Webinars

The Trillion Dollar War Machine

America spends a trillion dollars a year on its military. This extraordinary spending not only detracts from our ability to address pressing social problems but compels us into foreign wars to justify our vast arsenal. Sold to us in the name of “security,” our military industrial complex actually makes us far less safe.

Top policy experts William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman will join the War Industry Resisters Network to discuss their new book The Trillion Dollar War Machine, which follows the profits of militarism from traditional Pentagon contractors, who receive more than half of the Pentagon’s budget, to the upstart high-tech firms that shamelessly promote unproven and destabilizing technologies. They unmask the enablers of the war machine—politicians, lobbyists, the media, Hollywood, think tanks, and so many more—whose work enriches a wealthy elite at the expense of everybody else, spreading conflict around the world and embroiling America in endless wars. A damning tour de force, The Trillion Dollar War Machine shows who is pulling the strings and pushing for war, and offers a blueprint for how we can shut down the war machine and restore American security and prosperity.  

Presenters

William D. Hartung focuses on the arms industry and US military budget. He was previously the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy and the co-director of the Center’s Sustainable Defense Task Force. Bill is the co-author, with Ben Freeman, of the recently released The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home. He is also the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2011) and the co-editor, with Miriam Pemberton, of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (Paradigm Press, 2008). And Weapons for All (HarperCollins, 1995) is a critique of US arms sales policies from the Nixon through Clinton administrations.

Bill previously directed programs at the New America Foundation and the World Policy Institute. He also worked as a speechwriter and policy analyst for New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams. Hartung’s articles on security issues have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the World Policy Journal.
He has been a featured expert on national security issues on CBS 60 Minutes, NBC Nightly News, the PBS Newshour, CNN, Fox News, and scores of local, regional, and international TV and radio outlets.

Ben Freeman is director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute. Ben is the co-author, with William Hartung, of the recently released The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home. He investigates money in politics, defense spending, and foreign influence in America. He is the author of The Foreign Policy Auction, which was the first book to systematically analyze the foreign influence industry in the United States. Before joining the Quincy Institute, Ben founded the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, served as Deputy Director of the National Security program at Third Way, and was a National Security Fellow at the Project On Government Oversight. At the latter, he spear-headed creation of the “Foreign Influence Database,” a repository of propaganda distributed by foreign agents that was previously unavailable online.

Ben earned a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University, where he taught in the Political Science Department and the Bush School of Government and Public Service. He is currently a faculty member at the Institute for Defense and Business, where he teaches seminars on the defense budget process and the foreign influence industry.

His work has appeared in numerous media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and Politico. Ben has appeared on CNN, BBC, NPR, Fresh Air with Terry Gross and numerous other media outlets. He has also testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee.