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🌊 The Dinner that Ended Competition
After the “Last Supper,” competition disappeared from the defense sector
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By Barratt Dewey
Throughout his precedency, President Dwight Eisenhower had walked a tightrope. As America’s most respected general, attributed with winning the war in Europe, he had insisted that the US needed to be a military superpower and out-compete the Soviet Union and China. Yet he also used his standing as a respected commander to warn of the risks involved with that.
Nowhere did he do so more clearly than in his farewell address, in 1961:
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction…We can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions
He continued:
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience…Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications… In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
64 years later, the existence of a military-industrial complex is often taken for granted. This industry employs millions of people, has enormous political influence, and possesses the powers of life and death. And the United States and all of its allies – from Australia to Japan to Colombia and NATO – all depend on it for survival.
The implications of this have become especially clear in recent months, as Trump faces calls to radically overhaul defense policy and take on the vested interests in DC. In few places are those interests more pronounced or powerful than the defense sector.
This week, we’re running five articles that highlight various aspects of this system, beginning with today’s, on how a dinner in 1993 consolidated 51 defense companies into the five that run the arms industry today.
In a dining room at the Pentagon in 1993, a dinner was held that would transform America's defense landscape. What became known as "The Last Supper" brought together the CEOs of America's largest defense contractors to receive a stark message from the Department of Defense: Consolidate or die.
Since then, America's defense industrial base has shrunk from 51 prime contractors to just five.
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Editor’s Note
Thanks for reading, we hope you enjoyed. Please write in with your thoughts on today’s newsletter! Is the modern American defense industry too powerful? Is opening up competition to smaller firms a good thing? Or is it a risk to national security? How can we rebuild public trust in the military industry? We want to hear from you!
In case you missed our latest stories, find them here:
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We hope you all have a fantastic Monday. See you back here tomorrow for more on the US military-industrial complex.
–Max and Max