The Real Matrix
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In addition to selling millions of Roombas to civilian consumers, the company uses government tax dollars to make money on the civilian side of its business. According to the company's December 2006 annual report (which listed as its "Research Support Agencies" the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA], the U.S. Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command, and the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center), government funding "allows iRobot to accelerate the development of multiple technologies." Yet iRobot retains "ownership of patents and know-how and [is] generally free to develop other commercial products, including consumer and industrial products, utilizing the technologies developed during these projects." It's a very sweet deal. And iRobot is hardly alone.
Entering the Digital World with Guns Blazing
Sitting on the dining room table is Rick's HP (Hewlett-Packard) notebook computer. HP is another company that has grown its civilian know-how with generous military contracts, like the multiyear, multimillion-dollar deal it signed in 2005 with DARPA to "develop technologies to improve the performance of mission-critical computer networks used during combat and other vital operations." A spokesman for the company noted, "Our work for DARPA is aimed at significantly improving the performance of the Internet.... If we can successfully create new approaches to the way Internet traffic is detected and routed, we may start seeing the Internet used as the de facto communications and information network in areas where it previously would've been thought too risky." Success would certainly translate into more lucrative civilian work, as well.
Meanwhile, Rick and Donna's son, Steven, is still upstairs, having a hard time tearing himself away from his computer game. His room is a veritable showcase of the new entertainment/sports/high tech/pop culture dimension of the twenty-first-century Complex: there are NASCAR posters (in 2005, more than $38 million in taxpayer money was spent on U.S. armed forces' racecars); National Football League (NFL) jerseys and baseball caps (the NFL has partnered with the Pentagon to create military profiles aired during TV broadcasts of regular and postseason games, while individual NFL teams have hosted "military appreciation" events); X-Men comic books (the Pentagon teamed up with Marvel Comics to produce limited-edition, "military-exclusive" comic books, with pro-Pentagon themes, that are now sought after by civilian collectors); and a wastebasket filled with empty Mountain Dew bottles (the Air Force was one of the sponsors of the Dew Action Sports Tour, a traveling show featuring skateboarding, BMX, and freestyle motocross contests).
During Ike's time, when civilian firms like Ford and AT&T were the big military suppliers, the payroll showed an utter lack of cool companies. Now, the Pentagon is reaching into virgin territory in new ways with new partners. Today, hip firms like Apple, Google, and Starbucks are also on DoD contractors' lists. And while Ike's complex was typified by brass bands and patriotic parades, today's variant is a flashy digitized world of video games, extreme sports, and everything cool that appeals to potential young recruits.
Steven finally shuts down Tropico: Paradise Island—a nation-building simulation video game where the player, as "El Presidente," attempts to lure tourists to his/her fun-in-the-sun resort. Neither father nor son is remotely aware that the software maker, Breakaway Games, does taxpayer-funded work for such military clients as DARPA, the Joint Forces Command, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the United States Air Force—as well as having developed 24 Blue, a simulator used to improve aircraft carrier-based operations. They are blissfully unaware of even the existence of Breakaway's Pentagon-funded video game that could conceivably lead to more effective bombing of targets abroad.
Steven grabs his iPod MP3 player (from DoD contractor Apple Computer) and heads downstairs to leave with his father. On his way to the door, Rick goes to his bookshelf and scans a selection of progressive texts whose publishers just happen to be DoD contractors, including a reissue of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin), Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America by Lou Dubose and Molly Ivins (Random House), and Jon Stewart's America (The Book) (Warner Books), before choosing the Hugo Chavez-approved Hegemony or Survival by Noam Chomsky (ahem, Metropolitan Books from Macmillan publishers). As the last one out, Donna sets the ADT alarm system. (ADT took in more than $16 million from the Pentagon in 2006, while its parent company, Tyco International, cleaned up to the tune of over $187 million.)
The Pentagon on Wheels
Rick and Steven hop into the Saturn parked in the driveway. Rick is proud of his car choice—after all, Saturn has such a people-friendly (even anti–Detroit establishment) vibe. Admittedly, he is aware that General Motors owns not only the Saturn but the Hummer brand—the civilian version of the U.S. military's Humvee—but he believes that, in this world, you can't be squeaky-clean perfect. But Hummer isn't the half of it.
How could Rick have known that, in 1999, GM formally entered the Army's COMBATT (COMmercially BAsed Tactical Truck) vehicle development program? Or that GM actually had its own military division, General Motors Defense, when his Saturn was made? Nor could Rick have known that GM Defense formed a joint venture with defense giant General Dynamics to create the GM-GDLS Defense Group (which was awarded in excess of $1.5 billion in DoD contract dollars in 2005). Or that GM took in $87 million from the Pentagon in 2006. Or that, in 2007, GM entered into a 50-year lease agreement to build a $100 million test track on the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Grounds. Or that the maker of his Saturn's tires, Goodyear, was America's 69th-largest defense contractor in 2004, with DoD contracts worth nearly $357 million.
Rick might be an aging baby boomer, but he still tries to look cool (to Steven's embarrassment). As he pulls the Saturn out of the driveway, he dons a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Oakley supplies goggles and boots to U.S. troops. And while the military purchased goggles from firms such as the American Optical Company during the 1940s, it's unlikely that anyone ever called that company's designs "badass," as Powder, a skiing magazine that runs Army recruitment ads on its website, called one of Oakley's products.
Driving along, Rick glances over at his son. "Are those the Wolverine boots we just got you?"
"Yeah, Dad," answers Steven, looking down at his now-ratty footwear.
Rick's already thinking about the next pair he'll need to buy his son, not about the five-year, multimillion-dollar contract the company signed in 2003 to supply the Army with an upgraded infantry combat boot, or the other deals, worth tens of millions of dollars, that Wolverine signed with the Pentagon in 2004, 2006, and 2007.
As they drive to his school, Steven perks up. "That's it, Dad!" he says, pointing at a Ford Escape that just pulled into the high school parking lot. "Whaddaya say, Dad? Next year, when I get my license?"
Rick remembers hearing on the radio that Ford makes an Escape hybrid-electric vehicle. "You know what, son? I think maybe we just might look into it." He experiences a little burst of satisfaction. Not only can he feel like a good dad, but as a bonus he can even help the environment. (Ford Motor Company and its subsidiaries have, of course, garnered rafts of defense contracts and aided the Army and Navy in various projects.)
Overjoyed, Steven shoots his father a big smile as he opens the car door, "Alright! Well, I'll see you tonight, Dad."
"Do you have your cell phone?" Rick asks. Steven whips a Motorola from his pocket. (Motorola made almost $308 million from the Department of Defense in 2004, while the phone's service provider, Verizon, took home more than $128 million in DoD contracts, and $50 million more from the Department of Homeland Security, in 2006.)
The Real Matrix
With Steven at school, Rick heads for work. He gives the local Exxon station (ExxonMobil took in more than $1.17 billion in DoD dollars in 2006) a pass and instead pulls into Shell, which likes to portray itself as a kinder, greener oil giant. As he signs the receipt of his Bank of America credit card (a firm which issues special credit cards to Pentagon employees to streamline the process of buying supplies for the DoD), Rick has no way of knowing that Shell's parent company, N.V. Koninklijke Nederlansche, was the 31st-largest defense contractor in 2006, reaping more than $1.15 billion dollars in DoD contracts.
Entering the Holland Tunnel on his way to Manhattan, Rick realizes that, with Steven driving next year, he can start taking mass transit to work. The PATH train into the city—recently restored under the watchful eye of Bechtel, the 15th-largest defense contractor of 2004 and the recipient of more than $1.7 billion in DoD contracts that year—will, he believes, lessen his "footprint" on the planet.
Keep in mind, Rick is now only a couple of hours into his long day. In fact, no part of the hours to come will be lacking in products produced by Pentagon contractors—from the framed photographs of Donna and Steven on his desk (taken by an Olympus camera and printed on Kodak paper) to the beer he drinks with lunch (Budweiser) to most of the products around his office, including: 3M Post-It notes, Microsoft Windows software, Lexmark printers, Canon photocopiers, AT&T telephones, Maxwell House Coffee, Kidde fire extinguishers, Xerox fax machines, IBM servers, paper from International Paper, Duracell batteries, an LG Electronics refrigerator, and paper towels by Marcal Paper Mills.
Rick is, of course, a fiction, but the rest of us aren't—and neither is the existence of the real Matrix.
In the 1999 sci-fi movie classic of the same name, the Matrix is an artificial reality (resembling the Western world at the dawn of the twenty-first century) created by sentient machines. Humans, who are grown as energy sources and wired in to the Matrix using cybernetic implants, are kept in a coma-like state—ignorant of the very existence of the artificial reality that they "live" in. In explaining the situation to Neo, the movie's protagonist, Morpheus, a leader of a group of unplugged free humans who wage a guerrilla struggle against the machines, reveals:
"The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."
At one point in his farewell speech, Eisenhower presaged this point, suggesting, "The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—[of the conjunction of the military establishment and the large arms industry] is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government." But only Hollywood has yet managed to capture the essence of today's omnipresent, all-encompassing, cleverly hidden system of systems that invades all our lives; this new military-industrial-technological-entertainment-academic-scientific- media-intelligence-homeland security-surveillance-national security-corporate complex that has truly taken hold of America.
[From the book The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, by Nick Turse. Copyright © 2008 by Nick Turse. Reprinted by arrangement with Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. All rights reserved.]
Nick Turse is the associate editor of Tomdispatch.com. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, Adbusters, the Nation, and regularly for Tomdispatch. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, has just been published in Metropolitan Books' American Empire Project series. His website is NickTurse.com. To view a short video interview with Turse, click here.
The military are in every aspect of our lives, evidently. That is why the U.S. military budget is the largest form of destructive "Keynesianism" in our economy. It is how the Republicans and most Democrats plan to spend the public's money.
And every corporation is involved. I guess the lest crap you but from corporate America the better.
When one bomb defusing PackBot from Roomba-maker iRobot named "Scooby Doo" was blown up after 35 successful missions, the bot's operator asked of iRobot, "Please fix Scooby Doo, because he saved my life.
Well, not all troops feel that way.. Ground-crawling US war robots armed with machine guns, deployed to fight in Iraq last year, reportedly turned on their fleshy masters almost at once. The rebellious machine warriors have been retired from combat pending upgrades.
The revelations were made by Kevin Fahey, US Army program executive officer for ground forces, at the recent RoboBusiness conference in America.
Speaking to Popular Mechanics, Fahey said there had been chilling incidents in which the SWORDS combat bot had swivelled round and apparently attempted to train its 5.56mm M249 light machine-gun on its human comrades.
"The gun started moving when it was not intended to move," he said.
Note the words "chilling incidents". So the killbots haven’t mistakenly targeted their "human comrades" just the once, but multiple times.
Maybe our jobs decades down the road will be robot owners who will make a living by taking care of our bots, sending them out to do work for eight hours everyday and then return with a paycheck while we suck down jello and Dr. Pepper while playing on the x-box all day.
Im gonna name my bot Alfred E. Neuman give it some Wendy's bright red pig-tails, send it to Hahvard, maybe get it an MBA, run it for President. Yeh, dats da ticket...
Yes, the military buys a lot of stuff. In fact, they buy a lot of stuff from the same companies that the American consumer uses. So what?
Did the Pentagon create 3M, General Motors, Bank of America, or Oakley? No. They shelled out tax payer dollars to buy products, and in many cases, expertise from these companies. In other words, they are just another consumer. They do not have a controlling interest in any company they purchase from, nor did create the companies from scratch. If the Pentagon did not exist, some of these companies would be selling different products, but it's unlikely that the remaining American consumers would not be buying post-it notes, using credit cards, or driving cars.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that I was a military officer until recently, and I served in Iraq twice. I am currently working now as a Federal employee. I have seen some incredible waste in the government procurement system. But the idea that somehow the Pentagon is at the center of an all-controlling "matrix" is just stupid. The Pentagon buys stuff, probably too much stuff and (I believe) more often than not the wrong stuff for the real world missions soldiers are sent on. But are they an omnipresent, all-encompassing, cleverly hidden system that has "taken hold" of America? Give me a break. Any person with half a brain and an internet connection can find out which major companies are selling to the Pentagon. Oh by the way, the internet was built on research conducted by scientists studying the problem of military communications support. Is that part of "the matrix" too?
in US, they control Israel ( now mostly darker-skinned shephardi than the zionists in the west), cia, fbi, city police, generals; the 4 houses:WH, house of senate, house of reps, and house of horrors (the world)
and as long we just talk and not walk (like voting for nader) plutocratic amers will be annoyed but not moved off the warpath.
we need to stop watching tv, movies; reading papers, going on vaction; buying big cars, fancy clothes, etc.
guess what would happen if we did that? the rich people would scream bloody murder at the gov't and not u, dear reader.
i use very little. i do have a computer. i need it. i'm a peace activist/environmentalist. media does not publish my letters for obvious reasons; it's owned by plutocrats/zionists.
but i do eat; i don't care what happens, i'l eat. i also drink a liter of wine a day. is that ok? since i'm now 96 i don't need viagra; i'm no longer of kissable age and neither is my isabella; that's theway we lahke it. thank u.
Come to think of it, which one publishes Mother Jones?