The Siren Triangle

The government, the media, and the defense industry

By Elliott Ash

Abstract

The Pentagon's military analyst program is just the latest and most barefaced example of the poorly understood iron triangle comprising government agencies, defense contractors, and media conglomerates. This note traces the mutualistic coevolution of the defense industry and the mass media. Statutes and decisions on propaganda, fraud, false advertising, defense spending, and state secrets are explicated and applied to the industries; conduct. The reciprocal relationships between defense and media laws and the behavior of the defense and media industries are examined. Possible avenues for breaking the triangle are discussed, including greater transparency in defense matters and preservation of competition in media markets.

Text

Introduction

First shalt thou reach the Sirens; they the hearts
Enchant of all who on their coast arrive.
The wretch, who unforewarn'd approaching, hears
The Sirens' voice, his wife and little- ones
Ne'er fly to gratulate his glad return,
But him the Sirens sitting in the meads
Charm with mellifluous song, while all around
The bones accumulated lie of men
Now putrid, and the skins mould'ring away.

-The Odyssey of Homer

• The corruption linking the government to the media to the defense industry is an intertwined mess of tendrils. Flagitious defense spending is doxa, unquestioned and encouraged by the media.
• Give account of military analyst program.
• How did this happen? Why did it happen? This paper will try to explain.

Decide whether to organize these sections by line, by point, or by time. I think time is the best answer.

The Siren Triangle

The Political-Military Establishment

• 2009 military budget is the highest since world war 2. By contrast, Germany reduced its defense spending in 2004 to $33 billion.
• Benefits of war for the government: Kellner 1992 at 387.

Media Conglomerates

Government and Defense Contractors

• Evidence indicates quid pro quo between government and more influential contractors. (Fleisher 1993; Karpoff 1999)
• Retroactive immunity given to telecommunications corporations in 2008.
• Break-down of defense spending. Return on expensive programs.
• Important historical events

Defense Contractors and Media

• Defense-industry R&D funding facilitated growth and consolidation of media industry (Cypher 2002)
• General Electric and CBS own defense-industry assets (Kellner 1992)

History

• Kolko 2007
• Kellner 1992 at 138 *

World War II

Vietnam

Gulf War I

• After Vietnam, the military-industrial complex needed a war to demonstrate the effectiveness of its weaponry (Kellner 1992: 138). The Bush I administration actively blocked efforts to resolve the conflict with Saddam diplomatically (Kellner 1992 at 30).
• Kellner 1992: 384-88

The War on Terrorism

The Pentagon's Military Analyst Program

• A metaphorical nexus and corrupt offspring of the Siren Triangle

The horrible side effects and counterproductivity of weapons technology. (Kolko 2007 at 18-23) Crimes against humanity: mai lai, abu graib, guantanamo.

Discussion

From a legal perspective, the Siren Triangle is a complicated problem. The tangle of corrupt laws that enable and feed the triangle are numerous, and they aren't all in the most obvious places. From a sociological perspective, the problem is infinitely more complicated: Not only do you have to promulgate the regulatory changes just discussed; you have to make fundamental structural changes in how the government and society function in order to get them passed into law and followed correctly.

But perhaps the so-called "sociological" perspective is not meaningful distinct from the "legal" perspective. Instead, figuring out realistic measures that could help cure the Siren Triangle is just taking a broader legal perspective; the difference being that you recognize that all functions of government and society are fair game for reform. In dealing with monstrous, inertial problems like the Siren Triangle, it might serve to contemplate what the endogenous or exogenous variables are. On a short time frame, one might say that "law" is just an exogenous variable. So the problem-solver works around the law. On a longer time frame, law becomes an endogenous variable to the problem because the actor can take deliberate measures to repeal and revise the law. As the problem's time horizon increases, more variables become endogenous and thus instruments toward solving the problem, things like wealth, technology, prejudice, corporate incumbency, etc. In the very long run, even such apparent monoliths as constitutional provisions and even the human genetic code become endogenous.

The lesson of this discussion, I think, is that dealing with the Siren Triangle requires both short-term and long-term strategies. The short-term should deal with more realistic regulations such as closing the revolving door, prosecuting violations of existing propaganda laws.

More long-term solutions would be increasing transparency.

Very long-term solutions might involve reversing supreme court holdings on executive privilege, the commander-in-chief power, government transparency, freedom of the press, and restoring the requirement that Congress declare war before the executive engages in armed conflict against enemy states. Even more long term, we can relieve pedagogical limitations and even genetic limitations on human cognition and morality that curse human democracies to problems like the Siren Triangle.

Information Transmission

Lieberson (2002) demonstrates that transmission of aesthetic preferences has its own internal logic. The transmission of knowledge has its own internal logic. Some of that is based on human psychology: Some messages are more salient than others as a result of our brain structure (Boyer 2001). Humans appear to prefer truth to falsity, and also the appearance of truth over the appearance of falsity. What other neural mechanisms guide capture and transfer of information? Whatever they are, these evolved mechanisms for information processing are manipulable. Individuals can manipulate others to do their bidding (Dawkins 1982). This process will inevitably result if an entity 1) would benefit from such manipulation, and 2) it has the communicative tools to successfully undertake the manipulation. Humans do this to each other on a daily basis, with varying results. But the entity in this model doesn't have to be a human being. Collective organizations have their own emergent self-interest, and if they have the tools to manipulate humans to their benefit, they will do so. Governments and corporations are prime examples of this phenomenon. Congress will benefit if Americans think that there are no agency costs between citizen and representative--thus, "We are the party of the people." Media corporations will benefit via higher ratings if viewers think they are in danger and that that corporation's media product will give good information about avoiding that danger. This analysis puts the lie to the standard establishmentarian refrain that advertisements provide "information" about products. That is self-evidently false. Advertisements are disinformation--they are manipulation of the brains of the viewer. The upshot is that the actors in the Siren Triangle--the government, the media, and defense contractors--are actively and deliberately manipulating the public sphere to facilitate the production and reproduction of messages that strengthen the Siren Triangle.

The other problem is that while the benefits of the Siren Triangle are fully internalized by the three entities, the costs are distributed over the whole American electorate and, more crucially, citizens the world over. As far as the American citizenry goes, the coordination costs required to organize an effective populist campaign against the components of the Siren Triangle are preventative. But while Americans at least can vote with their ballots and their eyeballs, the rest of the world is out of luck. The costs that are imposed upon other countries are irremediable; neither the US government, the media, nor the defense contractors have to answer to the complaints of foreign citizens.

Scholars who complain of quid pro quo between politicians and defense contractors frame the relationship as that between buyer and seller: The defense contractor buys the vote. Empirical evidence shows that this is the wrong explanation. Instead, defense contractors support those candidates with preexisting ideological predispositions in favor of defense spending. The funding and support helps those candidates ascend to political power, and primaries and elections are just the final processes. Once defense-contractor-friendly individuals are in office, those predispositions are reproduced through path-dependent processes--specifically, those politicians hire and support new politicians with similar views on the defense industry. This process might explain why defense contractors donate to both democrats and republicans in electoral races. A better empirical test would involve examination of defense-contractor donations during primary season; the hypothesis being that the primary candidate that most supports defense spending will receive greater establishmentarian support by incumbent politicos, defense contractors, and media outlets. That candidate will be more likely to gain the nomination. Moreover, the election of the pro-defense candidate touches off an autocatalytic process whereby that candidate pulls the mean opinion toward pro-defense in the candidate's party and in the legislature. His incumbency will allow him to campaign effectively on behalf of militaristic candidates in future elections. The candidate is more likely to give sweet contracts to defense contractors, which will increase their cash flows, allowing them to donate more aggressively to militaristic candidates in future elections.

An analogue is the broken promotion process in the intelligence community elucidated by Kolko (2007). Blindly optimistic interpreters of intelligence were promoted by politicians who refused to see failure in Vietnam. Also, Neocons did not cause America to be militaristic; Neocons were hired because they were militaristic (Kolko 2007 at 97-98).

On Scandal (See Adut 2008)

Why isn't U.S. militarism a scandal? The power centers in the American public sphere, which consist of, and are manipulated by, the actors in the siren triangle, benefit from aggressive U.S. military policy. Those who bear the costs are many and face high coordination costs. They don't own the media, so they cannot disseminate inciting information easily. The beneficiaries of U.S. militarism are concentrated among a few individuals who coordinate easily; costs are diluted, low for any particular individual but enormous in sum. These individuals are communicatively--and often politically--disenfranchised, especially those in foreign countries. Oligopoly in the media industry and duopoly in the political system facilitate manipulation of both industries by siren-triangle beneficiaries.

As Adut emphasizes, scandal does not increase gradually in a linear relationship with moral violations. Instead, certain catalytic events induce tipping points (Gladwell 2000)

Military Technology and Intellectual Property

Military technology is a peculiar category of intellectual property. When embodied in a weapon, it does not produce net utility. Military technology schemes:

• Free sharing of military technology.
• Preservation of technology, sale of weapons
• Preserving technology and weapons.
• Agreement not to weaponize technology.
• Agreement not to pursue military technology (article on dual use: Guichard 03)

• Eli Whitney's replaceable parts. (Lehman 1996 at 8)
• Military technology was repeatedly monetized throughout the last century (Cypher 2002).

Arms races

• Between politicans. Candidates spend more. Offices grow (Kolko 07?).
• Between media companies. Media companies compete for viewers. Result: huge expenses for worthless technology (ex. doppler radar)
• Between military agencies. US builds astronomically expensive weapons that are practically worthless (Kolko 07 at 91, 93).
• Between institutions and public: Public develops safeguards against abuse; institutions develop work-arounds; repeat.

The Agency Problem

A fundamental problem in American governance that the Siren Triangle is founded upon is that the agents in charge of the country do not share the goals or incentive structure of the public. What the public wants the government to do is miles away from what the governors want the government to do. Media companies and defense contractors are quasi-public entities, and their incentive structures are not aligned with the public's.

Legal solutions

Judges

What is the role of judges and judicial decisions in preserving or destroying the siren triangle? (Decision on FTC case preserving media consolidation as freedom of the press).

• Supreme Court
• How does the Constitution help? Realize that constitutional norms are not exogenous.
• International law scholars are looking in the wrong places.

TSTSourceQuotes

Bibliography

Subject Legend:

• G = Government/Military
• C = Defense contractors
• M = Media
• MAP = Military Analyst Program