Hank Kennedy revisits the Nye Committee, the 1934–36 Senate inquiry that exposed how arms manufacturers turned international conflict into a sales strategy. His case for reviving it is simple: the war industry’s incentives have not changed, but its scale and political reach have.
The original investigation found arms makers:
- Bribing officials and using US military departments to promote private sales
- Playing rival states against each other during wars in South America
- Complaining when diplomacy threatened weapons orders
- Collecting extraordinary World War I profits—DuPont’s rose by 1,130 percent
The contemporary numbers are larger and no less absurd:
- Projected US military spending is roughly $1.5 trillion
- The average taxpayer contributes about $4,000 a year to war and weaponry
- Patriot interceptors cost about $4 million and THAAD interceptors about $12–13 million
- The drones they target can cost just $20,000–$50,000
The Nye Committee did not win its most ambitious reforms. Proposals to nationalize weapons manufacturers and require a referendum before war failed, and its Neutrality Acts were later weakened. But it forced private interests behind public wars into view.
That is Kennedy’s real argument for a new inquiry. After Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran, the central question is not whether military spending produces victory. It is who profits when costly, unpopular wars continue—and how that profit keeps them going.