Congressional defense leaders are working to deliver President Trump a $1.5 trillion military budget before the midterm elections. According to House Armed Services Committee chair Rep. Mike Rogers, the trillion-dollar military budget simply isn’t enough to expand the defense industrial base and deliver on the Pentagon’s big-ticket weapon programs.
The White House has made it crystal clear that its first defense policy priority is to spend more money. The 2026 National Defense Strategy reads like the fever dream of every war profiteer. In no case is this more explicit than in the description of the defense industrial base. The administration calls for “nothing short of a national mobilization—a call to industrial arms on par with similar revivals of the last century that ultimately powered our nation to victory in the world wars and the Cold War that followed.” But mobilization is beside the point; the goal is to further concentrate national resources among the wealthiest Americans.
President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress are hardly alone in this effort. Politicians of both parties and at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have long wielded national security dollars to implement a closet industrial policy crafted for military contractors, their executives, and their shareholders. After World War II, those best able to woo research and development funds from the Pentagon thrived. They became Cold Warriors, carrying the United States into the future and chasing technological superiority at all costs. High-tech sales boomed while the industrial heartland deteriorated, resulting in declining production of steel, machine tools, tractors, and more.
Read the full article on The National Interest.
