William D. Hartung

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at CIP and a senior adviser to the center's Security Assistance Monitor. He is 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). From July 2007 through March 2011, Mr. Hartung was the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. Bill 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 Lehrer Newshour, CNN, Fox News, and scores of local, regional, and international radio outlets. He blogs for the Huffington Post, the Hill, and Medium.

Arms Sales

Corporate Weapons Heaven Is a Hell on Earth: Joe Biden, the National Security State, and Arms Sales

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com) – Here’s a seldom commented-upon reality of this century and this moment: the United States remains the number-one arms-exporting nation on the planet. Between 2017 and 2021, it grabbed 39% of the total global weapons market and there’s nothing new about that. It has, in fact, been the top arms dealer in every […]

National Security State

Fueling the Warfare State: America’s $1.4 Trillion “National Security” Budget Makes Us Ever Less Safe

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – This March, when the Biden administration presented a staggering $813 billion proposal for “national defense,” it was hard to imagine a budget that could go significantly higher or be more generous to the denizens of the military-industrial complex. After all, that request represented far more than peak spending in the Korean […]

Arms Sales

Arsenal of Autocracy? The Major Weapons Makers Cash in Worldwide, Not Just in Ukraine

William D. Hartung

By William D. Hartung | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – These are good times to be an arms maker. Not only are tens of billions of dollars in new military spending headed for the coffers of this country’s largest weapons contractors, but they’re being praised as defenders of freedom and democracy, thanks to their role in […]

Arms Sales

The New Gold Rush: How Pentagon Contractors Are Cashing in on the Ukraine Crisis

William D. Hartung

By William D. Hartung and Julia Gledhill | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought immense suffering to the people of that land, while sparking calls for increased military spending in both the United States and Europe. Though that war may prove to be a tragedy for the world, one […]

Pentagon

What a Waste, and You’re Paying for it: $778 Billion for the Pentagon and Still Counting

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com) – 2021 was another banner year for the military-industrial complex, as Congress signed off on a near-record $778 billion in spending for the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy. That was $25 billion more than the Pentagon had even asked for. It can’t be emphasized enough just […]

Arms Sales

The Profits of War: How Corporate America Cashed in on the Post-9/11 Pentagon Spending Surge

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com) – The costs and consequences of America’s twenty-first-century wars have by now been well-documented — a staggering $8 trillion in expenditures and more than 380,000 civilian deaths, as calculated by Brown University’s Costs of War project. The question of who has benefited most from such an orgy of military spending has, unfortunately, received […]

Arms Sales

America Dominant Again (in Arms Sales) . . . And Again… and Again… and Again

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – When it comes to trade in the tools of death and destruction, no one tops the United States of America. In April of this year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual analysis of trends in global arms sales and the winner — as always — was the […]

Arms Sales

Trump’s Art of the Arms Deal: Filling up the Volatile Middle East with High-Tech Weapons

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com) – The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading arms dealer. It dominates the global trade in a historic fashion and nowhere is that domination more complete than in the endlessly war-torn Middle East. There, believe it or not, the U.S. controls nearly half the arms market. From Yemen […]

Pentagon

Police, Prisons, and the Pentagon: Defunding America’s Wars at Home and Abroad

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com) – Think of it as a war system that’s been coming home for years. The murder of George Floyd has finally shone a spotlight on the need to defund local police departments and find alternatives that provide more genuine safety and security. The same sort of spotlight needs soon to be shone on […]