Women Now Control America’s Military-Industrial Complex

FYI - Twitter has refused to allow me to post a link to this article.

I hope it has to do with them clumsily trying to protect women.

We usually think of Deep Staters as middle-aged-to-old men and military generals.

Apparently, we are entering a new age.

Lockheed Martin CEO Marilyn Hewson meets President Trump in front of an F-35 stealth fighter © Reuters / Carlos Barria

It’s not just Congress that’s seeing more and more female faces as of late. Women have taken control of the US’ multibillion dollar military-industrial complex too. Who said that war is only a man’s business?

With the 116th Congress being hailed as the most diverse and most female one yet, the rise of the empowered woman has left few sectors of business and government untouched and now extends to the US’ cosy-cosy club of arms manufacturers and their government procurers.

Politico celebrated this “watershed” moment on Wednesday, announcing that as of January 1, the CEOs of four of the nation’s top five defense contractors – Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Boeing’s defense wing – are now women. The latest appointment was of Kathy Warden as CEO and president of Northrop Grumman.

In government, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, the State Department’s weapons seller, the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons chief, and the secretary of the Air Force are all women. 

The waging of war and building of weapons have long been male-dominated fields. However, with government more and more open to women, and the STEM fields campaigning to even out the almost 80-percent male graduation rate, the current crop of female arms makers and buyers is part of the trend too.

“If I ask everyone in this room to think about the most protective person you know in your life, someone who would do anything to keep you safe, half the people in this room would think about their moms,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told the House Armed Services Committee.

“We are the protectors; that’s what the military does. We serve to protect the rest of you, and that’s a very natural place for a woman to be.”

With US-made weapons responsible for thousands of deaths worldwide – including a conservative estimate of almost 250,000 civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two decades and dozens of schoolchildren in Yemen – the irony of Wilson’s feelgood statement was not lost on some Twitter commenters.

“The way intersectional feminism is going right now, we’re going to have a very diverse group of war criminals and capitalist patriarchs,” one wrote.

./AGStover.exe
@AGStover
 Lol @ MSNBC writing a fluff piece about how most of largest Military Industrial Complex companies are now being run by women. #WokeImperialism


Marwa Osman
@Marwa__Osman
Replying to @Marwa__Osman
YES LADIES! You can now equally annihilate entire cities with a press of a button...just like men...because it is 2019 & WOMEN ARE FREE#MilitaryIndustrialComplex is now on equal representation & equal pay..woohoo..how about you ladies celebrate by dropping a bomb on my family? pic.twitter.com/JxTrmANVNZ

No matter the gender of the person at the reins, the US maintains a military presence in some 177 countries worldwide, and the Department of Defense has an annual budget of almost $700 billion. War is big business for America’s defense manufacturers too. Lockheed Martin, Boeing Defense, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics made a combined $56 billion in the third quarter of 2018 alone.

War - Good for Business in America

Is there any possibility that America really wants peace in the world? Not as long is there is money to be made.

‘An intangible lift’: Defense contractors assure investors of Middle Eastern wars’ profitability

A U.S. Air Force version of the F-35 Lightning II. © Lockheed Martin / Reuters

Top defense contractors reassured investors at a conference in Florida that they are poised to benefit financially from the escalating conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, according to a leaked tape.

Last week, Lockheed Martin Executive Vice President Bruce Tanner gave a speech at a Credit Suisse conference in West Palm Beach where he praised the “indirect benefits” that defense contractors and their shareholders would see as the result of the escalation of the conflicts in Syria, such as Turkey’s recent shooting down of a Russian jet. The Intercept obtained a recording of the speech.

That incident would lead to a greater potential for US involvement and would cause “an intangible lift because of the dynamics of that environment and our products in theater,” Tanner told investors. He also said that the Russian activities against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) with the US would stimulate demand for Lockheed Martin’s F-22 and new F-35 jets.

He added that the demand for “expendable” products like rockets has increased from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates because of the involvement of those countries in Yemen’s civil war.

The Intercept reported that Oshkosh president Wilson Jones, in another speech at the conference, said that with the threat of IS growing, “there are more countries interested in buying Oshkosh-made M-ATV armored vehicles.” He said that a recent business trip to the Middle East showed that many countries had expressed an interest in mechanizing their infantry forces.

Raytheon CEO Tom Kennedy added his voice to the chorus, saying that his company was seeing a significant uptick in demands for “defense solutions” from several countries in the Middle East.

“It’s all the turmoil they have going on, whether the turmoil’s occurring in Yemen, whether it’s with the Houthis, whether it’s occurring in Syria or Iraq, with ISIS,” Kennedy said, noting that he had met with King Salman of Saudi Arabia.

While terrorist attacks usually lead to bad results for the stock market, defense contractors’ share prices soared following the November terrorist attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead. On the Monday after the attacks, Lockheed Martin traded 3.5 percent higher, Northrop Grumman was up 4.4 percent, and Raytheon saw a 4 percent boost.

At this point I would normally make a smart-alec remark, but I think the article speaks loud enough on its own. What an up-side-down world we live in!