PRESS ROOM

On COI #106, Danny Sjursen returns to the show to discuss the death of Chadian President Idriss Deby, who was killed in fighting with rebels in late April. While Chad is a key player in US and French 'counter-terrorism' operations across Africa's Sahel region, Danny explains how the country has overextended its forces on multiple fronts and faces increasing instability, all compounded by Deby's demise.

William Hartung's article in the Nation cited on "the role of major defense contractors, such as Raytheon, United Technologies and Lockheed-Martin, in lobbying Congress."

On average, foreign military sales under Trump amounted to $57.5 billion per year, versus an average of $53.9 billion per year for the eight years under his predecessor Barack Obama, in 2020 dollars, according to Bill Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy think tank.

On average, foreign military sales under Trump amounted to $57.5 billion per year, versus an average of $53.9 billion per year for the eight years under his predecessor Barack Obama, in 2020 dollars, according to Bill Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy think tank

"Congress and the administration should take a closer look at these costs," says report lead author William D. Hartung, "with an eye towards reducing them and freeing up funds for other needed purposes."

Policy research is not free, and the world of nonprofit think tanks that help generate them is in fact a billion-plus dollar industry. “The theory is that think tanks serve as a kind of middle ground between academia and public policy,” said Ben Freeman, who studies think tank funding at the Center for International Policy, itself a think tank. “It’s like the ivory tower for policy nerds—so many great nerd worlds coming together.”

William Hartung's Issue Brief "Executive Excess: CEO Compensation in the Arms Industry, 2020" is cited in this article.

Joe Biden uttered the word "Africa" exactly once in his first address to a joint session of congress, marking the vaunted presidential cliché of his first "100 Days" in office. It was a tangential reference, but its context, implications – and what Biden didn’t say – were somewhat instructive.

According to a new report by the Center for International Policy, aptly entitled, “Executive Excess: CEO Compensation in the Arms Industry, 2020,” authors William Hartung and Leila Riazi detail the enormous sums of money paid to just a handful of individuals each year in an industry notorious for its over-reliance on the federal trough. In 2020, the CEOs of the Top 5 — Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Boeing — made more than $150 million. When expanded to other top company officers required to disclose their earnings, that number goes up to an astonishing $276 million.

Check out my latest intense, wide-ranging, but fun chat with British journalist&podcaster Gordon Dimmack. We talk polite Dem-imperialists, the media's duty-dereliction, Afghanistan, all things Africa, Britain's unspoken new troop mission to Mali, American exceptionalist "vampires" who can't see their own reflection&so much more!

Ultimately, however, the real onus must be on Capitol Hill. A state-by-state, “whack-a-mole” approach leaves too many loopholes for malign actors to jump through. Instead, federal lawmakers need to take charge, turning state lawmakers’ good intentions into momentum for a bipartisan push to modernize FARA and combat harmful foreign influence.

Ben Freeman, the director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, thinks that Giuliani may be more exposed to potential liability than he claims because of how broad the language is in the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which governs the disclosure of work within the U.S. on behalf of foreign principals.