Eisenhower’s Gift That Keeps on Billing

by Tammy Pondsmith

When Dwight D. Eisenhower left office in 1961, he didn’t just warn America about the “military-industrial complex”—he practically sketched out the business plan. It was the political equivalent of a parent saying, “Don’t drink too much while we’re gone,” and coming home to find the National Guard parked on the lawn.

Back then, the “complex” was modest: a few tanks, a missile silo here and there, some tasteful espionage. But it has since metastasized into a juggernaut with better lobbyists than God and a budget so bloated it makes Wall Street bailouts look like bake sales. The Pentagon’s annual allowance now runs north of $800 billion—roughly the GDP of Turkey—yet somehow can’t pass an audit. If a private company lost track of trillions, its executives would be in prison; in Washington, they get confirmed by the Senate.

Today, the complex operates like Amazon Prime for endless conflict: two-day delivery on drones to Ukraine, subscription renewals for NATO expansion, and a constant “recommended for you” feed of new adversaries. Remember Afghanistan? Twenty years, $2 trillion, and the Taliban back in charge. That wasn’t a failure; it was the ultimate loyalty program.

And when even that got boring, the defense industry innovated. Enter Space Force, a branch of the military dedicated to defending the cosmic void against…what, exactly? Asteroids? Klingons? Elon Musk’s ego? Still, the contracts keep rolling in—because in the world’s richest democracy, nothing screams “fiscal responsibility” like putting laser cannons on satellites.

Meanwhile, every new weapons system is a miracle of technology and a catastrophe of procurement. The F-35 fighter jet, billed as the Swiss Army knife of aviation, is so over budget and underperforming it could only have been designed by committee—or perhaps by a committee’s accountant’s dog. No matter: it’s “too big to fail,” and too politically entrenched to ever be retired.

Eisenhower, a general who actually understood the cost of war, warned us against this Frankenstein’s monster. Instead, we heard: “Make sure to franchise it.” And so the military-industrial complex has become America’s only truly bipartisan religion. Every fiscal year we kneel, not in prayer, but in appropriations.

The result? A nation that can’t fund universal healthcare but can fund universal surveillance. A country that debates food stamps down to the penny but rubber-stamps billion-dollar bombers. The complex is no longer just a warning—it’s our unofficial national pastime, right after football and pretending to fix infrastructure.

The real genius of the military-industrial complex is that it has managed to turn war into a subscription service. Unlike Netflix, you can’t cancel. And the price goes up every year.

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Tammy Pondsmith documents the Pentagon’s greatest hits and cost overruns with the dry amusement of someone who knows America will always choose a trillion-dollar jet over a working public restroom.

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Article 107 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice covers “false official statements.” As the name implies, Art107 News is Havok Journal’s satire wing, and you shouldn’t take anything published under this byline seriously. You should., however, mercilessly mock anyone who does.