
Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961 - js2
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
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walterbell
The 1964 movie "Seven Days in May" touches on this topic,
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May)

 _" President Kennedy had read Seven Days in May shortly after its publication
and believed the scenario as described could actually occur in the United
States. According to Frankenheimer in his director's commentary, production of
the film received encouragement and assistance from Kennedy through White
House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, who conveyed to Frankenheimer Kennedy's
wish that the film be produced and that, although the Pentagon did not want
the film made, the President would conveniently arrange to visit Hyannis Port
for a weekend when the film needed to shoot outside the White House."_

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vwcx
"As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must
avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and
convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the
material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their
political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all
generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."

------
js2
An article which argues that this speech has been "completely misunderstood.":

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_less...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2011/01/beware_the_militaryindustrial_complex.html)

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fapjacks
This is also shown in the documentary "Why We Fight". Very powerful.

~~~
remarkEon
When I was a student (Cadet) at West Point the Social Sciences Department
(colloquially known as "SOSH") sponsored a viewing of that film and invited
the director, Eugene Jareki, to come and conduct an open forum discussion
after the viewing. Probably one of the highlights of my time there. After the
Q&A some of the cadets who were SOSH majors stayed to ask a few one-on-one
questions and I got to ask him (and I'm paraphrasing here) whose
responsibility it was to fix this obvious problem - a problem so obvious that
the United States Military Academy's Social Sciences Department chose to show
this film to a bunch of people about to fight these wars. (Granted, there is a
statue of Ike that sits outside the Jefferson Hall Library[1]...so maybe there
was some Old Grad hero worship going on.) His response was that he hadn't
really considered who's responsibility it should be beyond the obvious (all of
ours), and that he didn't mean to convey that responsibility on this
generation of war fighters, but that he did have faith that younger people
would be able to affect some change here.

That was a number of years ago. I suppose he meant the long game of when the
young people grow up.

As an aside, the namesake of the documentary comes from the propaganda films
made during WWII.[2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_Monument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_Monument)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Fight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Fight)

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digi_owl
The US presidency is perhaps the greatest bait and switch ever pulled. So much
is spent fretting over who gets the office, when there is very little direct
power to be had without some backing from congress.

~~~
thephyber
In no way is it a "bait and switch", but I wholeheartedly agree that too much
emphasis is given to the president and not enough emphasis on voters
communicating with state and federal legislators during the legislative
sessions.

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engi_nerd
Okay, disclaimer up front: I have spent almost my entire working career as an
engineer in the MIC. And this speech, in particular, is something I have spent
a lot of time thinking about.

> America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive
> nation in the world.

Still true today, although the "rise of the rest" means that the US is not the
absolutely dominant-in-all-arenas country it was a few decades ago. That's
fine with me personally, as that rise of other countries has meant improved
living standards and less poverty for many areas.

> we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely
> upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on
> how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

"With great power comes great responsibility". No argument with President
Eisenhower on this one. Power must be used with great discretion and for good
purposes.

> Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or
> readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and
> abroad.

A point that seems to have been largely forgotten in recent years.

> A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms
> must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may
> be tempted to risk his own destruction.

As you would expect from the man that led the most powerful single fighting
force in history to that time, Eisenhower understands the value in deterrence.
Our arms are indeed mighty. We are developing weapons systems that are the
result of integrating applied expertise in just about every technical field.
And then we are making huge systems of systems where those weapons systems
work together.

> Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any
> of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War
> II or Korea.

It's 1961. He's talking about a system that has completely changed in seven
years (since the end of large scale hostilities in Korea in 1953). What
happened during that time? The Department of Defense got its legs underneath
it (it was only 13 years old in 1960), the Cold War became the dominant
ideological conflict shaping the world, the "Sputnik Shock" resulted in large
investments in aerospace, and the space race was on. I wonder what Eisenhower
would have made out of the massive changes in the 14 years since the September
11 attacks.

>In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist.

The core idea of the speech. I think that Eisenhower's warnings weren't
heeded. The systems he oversaw had a number of positive feedback loops in
their design. The biggest feedback loop in Eisenhower's time was the cold war.
What were the Russians doing? Did they have advantages in technology? Could we
counter their weapons systems? Their computer systems? Efforts to answer these
questions continually brought technical people and money into the system,
which reinforced the system, driving the system even harder. This feedback
loop remains largely unchanged, only the language used ("information
dominance") and the targets referred to (terrorists, other large nation
states) change.

> But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense;
> we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast
> proportions.

It is a world so vast that no one can really tell you exactly how big it is.
The Pentagon cannot even accurately account for how the money that it takes in
is spent. And it's large at even the smallest scales. You can work in the same
building as someone (even a fairly small building) and have zero idea what
they're working on, because you don't need to know.

> 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.

Something to think about in the current climate of pervasive surveillance.

> Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should,
> we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy
> could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.

Don't worry, Ike, the MIC will eventually give birth to the internet, which
will make it even MORE difficult to discern signal from noise and will result
in a US citizenry that doesn't believe in evolution or anthropogenic climate
change. That extends to the elite that runs the country.

> As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government --
> must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease
> and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow.

Similarly, I wonder what Ike would have made out of climate change deniers? I
doubt, from this language, that he would have been a denier.

Eisenhower was right on pretty much all points, but I think that by the time
he noticed this, it was already too late to stop. Perhaps if the USSR had
collapsed a few decades earlier, there might have been some reason dial down
the gain on the feedback loop driving the growth of the MIC.

~~~
digi_owl
>> Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or
readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and
abroad.

As best i can tell, the first two have largely been ignored, while the last
one is shouted from the hilltops all days, every day.

