Seventy-nine years ago, the Truman administration dropped atom bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly killing approximately 100,000 innocent civilians. Host Robert Scheer calls these horrific incidents among the major instances of terror ever committed in human history.
Bill Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft joins Scheer Intelligence to discuss the history and legacy of nuclear weapons in relation to the military industrial complex, as a $2 trillion effort from the Pentagon to build “a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines” takes place.
The central question underlying the conversation is asked by Scheer; “How could they, in good conscience, be talking about modernizing the devil’s weapon?”
Hartung claims that the Pentagon and arms manufacturers are doing so under the guise of deterrence, but also because of false stories of controllable nuclear war and even the “evil” consideration that it may be necessary to use nuclear weapons on certain populations.
“I think some of the folks promoting this stuff would like to believe that they’re not putting the future of humanity at risk. So they kind of tell themselves these stories, which they then tell to the public and hope they can persuade them.”
In the past, the horror of nuclear war was widely acknowledged to some extent by the public and the political class alike, as even Reagan said a nuclear war could never be won and should never be fought. Hartung claims that the belief that nuclear war could be winnable was previously “pushed off the agenda,” but it “seems to be back.”
Despite movies like Oppenheimer, which to some extent injected the issue of nuclear war into public discussion, citizens and the media remain largely uninterested and unaware of the dangers of nuclear war, especially with regard to the war in Ukraine.
This is reflected in the opinions of the American political class. Hartung points out that “if you go to Washington, there’s this sort of atmosphere that, if you’re for reducing these things, you know, you’re the one who’s unrealistic. The logic is flipped on its head …”
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This transcript was produced by an automated transcription service. Please refer to the audio interview to ensure accuracy.
Robert Scheer 00:00
Hi. This is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence, where intelligence comes from, my guest. And in this case, someone whose work I’ve followed for years and years, and it’s been basically on the arms race, with a lot of emphasis on the nuclear arms race. William D.Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. And on the occasion of we’re recording this two days before we put it up for broadcast, which will be the day that the second day of bombing. On Wednesday, it was the bombing of Hiroshima. And now Friday, it’s the 80th [Correction: 79th] anniversary this week, in these two days of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And of 80,000 who died instantly in Hiroshima, 20,000 in Nagasaki, and the numbers grew much larger after. And I just I was startled by an article that I read in Tom Dispatch distributed that William Hartung wrote with Hekmat Aboukhater — I don’t know if I got the name right — on world-ending maneuvers. And what he’s talking about there, and I’ll let him speak now, but it’s about after thinking the horrors of nuclear war thinking about it. And we even had a movie recently Oppenheimer, which didn’t show the actual deaths or anything, but at least called attention to the danger. And we’ve gone through a period of, instead of intensifying our control and arms control, basically abandoning it. And what your article today suggests we’re in a much more dangerous moment and a more vibrant arms race for the use of nuclear weapons than we’ve ever been. You used this figure for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists were, what, 90 seconds away from oblivion. So what’s going on?
Bill Hartung 02:04
Well, one of the frightening things is that establishment Washington is kind of lowering the bar of what they think is possible, kind of diminishing the risk in the way they’re publicizing nuclear policy. So the Heritage Foundation had a big new report that basically wanted to go back to some cold war ideas like multiple warheads on one range missiles and mobile missiles and more tactical nuclear weapons. And this is on top of a Pentagon plan that was already going to spend $2 trillion over the next 30 years. So it’s, it’s kind of eye popping, you know, just the money involved. But between that heritage report and a congressional commission that reported last year, there’s very much this notion that we have to stoke up the arms race. And their argument is, well, you know, China’s building up, Russia is building up. It’s a three way race. Now we’re in a different moment. Therefore we need to build more nuclear weapons, with no discussion of the fact that if any of these things are used, there’s very good chance of life as we know it is over. So the policy shouldn’t be building up. It should be figuring out how to control reduce and there’s very little talk about that in the capitals of the countries that have these things. We’re down to one US-Russia, nuclear arms control treaty, new start, which may or may not survive. So, yeah, I think it’s a very challenging time. I was glad that Oppenheimer at least put the issue on the agenda for public discussion. A lot of the movie was about his personal kind of anguish about building the bomb, using the bomb, should we build a more powerful H bomb, with a little bit about the scientists who tried to hold off the use of the bomb through a demonstration, you know, explosion. And they did not talk about people like Joseph Rotblat, who actually resigned from the program and started the international Pugwash movement, which was designed to eliminate nuclear weapons. So it put on the agenda, and then it was up to groups that care about disarmament to kind of fill in the blanks of the impacts on Japan, impacts of the testing on downwinders domestically. But you know the fact that we have people spinning out scenarios to win a war with China without talking about the fact that it could go nuclear. It just indicates there’s kind of this kind of just fantastical kind of thinking in Washington that really doesn’t square with any version of reality. And to a significant degree, they seem to be getting away with it.
Robert Scheer 04:40
Well you know, it’s interesting comment about the power or effectiveness of mass media for whatever the failings of the movie. And I do think not showing it all, or dealing at all with the devastating destruction of human beings and what I consider, again, the most horrible terrorist attack, and by terrorism would mean killing innocent people, which were most people killed. You would have thought a movie like this, done powerfully with a huge international audience, would at least compel some sort of debate and caution. And when I got out of your article and I could see it myself, I mean, we’re getting Western Europe to think about possible nuclear war between intermediate range weapons. That treaty has collapsed. You know, there’s just almost a giddiness, a giddiness about these weapons, like, Bring it on. And so I’m not blaming all that on the movie, but it seems to have had zero effect in terms of alarming us. And you have a situation now where Israel has, I assume, from what, everything I’ve read about, a couple of 100 of these weapons, you’re provoking Russia over the Ukraine and, you know, forcing certain new alliances. We’re threatening the Taiwan arrangement that was basic to peace with that Nixon developed with China. And I think again, I want to ask you about the word giddiness. You deal, you’ve dealt with these politicians. You’re at a respectable institute that informs people. What are they thinking? Is it all? And your article suggests a lot of it is the lobbying. You know, I broke down the figure. There’s 800 to 1000 lobbyists work full time on getting us to build better nuclear weapons that can be more effective in killing people. Is it just what Eisenhower warned about the military industrial complex? Or is it just a degree of irresponsibility that’s even greater than when people like Nixon and Reagan were running the show?
Bill Hartung 06:44
I think it’s a combination. I think there’s a certain amount of ideological derangement, which we could talk about. But in terms of the kind of legacy of the military industrial complex, even when Eisenhower, you know, coined the phrase, a lot of it had to do with lobbying for nuclear weapons. The complex wanted a new bomber. Ike didn’t. They tried to pin a so called missile gap on him, even though it didn’t really exist. And a lot of the hype about the missile gap was intelligence, military and contractors trying to create conditions where they could get more money. Even the the so called sacrosanct nuclear triad, the idea that we have to have land based missiles, missiles on bombers, missiles on submarines, was really more about a bureaucratic fight for money between the Navy and the Air Force. You know, the Navy was freaking out because Air Force had bombers and ICBMs, they didn’t have anything out of the nuclear pie until they managed to put them on submarines. And then they had rival doctrines, you know, the the Air Force said, “Oh, let’s hit military targets. We’ve got the accurate missiles to do that.” And the Navy said, “Oh no, let’s hit population centers, because that’ll scare them off from, you know, attacking us.” And they sent their people around the country, you know, kind of peddling their rival doctrines, because their doctrine would call for buying more of their particular weapons. And there was even a naval admiral who confused the Air Force of being worse than the communists, because they were sneaking around behind their back to try to get more for their particular system. Now, what happened? First of all, under Kennedy, they acknowledged there was no missile gap, but they also kind of took care of both sides of the divide. They bought a lot of submarines with missiles. They bought a lot of land based missiles. They bought a lot of bombers. So that inter-service rivalry was solved with a lot of our money. And you know, there was a point in the 60s where there were 60 or 70,000 nuclear weapons on the planet and others, you know, maybe 15 to 17,000. So the money was driving it, you know, from the beginning. But we managed to get arms control treaties. We managed to ratchet down the numbers. Reagan said, you know, “A nuclear war can never be won, should never be fought.” He almost agreed with Gorbachev to get rid of these things. And that was, that was a pretty fascinating turnaround, pushed a lot by, you know, a public movement. You know, the book you wrote “With Enough Shovels” made it sound like these people really were willing to contemplate a nuclear conflict. And there were people like Keith Payne who said, “Oh, we’ll only lose 30 or 40 million people in the nuclear war. So, you know, we’ll, quote, unquote, win.” That thinking seemed to be mostly pushed off the agenda, and it seems to be back. And the people that are pushing it seem kind of shameless and kind of just inhumane to think that you know, these things could be used in a conflict. There was a study by the Atlantic Council that said, “Oh, let’s use tactical weapons first in a war over Taiwan,” as if you could control a nuclear conflict, which, of course, was kind of the argument back in the bad old days. So it just seems like the combination of the money and kind of just a, you know, old thinking on nukes. I mean, this congressional commission that was pushing for nuclear weapons was co chaired by John Kyle, who was a lifelong opponent of nuclear arms control, but also did a stint lobbying for Northrop Grumman, which makes both the new ICBM and the new nuclear bomber. So there’s, it seems like the money and the ideology are kind of working in tandem, but the net result is they’re making the world a lot more dangerous.
Robert Scheer 10:34
Well, not just dangerous, we’re talking about screwballs in charge. I mean, you know, there’s one thing Trump is blown away, is the idea that the establishment is reasonable and fact informed and logical. So now we see there’s a guy who became President, could be president again, who can be all over the map and not think things through, yet he didn’t push us any closer to nuclear war. He challenged treaties and he- yes, He disrupted the remaining one. But the reality is that we don’t have sane adults of any party in any position of leadership that are warning us that of something that even… And I interviewed Reagan a number of times in the course of his life, including for that book, that led to that book you’re mentioning. But at that time, there was at least a consensus that life would end if you use these weapons, nd in fact, the justification of the triad of weapons is you didn’t want just land based missiles, because you would have lose them or use them, right? You, you would have to *clap* they were unstable. So we wanted the subs, and we wanted to keep the bombers, because at least you could pull them back. One of the frightening things in your article, you talk about the central missile system, which is still on 450 locations in five states, I think it is four or five states, and these would be the first things to go. And yet we’re modernizing those, the land based missiles, even!
Bill Hartung 12:17
Yes, you know, the voices of reason are, unfortunately, mostly not in government. So you know, former Secretary of Defense, Bill Perry said, you know, ICBMs are among the most dangerous weapons we have, because in a crisis, the President would have a few minutes to decide, is this a real attack? Is this a false alarm? So even just the idea of an accidental nuclear war becomes much more likely. And and, plus, they’re they’re sitting targets. I mean, they call it, they call them sponges. And the idea is, well, maybe if they use up a lot of their nukes on the land based missiles, then the other parts of the triad will be safe. So, you know, we should be getting rid of these things, as the late Dan Ellsberg pointed out. But if you go to Washington, there’s this sort of atmosphere that, if you’re for reducing these things, you know, you’re the one who’s unrealistic. Everything’s the- logic is flipped on its head, and a lot of the press coverage, and, you know, it reports this stuff with a straight face. It’s not It’s like report says X, but it doesn’t challenge it often. So I think to the extent that people are paying attention, they’re kind of draining away this concept that you know, these things could end life as we know this is not something to play around with and not something to be building for next generations. I mean, this new missile could last till 2075. I don’t want to have nuclear weapons around in 2075 and if we do, you know, will we last till 2075? So it’s just, it’s twisted logic, but there is money behind it. I think that’s one of the reasons it’s so persistent.
Robert Scheer 13:54
Yeah, but we’re talking about a situation of insanity. I mean, you make your living convincing Congress to pay for weapons that… What were the companies you mentioned? Let’s mention those companies, Bechtel, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Honeywell. These are people who’ve gone to the best colleges. They presumably have some sense of values and respect for life and care about their grandchildren and all that. And in pursuit of money, money, they’re willing to develop this hoax that you could somehow use these weapons and survive. You’re correct. When I did interview Reagan, it was George W, George Bush, the first President Bush, who told me, “Well, you know, the Russians, they’re monsters, and they think you can survive a nuclear war.” And then Reagan repeated that idea, the idea that… But for Reagan, when Gorbachev came along and said, “Let’s get rid of these weapons,” he welcomed that idea. His experts didn’t then that, you know, became already the start of the idea maybe Reagan’s not altogether clear in his mind. But I’m trying to get the the atmosphere that you have operated in all your life, when you talk to these people. What do the lobbyists really say to you? What- how could they, in good conscience, be talking about modernizing the devil’s weapon?
Bill Hartung 15:27
You know, they they kind of retail this notion of deterrence. You know, if we have more, the other side will be afraid to attack us. Or they have this notion that you can scale a nuclear war. You know, we need tactile nuclear weapons because then we can use them without going to an all out nuclear conflict. And they use the fact that, “Well, you know, you don’t have access to classic classified information like I did when I was in government,” and and on and on and on, and that the other side is, is evil, and might use these things. But none of those arguments really explain why you would want more, but they seem to be kind of a nod and a wink. And I think some of the folks promoting this stuff would like to believe that they’re not putting the future of humanity at risk. So they they kind of tell themselves these stories, which they then tell to the public and and hope they can persuade them.
Robert Scheer 16:20
But you know, even, I mean Trump, for instance, he did go and talk to the leader of North Korea, okay? And, you know, with the idea that maybe you could do business, or at least somebody, instead of just demonizing and saying these people are just, you know, new Hitler’s or something, that he actually had the idea. But now we’re in a situation. Forget about talking to the leader of North Korea. Talk to leaders of Russia and China. Seem to be off the table, certainly with Russia, and there is absolutely no sentiment that we ought to create a common understanding and, you know, basis of communication. I mean, we’re… I don’t know, I, I don’t want to exaggerate this, but after reading your article, and I would recommend that to people, you know, I wrote down the title here. Well, you will actually be doing a book on that. You have a new study coming out “Inside the ICBM Lobby and War?”
Bill Hartung 17:34
Yes which is kind of an extended version of what’s in the article. A little more chapter and verse. Few more stories, little more the history, but there’s the same thrust. And then I’m doing a longer book with my colleague Ben Freeman called “The Trillion Dollar War Machine,” which is about how the military industrial complex has changed or not changed since Eisenhower’s speech. And all the different means of influence that the industry has not just, you know, campaign contributions and lobbyists, but trying to influence Hollywood, the gaming industry funding university scientists, sort of, sort of all the tentacles that they have to, you know, put to bear to to keep the budget going up.
Robert Scheer 18:17
Well, why don’t we spend a few minutes that we have left on that, because after all it was Eisenhower’s brother who, I think was the head of the University of Pennsylvania, wasn’t it Milton? Yeah. And, there was a concern, it was the military industrial complex. But then people, the Congress should have been in it, and then maybe the universities should be in it. And so we have a real, a situation where the “best and the brightest” — to use David Halberstam’s title of his book explaining Vietnam — we have the smartest, some of the smartest people in the country at the most prestigious institutions, basically working, in effect, to develop weapons that cannot be used without destroying humanity. And they do it with the idea that somehow there’s an inherent stability to this enterprise. You have devoted your life to telling them this is not stable. And if ever there’s a time when this seems to be the case. It’s right now. And yet there’s no discussion. There’s hardly any peace movement to speak of, right? There’s hardly any group of respectable people speaking out. And I use the, I use idea of giddiness. We’re almost sort of, bring it on, you know? We’ll show Putin, we’ll show Xi will show all of these people. We can do it. We can do whatever we want. And what your life study shows you can’t control these weapons. Isn’t that the main contradiction here?
Bill Hartung 19:53
Yeah, I mean, there’s, you know, sort of the veteran peace movement, which is a shrinking cohort. I think that the younger generation is starting to care about this issue, among the others that they’re dealing with. There’s some scientists resisting, but it’s not on the numbers or scale that we need. You know, in the 80s, it became a national kind of focus, and that was enough to shift Reagan. In fact, some of his advisors said, you know, this, this freeze thing is getting out of hand. It’s not just the peaceniks, it’s the churches. It’s elected officials. It’s, you know, you need to do something about this. And so his, his two ideas were, Star Wars, technology will save you. But then he was open to arms control proposal, and he was open to, you know, what some of the things Gorbachev said. So, you know, you know, could we do that again? I don’t know. I mean, could, could we get a big enough scientist movement? Could we get enough people to push on this? Is politics even done in the same way? I mean, could you put a million people in the streets? Very unclear, but you know, so I think first and foremost, people have to confront the dangers, and I think a lot of people have not done so, and so without that, the motivation to organize against it is not nearly strong enough.
Robert Scheer 21:11
Well what’s happened to the… It used to be thought, first of all, we had reasonable Republicans, certainly Eisenhower, who was such a person, and you could count on moderate Republicans to be concerned about peace and war, and even Richard Nixon, who certainly had negative aspects to him, on the other hand, you know, wrote very intelligent books, even after being pushed out of power, about the need for arms control and the danger of nuclear weapons, and was part of a an establishment consensus, which certainly extended to many Democrats, that you know this was the big issue! That you really couldn’t let it go on. And not only do we have we let it go on, we have stoked every possible war we’ve risked conflict. I mean, look, look what’s happening China right now, is building new submarines, right new aircraft. So there, instead of focusing on what they turned out to be really good at, which was capitalism and making products that you could sell now, oh, no, they, if they’re really going to be a stable nation. They’ve got to get into this crazy arms race in a really big way. Here’s Russia going to starve their own people if they have to to support war. And so there’s an international cadre pushing for this. And I we haven’t really discussed the main theme of your article, which is the money that drives it. So tell us about it. How much do these people make? What are the profits? I mean, who’s going to get the 2 trillion that they want to spend on modernizing the nuclear force?
Bill Hartung 22:57
Well a lot of it goes to the Big Five contractors; Northrop Gumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon Boeing, and you know, they get, you know, the government spends three or $400 billion a year on weapons, about 50 billion of that on nuclear weapons, and about a third of that money goes to these big companies. Then there’s subcontractors, and there’s the laboratories, which are run on management contracts by things like Bechtel and even universities like Berkeley and Texas A&M. So the money goes into these big companies. A lot of it, they used to buy up their shares to jack up the prices for them and their shareholders, a lot of it goes to their executives who make $20 million a year and more. There’s a like a elite level of scientists and engineers who do well in this industry, but the actual production workers, it’s been on the downswing. There’s much less unionization. There’s two tier contracts at the nuclear submarine plant in Connecticut, some of the new employees were looking for subsidized housing. So even this myth that it’s creating good jobs is kind of falling apart. And I guess the biggest question which you were getting at is, no matter how conservative you are, no matter how much money you want, no matter how greedy you are, presumably you want life to continue. So in that sense, this is completely irrational. I mean, there’s other ways to make money than to build this, you know, global death machine. So…
Robert Scheer 24:31
Do you do you want life to continue? I mean, let’s think about that for a second. I mean, you know, I went to graduate school in Berkeley, and there was certainly an awareness there that these weapons were civilization killing, the end of life on the planet. You, I just heard what come out of your mouth, that Berkeley is still a major part of this, this nightmare industry?
Bill Hartung 24:58
Yes, yes, that’s right. And I doubt most students are thinking about it.
Robert Scheer 25:01
So all of the great consciousness of Berkeley, all of the thinking right of this major, one of our most important institutions, that which, after all, is where Oppenheimer was, and it’s the university that managed both Livermore and Los Alamos, right?
Bill Hartung 25:21
Yes.
Robert Scheer 25:21
Up to its eyeballs, and these weapons of killing, on a level incomprehensible, and they… It still continues?
Bill Hartung 25:33
Yes, that’s right. I mean, I think, I think we have to rally folks again, you know, as we did in the 80s. But I think it’s going to be more complicated, because it’s more complicated to reach people in the communication system. It’s more complicated to get them to pay attention when you’ve got all these other horrors in the world. You’ve got climate change, you’ve got slaughter in Gaza, you’ve got war in Ukraine, you know, just other kinds of environmental damage being done, larger inequality. So, you know, is there a way to knit together these issues so people can build a kind of a stronger base, as opposed to taking them on separately? And that’s a, you know, a job for organizers. I have sort of focused my career on doing analysis that’s useful to organizers and advocates, but you need that movement for the kind of thing I’m doing to make a dent, you know?
Robert Scheer 26:27
Yeah, well, as somebody who’s tried organizing once a while, in addition to my journalism, I think first of all, it’s a mistake to suggest that concern about this nuclear war and just arm spending is not consistent, and actually, indeed, essential to figuring out how to control climate change, after all. I mean, you should even look at the situation now, with the tension with China, and should we go to war over Taiwan? And what’s going on here? One casualty has been that China has to be very good at making electric cars and solar panels, and, you know, doing a lot of stuff. And after all, China became a major polluter, providing us with a lot of goods, maybe more than we needed. But then they couldn’t breathe very easily in Beijing, so they’ve now, you know, I think 45% of the new cars in China are electric, and you know, they are moving to alternatives. They’re even working with Saudi Arabia to build up solar power, even for the kingdom and so forth. But that’s all being ignored. You know, the cost of the military to climate change, that’s all being ignored because it’s not all of us together to save the planet. It’s rival military powers. And certainly the war in Ukraine, plus the genocide in Gaza will leave countries with waste and new resources that have to be devoted and so forth. I mean, it just seems that making war is the norm, and that our culture… What was it Martin Luther King said his government, or “My government, is the major purveyor of violence in the world today.” And if that was true in 67 when he said it, it’s certainly more true now, and I want to ask you a political connection to onnect to that. We used to think that in the Republican Party got captured by the neoconservatives, who were very warlike, but now the neoconservatives seem to have switched over to the Democrats and are well situated in the State Department of Pentagon. And there’s actually rumbling, at least on the other side, of concern about, why do we need NATO, and what’s going on with the Ukraine, and actually some hesitation. So what, how do you see it politically?
Bill Hartung 28:57
It’s… it’s a mess. I mean, I think a lot of the neocons initially basically opposed Trump because they thought he wasn’t going to be tough enough. You know, he’s going to abandon NATO. He had this sort of transactional approach to international affairs. He beat up Hillary and Jeb over Iraq, which, of course, at the time, he barely said boo, but suddenly he was an opponent of Iraq. I think a lot of the vets who voted for him actually thought he was anti war… So but, you know, I wouldn’t want to hand the keys back to the Neo cons anytime soon, but there’s certainly less erratic. I think that’s the biggest problem with Trump is, you know, if he wakes up in a bad mood, is he going to push the button? But you know, as a result, there’s, you know, some of the opposition to Trump from the Democratic side is like, “Well, he’s not a… he doesn’t have a realistic sense of a threat,” and it’s about almost outdoing him in terms of military buildups and tough talk. So neither party is quite- there’s factions within each party that are nterventionist, but the leaderships of the parties, you know, it’s quite the opposite.
Robert Scheer 30:06
But there’s no force for peace. I don’t want to, I mean, let me just state it clearly here. We can go on and on. I mean, we can’t — in this election — vote for peace. There might be some exceptional Congress person, they probably be defeated as one was just defeated by AIPAC, daring to criticize Gaza and so forth. But you don’t get to vote for peace, you know? And if you dare speak out for it, you’re going to be baited in some way. You’re an agent of Putin, or you’re this or that, you know? How we get…? I want to wrap this up. And I know you have other things to do, but I’m asking you, as a veteran of trying to raise these issues, and you’ve spent your whole life… And you know, in fact, you you mentioned before that you actually like stand up comedy; Lenny Bruce could have got this, you know, would understand what happened, just the insanity of it, you know. Dr Strangelove got it in the movie, you know, you know. But why don’t we were sitting here thinking that, yeah, we’ll show them, we’ll get them, we’ll push this, we’ll challenge China, we’ll do this and and all of it contradicts everything we said before about the necessity of other wars. For instance, we’re trying to pit Vietnam, still a communist country against China, still a communist country again, but they’re the good communists. The other guys are the bad commies. So none of it ever made sense, right? And only thing, and this is… I recommend when your study, when it comes out, but the article that you just read it people can get from Responsible Statecraft. They can get it from our publication, Scheer Post. But you know, basically, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It is just follow the money. I mean, the money is compelling. Give us some of those figures, because they’re in your article. The kind of money we’re talking about.
Bill Hartung 32:08
Well, it’s, you know, the build up that they want to do just the new generation of weapons is 2 trillion over 30 years. And then in any given year, all the different elements of the nuclear enterprise could cost 50 or 60 billion. And then the ICBM is the biggest cost over its lifetime, over 300 billion. So the money is just, you know, hemorrhaging towards this stuff. And, you know, it’s, it’s, they’re selling kind of irrational fear and without thinking through what would happen if these weapons were used, and that arms racing makes the world less stable, not more stable. Things that kind of we thought had sunk in are being kind of ignored. And you’re right, there’s not enough pushback.
Robert Scheer 32:59
There’s no pushback. There’s no pushback! There’s no… I mean, not, not from the main what remains of mainstream media? There’s simply no… I use this word giddiness, people are just drunk on on power or something, and getting their own party to win, and getting their jobs and getting their more money. And who are these 800 to 1000 lobbyists that you mentioned? A number of them were in government.
Bill Hartung 33:30
Two thirds of them, they were congressional staffers. They were high level officials at the Pentagon. Our second last, four of the five last Secretaries of Defense were in the arms industry, then came back into government. They were at Raytheon. They were General Dynamics. They were Boeing. And I don’t recall a period where there was that kind of record of, you know, one after the other, after the other, coming out of the weapons industry. And then the new Gambit, is go work for the Silicon Valley militaries, either venture capital firms investing in this new tech, or the companies themselves. There’s now kind of the march of the military folks into that where they’re hoping to hit it big in the millions, instead of the hundreds of 1000s they would get at Lockheed Martin. So you know, and every front it seems like the money is kind of leading the politics of it. And if anything, you know that the head of Lockheed Martin looks sane compared to some of these, you know, Silicon Valley folks who think they’re going to save us through technology and just happen to get rich along the way.
Robert Scheer 34:40
Well, and let’s not forget that the whole idea of the Internet came out of the Pentagon originally, because you had to have a fragmented system to survive nuclear war fighting, right? And you have to- the revolving door between… that’s something we always forget, but you saw it over the battle of, between Amazon and others, about who’s going to control the cloud structure for the Defense Department. How you’re going to fight these modern wars? The whole role of artificial intelligence and so forth. It’s taken the preoccupation with the military and arms and the violent solution to social problems. It’s taking it to the highest level. And, you know, I hate to end on a depressing note, but it looks kind of hopeless right now.
Bill Hartung 35:32
Well, I, you know, my feeling is you got to fight the good fight. You got to rally the folks, and I’m just not going to let them get away with this without some critical voices and some organizing and some like you said, it’s insane. I don’t think we can let that stand. Now, I’m not saying we’re guaranteed to win, but, but we got to fight the fight.
Robert Scheer 35:52
Okay? I want to end on one little note, though, even at a major university now, if you challenge where they’re getting their money from… and that used to be a norm. Where are we getting our money? What are we working on? Is it responsible? And so forth, you would be considered, what’s wrong with that guy? A bad actor. We need the money. The money pays for good things, right? It’s, you know, it’s, virtuous. And when I got out of your article, I hope people read it, and I’ll end on this, the money does talk, and that is our way of life. And unfortunately, there is another way of looking at it. Sometimes you get these libertarians and others and they say, yeah, yeah, but we should do it through the market, the marketplace. And we right. Even Apple is caught, they don’t want to war with China. Even Musk, you know, after all, he’s making his Teslas, his biggest plant is in China. So there are people who believe in trade, believe in getting along. Let’s cut deals. Let’s work it out. But that doesn’t seem to carry the day anymore. And…
Bill Hartung 37:03
No, it’s like you don’t want to kill your biggest customer, and yet these policies could do that, you know?
Robert Scheer 37:08
Yeah, I’ll end on that note. It’s, you know, oddly enough, you really believe in capitalism… You can’t, and certainly, now that we have international capitalism, which requires not screwing around with shipping channels, and, you know, relying on trade and, you know, relying on understanding this is supposed to be the virtue of capitalism, as was proclaimed for centuries. It gets squandered. You know, without a moment’s notice. Bring it on. Okay, you know the final example, like, what’s happening with Israel? Here’s here’s Netanyahu comes to Congress and says, “We have to have war with Taiwan- or with Iran. We have to do this. We have to expand. It’s just a question now or later,” and there’s absolutely no challenge to that, or very little.
Bill Hartung 38:02
Yeah, I think we have to change that. And I admit it’s, it’s challenging, you know.
Robert Scheer 38:07
All right, I want to pay my respects to you for keeping on challenging it, but it’s not going to let me sleep any better. I just think what you describe is an absolutely nightmarish situation, far worse than the one that Eisenhower was talking about. You know, when you’re in a situation where people like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan see moments like peaceniks compared to the current crowd, it’s pretty damn scary, I think. But I’ll leave it…
Bill Hartung 38:38
Oh scary for sure. I wouldn’t dispute that.
Robert Scheer 38:41
Okay. Thanks a lot for doing this. Want to thank Christopher Ho and Laura Kondourajian at KCRW, the excellent NPR station in Santa Monica, for hosting these shows. Joshua Scheer, our executive producer, who lined up this interview. Diego Ramos and Max Jones, who work on the intro and work on the technical aspects, and the JKW Foundation, in memory of Jean Stein, a writer who believed in and practiced independent journalism. And the Integrity Media Foundation, which believes in supporting contrary voices, independent media, and has given us some funding for this. See you next week with another edition of Scheer Intelligence.