The Trillion Dollar War Machine

How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home

Coming Soon

Contributors

By William D. Hartung

By Ben Freeman

Formats and Prices

On Sale
Nov 11, 2025
Page Count
336 pages
Publisher
Bold Type Books
ISBN-13
9781645030638

Price

$30.00

Price

$40.00 CAD

Format

Hardcover

Format:

Hardcover $30.00 $40.00 CAD

A hard-hitting investigation into how the Pentagon’s runaway spending embroils America in foreign wars, squanders its wealth, and enriches a privileged elite

America spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on its military. This extraordinary spending not only detracts from our ability to address pressing social problems but compels us into foreign wars to justify our vast arsenal. Sold to us in the name of “security,” our military industrial complex actually makes us far less safe.

Top policy experts William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman follow the profits of militarism from traditional Pentagon contractors, which receive more than half of the Pentagon’s budget, to the upstart high-tech firms that shamelessly promote unproven and destabilizing technologies. They unmask the enablers of the war machine—politicians, lobbyists, the media, Hollywood, think tanks, and so many more—whose work enriches a wealthy elite at the expense of everybody else, spreading conflict around the world and embroiling America in endless wars.

A damning tour de force, The Trillion Dollar War Machine shows who is pulling the strings and pushing for war, and offers a blueprint for how we can shut down the war machine and restore American security and prosperity.  
 

William D. Hartung

About the Author

Bill Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. He has worked for the Council on Economic Priorities and the World Policy Institute doing research and writing on the arms industry and the politics of defense spending. Hartung is the author of two books on the intersection between the arms industry and the shaping of U.S. foreign policy, And Weapons for All and How Much Are You Making on the War, Daddy? — A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration.

Hartung has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the Nation, and has been interviewed by ABC News, CBS 60 Minutes, CNN, Fox News, the Lehrer Newshour, NBC Nightly News, and National Public Radio. His writing on Lockheed Martin has appeared in the Washington Post Outlook section, the Nation, the Multinational Monitor, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He lives in New York City.

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