Existence of the wealthy & well-known ‘Lords of War’

This article is co-published in partnership with The Intercept

For the primary time, the Pentagon finances topped $1 trillion and personal contractors now obtain more than half of all of the tax {dollars} flowing to the Pentagon.

Few have profited from this privatization of the U.S. army greater than the CEOs of Pentagon contractors.

While these firms usually advertise their work as supporting the troops, the actual fact is that many servicemembers stay in appalling housing circumstances, whereas military-industrial contractors’ earnings soar and their CEOs stay in luxurious.

The lavish life of those CEOs is laid naked within the new mockumentary “Lords of War,” co-produced by the Quincy Institute and The Intercept. The brief movie pulls no punches because it lampoons an business held aloft by a whole bunch of billions of public funds yearly.

“Lords of War” connects exorbitant Pentagon spending to the posh loved by the CEOs of its high contractors. As the movie notes, Lockheed Martin is commonly the most important recipient of Pentagon contracts, raking in $75 billion in income in 2025 — greater than 72% of which got here from the U.S. authorities. As Lords of War’s fake actual property aficionado explains, Lockheed’s CEOs have used their $20-plus-million-dollar compensation packages to purchase luxurious actual property from the D.C. suburbs to the shores of Miami.

Despite its care-free tone, the movie highlights very actual issues throughout the military-industrial advanced. As research by William Hartung and Stephen Semler for Brown’s Costs of War Project confirmed, 54% of the Pentagon’s annual spending now goes to personal contractors — up from 41% within the Nineteen Nineties.

The high Pentagon contractors’ revenues and inventory costs additionally skyrocketed as they’ve begun to devour an ever-larger share of the army finances. They transformed their income from the army into line-items on their very own budgets that do nothing to enhance U.S. nationwide safety. They employed armies of lobbyists that now outnumber all members of Congress by a virtually two-to-one margin; billions of {dollars} in stock buybacks; and, of-course, CEO compensation packages on par with these of NFL quarterbacks.

The distinction of those CEOs’ rock-star life — Lords of War reveals that one chief govt purchased pop star Lenny Kravitz’s Miami mansion — with these of the army servicemembers they purport to serve is placing. As the movie notes, Lockheed Martin’s CEO, Marilyn Hewson, obtained $33.7 million in compensation in 2015, which is greater than 150 occasions as a lot as the common compensation package for an enlisted servicemember. While Hewson and different Pentagon contractor CEOs have been buying-up mansions, the basic pay of servicemembers has been comparatively stagnant for the previous 20 years when controlling for inflation.

Worse, the circumstances servicemembers have been dwelling in are deteriorating. A 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office discovered that two-thirds of servicemembers assume their housing is unaffordable. And servicemembers usually face “long commutes, leave families behind in other states, and work 2 jobs to afford housing,” in keeping with the GAO report.

A July 2026 Senate investigation, in the meantime, revealed harmful dwelling circumstances at army bases in Georgia, together with “reports of lead exposure affecting newborn health, severe mold contamination leading to emergency room visits, flooding in living areas, and more.”

Wartime environments have been no higher, as evidenced by the deplorable circumstances — together with meals shortages and inoperable plumbing — through the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln’s prolonged deployment close to Iran, which in the end led a number of sailors to aim to leap overboard.

Unfortunately, it’s your tax {dollars} which might be paying for this gaping chasm between the lives of contractor CEOs and the troops. As one of many stars of Lords of War notes in a fast reduce that seamlessly blends the rabid patriotism of a Top Gun montage with the horrors inflicted in Gaza, “It’s thanks to your generosity in the form of tax dollars that these illustrious executives are on the case.”

“Lords of War” is among the few movies concerning the military-industrial advanced that you simply discover hilarious, however its topic isn’t any laughing matter. The non-public companies we’re entrusting with U.S. nationwide safety are doing extra to defend their very own share costs than they’re to defend the nation. If we hold trusting this damaged system to maintain us protected, then, in the end, the joke is on us.