PRESS ROOM

The market for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) has exploded over the last decade in both the civilian and military sectors, with drones becoming everyday household objects and favored weapons of war. But the White House’s recent policy relaxation aimed at imposing American UAV export dominance is misguided and risky.

The corruption of Donald Trump means that lives are being lost and laws are being broken. There is no sign of congressional oversight and accountability for the excessive actions of the Trump administration. The Senate is firmly in the hands of Trumpian loyalists, who are blocking legislation that would address the economic and social costs of the pandemic. The House of Representatives is in the capable hands of Nancy Pelosi, but the legislation that comes out of the House sits on the desk of Senator Mitch McConnell. Who knew that “one man; one vote” actually meant that McConnell is The Man? So “one man; no vote.”

"The key difference is that 951 isn't about normal FARA activity like lobbying or public relations work. This statute is for borderline spies," said Ben Freeman, director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy. "The bottom line here is that the Department of Justice appears to believe Yeo was acting more as a spy than an unregistered lobbyist."

Government watchdogs have little doubt that a whole new bureaucracy will result in increased federal military funding. “The initial costs of setting up the Space Force are likely a small down payment on an under-taking that could cost tens of billions of dollars in the years to come,” says William Hartung of the Center for International Policy.

I’ve been analyzing the Pentagon budget for close to four decades and I can count on one hand the number of times Congress has voted on significant cuts in the Pentagon budget. This week is one such time, as both the House (as early as this morning) and the Senate (likely tomorrow) will vote on a 10% reduction in the Pentagon’s bloated budget.

When former secretary of defense Robert M. Gates retired from the Obama administration in 2011, he explained that he could no longer support a president who favored a smaller military that would be “able to go to fewer places and do fewer things.” Gates said that he couldn’t imagine “being part of [such] a nation, part of [such] a government.” Nearly a decade later, he has written a so-called “insider’s account” that touches on the limits of military power—but provides no recommendations for demilitarizing the national security process.

Last week, both the House and Senate passed their versions of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2021... As the Costs of War project at Brown University recently reported, more than half of the Pentagon’s budget goes to defense contractors. And, the defense industry, in turn, uses part of their profits to influence members of Congress... What hasn’t been reported yet is that lobbying and contributing to members of Congress is just one way defense contractors influence the defense budget process. Outside the halls of Congress, contractors are able to significantly influence debates about the defense budget process through the sizeable contributions they make to many of Washington’s top think tanks.

Not only are we spending too much, but we're also spending it on the wrong places.

This year’s proposed budget of $740 billion for the Pentagon and related programs is one of the highest levels of defense spending since World War II, higher than spending during the Korean or Vietnam Wars or the peak of the Reagan buildup. Spending this much money on traditional military capabilities is out of sync with the world we now live in, where pandemics, climate change, and extreme inequality pose the greatest challenges to our safety and security.

While the Pocan amendment did not pass, longtime Pentagon watcher William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, described it as the first time in years that significant cuts to defense spending received a vote in Congress. After retaking the House in the 2018 midterms, House Democrats’ April 2019 proposal was to increase military spending by 2.6%, and since the beginning of the Trump administration defense spending is up almost 20%.

Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr, facing the possibility of less than six months in command, are stepping up their attacks on governance. Five Inspectors General have been removed since April; the Post Office has been placed in the hands of a political ideologue; and sensitive data related to the coronavirus is being taken away from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Though there is no shortage of examples of President Trump’s contempt for the authority of Congress, his administration’s efforts to dismantle congressional oversight over U.S. arms sales are especially troubling.