In “The Psychopath Epidemic” I explained how the USA’s economy, since WWII, has been largely based on Military Keynesianism. Most people understand that the United States spends a lot of money on weapons, bombs, jets, army bases and personnel, etc. But what most fail to appreciate is how deep it goes. The impact of Pentagon spending goes way beyond guns and bombs. The Pentagon hands out hundreds of billions of dollars every year to American businesses for an enormous range of goods and services. Those businesses have come to rely on those dollars. The management of those businesses support politicians who support the spending. The spending requires war. Constant war. They don’t care who *wins* the war. Winning is beside the point. What matters is the spending.
In today’s news…
Open the Books has tracked the annual September spending bonanza for nearly a decade. Military spending has spiked every year, regardless of which party controlled the White House.
However, there has never been anything quite like September 2025, when $93.4 billion was spent on grants and contracts. Since at least 2008 — and presumably in history — no federal agency has ever spent so much on grants and contracts in a single month.
In the last five working days of September alone, the DoD spent $50.1 billion on grants and contracts. That’s more than the annual defense budget of countries like Israel and Italy. In fact, there are only nine foreign countries that spend that much on their military in an entire year!
https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/pentagon-should-focus-on-defense