Antinuclear

How Corporations View (and Own) the U.S. Military

The most famous example in recent years is the 2023 NDAA, which contained several provisions regarding Taiwan. One provision allowed Taiwan to receive foreign military financing (FMF) from the U.S. government. FMF usually goes to independent countries, not breakaway provinces. FMF consists of loans and/or grants from the U.S. government for a country to purchase goods and services from the U.S. war industry.

And, just like that, the 2023 NDAA increased U.S. belligerence toward Beijing and made war more likely, profiting corporations all the while.

Corporate Capture Is Not Just Lobbying

Christian. Dec 27, 2025, https://thebusinessofwar.substack.com/p/how-corporations-view-and-own-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1769284&post_id=179499875&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

A for-profit corporation is a business organization designed to maximize short-term profit. The job of corporate executives is to maximize that profit, while the board of directors makes sure they do so.

The number one way that a corporation maximizes profit is by underpaying its workers.1 Workers create the profit, but don’t receive it. The executives funnel that profit to investors and themselves.

It goes without saying that the workers are not in charge. They are not allowed to make the business decisions in a given corporation. The executives make those decisions. There is no democracy in the workplace.

This is the situation in any industry, including the war industry.

What You Know about Corporate Capture

Big business works hard to influence the U.S. government. Corporate capture happens when it succeeds. Massive corporations work together to influence the government’s institutions and decision-making so that policy and regulation (or lack thereof) increase corporate profit instead of public well-being.

You likely know about think tanks, lobbying, and legal bribery.

• A think tank issues information favorable to those who fund it. Corporations and the super-rich fund think tanks, which create and inflate threats and justify the broad deployment of U.S. troops and sky-high military and intel budgets.
• Corporations and the super-rich hire lobbyists to swarm U.S. Congress and the Pentagon. Lobbyists even draft legislation, which they hand over to politicians.
• Corporations and the super-rich fund the two political parties and individual candidates. Once in office, elected officials pass laws favorable to these big business interests.

Think tanks, lobbying, and legal bribery are a powerful combination, but corporate capture is much more than that. War corporations (known as “military contractors” or “defense companies”) control the mind and the body in several ways.

Control the Mind

• Corporations regularly open (and close) offices and factories. Corporate executives promise a number jobs at a given location, particularly when seeking state and local tax breaks (though the fine print makes sure they never have to come through with all of those jobs or keep workers employed for the long run). Playing the “jobs” card is a way for big business and its politicians to pretend to care about workers.
• Legally designated as 501(c) nonprofits, trade groups (e.g., NDIA, AIA, AUSA) excel at networking active-duty military officers and industry officials, further blurring the line between government and corporate. Corporate viewpoints reign supreme at networking events, such as seminars, breakfasts, and arms fairs. (Additionally, 501(c)4 nonprofits are skilled at using dark money to influence politics.)
• Corporations help to craft policy and strategy on the inside. Corporations have had a hand in strategic initiatives and planning for Navy leadership, strategic plans and policy support for the Air Force, acquisition policy and program development for the Marine Corps, assessments and policy recommendations for the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Logistics, and more!
• The Pentagon gives corporations free labor from military officers. The corporations are allowed to propagandize these officers with recommendations about military policy, which the officers take with them when they return to their military unit.
• Greedy tycoons, including prominent war profiteers, sit on different boards that advise the Pentagon. The Defense Policy Board is one such grouping.

Control the Body

• The U.S. military doesn’t move, bomb, or communicate without corporations. In fact, it doesn’t do anything without corporate goods and services — from the largest aircraft carrier (itself a platform for innumerable goods and services) to the smallest microchip. Comprising the militant body, corporations gobble up more than half of the military budget. There still are uniformed troops (soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and guardians), but they are merely users of corporate products… in the eyes of top executives.
• Corporate personnel are everywhere. These “contractors” even outnumber the troops in many military locations.
• The U.S. military isn’t allowed to repair most of its own equipment. Corporations must do it. This is just like corporations preventing farmers from repairing their tractors or you from putting a new battery into your old laptop.
• In the same vein, corporations do their best to hog the data pertaining to big-ticket weapons. The most famous example is the Lockheed Martin F-35 jet, the most expensive weapon of all time. The corporation owns the software code and the technical data for the jet. The U.S. military therefore is unable to operate, maintain, or upgrade the jet on its own.
• If you don’t own it, it’s not yours. Many corporations require the U.S. military to license their software, not purchase it outright. Licenses cover everything from accounting software and data integration software to products that monitor communications network and Oracle databases for a massive counterintelligence bureaucracy. Licensing is more profitable than a one-time sale.
• Capitalists move from industry to government and back again. When in government, they implement profit-over-people policies and they acquire knowledge to profit better whenever they leave government. (Top military officers also flock to war corporations in retirement, often becoming executives.)

Corporations don’t just run the show. Corporations are the show.

The Resulting Behavior

This corporate capture — mind and body — guarantees that government policy will help to maximize corporate profit.

The annual military policy bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is crafted in the environment described above. Corporate lobbyists and U.S. Congress pack the NDAA with section after section designed to increase corporate profit.

Year after year, the NDAA requires the Pentagon to:

1. Train and arm foreign militaries or paramilitary groups. This increases arms sales and can give the Pentagon some influence over those being trained/armed.

A few examples of many include: training Iraqi forces and Kurdish Peshmerga (2024 NDAA); expanding the training of Eastern European “national security forces” (2025 NDAA); and reinforcing Lebanese military training and equipping (2026 NDAA).

2. Maintain or expand the U.S. military’s presence around the world.

The hundreds of U.S. military bases worldwide increase corporate sales — remember, corporations comprise most U.S. military activity2 — and allow the Pentagon to further bully governments/groups that chart an independent foreign policy or resist corporate domination of their land and resources.

No region is off-limits.

For example, the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, established through the 2021 NDAA and enhanced in all subsequent ones, is the main way the Pentagon militarizes the Pacific. It focuses on building up military infrastructure in the Pacific, purchasing and placing weaponry there, expanding military training and exercises there, and fostering and co-opting regional leaders.

3. Spend money on goods and services made by U.S. war corporations.3 For example, section 1640 of the 2024 NDAA required the Pentagon to establish a nuclear sea-launched cruise missile program. (Sections 1513 of the 2025 NDAA and 1633 of the 2026 NDAA refined the program’s goals.) Guess which corporations the military will pay to develop this weapon!

4. Assess what the official enemies are doing in a given region.

• Assess, for example, what Moscow and Beijing are up to in Latin America and the Caribbean (2024 NDAA, section 7342).
• Devise a strategy for “exposing, and, as appropriate, countering” China’s “malign activities” (2025 NDAA, section 1254).
• Evaluate [alleged] fentanyl trafficking by the Chinese government (2026 NDAA, section 8313) and plan to “respond” to China’s “global” military bases (section 8367).

These are just a few examples.

The assessments are then used to create fear and hype up such “threats.” Look out! [Country you’re taught to fear] is doing X, Y, and Z in [region U.S.-based capitalists want to dominate]! Bigger budgets follow. More money for war corporations.

5. Spend tax dollars on researching more technology for war and espionage. For example, the past three NDAAs have mandated research in artificial intelligence, microelectronics, nuclear weaponry, and much more. Industry does the research. And charges a pretty penny for it. (Meanwhile, corporations don’t use much of their own profit for R&D. Profit goes to execs and investors.)

The most famous example in recent years is the 2023 NDAA, which contained several provisions regarding Taiwan. One provision allowed Taiwan to receive foreign military financing (FMF) from the U.S. government. FMF usually goes to independent countries, not breakaway provinces. FMF consists of loans and/or grants from the U.S. government for a country to purchase goods and services from the U.S. war industry.

And, just like that, the 2023 NDAA increased U.S. belligerence toward Beijing and made war more likely, profiting corporations all the while.

Every subsequent NDAA increased the likelihood of all-out war with China. The 2026 NDAA, for example, further weaponized Taiwan by $1 billion, accelerated U.S.-Taiwan drone and counter-drone programs, encouraged the Pentagon to invite Taiwan to the massive annual military exercise known as RIMPAC, and more.

Full-court Press

Corporate capture is thorough.

It is lobbying; funding political parties and campaigns; establishing and funding think tanks; lying about jobs; using trade groups to imbricate military and industry; crafting policy and strategy on the inside; using boards to advise the Pentagon; flooding the military with corporate goods, services, and personnel; hogging data and requiring licensing; occupying the top Pentagon positions; and propagandizing military officers directly.

The troops are users of corporate goods and services.

Military bases are avenues of corporate profit.

That is how big business sees the U.S. military. And it has achieved its vision.

Christian Sorensen is a researcher focused on the U.S.-based corporations profiting from war. A U.S. Air Force veteran, Sorensen is associate director of the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), a group of military and intel veterans who disagree with U.S. foreign policy and believe a better world is possible.

December 29, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized