Pres. Eisenhower gives dire warning: 'We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether saught or unsaught by the Military Industrial Complex' (Jan. 17, 1961)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY
Most people view the term "Military Industrial Complex" from the view of the primary definition of complex - "consisting of many different and connected parts".
It seems however, that Eisenhower intended that phrase to use the psychoanalytic definition of complex - "a related group of emotionally significant ideas that are completely or partly repressed and that cause psychic conflict leading to abnormal mental states or behavior". More of a dysfunctional mental state of the nation than an actual physical interaction.
It seems to me the two complexes reinforce one another. Something akin to Sinclair's observation: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."
But that is in interesting point that you make. I had never considered it from that angle before. Works either way for me. And even better together. Eisenhower: America's Derrida.
>It seems however, that Eisenhower intended that phrase to use the psychoanalytic definition of complex ...
No, he did not. [1]
While that's certainly an interesting thought as well as a unique angle, nothing I can find suggests that it was his intent.
Moreover, the usage of the term in context of the speech itself is evidence enough:
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." [2]
Eisenhower clearly used the term as if it were a concrete entity, not as an abstract reference to a psychiatric state.
The problem with most of these examples is that all of these "NSA contractors" are just giant multi-billion dollar revenue companies. I'm sure MSFT is an NSA contractor on one level, but most people would find it weird to classify Microsoft as "A NSA contractor".
This is just a consequence of powerful people happening to have a lot of money to invest and thus becoming board members for companies in domains in which they have expertise (policy).
So what you're saying is that they just "happen to support the NSA" while getting donations from those companies for other reasons?
I think America has gone too far with its "political correctness". This is why these days media people can't even say that politicians are lying anymore. They have to say words such as "misinterpreting the truth" or "made an error", and why people like Clapper or other law enforcement agents get away with committing "errors", as opposed to calling them what they really are - crimes.
Government contracting is a very large and lucrative business. The surveillance programs are large data pipelines that require datacenters, computing, storage and state-of-the-art analysis. Then, given the secret nature of the program, the bidding process is less strict as a matter of cost and hence more profitable.
if we were serious about the social benefit to having a failsafe black box that we can sometimes under extraordinary conditions retrieve intelligence from, then companies should be required to operate these programs (send data to that black box) without benefit, and over their protests, by law. they shouldn't be paid for it. it should be a burden.
It should be like taxes - companies should hate the burden, and try to avoid it, but in the end do what it takes because society has said that it's necessary. companies should certainly not receive transfer payments from the public in exchange for spying on them. I mean think about it, this means you are LITERALLY paying taxes, to be transferred over to a company and returned to shareholders of a company, where that company has received the transfer... so that it can operate a special level of secrecy... in order not to tell you... that they are spying on you. Which you paid for. I mean I get that you're covering the cost of the equipment, but this is about EXTRA payment.
I mean that is a level of absurdity that is beyond the pale. It is like handing a waitress a tip and saying, "this is for not telling me that you were spying on me." I mean, regardless of whether this creates a puzzled or a guilty look on her face, it is a pretty absurd transfer payment!! "Wait, what...you're paying me extra...NOT to tell you...that I'm spying on you?" - "Yep!! In my book, that's how you earn the big profit." Pretty absurd. You don't give companies profit for these programs. It's some burden they do out of civil responsibility and legal obligation, if at all.
It's also why a for-profit police force is a pretty bad idea. Some things are best left to a minimal government mandate, and not these artificial market forces.
By the same reasoning, criminals literally pay the police to lock them up or shoot at them. Isn't that crazy????? No, that's how taxes work. You don't get to pick and choose which government functions to pay for.
A clearer example than the server / tip is jury duty. It's not profitable for almost anyone with a job but for the most part we are forced to participate.
Yes, that's a good analogy. Most adults can see why being tried by a jury of your peers is an amazing difference between a modern democracy and fascism, so we "force" each other (ourselves) to participate, even though it isn't profitable, and we create a great public good as a result (a fairer system of laws, even if it isn't perfect. it's hard to want an alternative to a jury of your peers if you are being tried for some crime by the state.)
So in the analogy, the companies that are spying for the NSA are like the people participating in jury duty - and (if we agree that there is a social good toward having the black box of intelligence available under extraordinary circumstances) should be "forced" to (or compensated extremely minimally for it), like jury duty.
Being paid a windfall profit to do so would be as though people went out of their way to participate in jury duty, for personal profit. Obviously that would be a horrendous set of incentives for society. (i.e. creating legal cases just so people can participate in jury duty.)
having it be a chore and "forced" on people (by the social contract) and to a minimal extent, is much better.
(this is just assuming there is some social good to having this stuff be available at all, under extraordinary circumstances.)
It would be crazy, if criminals obeyed all the other laws and paid their taxes responsibly, as well as voted and participated in representative democracy. Which is why they don't.
Plus, to complete the analogy with our subject (which I mention explicitly) the police would have to be for-profit, which would be a terrible idea. But to answer your question, yes, it would absurd for criminals to vote in for-profit police that they choose to finance, and have shoot at them for profit.
The difference is that the public aren't criminals, and are protected by minimum sane levels of black-box surveillance for their protection, which they pay for via taxes. It's not supposed to be some profit-making activity. it's not "against" the public. the public aren't criminals.
The public aren't criminals, I agree wholeheartedly. The law (in the USA) probably says otherwise, but law enforcement isn't supposed to treat the public as criminals. That's pretty basic to the US's form of government.
The issue is that the FBI and DEA (with help from NSA) do treat the public as criminals. We've all done something wrong, or are going to very shortly, and they're gathering lots of information on all of us to ensure they can find that wrongdoing.
I think that's the issue. We, the public, are treated as criminals in all of these snooping programs. We didn't get to vote on it, the FBI and NSA went rogue, creating "secret" laws via secret courts that justify all the assumptions of criminality. We didn't get to choose.
Is corporate welfare somehow worse than individual welfare? I gather from the tone of your comment that you think it is, but this being the internet, tone is easy to confuse.
Individual welfare at least supports the more vulnerable and less well-off elements of our society. Large defense contractors have revenues in the billions of dollars, high level managers are likely millionaires, and they employ an entire army of upper-middle class workers.
The defense sector is mostly about providing welfare to the already rich and privileged.
Ok, but let's take it to a different industry. Are corporate farmers more or less deserving of government money than individuals?
Also, I'm not convinced that individual welfare accomplishes what you think it does. I don't think that just supporting the "more vulnerable ... elements of our society" is good at all. If we want to improve anything, they need to advance in society instead of merely being supported in it.
The "corporate" or the "farmer" part. One is a corporation, the other is a person working for and/or owning the corporation. Once you realize that corporate farmer isn't some magical combination the question is uninteresting. But, for the record - the farmer is an individual and is just as deserving (however much that is) as anyone else regardless of his profession. But we don't owe him that livelihood and aren't under and obligation to support his enterprises in that area.
As to "advance in society", it's pretty easy for (most of) us to take a two-day course in some flavor of the week and have a piece of paper that helps to do so. For someone working a subsistence job it's not so trivial. Many people may waste it but it only has to help create a few productive taxpayers to be a net win to all of us.
Entirely. It's a capitalistic no-no to support a failing corporation. Their IP and people will be subsumed under a new umbrella which will hopefully avoid the mistakes of the past (which might just include buying disaster insurance).
And, the people who do fall through the cracks of a rough transition can be taken care of by the humanitarian personal welfare service.
Corporations are much more to become total crooks - spending the last bailout money to hire lobbyists to bribe you to give them more. Imagine the outcry if welfare recipients were encouraged to tip...
It seems that the most powerful tool most people have in their debate toolbox is "you have a financial interest in X, so your opinion on X must be invalid". But this is a logical fallacy.
It's incorrect dismiss a study on the Widget industry just because it was performed by scientists from Widgets-R-Us. Who else is going to do the study? Who has more understanding of widgets than those very scientists? And in particular, why should we believe that the study done by Widgets-R-Evil is somehow more pure and worthy of consideration?
We don't live in a perfect boolean world, and "you have a financial interest on X" is a completely valid reason to dismiss everything you have to say about X.
And what's even more valid is the rationale implied at this article, that since only people with financial interest on X are defending it, it follows that X is bad and you should be against it.
Phrased more broadly - everyone has biases in their opinions. Make sure you know what their bias is and take it into account when listening to them.
Widgets-R-Us has a strong financial incentive to make their Widgets study as advantageous to them as possible. Widgets-R-Evil has a strong incentive to blast Widgets-R-Us's study as invalid and make their own study as negative as possible, since their reason for existence (assumedly) is convincing people that Widgets are evil.
The truth is A) usually without a direct incentive of its own and B) usually somewhere in the middle.
Lobbying isn't an inherently dirty thing. It started (and largely remains) a way for people with knowledge of a field outside the politician's bailiwick to inform them of pros/cons to an issue they may not be aware of.
Corruption has indeed seeped into the process, but I would prefer experts in a field (on both sides) to inform politicians than have them be clueless on the issues in question. The EFF, the ACLU? Lobbyists. Good lobbyists, but lobbyists nonetheless.
Lobbying is like any other organization of man: government, organized religion, corporations, unions, non-profits, etc. Once they get to a certain size, once people are supported solely by the organization and thus put their need for it to exist and grow and flourish above even its stated purpose, it can (and seemingly inevitably does) become corrupt.
Lobbying on Net Neutrality, done by a bunch of technology workers passionate about the issue is fine. Lobbying on Net Neutrality by professional lobbyists (selling their rolodex) and corporate lawyers, who donate, wine/dine, hire nephews, host fundraisers, etc is not.
It's pretty clear which version people are talking about when they complain about lobbying. (Hint: less to do with reddit, more to do with K Street) And professional lobbying is pretty much inherently corrupt.
I largely agree, though I think professional lobbyists ideally would have a place as a representative of a large group. What needs to be done is campaign finance reform. If we get money out of running for office, most of these soft-corruption problems will disappear.
The problem is the process is innately corrupt though. If we wanted an uncorrupted process, we would set aside tax money to pay researchers in the field grants solely to study and advise, with laws preventing them from taking subsidies and the like elsewhere. Perhaps with a process to allocate existing researchers to new issues. Corporation feels that we need more spying on our citizens because it makes them profitable? They could raise that issue, an existent researcher could look into it; but the continued funding of that researcher is not tied to their findings or results in any way.
As it is, the side with the most money gets the most lobbying, and that's not even considering the negative effect of campaign donations and the like.
Lobbying is an inheritly tricky problem because you want to allow everyone to exercise free speech, if suddenly only government funded researchers are allowed to make comments on policy you no longer can participate in democratic governance.
The problem is governents have way too much control over nearly every facet of the economy and it is much cheaper and easier to buy a senator and get some new regulations passed than it is to build a successful product or service that everyday people want to opt in for.
When you mandate decisions, you tend to get bad and corrupt decisions that benefit the few over the many.
It's not the issue of the speech in lobbying, it's that lobbying in politics means gifts of money.
I can "lobby" a police officer not to give me a ticket, but when I offer him a $20 all of a sudden he'll call it a bribe and slap the cuffs on me. (Despite my explanations that money is speech, and thus protected...)
> The EFF, the ACLU? Lobbyists. Good lobbyists, but lobbyists nonetheless.
Necessary to counter bad lobbyist. :)
Lobbying: you have more money == you have more influence. Sounds very undemocratic to me.
> I would prefer experts in a field (on both sides) to inform politicians than have them be clueless on the issues in question.
But to have them paid for? If civilians press on their representatives, in their own "free" time, this is the only "lobbying" that I consider "honest".
Lobbies kill democracies. You think, for instance, the US would be in so heavily invested in going to war without military corps spending on lobbying?
I think lobbies are bad. In my country (NL) a lobbyist can walk closer to politicians (like a journalist) then a civilian is allowed to. This is too much.
The only good lobbyist is one that doesn't profit from his lobbying.
This is the real issue here -- by making it financially beneficial to peddle rhetoric that reduces the quality of life for hundreds of millions of people, we are selling out.
We're morally bankrupt in every sense.
Only fools argue that "lobbying should be outlawed because it's bribery" because they lack the foresight to realize that such levers are necessary for a healthy political process, but it is more foolish to delude yourself into thinking that it's beneficial to peddle garbage legislative proposals.
Trust, but verify. We're trusting lobbyists but not verifying whether that trust is warranted.
"No boss, trust me on this. Sometimes - for the process to work - I have to let these guys pay me subvert the process."
It's unacceptable that there are any levers on our politicians other than our votes - they're our employees after all.
For what it's worth, if you're going to lobby I'd rather you lobby all of "us" (commercials, etc) to sway the popular vote than being able to concentrate on only our elected representatives.
It is not. This is why US is not ranked high on any corruption list, while maintaining the highest level if private financial influence not only in the lawmaking but also in national security. These are very dangerous, and as the Princeton study points out it threatens democracy in the long run very much.
You could even argue that lobbying is democracy's way of having "corruption" built-in.
When there's a dictatorship, no one is surprised when the dictator is bribed. In a democracy, you can't just walk into the president's office and drop a bag of money on his desk, but you can lobby the shit out of him.
Either way, you get to bribe someone who's in a position to hand out favours. That's just how political power works.
You say this as if lobbying/corruption doesn't happen from the top (federal) to the bottom (local/city) in the United States... We don't need to compare the federal government's issues with "security" spending to European countries to see how there are questionable spending practices at the state level, e.g. public works contracts.
Well that is going to be a hard argument to sell because so many laws are local and you can't really successfully condemn every small jurisdictions decisions without condemning the people that voted for them.
Saying that it's unfeasible to criticize the elected without criticizing the electorate is silly. It's not that the laws are wrong in spirit, it's that they are crafted or operated around so as to benefit the people that put them in place (or their cronies). I think that making the argument that the elected are separate in many ways -- socially, ethically, and legally -- from the electorate is a very easy one to make. It's also a lesson repeated throughout history: see Rome (and the transition from Republic to Empire), Britain (and their 19th century colonial exploits), and others.
You can criticize the personal traits of the elected but when their policies are overwhelmingly supported it is hard to condemn that without involving the people who voted for it. It sucks to have the majority against your beliefs but pretending doesn't address the real problem.
Doubling down on the good old "appeal to the majority," I see... guess we won't be getting anywhere in this thread. The real problem is the one that I am addressing: it starts with the offices themselves and continues as the revolving door continues to revolve. The masses have less and less of a chance to get their desires implemented if lobbying occurs.
Yet again, you've missed the point. Lobbying and its disproportional impacts are the antitheses of majoritarian rule. They are examples of failed (or more accurately, untested) minority opinions crafted into law and policy without passing under public scrutiny. Your argument boils down to "things are currently the way they are because they are right," which belies the complexities of the situations at hand. That is the appeal to the majority that I am pointing out. It's ironic that you bring it up in the context of lobbying for the reason I've stated above.
Note: I don't think that all lobbying is unethical or contrary to public opinion. I do think that a good majority of it is untested and inorganic. It's monied interests preserving monied interests.
You are attempting to handwave away the fact that virtually all policies have majority support. You can argue they were tricked, you can argue they are wrong, but you cannot argue that long standing policies are not supported by the majority. That may not jive with your world view but too bad, it is on the minority to convince the majority.
To say that the positions lobbyists are lobbying for "virtually all have majority support" is a much bolder claim than the one that I making, which is merely that they are untested opinions that run counter to the spirit of democracy. Lobbyists are in the business of keeping them untested. Why try to engender grassroots support or genuinely benefit constituents when you can spend the money more effectively (i.e., a better ROI) on a handful of representatives? For example, can you say with a straight face that Gramm-Leach-Bliley was genuinely supported and understood by a majority of the population?
If achieving policy based on majority opinions was actually the end game of lobbyists, why would they need to exist in the first place? Majority opinions would elect majority abiding politicians who would enact majority policies. Where's the step that necessitates lobbyists?
The definition of lobbyist seems to have become people persuading congress in favor of an opinion I don't share. Not to be confused with "activists", who are people persuading congress for an opinion I agree with.
The biggest difference is lobbyists tend to let their money do their talking for them. They also almost always work for large companies with the means to pay. Activists tend to be larger groups of individuals with little money. Lobbyists win more than the activists do.
Lobbying itself is just a form of advocacy. They actually add value sometimes, as they know everyone... If you have s problem, they can get you to the right people in government.
It has become a bigger corruption issue as attaining office has become more expensive, lobbyists are a money funnel.
There's nothing special about lobbying that needs to tie it to corruption. Plenty of countries without legalized lobbying are even more corrupt.
Politics is power, money is power, the two will invariably be linked. It's human nature. Very, very few people are "uncorruptable". Usually, it's just a matter of "how much".
The way to fight this isn't by trying to enforce more unenforceable laws or to make new rules/regulations. It's much simpler than that - voter education.
The problem lies squarely with the voters. Time and time again we elect these people to represent us. They didn't usurp power through a military coup. And our only legal recourse of punishing this behavior is to simply not elect them.
Making lobbying illegal will not make the problem go away - it just won't be in the open.
If all candidates will be happy to take bribes once in office - which is pretty much guaranteed - how do you think voting could possibly prevent bribery at all?
Voting is the only way to end a politician's career. "Fool me once", yes, but you're not holding office again. Not only that, but people will know why you didn't get elected, which drastically reduces your chances of finding good, honest employment again.
If voters actually voted, you'd see a lot less corruption - politicians want to stay politicians, after all.
If voters actually voted, you'd see a lot less corruption...
Do you think that the small portion of people who vote today care about corruption less than all those who don't vote? Or maybe they're just not as well informed as those who don't vote? Maybe it's something else?
They've already been pre-bribed with "campaign-contributions" at the time of getting into office. Then they'll take further bribes behind the scenes.
How about applying "Fool me once" to politicians in general?
Let's say you vote for the first time in your life, and whoever you voted for breaks all his campaign promises and calmly shafts the general populace to his own benefit.
> LONDON — There is no political advertising on television or radio in Britain. Fund-raising and spending are strictly limited. Tight elections can turn on a relative handful of votes in a small number of competitive parliamentary constituencies.
If you don't need to buy broadcast ads for 6 figures during campaign season, there is alot less power in the hands of a lobbyist.
Yes, but they are not being charged for the time. It is the fact that US politics allows essentially unlimited spending on broadcast advertising to consumers that creates the corrupting influence of lobbyists on the scale we are seeing.
1 on 1 conversations with industry, media, union reps, etc. is part of doing business in a democracy. Mass broadcasts to sway public opinion isn't required.
> In the United Kingdom the Communications Act 2003 prohibits political advertising on television or radio; parties are instead allocated broadcast slots (usually around five minutes long) free of charge on broadcast channels using a formula set by Parliament
its not different. however, if you legalize "corruption" then it isn't exactly corruption anymore. a lobbyist is just a professional advocate at the end of the day. its not intrinsically bad.
a much more serious concern is the issue of nearly limitless campaign spending through PACs. I feel like this is the real face of corruption in the American system right now, to a far greater extent that the existence of professional lobbyists.
As an European I often wonder, how do people in the US cope with this level of corporate driven politics...
I have the impression in Europe this kind of connections do exists but are seen as a serious problem and actively worked against in the legislation and even with this those connection are increasing and "growing" in weight on politics.
I have the impression what Europe is trying to work against is the normal modus operandi in US politics.
Are Europe and the US approaching some kind of middle point in the level of inter-connectivity of corporations and politics: Europe reaching it from the lower levels and the US by reaching it from higher levels?
It is really absurd how since the 60s resp. 70s after the nations coped more or less with the devastation of the 2 World Wars, politics has been reduced essentially to economic interests and agendas AND in the process gave it self up to the economic agents: large corporations which are defining politics.
Are economics, money, corporations over-represented in politics?
If I understand the article correctly, the people they are talking about don't hold public office. They are private citizens who are pro-NSA and who have corporate ties to the NSA, and are speaking publicly.
So I don't think this article is an example of politicians having corporate motivations, but rather talking heads on TV having corporate motivation.
I don't know about the others, but I've been reading Stewart Baker for years, at the Volokh Conspiracy and then later at lawfare blog.
He's an authoritarian loon, and I don't agree with a word his ever written, but I'd be willing to bet he believes all of it. He's far too unreasonable to be playing a cynical PR game.
Not to say that potential conflicts shouldn't be noted, they absolutely should.
I was thinking something similar, which is that I felt the article was implying that if these people didn't have a financial connection to the NSA their opinions would be different, and I don't think that is the case.
Until Senator Feinstien had her laptop hacked by the CIA I think she actually took what they said at face value and bought into the narrative.
So I can certainly believe that folks donate money to representatives that hold opinions compatible with theirs. I certainly give money to politicians who I feel will represent my view of how things should be run. But when their opinions change, or they move away from what I would like I simply stop giving them money[1].
So what is the cause and what is the effect? That the NSA funnels funds to people who have both a megaphone and a compatible point of view? I don't find that particularly noteworthy.
[1] and as we're talking small amounts of dollars here I am not sure its all that big a deal for them :-)
>> That the NSA funnels funds to people who have both a megaphone and a compatible point of view?
I don't think you even need to go that far. The underlying phenomenon here is the revolving door. Senior government officials retire into government contractors for their former agencies because that's by far the most lucrative positions open to them. The exception would be if you were completely disgruntled, Snowden isn't going to end up at Booz Allen.
What that means is that we have a shared underlying cause for the two things we are seeing: former senior officials that remain supporters of their agency end up at government contractors and former senior officials that remain supporters of their agency are happy to defend them publicly.
As for the solution to the revolving door, I'd say first we need to raise the salaries of senior government administrators. Every study I've seen shows that low skill government employees are over-compensated and high skill government employees are under-compensated (both as compared to the private sector). Second, we should probably cut down on government contracting. I don't a good reason for it to have grown so large.
I find recent NSA related craps utterly outdated, dull and juvenile. At this point, distinction between news on NSA's secret projects and government's public release of secret documents seems blurry and overlapping.
NSA has been working on quantum computing for decades. Recent success of both Israel and NSA in harnessing quantum computing for practical purposes is well known for at least couple of years. When quantum computing can blow off present mathematical proof of concepts in security, why waste time talking about decade old NSA technology? Why not discuss about the bleak future of information security? Why not prepare for the coming years?
The whole point of the article is completely irrelevant at this point.
The NSA already built their huge data center in the desert. They've been scooping up data for years. They've been using methods to usurp wireless phone security in order to snoop on what should be secure networks. There's suspicions they've cracked TOR's encryption as well.
Alert the media, the people who support the NSA have financial ties to them.
Even with the recent court ruling, Pandora's box was opened decades ago, and I see no palatable future where anybody is able to close it.
Whether it's a good or bad thing is irrelevant. I agree that we should be aware and try to deter some instances, but saying that having skin in the game causes incentives seems like a weird conclusion to me. It should be obvious.
I think the main point here is the one Todd Gitlin makes: "the onus for disclosure ultimately lies with reporters and news programs, who should be asking these experts to reveal potential conflicts of interest and to explain the basis of their assertions about national security."
We all have a conflict of interest here (not least because since we are all being spied on by our governments) but that doesn't mean our opinions aren't valid. But the conflicts of interest need to be disclosed with the opinions so the readers/viewers have a chance to weight the opinions presented.
If you have ever watched CNBC or Bloomberg I am sure you have been whenever an analyst talks about a stock a disclosure screen pops indicating whether the analyst, their family or their firm have an financial stake in the company.
It would be interesting to see that especially for very senior former government officials who often clock themselves in their former agencies and not as board members of x,y, and z. There is certainly more credibility as been former 4 star general than a board member of a government contractor.
Now having spent some time earlier in my life working around the DC establishment I know that being a general is now basically a political position even though it is accorded the same respect that generals garnered 70 years ago. So I just expect that former senior government officials are now trading on their connections to government...since that is the most valuable asset to have. And this goes for everything, not just the military and intelligence agencies. When there is as much money as there is in Washington being connected to the people who hand it out is extremely valuable.
Yes, HSA advocates are secretly biased, and unlike politicians and their campaign ads, their bias is covert.
But that's not the story we need reported on, because this story is preaching to the choir.
The real story is understanding the American public's malleability in the face of advertising/punditry in general. There is a real story analyzing in-depth (and with open-minded sympathy) why real believers in the practice believe that it is actually truly the right thing to do.
I suspect that the public won't understand what's at risk until the IRS starts using NSA collected data to conduct (automated, universal) audits.
>Baker at one point told intelligence committee lawmakers that The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald was simply on a campaign to “cause the greatest possible diplomatic damage to the United States and its intelligence capabilities.”
The problem with liars is that sometimes they tell the truth.
