How America’s Military Profiteers Control the U.S. Government

6 February 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

The taxes that Americans pay to the U.S. Government are being paid to a dictatorship. If you don’t believe that this is true, then click HERE to be shocked by the reality that you will learn. (I have previously documented by means of links to the scientific studies that have proven it, that America is a dictatorship not a democracy.)

This dictatorship is now behaving more boldly than before as a military dictatorship, and the present article will document why, and it will do this by documenting the category (America’s billionaires) of around a thousand individuals who are enormously increasing their private wealths by means of their controlling this military dictatorship, essentially extracting their wealth increasingly from the people who pay taxes to their Government — and not ONLY by extracting it from its foreign victim-nations that this military dictatorship regime-changes by means of its invasions, coups, and crushing economic sanctions (all of which extractions economically benefit this tiny American financial elite)

On February 5th, Richard Wolff, a retired economist, gave an excellent news-report explaining how and why the U.S. budget deficits are going to start absolutely exploding:

“The Coming U.S. War Economy”

Dated February 4, 2026, RichardDWolff

0:00

Welcome friends to another Wolff

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responds.

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I call this one the coming US war

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economy

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and it begins with taking seriously

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Donald Trump’s statement

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of a couple of weeks ago

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that he plans on an increase in the US

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what we used to call the defense budget.

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But now that the defense department has

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changed its name to the war department,

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it’s the war budget.

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And he’s going to increase it, he said,

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to around $1.5

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trillion

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in one year.

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Currently, it stands at around

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900 billion.

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So this is an increase of $600

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billion

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in one year.

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And since we never cut our defense

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budgets, we only increase them.

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Future years I assume will be increases

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based on 1.5 trillion rather than the

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current 900 billion.

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But what matters here are not these

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numbers but the sheer growth

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$600 billion. Let me give you an idea of

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what that means.

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In the entirety

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of 2025, the year just passed,

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one new source of revenue

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was created by Mr. Trump,

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and that was a tax.

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Unlike other Republicans who used to say

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they were against taxes,

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Mr. Trump says that, but in actuality,

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he raised the taxes. Why? How? The

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answer is the tariff.

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Mr. Trump imposed a tariff. And a tariff

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is a tax. It is paid by the American

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company or the American citizen that

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brings foreign goods into the United

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States. When those goods cross the

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border into the United States, then they

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must pay the tariff and the money they

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pay goes to Uncle Sam. It’s paid by the

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American company that brings the goods

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in or the American citizen

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or any company even if it isn’t American

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but that’s based here in the United

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States they pay Uncle Sam.

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How much did the tariffs

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generate?

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The basic estimate of most sources is in

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the neighborhood of $200 billion dollar.

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And because Mr. Trump is constantly

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changing the tariffs and offering

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countries various kinds of deals

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that involve lowering the tariffs.

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Well, that’s probably

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a pretty good estimate of how much

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that’s going to raise this year, next

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year.

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Well, there follows

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what? The fact that

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if the largest single increase in

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revenue is the tariff,

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the one new big tax

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and it raised 200 billion

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and Mr. Trump is going to increase the

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defense budget

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by 600 billion.

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Well, I got news for you. Six is larger

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than two.

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Much larger.

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And that means the government is going

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to have to borrow borrow

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the extra money in order to pay for the

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war economy.

4:43

…

——

Actually, Wolff’s figures are understatements; they are “conservative” estimates, because they employ the U.S. Government’s jiggered financial reports and numbers, which (as you will see documented if you will click HERE) are designed to understate this Government’s military expenses by paying for around 40% of them from U.S. federal Departments OTHER THAN the War Department (which till recently was called the “Defense Department”), so that SIPRI’s international comparisons of the various nations’ military expenditures drastically understate America’s, such as last year’s SIPRI number of slightly above $900 billion for the U.S. military, which was actually already over the $1.5T level (as you will see documented if you will click HERE) that Trump is now requesting for ONLY the War Department (ignoring the approximately $600 billion in U.S. military spending that is being payed out from the U.S. Treasury Department, Homeland Security Department, Veterans Affairs Department, Energy Department, CIA, and others). So, Trump is aiming to spend not the $1.7T that was allocated during 2025, but instead $2.3T to be allocated this year. SIPRI’s latest estimate of annual global military spending is for the year 2024, was $2.718 trillion. Now, $2.3T/$2.718T= 85% of global military spending being from the U.S. this year if Trump gets his $600B 2026 military-spending increase from the Congress, which is composed almost 100% of neoconservative (MIC-controlled) legislators and therefore ALWAYS gives the President AT LEAST as much military spending as he requests. (It’s the ONLY federal Department like that, and it also is the only U.S. federal Department that has never been audited; it is THAT corrupt.)

As-of around 2024, the U.S. Government was spending 65% of the world’s military expenditures.

U.S. military spending took off like a rocket as soon as the Soviet Union ended in 1991 and America no longer faced any potential military invasion by any country. The U.S.President at the time, George Herbert Walker Bush, secretly told America’s stooge-leaders of its colonies (‘allies) such as France and West Germany, that there would be no peace dividend. Bush secretly told Helmut Kohl of Germany, on 24 February 1990, “We have weird thinking in our Congress today, ideas like this peace dividend. We can’t do that in these uncertain times.” At exactly the moment in history when the Cold War on the Soviet side was ending, that is what he privately instructed Kohl — Kohl was to take over also East Germany, and was to remain a U.S. ally to conquer ultimately Russia itself. As regards the Bush Administration’s multiple verbal promises to Gorbachev and his Administration that NATO would not expand eastward toward Russia’s border, Bush told Kohl, “To hell with that. We prevailed and they didn’t. We cannot let the Soviets clutch victory from the jaws of defeat.”

Here is the chart showing the stock-market valuations of the corporations whose main or only customers are the U.S. Government and its colonies (‘allies’) which buy their products and services (mainly America’s armaments manufacturers). (These corporations are the only ones that make their money from Governments instead of from consumers.) As you can see there, whereas until 1991 they rose along with the rest of the “stock market,” they took off immediately and rose twice as fast and continued doing so until Barack Obama became President in 2009, at which point they soared so that between 2009 and 2015, when that chart ends, they quadrupled in value, while the rest of the stock market merely doubled in value. The individuals who own most of these “Defense” (aggression) stocks are hidden behind layers of investment companies but are probably America’s approximately 1,000 billionaires holding most of those shares, and this would explain America’s billionaires’ net worths increasing much faster than the nearly 100% of the rest of Americans’ net worths have increased. During the Obama years, the Defense Department’s budget actually decreased from $700B down to $584B. But from 2016 onward, it increased to $855B in 2024. However, on 1 May 2023, Winslow Wheeler headlined and documented “The US National Security Budget for 2023/24 is … approximately $1.5 Trillion”. Again: measuring U.S. military expenditures by merely the ‘Defense’ Department’s budget is designed to deceive, not to inform (and deception is what the empire’s ‘news’-media are designed to do).

These corporations control their markets (mainly the U.S. Government itself) by controlling the Government. And here is how the billionaires do that.

For example, this is how they, warring against Syria during 2011 to 8 December 2024, replaced the non-sectarian leader Bashar al-Assad, by the former head of both Al-Qaeda in Syria and ISIS, al-Julani, on that date. The economist Jeffrey Sachs was asked on 12 April 2025, at a conference in Antalya Turkey about the history that had led up to that, and he said:

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“Prof. Jeffrey Sachs SLAMS America & Israel at Antalya Diplomacy Forum 2025”

DRM News, 12 April 2025, Antalya Turkey

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Interviewer: Now I’m going to

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ask Jeff — is the United States sitting on the fence when it comes to Syria?

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In my understanding, they are not. Why? Because they hold the most important

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card in the Syrian issue: sanctions. Even when the Europeans wanted to ease them,

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the Americans had the final say. So no — the U.S. is not neutral; they’ve taken a clear position.

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The fact that, even after four months, Syria is still suffering under sanctions,

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and the current government — which we’re demanding to show flexibility — cannot

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even provide daily food to its people, proves that the U.S. is not on the fence.

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So, what is the grand strategy of the United States in Syria? And how

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do you see the game currently being played by the Trump administration?

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Jeff: Yeah,

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thank you very much. I think it’s important to understand where this

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entire war came from. It did not come from Bashar al-Assad — it came from Washington.

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There was a decision in 2011 to overthrow Assad. Actually, that decision originated in Jerusalem.

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This has been a long-standing objective of the Israeli government, stretching back

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over 25 years. Netanyahu’s vision is to remake the Middle East in Israel’s image:

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overthrow every government that opposes Israel.

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And he’s had a key ally in that goal — the CIA and the U.S. government.

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So no, this war in Syria didn’t start because of Assad’s repression or dictatorship. It

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started because of a presidential order by Obama in spring 2011 to remove Assad.

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This was called Operation Timber Sycamore — a U.S.-led program, joined by regional partners,

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to train and arm fighters, especially jihadists, to overthrow the Syrian government.

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That led to chaos. 600,000 people dead. A war lasting 14 years. And the outcome? Just what the

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CIA aimed for in 2011 — a jihadist group taking power after being armed by the United States.

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…

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So is the U.S. on the fence in Syria? Hardly. It’s the major actor.

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And by the way, I know first-hand: in 2012, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

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appointed Kofi Annan as special envoy to broker peace in Syria.

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I loved Kofi Annan. I loved Ban Ki-moon. I worked with both.

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Kofi arranged a peace deal in 2012. Everyone agreed — except one party: the United States.

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The U.S. said: “There will be no peace unless Assad leaves on day one.”

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The others said, “No — let’s have a process, maybe elections, maybe a transition period.”

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But the U.S. refused. “No Assad, day one, or no deal.”

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So Kofi Annan stepped down. And since then, 500,000 people have died.

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We should not allow this kind of criminality to be normalized. This region has been

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at war non-stop for at least 30 years — arguably 57 years, since the Six-Day War.

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Why? Because there has been no honest diplomacy. No accountability. Only militarization.

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And yet peace is possible immediately.

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What’s needed is for the U.S. to stop vetoing

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Palestine’s membership as the 194th UN member state.

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On that basis, the whole region could normalize relations, and the wars would end.

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But Israel controls U.S. policy. And Israel says no. It wants Greater Israel.

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It wants Israel in Syria. In Lebanon. In the West Bank.

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That’s just a typical example of the way the U.S. Government works. In foreign policies, it is 100% neoconservative; and in domestic policies, it is 100% neoliberal (“libertarian”); and both neoconservatism and neoliberalism are actually imperialist-fascist-supremacist policies, and are consistently the policies in each of America’s two political Parties. Such a Government as this, is a boon to its armaments-manufacturers; and their owners control the Government and profit enormously from it.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.