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The Think Tank Industrial Complex
Matthew Yglesias — Steven Walt says: Here’s why it won’t happen any time soon. As Cindy Williams, former director of the National Security division of the Congressional Budget Office and now a senior research scientist at MIT, points out in an as-yet unpublished paper for the Tobin Project, DOD is insulated from serious cuts by an array of impressive political advantages. First, its budget is more than 50 percent of all federal discretionary spending, and its sheer size gives it a lot of bureaucratic clout. Second, the Pentagon has a ...

Think Tank Industrial Complexities…
democracyarsenal.org — Both Steve and Matt make some excellent points here about the way the military and defense contractors keep their piece of the pie in the big federal budget. I’d only disagree with Matt on one point. He says: ...

Why Ike Was Right
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — Stephen Walt and Matt Yglesias explain.

What Keeps the Military Big
democracyarsenal.org — ... he suggests that those who support a larger military (such as military contractors) financially support think tank denizens who share this view - thus perpetuating the notion that we need to keep spending more and more on the military. In the original post that inspired this conversation, Steven Walt goes even further: ...