Eisenhower called it the 'military-industrial complex.' It's vastly bigger now.

[DonViejo]

Here are four things to know about this transformation.

By Daniel Wirls June 26 at 7:00 AM

When two giant Pentagon contractors — Raytheon and United Technologies — proposed to merge into Raytheon Technologies, it hit the headlines. President Trump said he was “a little bit concerned” that the merger would dampen competition in the defense industry. Coincidentally, Congress was at the same time debating the administration’s request for substantial increases in military spending — particularly in weapons procurement and research and development.

We used to call the nexus of private interests and national defense the “military-industrial complex.” But that Cold War term no longer fits. “Industrial” does not capture the breadth of the activities involved. And “military” fails to describe the range of government policies and interests implicated. Over the past two decades we’ve seen transformations that include new government reliance on private security firms, revolutions in digital technology, a post-9/11 surge in the number of veterans, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). What we have now could be called a “National Security Corporate Complex.”

Here are four things you need to know about this transformation.

1. President Dwight Eisenhower coined the term, and it stuck

In the heyday of the Cold War, with corporate giants bending metal for the Pentagon in its titanic competition with the Soviet Union, President Dwight Eisenhower coined the phrase as part of a famous warning about the unprecedented “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.”

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/26/eisenhower-called-it-military-industrial-complex-its-vastly-bigger-now/?utm_term=.72e43036c808

[C_U_L8R]

1. Yeah now we have commercial concentration camps

How soon will these poor refugees be put into forced labor?

[beachbum bob]

2. american people didn;t pay attention to it then and not likely now either, way

too easily manipulated as we all know

[LastDemocratInSC]

3. Eisenhower originally called it the military-industrial-congressional complex

But the word "congressional" was edited out in the final version of the speech. He understood the system perfectly.