The Pentagon’s congressional district strategy is John Kiriakou’s shorthand for why the American defence budget is politically immovable.
Of the Pentagon’s roughly one trillion dollars, he says, fully a third goes to weapons and weapons systems — and that is only what the United States buys for itself, before what it sells to other countries whose leaders sit in the same conference rooms he describes discussing arms deals. Together, in his estimate, that accounts for a very large share of American economic activity year after year.[1]
The placement
What makes it untouchable is where the work sits. Kiriakou cites reporting that the Pentagon has placed orders with manufacturers in literally every one of the 435 congressional districts, so that every single member of Congress has constituents dependent on the defence economy. “And so there’s no incentive for any member of Congress to vote no on DOD.”[2][3] The campaign money runs the same way: it costs millions to run for Congress every two years, and that money comes from somewhere.[4]
Beaver County
The illustration Kiriakou gives is personal and small. A friend with a little mom-and-pop manufacturing plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, mentioned about five years earlier that he was entirely dependent on the Pentagon. Asked for what, he said he could not say — it was a classified programme. Kiriakou had assumed he made something like heels for shoes. Later the friend told him: a little widget that fits inside the motor for something like a Patriot missile. “In Beaver County?” — “Yeah.” When Kiriakou later read the reporting on district placement, “I was like, oh, of course. It all makes sense.”[5][6]