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Contribution: Military Industrial Complex

Eras of the United States Military Industrial Complex
The Military Industrial Complex has gone through three distinct eras in its existence.

The First Era
From 1797 to 1941 the government only relied on civilian industries while the country was actually at war. The government owned their own shipyards and weapons manufacturing facilities which they relied on through World War I. With World War II came a massive shift in the way that the American government armed the military.

With the onset of World War II President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Production Board to coordinate civilian industries and shift them into wartime production. Throughout World War II arms production in the United States went from around one percent of the annual GDP to 40 percent of the GDP. After the end of the war the American government did not dismantle the war machine that they had built. Various American companies maintained such as Boeing and General Motors and expanded their defense divisions. These companies have gone on to develop various technologies that have improved civilian life as well such as night-vision goggles, GPS, and the Internet.

The Second Era
The start of the second era of the Military Industrial Complex is said to start with the coining of the term by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. This era marked the end of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1993 the Pentagon urged defense contractors to consolidate due to the collapse of communism and shrinking defense budget.

The Third (Current) Era
The third era of the Military Industrial Complex has seen the most change as defense contractors either consolidated or shifted their focus to civilian innovation. From 1992 to 1997 there was a total of $55 Billion worth of mergers in the defense industry. Major defense companies purchased smaller defense companies and became the major companies that know today. The Department of Defense no longer exports technological advancements to the civilian market, they now import many technologies. 3D printing, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and nanotechnology are all examples of the advancements of the civilian technological industry.

The Pentagon no longer has the budget to award many defense contracts and the research and development budgets of defense contractors is far smaller than private technology companies. The lack of a large budget from the Pentagon has made defense contractors anxious to invest their own profits into research and development as it is unclear whether or not the Pentagon will be able to match their contributions to create intuitive new products.

In the current era, the Military Industrial Complex is seen as a core part of American policymaking. The American domestic economy is now tied directly to the success of the MIC which has lead to concerns of repression as Cold War era attitudes are still prevalent among the American public.

The Military Subsidy Theory
The Military Subsidy Theory is the theory that the effects of the Cold War era mass production of aircrafts benefitted the civilian aircraft industry. The theory asserts that the technologies developed during the Cold War along with the financial backing of the military lead to the dominance of American aviation companies. There is also strong evidence that the United States federal government intentionally paid a higher price for these innovations to serve as a subsidy for civilian aircraft advancement.

Benefits of the Military Industrial Complex
The proliferation of the Military Industrial Complex in the United States has lead to a stable world order in which all adversaries agree that nuclear war should be avoided at all costs. Additional benefits of the Military Industrial Complex of the United States include the advancement of the civilian technology market as civilian companies benefit from innovations from the MIC and vice versa.

Current Applications
In February 2010 the Obama Administration proposed a Federal Budget plan (titled A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise) including $663.7 billion, a 12.7 percent increase from the Bush administration's last budget, in funding for the Department of Defense to be spent at the discretion of the Department of Defense in fiscal year 2011.

In President Trump's first budget proposal the Department of Defense was given $574 billion, a 9 percent increase from the last Obama administration budget. This marked the first increase in federal funding for the Department of Defense since President Obama's first budget proposal in 2010. The purpose of the increase in funding was an increase in size of the Army, Marines, and Navy. The increase in funding for the Department of Defense, an thereby the Military Industrial Complex, came at the cost of other departments.

Modern state of the Military Industrial Complex
Shifts in values and the collapse of communism has ushered in a new era for the Military Industrial Complex. The Department of Defense works in coordination with traditional military industrial complex aligned companies such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Many former defense contractors have shifted operations to the civilian market and sold off their defense departments which analysts argue is causing the United States to lag behind other countries. Strict regulations such as accounting formats and intellectual property rights from the Pentagon have driven civilian companies away from bidding for defense contracts.

Nice job. In the future you'll want to sign the post with four tildes (just click on the icon below). Cassell04 (talk) 00:52, 10 September 2018 (UTC)