NEW FACE OF THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Militarization of the American government is, at this stage, approaching total and irreversible, if we are to believe Chalmer's Johnson's new book The Sorrows of Empire (in which he is quite methodical and convincing).

Today's NYT fills in some of these details:

Lockheed stands at "the intersection of policy and technology," and that "is really a very interesting place to me," said its new chief executive, Robert J. Stevens, a tightly wound former Marine. "We are deployed entirely in developing daunting technology," he said, and that requires "thinking through the policy dimensions of national security as well as technological dimensions."

...No contractor is in a better position than Lockheed to do business in Washington. Nearly 80 percent of its revenue comes from the United States government. Most of the rest comes from foreign military sales, many financed with tax dollars. And former Lockheed executives, lobbyists and lawyers hold crucial posts at the White House and the Pentagon, picking weapons and setting policies.

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