toran, senior national security reporter for Bloomberg government. I really appreciate your guys' insight into this, and we'll keep checking in on it. Yeah, I'm glad we got to have this conversation. Same. Thank you. Beautiful. Those guys, I thought those guys were fantastic. So knowledgeable. Amazing conversation.

But kind of a downer. I was, you know, last time we got to this sort of nugget of solution that everybody got lit up about, this sort of felt like I think Bill summed it up with, yeah, I don't think that's going to happen. Here's what could happen. I don't think that's going to happen. I don't want to be more of a downer, but. Yes. What Roxanne was saying about journalism. So I used to be a national security reporter and the way of journalism then was you were very incentivized for clicks.

And it was an issue if you didn't get clicks. And national security, not too interesting. So we would have a chartbeat of all the stories. And my stories were never the most clicked. So I was told to start covering some other things like VR and crime so that I could keep my spot. And so I just, the fact that they said that there's fewer people covering this, like, it's not an accident. Holy shit, Lauren. I'm glad that she has the support she needs at Bloomberg, but it's harder and harder to find that support in journalism.

That's fascinating, Lauren. And if that's happening in like the blood and guts area of military reporting, I can't even imagine what's going on everywhere else. That's really stunning. But anyway, we open up the Twitter lines and Instagram lines to the listeners and the viewers. If you have any stories, let us know because your comments on the previous one were really helpful and led us into a lot of interesting directions. Yeah, on Twitter, we are Weekly Show Pod, Instagram, TikTok Threads. We are Weekly Show podcast.

And our YouTube channel is The Weekly Show at John Stewart. All right, guys. Well, that's all for this episode of the week's show. I want to thank, as always, lead producer Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mehmedevic, the man behind the glass, Rob Vitola. We have a new audio behind the glass, the cold boys. And as always, our researcher, Catherine Newin, who, without her, I would just say things that are just lies.

So thank you. Thanks to all. We'll see you guys next time on the weekly show. Bye-bye. The weekly show with John Stewart is. a Comedy Central podcast is produced by Paramount Audio and Bus Boy Productions.