"Generals gathered in their masses - Just like witches at black masses"

This brief documents the extent to which recently retired four–star generals and admirals have gone to work as lobbyists, executives, board members, consultants, or financiers of the arms industry upon leaving government service. It covers the period from June 2018 through July 2023.

The role of generals and admirals in the arms industry is part of the larger problem of the revolving door, in which hundreds of senior Pentagon and military officials go to work for major Pentagon contractors every year, using their contacts with former colleagues to wield influence on behalf of their corporate employers and clients. A 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office found that over 1,700 senior government and military officials — including generals, admirals, and top acquisition officers — went to work for one or more of the top 14 weapons contractors between 2014–19, for an average of over 300 per year. This report looks in greater detail at a smaller number of “revolvers,” focusing only on four–star generals and admirals.

The revolving door is a problem because it creates the appearance — and in some cases the reality — of conflicts of interest in the making of defense policy and in the shaping of the size and composition of the Pentagon budget.  The role of top military officials is particularly troubling, given their greater clout in the military and the government more broadly than most other revolving door hires. Their influence over policy and budget issues can tilt the scales towards a more militarized foreign policy.  

There is also the potential for military officials to favor companies they are supposed to oversee while they are still in government, with the goal of landing a lucrative position with them upon retirement. As Senator Elizabeth Warren (D–MA) put it, “When government officials cash in on their public service by lobbying, advising, or serving as board members and executives for the companies they used to regulate, it  undermines public officials’ integrity and casts doubt on the fairness of government contracting.”

Official government tracking of post–government employment of retired four–stars and other senior government officials with national security responsibilities is insufficient, but even under current rules a number of concerning cases have been uncovered.  

For example, as the Project on Government Oversight  (POGO) has noted in its path breaking report “Brass Parachutes,” while he was in the service, General James E. Cartwright advocated vigorously for the JLENS, a surveillance balloon notorious for an incident in which it broke free from its moorings and floated 160 miles off course.4 Cartwright blocked the Army from canceling the program in 2010, then joined the board of JLENS’s producer, Raytheon, after retiring as vice–chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In another prominent case, General James Mattis went to bat for the blood testing firm Theranos while he was serving as Commander of the U.S. Central Command, then joined the company’s board upon leaving government service. Mattis pressed the Army to buy and utilize Theranos equipment, as he acknowledged in an email to Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes uncovered by the Washington Post: “I’ve met with my various folks and we’re kicking this into overdrive to try to field your lab in the near term.”

After Mattis left the military to join the Theranos board, he defended the company’s practices — even as it was marketing a product that did not work, with false claims that included denying charges that it was out of compliance with Food and Drug Administration requirements. Mattis later claimed that, despite being a board member, he was not informed of the limitations of the Theranos devices while he was serving at the company for compensation of $150,000 per year. In 2018, Holmes was indicted on charges of wire fraud for allegedly perpetrating a “multi–million dollar scheme to defraud investors, doctors, and patients.”9 The Securities and Exchange Commission described Theranos as an “elaborate, years–long fraud” in which Holmes “exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.”

Retired military officers were also prominently involved in a lobbying effort that prevented the Navy from divesting itself of multiple copies of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), which the service had determined were not relevant to the most important challenges facing the Navy and would, if retained, result in a service that was “less capable, less lethal, and less ready.” The LCS is also plagued with technical problems that were described in detail in a New York Times investigation of the campaign to save the ship from retirement.

The role of ex–Navy officers in the campaign to save the LCS was described in detail by Danielle Brian, Executive Director of the Project on Government Oversight, in her April 2023 Congressional testimony. Among the retired Navy officials spearheading the effort to block the retirement of the LCS was a retired Navy veteran, Timothy Spratto, who served as general manager of BAE Systems’ shipyard in Jacksonville, Florida, where the littoral combat ships are serviced. Before joining BAE, Spratto served as Assistant Chief of Staff, Material Readiness and Assessments, Naval Surface Forces Atlantic.

Another key player in the effort to save the LCS was retired Rear Admiral James A. Murdoch, who served as program executive officer for the littoral combat ship program from 2011–14 before leaving government service to become the international business development director for ship and aviation systems at Lockheed Martin, one of the prime contractors for the Freedom–class Littoral Combat Ships. Also involved in the successful lobbying effort was retired Captain Tony Parisi, who worked on the General Dynamics team that trains crews to run the LCS, and wrote an op–ed in 2022 for Real Clear Defense titled “Don’t Give Up the Ship.” The work of these former military officers resulted in the procurement and continued deployment of flawed ships that cost taxpayers billions of dollars and put crew members at risk.

More consistent and detailed reporting on post–government activities of military officers who go to work in the arms industry would likely uncover many other incidents similar to the ones described above.

Proponents of the revolving door argue that the expertise ex–military officers bring to the arms industry can improve its performance and ability to produce systems relevant to the needs of the warfighter. This is belied by the fact that — according to a study by Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office — over 90 percent of senior government officials who go into the arms industry serve as lobbyists.19 Their job is to promote projects and practices that boost the bottom lines of their new employers, not weigh in on how the firms carry out their government–funded projects, for good or ill.  To the extent that there is expertise in the military sector that can make contractors more effective, it can be transmitted without hiring a majority of retiring senior officials as lobbyists (see detailed recommendations, below).

One overall finding of this report is that the nature of the revolving door has shifted.  Not only do retired officers join the boards of major contractors like Lockheed Martin or the ranks of lobbyists at major firms that include weapons contractors as clients, but they set up their own consulting firms, work as advisors to defense startups, and join firms that finance arms companies. There are many routes available for former military officials to seek work in the arms sector. In the sections that follow we provide details on post–government employment of recent four–star retirees and recommendations for curbing their influence over decisions on Pentagon spending and policy.

The vast majority of retired four–star generals and admirals who have left government service in the past five years have gone on to work for the arms industry. Of the 32 four–star officers who retired between 2018–23, at least 26 went to work for the arms industry as board members, advisors, consultants, lobbyists, or financiers.  Many of the military retirees also went to work for industry–funded think tanks and advocacy groups, but for the purposes of this report these connections are not counted as involving work for the arms industry. (see appendix for details).

The breakdown of what types of arms industry related jobs were taken by retired four–stars is below. Many of the retired officials had multiple connections to the weapons sector.

• Six went to work as board members or executives for one of the Pentagon’s top 10 contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and BAE Systems.

• Six started their own defense consulting firms or joined an existing consulting firm.

• Fifteen became advisors or board members for small or medium–sized weapons contractors.

• Five went to work for lobbying firms that have clients in the arms industry.

• Four went to work for financial firms with major investments in the arms sector.

Among the most prominent four–stars who have gone through the revolving door are former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford, who joined the board of Lockheed Martin five months after leaving the military; General Mike Murray, former head of the U.S. Army Futures Command, who went on the boards of three defense tech firms — Capewell, Hypori, and Vita Inclinata; General Terrence O’Shaugnessy, former head of the U.S. Northern Command, who is now a senior advisor to Elon Musk at SpaceX, a firm that launches military satellites and produces the Starlink system, a dual use system which among other things has been used to supply internet service to Ukrainian troops in their war against Russia’s invasion of their country; General Richard D. Clarke, former Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, who joined the boards of General Dynamics, defense tech firm Shift5, and drone maker General Atomics;  and General John W. Raymond, former head of the U.S. Space Command, who went on to be a managing partner at Cerberus Capital Management, which invests heavily in cutting edge technologies with applications in the defense and aerospace sectors.

Recommendations:

1. Restrictions on post–government employment involving both top military brass and senior Pentagon officials should be tightened to avoid the appearance or reality of conflicts of interest, along the lines outlined below.
   
   
2. Bar flag officers from working for any arms contractor receiving more than $1 billion per year from the Pentagon: Given their greater levels of power and influence and broad contacts within the government at large, top generals and admirals should be barred from working for major weapons contractors upon leaving government employment. And as set out below, their ability to work on behalf of the arms industry in other forms should be subject to an extended “cooling off” period.
   
   
3. Extend cooling off periods: When it comes to the revolving door, time is the enemy of influence. A substantial cooling off period moving from the Pentagon or Congress to the arms industry would mean that key contacts with former colleagues would be less useful as personnel in the executive branch turn over. And potential “revolvers” might be more likely to find employment outside of the defense sector in the meantime. Cooling off periods for all relevant national–security related positions should be at least four years, extended from the current norm of one to two years.
   
   
4. Improve transparency: Lists of former military and Pentagon officials who have gone to work in the arms industry should be compiled and made publicly available. In addition, contractors who employ former government officials should be required to report on their activities on a regular basis, including any contacts with relevant government officials and any materials developed in efforts to influence those officials.
   
   
5. Expand the definition of lobbying activity: As national political reporter Isaac Arnsdorf noted in a 2016 investigative piece for Politico, efforts to avoid lobbying restrictions have created “an entire class of professional influencers who operate in the shadows” as “policy advisers, strategic consultants, trade association chiefs, corporate government relations executives, [and] affiliates of agenda–driven research institutes.” Current law does not require any of those influencers to register as lobbyists. Congress should review the full range of activities carried out on behalf of arms corporations and expand the definition of what qualifies as lobbying activity subject to government regulation as appropriate.
   
   
6. The most comprehensive current proposal to address the revolving door issue is Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Department of Defense Ethics and Anti-corruption Act. The bill would encompass many of the recommendations put forward above, including imposing a four–year ban on arms contractors from hiring DoD officials and preventing them from hiring former DoD employees who managed their contracts. The Act would also require defense contractors to provide detailed information to the Pentagon on former senior DoD officials they have hired, among other provisions.

In the absence of true control of the revolving door, the giant weapons-making corporations rule the roost both in Washington and in global war-making. One factor to be added to the nightmare scenario might be the effort to create a weaponized future beyond compare. After all, in the coming decades, the Pentagon is already planning to upgrade its vast nuclear arsenal to the tune of perhaps $2 trillion or more — $756 billion in the next decade alone. And mind you, we’re talking about the country that already has an active stockpile of 4,500 long-range nuclear weapons, with over 1,600 of them deployed — enough weapons, that is, to wipe out several Planet Earths.

That was before the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States even came up with the brilliant idea that such a “modernization” of U.S. nuclear forces won’t be faintly enough to take us all safely into that future. As the Federation of American Scientists recently reported, that committee is urging this country’s leaders to “prepare to increase its number of deployed warheads, as well as increasing its production of bombers, air-launched cruise missiles, ballistic missile submarines, non-strategic nuclear forces, and warhead production capacity. It also calls for the United States to deploy multiple warheads on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and consider adding road-mobile ICBMs to its arsenal.” All above and beyond the previous madly ambitious nuclear plans (aimed at ending it all in truly high style).

It seems that this arms escalation is based on the blatant lie that China is a major threat and is rapidly achieving military dominance over the US. As this recent paper painstakingly points out, the U.S. already outspends China on its military by a substantial margin and it is abundantly clear that the U.S. outpaces China substantially on a number of key measures of military power. China currently represents little or no direct threat. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars in an attempt to maintain across-the-board military dominance tied to a strategy for “winning” a war with China is as misguided as it is dangerous. The public is kept patriotic and silent by mass media-aided propaganda that helps the state invent enemies as fear is sown relentlessly.

The commission’s report brings to mind Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic movie, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb. The giant corporate arms producers are already having the time of their lives as the planet goes up in still reasonably local flames, most recently in the Middle East. If that commission has its way, however, they can look forward to making an all-too-ultimate fortune off creating yet more weapons to blast us out of this galaxy.

The MIC is no different from the fossil fuel industry, Big Pharma, or tobacco, insofar as it will ruthlessly fight to continue with business as usual. It is just a lot more powerful.

It possesses two unique features that make it especially dangerous.

First, the MIC is a mutant creation of the capitalist economy: it is the state, with private actors embedded, a multiheaded hydra. It has tentacles in all segments of the economy, public policy, media, academia and even think tanks.

Second, it is primarily a government/business to government – GB2G – network with many intermediaries and thus prone to large-scale capture of state funding and, inevitably, corruption.

Concerted efforts globally will be required to expose the military industrial complex (MIC), which masquerades as providing national and regional security. But in reality, it is in the business of creating fear and destabilising entire nations to create great insecurity, thus forcing the conditions to sell its weapons of destruction, not security. 

The deadliest weapon in all of war making, until the nuclear bombs are used, is and has long been the federal budget of the United States government. More people die or suffer for lack of the resources dumped into U.S. military spending than die in all the wars. And its worse than that because of other tradeoffs that are made. Not only do we lack funding for environmental protection, for example, but the wars prevent the global cooperation needed to address climate and eco-systemic crises, the wars and war preparations are themselves huge environmental destroyers, and the wars are often driven by and in turn drive onward the efforts to control and profit from Earth-destroying fossil fuels.

The conclusion is, in fact, quite simple. It’s war or life. We have to choose which we value more, and be willing to do what’s needed to end the other one.