I'll Take Nukes for $1,000,000,000,000, Ike

During his 1953 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower shared the wisdom of 50 years of public service, his hopes and expectations for America, and issued a stark warning:

“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.”

I was reminded of Ike’s words when, last month, the Trump Administration announced that it will spend nearly $1 trillion on America’s nuclear arsenal over the next decade. That’s a one with 12 zeroes behind it. It is one million million dollars. This estimate has increased by 25% over the last two years.

Why? Among other things, the centerpiece of this plan, the Sentinel ICBM is 81% “over its baseline cost estimate,” according to Breaking Defense. More than $125 billion is earmarked to “cover potential additional costs in excess of projected budgeted amounts estimated using historical cost growth.”

For context, the entire 2025 federal budget is $7 trillion. That’s for everything the government (still) pays for. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2025 will be $1.7 trillion.

“We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations.”

The United States currently holds about 5,300 nuclear warheads. To put that in a human frame, that’s one warhead for every 27,000 Russian citizens. The Russian military possess a similar stockpile.

The government is planning to spend money we don’t have, and will have to borrow at increasing interest rates, to build and modernize an arsenal of weapons that by any rational estimation we don’t require and never hope to use.

This isn’t a budget line item, it’s a value proposition. Is this what we value as American citizens and taxpayers?

The United States is the only country to use a nuclear weapon in combat. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear deterence has been an article of faith; first in a bipolar US/USSR world, and now on a multi-polar globe with additional nuclear actors.

We should not unilaterally disarm. We should consider, though, what is necessary in 2025. The nature of conventional warfare is changing and offensive cyberweapons can disable and destroy critical infrastructure with keystrokes rather than missile keys.

“Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”

Even in Washington, DC $1 trillion is a lot of money. It should come as no surprise that a range of actors from the ‘military-industrial complex’ are hard at work issuing purchase orders to the Pentagon.

The Sentinel project was awarded to Northrop Grumman as a sole-source contract. The sub-contractors included names like Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, and Honeywell. The missileers don’t end with the big companies, though. According to a 2021 study by the Arms Control Association, nearly 400 lobbyists are dedicated to America’s nuclear stockpile.

Because it’s Washington, there is even a thinktank dedicated to the maintenance of our nuclear arsenal. The Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance (yes that’s it’s name) is funded by some of the same companies listed above, but also by several National Laboratories and large univerisities such as the University of California, the University of Oklahoma, and Texas A&M.

The ANWA also has a podcast.

In recent weeks, the amount of taxpayer dollars flowing to American universities has come to light given the Trump Administration’s threats to cut funding for political and ideological reasons.

In this instance, our concern shouldn’t be ideological, but moral. Based on my cursory research, it appears that government-funded programs and facilities are sending taxpayer money to a non-public organization who’s sole mission is to…increase federal funding of nuclear-related programs.

Eisenhower warned of this very dynamic:

“…the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”

Missiles into Plowshares

For argument’s sake, let us say we cut in half the amount being spent revamping our already too-large nuclear force. What could we do with $500 billion here at home? What should we do?

We could not spend the funds. Not print the money. Not shovel more cash into what begins as a cost overrun and ends as a stock-buyback or a heftier dividend.

Or perhaps the schoolhouse. Per a story in The Maine Monitor last year, the cost of school construction stands at $661 per square foot (more than twice what is was 10 years ago, but that’s an Ezra Klein column.) States like Maine use a complicated, interlocking mix of funding streams to build and refurbish schoolbuildings. Because of this, “many of the state’s 569 schools, districts must ask local taxpayers to shell out for construction or do without necessary repairs.”

Every dollar we spend digging a new silo in North Dakota’s dusty plains is one not being spent for the betterment of individual Americans or their families.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government.”

In Closing…

The story of $1,000,000,000,000 worth of spending on nuclear weapons is one of dozens, perhaps hundreds we could find in which a small cadre of politicians, lobbyists, and executives unleash a tsunami of federal funds in the name of ‘national security’ or the ‘greater good’ but in fact leave every American less safe, less wealthy, and less secure.

If we want to restore our liberal democracy’s lost legitimacy, with voters of all sections and beliefs, we must listen to Eisenhower’s words and act upon them.

“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

News and Notes:

I will be hosting a Substack Live with

Trygve Olson

and

Tom LoBianco

tomorrow at 4 pm Eastern. We’ll be discussing the second of Olson’s Rules for Dealing with Autocrats: Always Speak Truth to Power.

You can find the link to watch here.

Please take a few minutes to watch my terrific conversation with

Evelyn

on the myriad shortcomings of Democratic messaging.