Difference: TheSirenTriangle (1 vs. 41)

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Law and the Siren Triangle

How legal safeguards fail to prevent collusion between government, media, and defense contractors

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Author Title Year Subject Summary Link
Barstow, David NYTimes article on Military Analyst Program 2008 MAP   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1221408048-NbbOOtV/zAdLhqxAlnmTlw&pagewanted=print
Reuters Pentagon suspends retired military analyst program 2008 MAP   http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN28303679
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Barstow, David McCaffrey? article 2008     http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/washington/30general.html?hp
| Arango, Tim | Bush administration asked U.S. media executives to disseminate propaganda | 2008 | | | http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/business/media/01soft.html
PRWatch Pentagon Pundit Scandal Broke the Law 2008     http://www.prwatch.org/node/7261
 
Cypher, James The Iron Triangle 2002     http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_America/Iron_Triangle.html
Cypher, James From Military Keynesianism to Neoliberal Militarism 2007     http://www.monthlyreview.org/0607jmc.htm
Sessions, David Onward, TV Soldiers 2008 MAP Follows up on Barstow's MAP scoop http://www.slate.com/id/2189545/

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Law and the Siren Triangle

How legal safeguards fail to prevent collusion between government, media, and defense contractors

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Bentley, R. Alexander et al. Regular rates of popular culture change reflect random copying 2007   randomness of aggregate market movement http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T6H-4MV1FCT-3&_user=18704&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000002018&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=18704&md5=080e960ee1e49f5f28469e7f9b27db64#secx2
  Institutional Theory in Political Science     http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=lang_en&id=ybGkfO3ZBVEC&oi=fnd&pg=PP6&ots=njwe6QWYUq&sig=bWz8oRpARM03fTQmU1oqXEkAgQw#PPA48,M1
US Order lets US Raid Al Qaeda Eric Schmidt, NYTimes   G   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/washington/10military.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
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Thompson, Mark Court enables contractor abuse     http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_v18/ai_4539826/print?tag=artBody;col1

Cases

Title Court Year Summary Link
Boeing v Roby U.S. 6th Circuit 2002 Defense contractor had to pay consequential damages of defective helicopter part http://altlaw.org/v1/cases/1122732
Densberger v United Technologies U.S. 2nd Circuit 2002 Defense contractor cannot evade damages payment via government contractor defense http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=2nd&navby=case&no=009512&exact=1
Rothe Development v. DoD? U.S. Appeals 2008 law requiring 5% of defense contractors be minority-owned is unconstitutional http://www.jacksonlewis.com/legalupdates/article.cfm?aid=1561 http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cafc.uscourts.gov%2Fopinions%2F08-1017.pdf&ei=dAktSYr1LaTYeOHXgOcK&usg=AFQjCNG_k42zLmcl40i9ESzCHmwRBRFyfA&sig2=vXY2CzG_dFIcnYZHLW4EIg 
<-- /editTable -->
 Subject Legend:
  • G = Government/Military

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Law and the Siren Triangle

How legal safeguards fail to prevent collusion between government, media, and defense contractors

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Law and the Siren Triangle

How legal safeguards fail to prevent collusion between government, media, and defense contractors

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Chang, Tsan-kuo The Social Construction of International Imagery in the Post-Cold War Era: A Comparative Analysis of U.S. and Chinese National TV News       http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/jbem42&div=27&size=2&rot=0&type=image  
Bentley, R. Alexander et al. Regular rates of popular culture change reflect random copying 2007   randomness of aggregate market movement http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T6H-4MV1FCT-3&_user=18704&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000002018&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=18704&md5=080e960ee1e49f5f28469e7f9b27db64#secx2
  Institutional Theory in Political Science     http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=lang_en&id=ybGkfO3ZBVEC&oi=fnd&pg=PP6&ots=njwe6QWYUq&sig=bWz8oRpARM03fTQmU1oqXEkAgQw#PPA48,M1
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US Order lets US Raid Al Qaeda Eric Schmidt, NYTimes   G   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/washington/10military.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
 Subject Legend:
  • G = Government/Military
  • C = Defense contractors

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The Siren Triangle

The government, the media, and the defense industry

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Law and the Siren Triangle

How legal safeguards fail to prevent collusion between government, media, and defense contractors

 

By Elliott Ash

Table of Contents

Abstract

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<		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.
>
>		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

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The Political Economy of the Siren Triangle

  • Following Higgs (2006) and Gintis (2006), institutional actors will be examined using an evolutionary game-theoretic model, in which rational actors seek to maximize utility subject to beliefs, preferences, and constraints. Institutional actors are collective entities with a more-or-less decentralized decision-making apparatus, decision strategies will be characterized by significant degrees of noise and stochasticity (Bentley et al. 2007).
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Institutional Agency

>
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  • Institutional Modeling
 Understanding institutions and predicting outcomes of institutional interaction require an analysis of their preferences and constraints that serve as inputs to institutional decison-making. Some institutional agents have unity of purpose across their constituent components; others do not. The similarity of preferences across constituent agents influences the degree to which conglomerate institutions can be treated as unitary decision-makers. Individuals and firms making economic decisions are generally considered to have relatively unitary preferences--those preferences consist in maximizing economic returns. There are serious problems with treating economic actors as unitary agents, but those problems are even more salient when dealing with non-economic actors, such as government agencies. Assuming the preferences of a legislator is relatively simple: He gains pecuniary and other benefits from his employment at the legislature, so it is assumed that he wants to remain in office. This preference assumption is rich with predictive implications: notably, short-term and long-term strategies at preserving electoral victory. Campaign advertising, buying off constituents, and manipulating electoral boundaries might be examples of such strategies. The pursuit of these preferences will of course be constrained by the preferences of other legislators. Because these strategies will differ significantly between electoral districts, examining the preferences of the legislature as a whole is far more problematic. Treating it as a unitary agent, it is unclear what exactly a legislature's preferences and goals would be. From a democratic theorist's standpoint, it is hoped that the emergent result of each legislator pleasing his constituents will result in the interests of the nation as a whole will be furthered. Then again, treating the nation as a unitary agent with cognizable preferences is even more problematic than doing so for the legislature. Preferences vary considerably among the electorate's constituent individuals.
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Institutional Rationality

  • Beliefs
    • Biological limitations on human knowledge
      • Emotional influences of fear, anger, etc.
    • Technological/cultural limitations on human knowledge
    • Information costs associated with broadcasting, transmitting, and receiving
>
>
  • Components of institutional modeling
    • Biological motivations, constraints on human knowledge, physical and emotional constraints on behavior
 
      • Ideological barriers to information
    • Beliefs themselves might be a source of utility.
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    • Individual and institutional manipulations of knowledge
  • Preferences
    • Biological
    • Monetary -- individual and institutional
    • Ideological
    • Temporal discounting
  • Constraints
    • Physical
    • Biological
    • Monetary
    • Temporal
    • Constitutional/legal
>
>
    • Technological and cultural constraints on individual behavior
    • Information costs associated with producing, transmitting, and processing information, manipulative or otherwise
    • Economic and ideological goals
    • Temporal constraints -- individuals have a lifespan; institutions do not
    • Legal regulation of institutional behavior
      • The law operates on the individual and on the institution.
 

The Political-Military Establishment

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  • The government has virtually unlimited access to information.
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>
  • Constitutional protections of privacy notwithstanding, the government has virtually unlimited access to information.(cite)
 
  • Benefits of war for the government: Kellner 1992 at 387.
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  • Democratic constraints -- elected officials must seek reelection. Loosened by the benefits of incumbency and gerrymandering, collusion between the incumbents of existing parties.
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>
  • Democratic constraints -- elected officials must seek reelection. This constraint is weakened by the benefits of incumbency and gerrymandering, and collusion between the incumbents of existing parties. Probably more powerful than the reelection constraint is an election constraint. Most individuals are outside the population subset that would be considered for office in the first place.
 
  • Legal constraints
    • Nominally, the government has to follow the law.
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    • Laws allowing the preservation of confidential government secrets undermine these constraints.
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    • Laws allowing the preservation of confidential government secrets undermine these constraints.(Schmitt and Mazzetti 2008)
 
  • Constitutional/judicial constraints

The Media

  • Journalistic ideology -- Many of the reporters working for the media have beliefs that run counter to the profit-making mission of their employers. Those beliefs--that truth is more important than profit, and that a press is democracy's Fourth Estate--interfere with the corporation's amoral belief system (Herman 2002: Ch 1; MacArthur? 1992: 20).
  • The obvious irony here is that the media, supposedly a cornerstone of the siren triangle, blew the whistle on this program. However, the main thesis is confirmed by the fact that broadcast media have blacklisted the story, while the Times and other print media have mostly ignored it. The story can also be explained in light of the agency noise characteristic of the media as a collective industry.
  • Individual journalists have an ideological preference for the pursuit of truth, but their editors and owners have monetary preferences.
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  • Media Consolidation
    • Enabled by Telecommunications Act of 1996?
 
  • Naturally, media consolidation has reduced the noise produced by journalistic ideology and rationalized the media industry's preferences in line with the profit motive.
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    • On the one hand, it could make regulation of the industry easier. But it also makes controlling the message easier--you have to buy fewer political advertisements.
 
  • News budgets. Consolidation has reduced news budgets as media conglomerates seek to maximize profits.
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  • Market forces
 
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  • Telecommunications Act of 1996?
 
  • Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman.
  • Retroactive immunity given to telecommunications corporations in 2008.
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  • The public sphere deteriorates (Habermas).
 

The Defense Industry

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  • Profit motive
  • Government procurement rules
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  • The preferences of defense contractors can be reduced to the profit motive. But the defense industry is a peculiar economic entity. They deal mostly or only with governments. This opens up lobbying to be an important instrument to pursuing goals. They would also want international arms trade regulations to be loosened, so sale of arms can be made with foreign governments. Most hazardously, defense contractors benefit from warmaking.
  • The laws regulating defense industry conduct include government procurement rules, lobbying rules, and export regulations.
 

The Siren Triangle

Because they share interests and instruments, the consolidated agencies of the government, the media, and the defense industry can be conceptualized as a single entity, the siren triangle. Because an even greater amount of complexity and agency noise is evident here, the predictive power of rational-choice hypotheses is reduced.

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The Siren Triangle

The government, the media, and the defense industry

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 How did this happen? This paper will attempt to model the various social, political, and economic forces The corruption linking the government to the media to the defense industry is an intertwined mess of tendrils. Gluttonous defense spending is doxa (Bourdieu 1977, ch. 4), unquestioned and encouraged by the media.

The Political Economy of the Siren Triangle

Changed:
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  • Following Higgs (2006) and Gintis (2006), the institutional and individual actors of the siren triangle will be examined using the BPC model--that is, they will be treated as rational actors that seek to maximize utility subject to beliefs, preferences, and constraints. Because they are collective entities with a more-or-less decentralized decision-making apparatus, decision strategies will be characterized by significant degrees of noise and stochasticity (Bentley et al. 2007).
>
>
  • Following Higgs (2006) and Gintis (2006), institutional actors will be examined using an evolutionary game-theoretic model, in which rational actors seek to maximize utility subject to beliefs, preferences, and constraints. Institutional actors are collective entities with a more-or-less decentralized decision-making apparatus, decision strategies will be characterized by significant degrees of noise and stochasticity (Bentley et al. 2007).

Institutional Agency

Understanding institutions and predicting outcomes of institutional interaction require an analysis of their preferences and constraints that serve as inputs to institutional decison-making. Some institutional agents have unity of purpose across their constituent components; others do not. The similarity of preferences across constituent agents influences the degree to which conglomerate institutions can be treated as unitary decision-makers. Individuals and firms making economic decisions are generally considered to have relatively unitary preferences--those preferences consist in maximizing economic returns. There are serious problems with treating economic actors as unitary agents, but those problems are even more salient when dealing with non-economic actors, such as government agencies. Assuming the preferences of a legislator is relatively simple: He gains pecuniary and other benefits from his employment at the legislature, so it is assumed that he wants to remain in office. This preference assumption is rich with predictive implications: notably, short-term and long-term strategies at preserving electoral victory. Campaign advertising, buying off constituents, and manipulating electoral boundaries might be examples of such strategies. The pursuit of these preferences will of course be constrained by the preferences of other legislators. Because these strategies will differ significantly between electoral districts, examining the preferences of the legislature as a whole is far more problematic. Treating it as a unitary agent, it is unclear what exactly a legislature's preferences and goals would be. From a democratic theorist's standpoint, it is hoped that the emergent result of each legislator pleasing his constituents will result in the interests of the nation as a whole will be furthered. Then again, treating the nation as a unitary agent with cognizable preferences is even more problematic than doing so for the legislature. Preferences vary considerably among the electorate's constituent individuals.

Institutional Rationality

 
  • Beliefs
    • Biological limitations on human knowledge
      • Emotional influences of fear, anger, etc.
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      • Ideological barriers to information
    • Beliefs themselves might be a source of utility.
    • Individual and institutional manipulations of knowledge
Deleted:
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  • Preferences
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    • Individual biological
      • Will to power (Nietsche)
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    • Biological
 
    • Monetary -- individual and institutional
    • Ideological
    • Temporal discounting
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    • Monetary -- individual and institutional
    • Ideological
    • Temporal discounting
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  • Constraints
    • Physical
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    • Biological
 
    • Monetary
    • Temporal
    • Constitutional/legal

The Political-Military Establishment

Deleted:
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  • Beliefs
 
    • The government has virtually unlimited access to information.
Deleted:
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  • Preferences
 
    • Benefits of war for the government: Kellner 1992 at 387.
Deleted:
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  • Constraints
 
    • Democratic constraints -- elected officials must seek reelection. Loosened by the benefits of incumbency and gerrymandering, collusion between the incumbents of existing parties.
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    • Legal constraints -- nominally, the government has to follow the law.
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>
  • Legal constraints
    • Nominally, the government has to follow the law.
    • Laws allowing the preservation of confidential government secrets undermine these constraints.
 
    • Constitutional/judicial constraints

The Media

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  • Beliefs
    • Journalistic ideology -- Many of the reporters working for the media have beliefs that run counter to the profit-making mission of their employers. Those beliefs--that truth is more important than profit, and that a press is democracy's Fourth Estate--interfere with the corporation's amoral belief system (Herman 2002: Ch 1).

  • Preferences
>
>
  • Journalistic ideology -- Many of the reporters working for the media have beliefs that run counter to the profit-making mission of their employers. Those beliefs--that truth is more important than profit, and that a press is democracy's Fourth Estate--interfere with the corporation's amoral belief system (Herman 2002: Ch 1; MacArthur? 1992: 20).
 
    • The obvious irony here is that the media, supposedly a cornerstone of the siren triangle, blew the whistle on this program. However, the main thesis is confirmed by the fact that broadcast media have blacklisted the story, while the Times and other print media have mostly ignored it. The story can also be explained in light of the agency noise characteristic of the media as a collective industry.
    • Individual journalists have an ideological preference for the pursuit of truth, but their editors and owners have monetary preferences.
    • Naturally, media consolidation has reduced the noise produced by journalistic ideology and rationalized the media industry's preferences in line with the profit motive.
Deleted:
<
<
  • Constraints
 
    • News budgets. Consolidation has reduced news budgets as media conglomerates seek to maximize profits.
    • Market forces
Line: 85 to 79
 
  • The public sphere deteriorates (Habermas).

The Defense Industry

Deleted:
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  • Beliefs

  • Preferences
 
    • Profit motive
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  • Constraints
 
    • Government procurement rules

The Siren Triangle

Changed:
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<		Because they share interests and instruments, the consolidated agencies of the government, the media, and the defense industry can be conceptualized as a single entity, the siren triangle. Because an even greater amount of complexity and agency noise is evident here, the predictive power of behavioral hypotheses is reduced.
>
>		Because they share interests and instruments, the consolidated agencies of the government, the media, and the defense industry can be conceptualized as a single entity, the siren triangle. Because an even greater amount of complexity and agency noise is evident here, the predictive power of rational-choice hypotheses is reduced.
 
Changed:
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  • Beliefs

  • Preferences

  • Constraints
>
>
  • A useful starting point for examining the siren triangle's utility function is overlap in the components' objectives. It is a plausible hypothesis, for instance, that the siren triangle gains utility from warmaking.
 
  • We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We also spend more on the media industry.
  • The Siren Triangle is not a conspiracy, with deliberate intent on the part of the actors to conspire against the public interest. Rather, the Siren Triangle is an emergent phenomenon of decentralized social processes, where self-interested activities by separate entities combine into a triangular feedback loop (See Herman and Chomsky 2002 at xi).
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  • 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 political distortions initiated by the defense industry persuade agents in the government to benefit the defense industry to their own detriment. Government entities (and the media) are highly distrusted as a result of the wars waged on behalf of the defense industry. Vietnam backfired. In Gulf War I, the violent victory was not enough to guarantee Bush Sr.'s reelection. After Gulf War I, defense spending decreased dramatically--but America's participation in the arms trade remained the highest in the world. September 11 and the subsequent War on Terror enabled significant increases in defense spending. The War in Iraq backfired in the same way Vietnam did--Bush Jr. prevailed in 2004 in spite of, rather than because of, the War in Iraq, and even then only by conflating the War in Iraq as retribution for the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, while media consumption did increase at the beginning of the wars in Iraq, there was a relatively larger spike in response to September 11. The different fates of Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. suggest that invasion of other countries does not serve the interests of government and media actors as well as an attack on the homeland does.
  • Evidence indicates quid pro quo between government and more influential contractors. (Fleisher 1993; Karpoff 1999)
  • Congressmen vote for obsolete programs, unneeded ordnance, and useless military bases because the actors in those programs are important constituents.
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Discussion

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<		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.
 
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<		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.
>
>

Information Transmission

 
Changed:
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<		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.
>
>		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 ([cite]). What other neural mechanisms guide capture and transfer of information? Whatever they are, these evolved mechanisms for information processing are manipulable. Many organisms, including humans, manipulate others to the manipulator's benefit (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. Institutions have their own emergent self-interest, and if they have the tools to manipulate humans and other institutions 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 the 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 viewer's brain. The actors in the Siren Triangle--the government, the media, and defense contractors--are actively manipulating the public sphere to facilitate the production and reproduction of messages that strengthen the Siren Triangle.
 
Changed:
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<		More long-term solutions would be increasing transparency.
>
>		Why isn't U.S. militarism a scandal?(Adut 2008) 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.
 
Changed:
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<		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.

Institutional Agency

Understanding institutions and predicting outcomes of institutional interaction require an analysis of their preferences and constraints that serve as inputs to institutional decison-making. Some institutional agents have unity of purpose across their constituent components; others do not. The similarity of preferences across constituent agents influences the degree to which conglomerate institutions can be treated as unitary decision-makers. Individuals and firms making economic decisions are generally considered to have relatively unitary preferences--those preferences consist in maximizing economic returns. There are serious problems with treating economic actors as unitary agents, but those problems are even more salient when dealing with non-economic actors, such as government agencies. Assuming the preferences of a legislator is relatively simple: He gains pecuniary and other benefits from his employment at the legislature, so it is assumed that he wants to remain in office. This preference assumption is rich with predictive implications: notably, short-term and long-term strategies at preserving electoral victory. Campaign advertising, buying off constituents, and manipulating electoral boundaries might be examples of such strategies. The pursuit of these preferences will of course be constrained by the preferences of other legislators. Because these strategies will differ significantly between electoral districts, examining the preferences of the legislature as a whole is far more problematic. Treating it as a unitary agent, it is unclear what exactly a legislature's preferences and goals would be. From a democratic theorist's standpoint, it is hoped that the emergent result of each legislator pleasing his constituents will result in the interests of the nation as a whole will be furthered. Then again, treating the nation as a unitary agent with cognizable preferences is even more problematic than doing so for the legislature. Preferences vary considerably between the electorate's constituent individuals.
>
>		As Adut emphasizes, scandal does not increase gradually in a linear relationship with moral violations. Instead, certain catalytic events induce tipping points (Gladwell 2000)
 
Changed:
<
<

Information Transmission

>
>

Agency Costs

 
Changed:
<
<		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 Siren Triangle is founded upon the circumstance that the agents in charge of the country do not share the goals and 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.
 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.
Line: 154 to 142
 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).
Deleted:
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<

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:

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

>
>

Solutions

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 even 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.
 
Changed:
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<
  • 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.
>
>		What I have called the "sociological" perspective is not meaningfully distinct from the "legal" perspective. 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 broad inertial problems like the siren triangle, it serves to distinguish endogenous from exogenous variables. On a short time frame, one might say that "law" is an exogenous variable, and solutions must work around it. On a longer time frame, laws become endogenous because the actor can take deliberate measures to repeal or reform them. 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 apparent monoliths as constitutional provisions and the human genetic code become endogenous.
 
Changed:
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The Agency Problem

>
>		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, and increasing government transparency.
 
Changed:
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<		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.
>
>		More 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.
  • Decision on FTC case preserving media consolidation as freedom of the press
  • Constitutional norms are not exogenous
 
Changed:
<
<

Legal solutions

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.
>
>		Outside of legislation and interpretation, we need institutional reform in media and defense corporations, and in academia.
 
  • International law scholars are looking in the wrong places.
Added:
>
>		Even more long term, we can relieve pedagogical and genetic limitations on human cognition and morality that contribute to problems like the siren triangle.

 

TSTSourceQuotes

Bibliography

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The Siren Triangle

The government, the media, and the defense industry

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Text

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<		First shalt thou reach the Sirens; they the hearts
>
>		_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
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 But him the Sirens sitting in the meads
Charm with mellifluous song, while all around
The bones accumulated lie of men
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<		Now putrid, and the skins mould'ring away.
>
>		Now putrid, and the skins mould'ring away._
 

-The Odyssey of Homer

Line: 81 to 79
 
    • Market forces

Changed:
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<
  • Telecommunications Act of 1996?
>
>
  • Telecommunications Act of 1996?
 
  • Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman.
  • Retroactive immunity given to telecommunications corporations in 2008.
  • The public sphere deteriorates (Habermas).
Line: 119 to 117
 

The Cold War and Vietnam

  • Kolko 2007
  • Herman and Chomsky (intro, Ch. 5-6)
Changed:
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<
  • Defense-industry R&D funding facilitated growth and consolidation of media industry (Cypher 2002)
>
>
  • Defense-industry R&D funding facilitated growth and consolidation of media industry (Cypher 2002)
 
  • General Electric and CBS own defense-industry assets (Kellner 1992)
  • Agent orange
Gulf War I and the 1990s
Line: 143 to 141
 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.

Added:
>
>

Institutional Agency

Understanding institutions and predicting outcomes of institutional interaction require an analysis of their preferences and constraints that serve as inputs to institutional decison-making. Some institutional agents have unity of purpose across their constituent components; others do not. The similarity of preferences across constituent agents influences the degree to which conglomerate institutions can be treated as unitary decision-makers. Individuals and firms making economic decisions are generally considered to have relatively unitary preferences--those preferences consist in maximizing economic returns. There are serious problems with treating economic actors as unitary agents, but those problems are even more salient when dealing with non-economic actors, such as government agencies. Assuming the preferences of a legislator is relatively simple: He gains pecuniary and other benefits from his employment at the legislature, so it is assumed that he wants to remain in office. This preference assumption is rich with predictive implications: notably, short-term and long-term strategies at preserving electoral victory. Campaign advertising, buying off constituents, and manipulating electoral boundaries might be examples of such strategies. The pursuit of these preferences will of course be constrained by the preferences of other legislators. Because these strategies will differ significantly between electoral districts, examining the preferences of the legislature as a whole is far more problematic. Treating it as a unitary agent, it is unclear what exactly a legislature's preferences and goals would be. From a democratic theorist's standpoint, it is hoped that the emergent result of each legislator pleasing his constituents will result in the interests of the nation as a whole will be furthered. Then again, treating the nation as a unitary agent with cognizable preferences is even more problematic than doing so for the legislature. Preferences vary considerably between the electorate's constituent individuals.
 

Information Transmission

Line: 194 to 193
 

Bibliography

Changed:
<
<
Author Title Year Subject Summary Link
Barstow, David NYTimes article on Military Analyst Program 2008 MAP   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1221408048-NbbOOtV/zAdLhqxAlnmTlw&pagewanted=print
Reuters Pentagon suspends retired military analyst program 2008 MAP   http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN28303679
Cypher, James The Iron Triangle 2002     http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_America/Iron_Triangle.html
Cypher, James From Military Keynesianism to Neoliberal Militarism 2007     http://www.monthlyreview.org/0607jmc.htm
Sessions, David Onward, TV Soldiers 2008 MAP Follows up on Barstow's MAP scoop http://www.slate.com/id/2189545/
Barstow, David DOD and GAO investigate MAP 2008 MAP   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/washington/24generals.html  
NYTimes 2009 Military Budget Bill Passes in Senate 2008 g   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc  
  Germany reduces defense spending 2004 G   http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00EFDC1330F937A25752C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink  
  Defense Industry Daily Web Site   C   http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com  
  Inside the Black Budget (NYTimes) 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc  
  Secret Military Programs Symbols 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1  
CBSA Defense Budget Data   MC Military spending data and tables http://www.csbaonline.org/2006-1/2.DefenseBudget/Topline.shtml  
Merle, Renae Recruiting Uncler Sam 2004 MC News piece on the revolving door between Pentagon and defense contractors    
Wayne, Leslie Pentagon Brass and Defense Contractor Gold 2004 MC more on revolving door http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07E2DC1538F93AA15755C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print  
Kellner, David Military Correspondents and propaganda 2008 GM Comparing media coverage of the gulf wars, mentions MAP in footnote http://www.ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/266/150  
Laveele, Tara Globalizing the iron triangle 2003 GC Describes iron triangle, bureaucracy models; shows how globalization changes these models    
Kellner, David The Persian Gulf TV War 1992 GMC Describes media coverage of gulf war I; discussion of defense/media conglomerates    
Homer The Odyssey     Sirens poem, Bk. 12 http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/223/1101/frameset.html  
Wikipedia "Ada"   G Article on "Ada" programming language, used in defense industry computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_programming_language  
  Federal Acquisitions Regulations     Statute regulating government procurements. http://www.acquisition.gov/far/loadmainre.html  
Herman and Chomsky Manufacturing Consent 2002 M propaganda model    
MacArthur? , John R. Second Front 1992 GM Details of Pentagon's manipulation of media in persian gulf war    
Gladwell, Malcolm The Tipping Point 2002   Demonstrates non-linearity in the causality of social phenomena    
Adut, Ari On Scandal 2008   Proposes theory of scandal    
Defense News Defense News Top 100 2007   ranking of defense contractors by revenues http://www.defensenews.com/static/features/top100/charts/top100_08.php?c=FEA&s=T1C  
Higgs, Robert Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy 2006 C Defense industry is more profitable than overall market http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=lang_en&id=UPiXyaMLe1AC&oi=fnd&pg=PA186&dq=stocking+the+arsenal+top+military+contractors&ots=xE0zl5yHtA&sig=BD0hu4_uA77NTFNE01nuKK_Looo#PPA192,M1  
Crocodyl "General Electric"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/general_electric  
Crocodyl "Boeing"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/boeing  
Crocodyl BAE Systems   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/bae_systems  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/lockheed_martin  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/dyncorp_international  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/mantech_international  
Crocodyl "Finmeccanica"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/finmeccanica  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/urs  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/caci_international_inc  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/iap_worldwide_services  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/united_technologies  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/eads  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/l_3_communications  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/general_dynamics  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/raytheon  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/northrop_grumman  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/blackwater  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/thales_group  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research    
Center for Defense Information         http://www.cdi.org/  
Project on Government Oversight         http://www.pogo.org/index.shtml  
Broadcast Museum "War on Television"       http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/W/htmlW/warontelevi/warontelevi.htm  
Chang, Tsan-kuo The Social Construction of International Imagery in the Post-Cold War Era: A Comparative Analysis of U.S. and Chinese National TV News       http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/jbem42&div=27&size=2&rot=0&type=image  
Bentley, R. Alexander et al. Regular rates of popular culture change reflect random copying 2007   randomness of aggregate market movement http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T6H-4MV1FCT-3&_user=18704&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000002018&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=18704&md5=080e960ee1e49f5f28469e7f9b27db64#secx2

>
>
Author Title Year Subject Summary Link
Barstow, David NYTimes article on Military Analyst Program 2008 MAP   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1221408048-NbbOOtV/zAdLhqxAlnmTlw&pagewanted=print
Reuters Pentagon suspends retired military analyst program 2008 MAP   http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN28303679
Cypher, James The Iron Triangle 2002     http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_America/Iron_Triangle.html
Cypher, James From Military Keynesianism to Neoliberal Militarism 2007     http://www.monthlyreview.org/0607jmc.htm
Sessions, David Onward, TV Soldiers 2008 MAP Follows up on Barstow's MAP scoop http://www.slate.com/id/2189545/
Barstow, David DOD and GAO investigate MAP 2008 MAP   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/washington/24generals.html  
NYTimes 2009 Military Budget Bill Passes in Senate 2008 g   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc  
  Germany reduces defense spending 2004 G   http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00EFDC1330F937A25752C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink  
  Defense Industry Daily Web Site   C   http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com  
  Inside the Black Budget (NYTimes) 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc  
  Secret Military Programs Symbols 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1  
CBSA Defense Budget Data   MC Military spending data and tables http://www.csbaonline.org/2006-1/2.DefenseBudget/Topline.shtml  
Merle, Renae Recruiting Uncler Sam 2004 MC News piece on the revolving door between Pentagon and defense contractors    
Wayne, Leslie Pentagon Brass and Defense Contractor Gold 2004 MC more on revolving door http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07E2DC1538F93AA15755C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print  
Kellner, David Military Correspondents and propaganda 2008 GM Comparing media coverage of the gulf wars, mentions MAP in footnote http://www.ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/266/150  
Laveele, Tara Globalizing the iron triangle 2003 GC Describes iron triangle, bureaucracy models; shows how globalization changes these models    
Kellner, David The Persian Gulf TV War 1992 GMC Describes media coverage of gulf war I; discussion of defense/media conglomerates    
Homer The Odyssey     Sirens poem, Bk. 12 http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/223/1101/frameset.html  
Wikipedia "Ada"   G Article on "Ada" programming language, used in defense industry computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_programming_language  
  Federal Acquisitions Regulations     Statute regulating government procurements. http://www.acquisition.gov/far/loadmainre.html  
Herman and Chomsky Manufacturing Consent 2002 M propaganda model    
MacArthur? , John R. Second Front 1992 GM Details of Pentagon's manipulation of media in persian gulf war    
Gladwell, Malcolm The Tipping Point 2002   Demonstrates non-linearity in the causality of social phenomena    
Adut, Ari On Scandal 2008   Proposes theory of scandal    
Defense News Defense News Top 100 2007   ranking of defense contractors by revenues http://www.defensenews.com/static/features/top100/charts/top100_08.php?c=FEA&s=T1C  
Higgs, Robert Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy 2006 C Defense industry is more profitable than overall market http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=lang_en&id=UPiXyaMLe1AC&oi=fnd&pg=PA186&dq=stocking+the+arsenal+top+military+contractors&ots=xE0zl5yHtA&sig=BD0hu4_uA77NTFNE01nuKK_Looo#PPA192,M1  
Crocodyl "General Electric"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/general_electric  
Crocodyl "Boeing"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/boeing  
Crocodyl BAE Systems   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/bae_systems  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/lockheed_martin  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/dyncorp_international  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/mantech_international  
Crocodyl "Finmeccanica"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/finmeccanica  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/urs  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/caci_international_inc  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/iap_worldwide_services  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/united_technologies  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/eads  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/l_3_communications  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/general_dynamics  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/raytheon  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/northrop_grumman  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/blackwater  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/thales_group  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research    
Center for Defense Information         http://www.cdi.org/  
Project on Government Oversight         http://www.pogo.org/index.shtml  
Broadcast Museum "War on Television"       http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/W/htmlW/warontelevi/warontelevi.htm  
Chang, Tsan-kuo The Social Construction of International Imagery in the Post-Cold War Era: A Comparative Analysis of U.S. and Chinese National TV News       http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/jbem42&div=27&size=2&rot=0&type=image  
Bentley, R. Alexander et al. Regular rates of popular culture change reflect random copying 2007   randomness of aggregate market movement http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T6H-4MV1FCT-3&_user=18704&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000002018&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=18704&md5=080e960ee1e49f5f28469e7f9b27db64#secx2
  Institutional Theory in Political Science     http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=lang_en&id=ybGkfO3ZBVEC&oi=fnd&pg=PP6&ots=njwe6QWYUq&sig=bWz8oRpARM03fTQmU1oqXEkAgQw#PPA48,M1
 Subject Legend:
  • G = Government/Military
  • C = Defense contractors

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The Siren Triangle

The government, the media, and the defense industry

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Introduction

 
First shalt thou reach the Sirens; they the hearts
Enchant of all who on their coast arrive.
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 -The Odyssey of Homer
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  • 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.
>
>

Introduction

 
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<		Decide whether to organize these sections by line, by point, or by time. I think time is the best answer.
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>		In May 2008, New York Times readers were introduced to the U.S. Pentagon's Military Analyst Program (Barstow 2008). David Barstow's feature article detailed a seedy web of conflicted interests, where retired Pentagon officers held triple roles as employees of the Pentagon, directors of defense contractors, and military analysts at television news networks. In their role as military analysts, these individuals provided rhetorical cover for the government, justified profits for the defense industry, and provided content for television networks with inordinately expansive broadcasting schedules. On the news networks, they were presented as independent analysts. Their personal and financial ties to the government, the military, and private defense contractors were not disclosed to viewers.
 
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The Siren Triangle

>
>		How did this happen? This paper will attempt to model the various social, political, and economic forces The corruption linking the government to the media to the defense industry is an intertwined mess of tendrils. Gluttonous defense spending is doxa (Bourdieu 1977, ch. 4), unquestioned and encouraged by the media.

The Political Economy of the Siren Triangle

  • Following Higgs (2006) and Gintis (2006), the institutional and individual actors of the siren triangle will be examined using the BPC model--that is, they will be treated as rational actors that seek to maximize utility subject to beliefs, preferences, and constraints. Because they are collective entities with a more-or-less decentralized decision-making apparatus, decision strategies will be characterized by significant degrees of noise and stochasticity (Bentley et al. 2007).
 
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  • Interlocking histories: A chronicle of the autocatalytic coevolution of the modern media and modern military.
  • We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We also spend more on the media industry.
  • The Siren Triangle is not a conspiracy, with deliberate intent on the part of the actors to conspire against the public interest. Rather, the Siren Triangle is an emergent phenomenon of decentralized social processes, where self-interested activities by separate entities combine into a triangular feedback loop (See Herman and Chomsky 2002 at xi).
  • The political distortions initiated by the defense industry persuade agents in the government to benefit the defense industry to their own detriment. Government entities (and the media) are highly distrusted as a result of the wars waged on behalf of the defense industry. Vietnam backfired. In Gulf War I, the violent victory was not enough to guarantee Bush Sr.'s reelection. After Gulf War I, defense spending decreased dramatically--but America's participation in the arms trade remained the highest in the world. September 11 and the subsequent War on Terror enabled significant increases in defense spending. The War in Iraq backfired in the same way Vietnam did--Bush Jr. prevailed in 2004 in spite of, rather than because of, the War in Iraq, and even then only by conflating the War in Iraq as retribution for the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, while media consumption did increase at the beginning of the wars in Iraq, there was a relatively larger spike in response to September 11. The different fates of Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. suggest that invasion of other countries does not serve the interests of government and media actors as well as an attack on the homeland does.
  • Following Higgs (2006) and Gintis (2006), the institutional and individual actors of the siren triangle will be examined using the BPC model--that is, they will be treated as rational actors that seek to maximize their self-interest subject to beliefs, preferences, and constraints. Because they are collective entities with a more-or-less decentralized decision-making apparatus, decision strategies will be characterized by significant degrees of noise and stochasticity (Bentley et al. 2007).
 
  • Beliefs
    • Biological limitations on human knowledge
      • Emotional influences of fear, anger, etc.
    • Technological/cultural limitations on human knowledge
    • Information costs associated with broadcasting, transmitting, and receiving
      • Ideological barriers to information
Added:
>
>
    • Beliefs themselves might be a source of utility.
 
    • Individual and institutional manipulations of knowledge
Added:
>
>
 
  • Preferences
    • Individual biological
      • Will to power (Nietsche)
Line: 55 to 55
 
    • Monetary
    • Temporal
    • Constitutional/legal
Added:
>
>
 

The Political-Military Establishment

Changed:
<
<
  • 2009 military budget is the highest since world war 2. By contrast, Germany reduced its defense spending in 2004 to $33 billion.
>
>
  • Beliefs
    • The government has virtually unlimited access to information.
  • Preferences
 
  • Benefits of war for the government: Kellner 1992 at 387.
Added:
>
>
  • Constraints
    • Democratic constraints -- elected officials must seek reelection. Loosened by the benefits of incumbency and gerrymandering, collusion between the incumbents of existing parties.
    • Legal constraints -- nominally, the government has to follow the law.
    • Constitutional/judicial constraints

The Media

  • Beliefs
    • Journalistic ideology -- Many of the reporters working for the media have beliefs that run counter to the profit-making mission of their employers. Those beliefs--that truth is more important than profit, and that a press is democracy's Fourth Estate--interfere with the corporation's amoral belief system (Herman 2002: Ch 1).
 
Changed:
<
<

Media Conglomerates

>
>
  • Preferences
    • The obvious irony here is that the media, supposedly a cornerstone of the siren triangle, blew the whistle on this program. However, the main thesis is confirmed by the fact that broadcast media have blacklisted the story, while the Times and other print media have mostly ignored it. The story can also be explained in light of the agency noise characteristic of the media as a collective industry.
    • Individual journalists have an ideological preference for the pursuit of truth, but their editors and owners have monetary preferences.
    • Naturally, media consolidation has reduced the noise produced by journalistic ideology and rationalized the media industry's preferences in line with the profit motive.

  • Constraints
    • News budgets. Consolidation has reduced news budgets as media conglomerates seek to maximize profits.
    • Market forces
 
Deleted:
<
<
  • Individual journalists have an ideological preference for the pursuit of truth, but their editors and owners have monetary preferences.

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.
Changed:
<
<
  • Break-down of defense spending. Return on expensive programs.
  • Important historical events
>
>
  • The public sphere deteriorates (Habermas).
 
Changed:
<
<

Defense Contractors and Media

>
>

The Defense Industry

  • Beliefs

  • Preferences
    • Profit motive

  • Constraints
    • Government procurement rules

The Siren Triangle

Because they share interests and instruments, the consolidated agencies of the government, the media, and the defense industry can be conceptualized as a single entity, the siren triangle. Because an even greater amount of complexity and agency noise is evident here, the predictive power of behavioral hypotheses is reduced.

  • Beliefs

  • Preferences

  • Constraints
 
Added:
>
>
  • We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We also spend more on the media industry.
  • The Siren Triangle is not a conspiracy, with deliberate intent on the part of the actors to conspire against the public interest. Rather, the Siren Triangle is an emergent phenomenon of decentralized social processes, where self-interested activities by separate entities combine into a triangular feedback loop (See Herman and Chomsky 2002 at xi).

  • The political distortions initiated by the defense industry persuade agents in the government to benefit the defense industry to their own detriment. Government entities (and the media) are highly distrusted as a result of the wars waged on behalf of the defense industry. Vietnam backfired. In Gulf War I, the violent victory was not enough to guarantee Bush Sr.'s reelection. After Gulf War I, defense spending decreased dramatically--but America's participation in the arms trade remained the highest in the world. September 11 and the subsequent War on Terror enabled significant increases in defense spending. The War in Iraq backfired in the same way Vietnam did--Bush Jr. prevailed in 2004 in spite of, rather than because of, the War in Iraq, and even then only by conflating the War in Iraq as retribution for the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, while media consumption did increase at the beginning of the wars in Iraq, there was a relatively larger spike in response to September 11. The different fates of Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. suggest that invasion of other countries does not serve the interests of government and media actors as well as an attack on the homeland does.
  • Evidence indicates quid pro quo between government and more influential contractors. (Fleisher 1993; Karpoff 1999)
  • Congressmen vote for obsolete programs, unneeded ordnance, and useless military bases because the actors in those programs are important constituents.
  • Americans end up with weapons that don't accomplish healthy goals but are murderous to civilians (Kolko 2007 at 18-23; Herman 2002 at xxx)

Historical Analysis

The Great Depression and World War II

  • Higgs 2006
  • Military Keynesianism (Cypher 2002; Cypher 2007)

The Cold War and Vietnam

  • Kolko 2007
  • Herman and Chomsky (intro, Ch. 5-6)
 
  • Defense-industry R&D funding facilitated growth and consolidation of media industry (Cypher 2002)
  • General Electric and CBS own defense-industry assets (Kellner 1992)
Changed:
<
<

History

  • Kolko 2007
  • Kellner 1992 at 138 *
World War II
Vietnam
Gulf War I
>
>
  • Agent orange
Gulf War I and the 1990s
 
  • 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
Added:
>
>
  • "Smart" bombs
 
The War on Terrorism
Changed:
<
<
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.

>
>
  • Kolko 2007
  • Abu graib
  • Guantanamo
  • NSA surveillance
 

Discussion

Line: 116 to 154
 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).
Changed:
<
<
On Scandal (See Adut 2008)
>
>

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)

Line: 145 to 183
 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

Deleted:
<
<
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.
Line: 159 to 196
 
Author Title Year Subject Summary Link
Barstow, David NYTimes article on Military Analyst Program 2008 MAP   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1221408048-NbbOOtV/zAdLhqxAlnmTlw&pagewanted=print 
<-- /editTable -->
Added:
>
>
Reuters Pentagon suspends retired military analyst program 2008 MAP   http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN28303679
 
Cypher, James The Iron Triangle 2002     http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_America/Iron_Triangle.html
Cypher, James From Military Keynesianism to Neoliberal Militarism 2007     http://www.monthlyreview.org/0607jmc.htm
Sessions, David Onward, TV Soldiers 2008 MAP Follows up on Barstow's MAP scoop http://www.slate.com/id/2189545/

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The government, the media, and the defense industry

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  • We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We also spend more on the media industry.
  • The Siren Triangle is not a conspiracy, with deliberate intent on the part of the actors to conspire against the public interest. Rather, the Siren Triangle is an emergent phenomenon of decentralized social processes, where self-interested activities by separate entities combine into a triangular feedback loop (See Herman and Chomsky 2002 at xi).
  • The political distortions initiated by the defense industry persuade agents in the government to benefit the defense industry to their own detriment. Government entities (and the media) are highly distrusted as a result of the wars waged on behalf of the defense industry. Vietnam backfired. In Gulf War I, the violent victory was not enough to guarantee Bush Sr.'s reelection. After Gulf War I, defense spending decreased dramatically--but America's participation in the arms trade remained the highest in the world. September 11 and the subsequent War on Terror enabled significant increases in defense spending. The War in Iraq backfired in the same way Vietnam did--Bush Jr. prevailed in 2004 in spite of, rather than because of, the War in Iraq, and even then only by conflating the War in Iraq as retribution for the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, while media consumption did increase at the beginning of the wars in Iraq, there was a relatively larger spike in response to September 11. The different fates of Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. suggest that invasion of other countries does not serve the interests of government and media actors as well as an attack on the homeland does.
Changed:
<
<
  • Following Higgs (2006) and Gintis (2006), the institutional and individual actors of the siren triangle will be examined using the BPC model--that is, they will be treated as rational actors that seek to maximize their self-interest subject to beliefs, preferences, and constraints.
>
>
  • Following Higgs (2006) and Gintis (2006), the institutional and individual actors of the siren triangle will be examined using the BPC model--that is, they will be treated as rational actors that seek to maximize their self-interest subject to beliefs, preferences, and constraints. Because they are collective entities with a more-or-less decentralized decision-making apparatus, decision strategies will be characterized by significant degrees of noise and stochasticity (Bentley et al. 2007).
 
  • Beliefs
    • Biological limitations on human knowledge
      • Emotional influences of fear, anger, etc.
Line: 206 to 206
 
Project on Government Oversight         http://www.pogo.org/index.shtml  
Broadcast Museum "War on Television"       http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/W/htmlW/warontelevi/warontelevi.htm  
Chang, Tsan-kuo The Social Construction of International Imagery in the Post-Cold War Era: A Comparative Analysis of U.S. and Chinese National TV News       http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/jbem42&div=27&size=2&rot=0&type=image  
Added:
>
>
Bentley, R. Alexander et al. Regular rates of popular culture change reflect random copying 2007   randomness of aggregate market movement http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T6H-4MV1FCT-3&_user=18704&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000002018&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=18704&md5=080e960ee1e49f5f28469e7f9b27db64#secx2

 Subject Legend:
  • G = Government/Military
  • C = Defense contractors

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META TOPICPARENT name="WebHome"

The Siren Triangle

The government, the media, and the defense industry

Line: 36 to 36
 
  • We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We also spend more on the media industry.
  • The Siren Triangle is not a conspiracy, with deliberate intent on the part of the actors to conspire against the public interest. Rather, the Siren Triangle is an emergent phenomenon of decentralized social processes, where self-interested activities by separate entities combine into a triangular feedback loop (See Herman and Chomsky 2002 at xi).
  • The political distortions initiated by the defense industry persuade agents in the government to benefit the defense industry to their own detriment. Government entities (and the media) are highly distrusted as a result of the wars waged on behalf of the defense industry. Vietnam backfired. In Gulf War I, the violent victory was not enough to guarantee Bush Sr.'s reelection. After Gulf War I, defense spending decreased dramatically--but America's participation in the arms trade remained the highest in the world. September 11 and the subsequent War on Terror enabled significant increases in defense spending. The War in Iraq backfired in the same way Vietnam did--Bush Jr. prevailed in 2004 in spite of, rather than because of, the War in Iraq, and even then only by conflating the War in Iraq as retribution for the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, while media consumption did increase at the beginning of the wars in Iraq, there was a relatively larger spike in response to September 11. The different fates of Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. suggest that invasion of other countries does not serve the interests of government and media actors as well as an attack on the homeland does.
Added:
>
>
  • Following Higgs (2006) and Gintis (2006), the institutional and individual actors of the siren triangle will be examined using the BPC model--that is, they will be treated as rational actors that seek to maximize their self-interest subject to beliefs, preferences, and constraints.
  • Beliefs
    • Biological limitations on human knowledge
      • Emotional influences of fear, anger, etc.
    • Technological/cultural limitations on human knowledge
    • Information costs associated with broadcasting, transmitting, and receiving
      • Ideological barriers to information
    • Individual and institutional manipulations of knowledge
  • Preferences
    • Individual biological
      • Will to power (Nietsche)
    • Monetary -- individual and institutional
    • Ideological
    • Temporal discounting
  • Constraints
    • Physical
    • Monetary
    • Temporal
    • Constitutional/legal
 

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.
Line: 43 to 62
 

Media Conglomerates

Changed:
<
<
>
>
 
  • Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman.
Changed:
<
<
>
>
  • Individual journalists have an ideological preference for the pursuit of truth, but their editors and owners have monetary preferences.
 

Government and Defense Contractors

  • Evidence indicates quid pro quo between government and more influential contractors. (Fleisher 1993; Karpoff 1999)

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The Siren Triangle

The government, the media, and the defense industry

Line: 35 to 35
 
  • Interlocking histories: A chronicle of the autocatalytic coevolution of the modern media and modern military.
  • We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We also spend more on the media industry.
  • The Siren Triangle is not a conspiracy, with deliberate intent on the part of the actors to conspire against the public interest. Rather, the Siren Triangle is an emergent phenomenon of decentralized social processes, where self-interested activities by separate entities combine into a triangular feedback loop (See Herman and Chomsky 2002 at xi).
Changed:
<
<
  • The political distortions initiated by the defense industry persuade agents in the government to benefit the defense industry to their own detriment. Government entities (and the media) are highly distrusted as a result of the wars waged on behalf of the defense industry. Vietnam backfired. In Gulf War I, the violent victory was not enough to guarantee Bush Sr.'s reelection. After Gulf War I, defense spending decreased dramatically--but America's participation in the arms trade remained the highest in the world. September 11 and the subsequent War on Terror enabled significant increases in defense spending. The War in Iraq backfired in the same way Vietnam did--Bush Jr. prevailed in 2004 in spite of, rather than because of, the War in Iraq, and even then only by conflating the War in Iraq as retribution for the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, while media consumption did increase at the beginning of the wars in Iraq, there was a relatively larger spike in response to September 11. The different fates of Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. suggest that invasion of other countries does not serve the interests of government and media actors as well as an attack on the homeland.
>
>
  • The political distortions initiated by the defense industry persuade agents in the government to benefit the defense industry to their own detriment. Government entities (and the media) are highly distrusted as a result of the wars waged on behalf of the defense industry. Vietnam backfired. In Gulf War I, the violent victory was not enough to guarantee Bush Sr.'s reelection. After Gulf War I, defense spending decreased dramatically--but America's participation in the arms trade remained the highest in the world. September 11 and the subsequent War on Terror enabled significant increases in defense spending. The War in Iraq backfired in the same way Vietnam did--Bush Jr. prevailed in 2004 in spite of, rather than because of, the War in Iraq, and even then only by conflating the War in Iraq as retribution for the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, while media consumption did increase at the beginning of the wars in Iraq, there was a relatively larger spike in response to September 11. The different fates of Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. suggest that invasion of other countries does not serve the interests of government and media actors as well as an attack on the homeland does.
 

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.
Line: 163 to 163
 
Gladwell, Malcolm The Tipping Point 2002   Demonstrates non-linearity in the causality of social phenomena    
Adut, Ari On Scandal 2008   Proposes theory of scandal    
Defense News Defense News Top 100 2007   ranking of defense contractors by revenues http://www.defensenews.com/static/features/top100/charts/top100_08.php?c=FEA&s=T1C  
Changed:
<
<
Higgs, Robert Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy 2006 C Defense industry is more profitable than overall market http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=lang_en&id=UPiXyaMLe1AC&oi=fnd&pg=PA186&dq=stocking+the+arsenal+top+military+contractors&ots=xE0zl5yHtA&sig=BD0hu4_uA77NTFNE01nuKK_Looo#PPA192,M1
Crocodyl "General Electric"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/general_electric
Crocodyl "Boeing"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/boeing
Crocodyl BAE Systems   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/bae_systems
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/lockheed_martin
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/dyncorp_international
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/mantech_international
Crocodyl "Finmeccanica"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/finmeccanica
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/urs
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/caci_international_inc
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/iap_worldwide_services
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/united_technologies
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/eads
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/l_3_communications
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/general_dynamics
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/raytheon
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/northrop_grumman
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/blackwater
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/thales_group
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Center for Defense Information         http://www.cdi.org/
Project on Government Oversight         http://www.pogo.org/index.shtml
>
>
Higgs, Robert Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy 2006 C Defense industry is more profitable than overall market http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=lang_en&id=UPiXyaMLe1AC&oi=fnd&pg=PA186&dq=stocking+the+arsenal+top+military+contractors&ots=xE0zl5yHtA&sig=BD0hu4_uA77NTFNE01nuKK_Looo#PPA192,M1  
Crocodyl "General Electric"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/general_electric  
Crocodyl "Boeing"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/boeing  
Crocodyl BAE Systems   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/bae_systems  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/lockheed_martin  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/dyncorp_international  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/mantech_international  
Crocodyl "Finmeccanica"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/finmeccanica  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/urs  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/caci_international_inc  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/iap_worldwide_services  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/united_technologies  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/eads  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/l_3_communications  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/general_dynamics  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/raytheon  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/northrop_grumman  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/blackwater  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/thales_group  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research    
Center for Defense Information         http://www.cdi.org/  
Project on Government Oversight         http://www.pogo.org/index.shtml  
Broadcast Museum "War on Television"       http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/W/htmlW/warontelevi/warontelevi.htm  
Chang, Tsan-kuo The Social Construction of International Imagery in the Post-Cold War Era: A Comparative Analysis of U.S. and Chinese National TV News       http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/jbem42&div=27&size=2&rot=0&type=image  
 Subject Legend:
  • G = Government/Military
  • C = Defense contractors

Revision 3021 Oct 2008 - Main.ElliottAsh

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The government, the media, and the defense industry

Line: 28 to 28
 
  • Give account of military analyst program.
  • How did this happen? Why did it happen? This paper will try to explain.
Changed:
<
<		Decide whether to organize these sections by line, by point, or by time
>
>		Decide whether to organize these sections by line, by point, or by time. I think time is the best answer.
 

The Siren Triangle

  • Interlocking histories: A chronicle of the autocatalytic coevolution of the modern media and modern military.
  • We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We also spend more on the media industry.
  • The Siren Triangle is not a conspiracy, with deliberate intent on the part of the actors to conspire against the public interest. Rather, the Siren Triangle is an emergent phenomenon of decentralized social processes, where self-interested activities by separate entities combine into a triangular feedback loop (See Herman and Chomsky 2002 at xi).
Changed:
<
<
>
>
  • The political distortions initiated by the defense industry persuade agents in the government to benefit the defense industry to their own detriment. Government entities (and the media) are highly distrusted as a result of the wars waged on behalf of the defense industry. Vietnam backfired. In Gulf War I, the violent victory was not enough to guarantee Bush Sr.'s reelection. After Gulf War I, defense spending decreased dramatically--but America's participation in the arms trade remained the highest in the world. September 11 and the subsequent War on Terror enabled significant increases in defense spending. The War in Iraq backfired in the same way Vietnam did--Bush Jr. prevailed in 2004 in spite of, rather than because of, the War in Iraq, and even then only by conflating the War in Iraq as retribution for the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, while media consumption did increase at the beginning of the wars in Iraq, there was a relatively larger spike in response to September 11. The different fates of Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. suggest that invasion of other countries does not serve the interests of government and media actors as well as an attack on the homeland.
 

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.

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The government, the media, and the defense industry

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The government, the media, and the defense industry

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The government, the media, and the defense industry

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Higgs, Robert Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy 2006 C Defense industry is more profitable than overall market http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=lang_en&id=UPiXyaMLe1AC&oi=fnd&pg=PA186&dq=stocking+the+arsenal+top+military+contractors&ots=xE0zl5yHtA&sig=BD0hu4_uA77NTFNE01nuKK_Looo#PPA192,M1
Crocodyl "General Electric"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/general_electric
Crocodyl "Boeing"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/boeing
Changed:
<
<
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/bae_systems
>
>
Crocodyl BAE Systems   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/bae_systems
 
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/lockheed_martin
Added:
>
>
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/dyncorp_international
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/mantech_international
Crocodyl "Finmeccanica"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/finmeccanica
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/urs
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/caci_international_inc
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/iap_worldwide_services
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/united_technologies
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/eads
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/l_3_communications
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/general_dynamics
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/raytheon
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/northrop_grumman
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/blackwater
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/thales_group
 
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Changed:
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<
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
>
>
Center for Defense Information         http://www.cdi.org/
Project on Government Oversight         http://www.pogo.org/index.shtml
 Subject Legend:
  • G = Government/Military
  • C = Defense contractors

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  Inside the Black Budget (NYTimes) 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc  
  Secret Military Programs Symbols 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1  
CBSA Defense Budget Data   MC Military spending data and tables http://www.csbaonline.org/2006-1/2.DefenseBudget/Topline.shtml  
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Merle, Renae Recruiting Uncler Sam 2004 MC News piece on the revolving door between Pentagon and defense contractors  
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Merle, Renae Recruiting Uncler Sam 2004 MC News piece on the revolving door between Pentagon and defense contractors    
 
Wayne, Leslie Pentagon Brass and Defense Contractor Gold 2004 MC more on revolving door http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07E2DC1538F93AA15755C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print  
Kellner, David Military Correspondents and propaganda 2008 GM Comparing media coverage of the gulf wars, mentions MAP in footnote http://www.ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/266/150  
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Laveele, Tara Globalizing the iron triangle 2003 GC Describes iron triangle, bureaucracy models; shows how globalization changes these models  
Kellner, David The Persian Gulf TV War 1992 GMC Describes media coverage of gulf war I; discussion of defense/media conglomerates  
>
>
Laveele, Tara Globalizing the iron triangle 2003 GC Describes iron triangle, bureaucracy models; shows how globalization changes these models    
Kellner, David The Persian Gulf TV War 1992 GMC Describes media coverage of gulf war I; discussion of defense/media conglomerates    
 
Homer The Odyssey     Sirens poem, Bk. 12 http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/223/1101/frameset.html  
Wikipedia "Ada"   G Article on "Ada" programming language, used in defense industry computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_programming_language  
  Federal Acquisitions Regulations     Statute regulating government procurements. http://www.acquisition.gov/far/loadmainre.html  
Changed:
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<
Herman and Chomsky Manufacturing Consent 2002 M propaganda model  
MacArthur? , John R. Second Front 1992 GM Details of Pentagon's manipulation of media in persian gulf war  
Gladwell, Malcolm The Tipping Point 2002   Demonstrates non-linearity in the causality of social phenomena  
Adut, Ari On Scandal 2008   Proposes theory of scandal  
>
>
Herman and Chomsky Manufacturing Consent 2002 M propaganda model    
MacArthur? , John R. Second Front 1992 GM Details of Pentagon's manipulation of media in persian gulf war    
Gladwell, Malcolm The Tipping Point 2002   Demonstrates non-linearity in the causality of social phenomena    
Adut, Ari On Scandal 2008   Proposes theory of scandal    
Defense News Defense News Top 100 2007   ranking of defense contractors by revenues http://www.defensenews.com/static/features/top100/charts/top100_08.php?c=FEA&s=T1C  
Higgs, Robert Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy 2006 C Defense industry is more profitable than overall market http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=lang_en&id=UPiXyaMLe1AC&oi=fnd&pg=PA186&dq=stocking+the+arsenal+top+military+contractors&ots=xE0zl5yHtA&sig=BD0hu4_uA77NTFNE01nuKK_Looo#PPA192,M1
Crocodyl "General Electric"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/general_electric
Crocodyl "Boeing"   C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/boeing
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/bae_systems
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/lockheed_martin
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
Crocodyl     C Collaborative corporate research  
 Subject Legend:
  • G = Government/Military
  • C = Defense contractors

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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.
Added:
>
>		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:

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  Inside the Black Budget (NYTimes) 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc  
  Secret Military Programs Symbols 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1  
CBSA Defense Budget Data   MC Military spending data and tables http://www.csbaonline.org/2006-1/2.DefenseBudget/Topline.shtml  
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Merle, Renae Recruiting Uncler Sam 2004 MC News piece on the revolving door between Pentagon and defense contractors    
>
>
Merle, Renae Recruiting Uncler Sam 2004 MC News piece on the revolving door between Pentagon and defense contractors  
 
Wayne, Leslie Pentagon Brass and Defense Contractor Gold 2004 MC more on revolving door http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07E2DC1538F93AA15755C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print  
Kellner, David Military Correspondents and propaganda 2008 GM Comparing media coverage of the gulf wars, mentions MAP in footnote http://www.ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/266/150  
Changed:
<
<
Laveele, Tara Globalizing the iron triangle 2003 GC Describes iron triangle, bureaucracy models; shows how globalization changes these models    
Kellner, David The Persian Gulf TV War 1992 GMC Describes media coverage of gulf war I; discussion of defense/media conglomerates    
>
>
Laveele, Tara Globalizing the iron triangle 2003 GC Describes iron triangle, bureaucracy models; shows how globalization changes these models  
Kellner, David The Persian Gulf TV War 1992 GMC Describes media coverage of gulf war I; discussion of defense/media conglomerates  
 
Homer The Odyssey     Sirens poem, Bk. 12 http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/223/1101/frameset.html  
Wikipedia "Ada"   G Article on "Ada" programming language, used in defense industry computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_programming_language  
  Federal Acquisitions Regulations     Statute regulating government procurements. http://www.acquisition.gov/far/loadmainre.html  
Changed:
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<
Herman and Chomsky Manufacturing Consent 2002 M propaganda model    
MacArthur? , John R. Second Front 1992 GM Details of Pentagon's manipulation of media in persian gulf war    
>
>
Herman and Chomsky Manufacturing Consent 2002 M propaganda model  
MacArthur? , John R. Second Front 1992 GM Details of Pentagon's manipulation of media in persian gulf war  
Gladwell, Malcolm The Tipping Point 2002   Demonstrates non-linearity in the causality of social phenomena  
Adut, Ari On Scandal 2008   Proposes theory of scandal  
 Subject Legend:
  • G = Government/Military

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Homer The Odyssey     Sirens poem, Bk. 12 http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/223/1101/frameset.html  
Wikipedia "Ada"   G Article on "Ada" programming language, used in defense industry computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_programming_language  
  Federal Acquisitions Regulations     Statute regulating government procurements. http://www.acquisition.gov/far/loadmainre.html  
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Herman and Chomsky Manufacturing Consent 2002 M propaganda model  
>
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Herman and Chomsky Manufacturing Consent 2002 M propaganda model    
MacArthur? , John R. Second Front 1992 GM Details of Pentagon's manipulation of media in persian gulf war    
 Subject Legend:
  • G = Government/Military

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 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).
Added:
>
>
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.
 

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:

Line: 120 to 122
 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.
Added:
>
>

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

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 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.
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<		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 be more likely to gain the nomination.
>
>		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).

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 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.
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SourceQuotes?

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TSTSourceQuotes

 

Bibliography

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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.
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  • Benefits of war for the government: Kellner 1992 at 387.
 

Media Conglomerates

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  • Defense-industry R&D funding facilitated growth and consolidation of media industry (Cypher 2002)
  • General Electric and CBS own defense-industry assets (Kellner 1992)
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Nexus: The Pentagon's Military Analyst Program

>
>

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
Deleted:
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Results

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

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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.
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Body

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Text

Introduction

 
First shalt thou reach the Sirens; they the hearts
Enchant of all who on their coast arrive.
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 -The Odyssey of Homer
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Introduction

 
  • 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.
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  • 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

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The Siren Triangle

Added:
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  • Interlocking histories: A chronicle of the autocatalytic coevolution of the modern media and modern military.
  • We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We also spend more on the media industry.
Changed:
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  • The Siren Triangle is not a conspiracy, with deliberate intent on the part of the actors to conspire against the public interest. Instead, the Siren Triangle is an emergent phenomenon of decentralized social processes, where self-interested activities by separate entities combine into a triangular feedback loop.

Media and Government

>
>
  • The Siren Triangle is not a conspiracy, with deliberate intent on the part of the actors to conspire against the public interest. Rather, the Siren Triangle is an emergent phenomenon of decentralized social processes, where self-interested activities by separate entities combine into a triangular feedback loop (See Herman and Chomsky 2002 at xi).

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.
Added:
>
>

Media Conglomerates

 
  • Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman.
Changed:
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  • Does the media benefit from war?
>
>
 

Government and Defense Contractors

Added:
>
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  • 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.
Line: 41 to 51
 
  • 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.
Added:
>
>
  • Important historical events
 

Defense Contractors and Media

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

Nexus: The Pentagon's Military Analyst Program

Added:
>
>
 
  • A metaphorical nexus and corrupt offspring of the Siren Triangle
Added:
>
>
 

Results

Added:
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>
 The horrible side effects and counterproductivity of weapons technology. (Kolko 2007 at 18-23) Crimes against humanity: mai lai, abu graib, guantanamo.
Line: 69 to 87
 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 be more likely to gain the nomination.
Changed:
<
<		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.
>
>		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).
 

Military Technology and Intellectual Property

Added:
>
>
 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
Line: 83 to 102
 
  • Military technology was repeatedly monetized throughout the last century (Cypher 2002).

Arms races

Changed:
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  • Within government. Candidates spend more. Offices grow (Kolko 07?).
  • Within media. Media companies compete for viewers. Result: huge expenses for worthless technology (ex. doppler radar)
  • Within military technology. US builds astronomically expensive weapons that are practically worthless (Kolko 07).
>
>
  • 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.
Added:
>
>

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.

 

SourceQuotes?

Added:
>
>
 

Bibliography

Added:
>
>
 
Author Title Year Subject Summary Link
Barstow, David NYTimes article on Military Analyst Program 2008 MAP   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1221408048-NbbOOtV/zAdLhqxAlnmTlw&pagewanted=print 
<-- /editTable -->
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Homer The Odyssey     Sirens poem, Bk. 12 http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/223/1101/frameset.html  
Wikipedia "Ada"   G Article on "Ada" programming language, used in defense industry computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_programming_language  
  Federal Acquisitions Regulations     Statute regulating government procurements. http://www.acquisition.gov/far/loadmainre.html  
Added:
>
>
Herman and Chomsky Manufacturing Consent 2002 M propaganda model  
 Subject Legend:
  • G = Government/Military

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

Added:
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Arms races

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

SourceQuotes?

Bibliography

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Cypher, James The Iron Triangle 2002     http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_America/Iron_Triangle.html
Cypher, James From Military Keynesianism to Neoliberal Militarism 2007     http://www.monthlyreview.org/0607jmc.htm
Sessions, David Onward, TV Soldiers 2008 MAP Follows up on Barstow's MAP scoop http://www.slate.com/id/2189545/
Changed:
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<
Barstow, David   DOD and GAO investigate MAP 2008 MAP   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/washington/24generals.html
NYTimes 2009 Military Budget Bill Passes in Senate 2008 g   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc
  Germany reduces defense spending 2004 G   http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00EFDC1330F937A25752C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
  Defense Industry Daily Web Site   C   http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com
  Inside the Black Budget (NYTimes) 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc
  Secret Military Programs Symbols 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1
CBSA Defense Budget Data   MC Military spending data and tables http://www.csbaonline.org/2006-1/2.DefenseBudget/Topline.shtml
Merle, Renae Recruiting Uncler Sam 2004 MC News piece on the revolving door between Pentagon and defense contractors  
Wayne, Leslie Pentagon Brass and Defense Contractor Gold 2004 MC more on revolving door http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07E2DC1538F93AA15755C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
Kellner, David Military Correspondents and propaganda 2008 GM Comparing media coverage of the gulf wars, mentions MAP in footnote http://www.ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/266/150
Laveele, Tara Globalizing the iron triangle 2003 GC Describes iron triangle, bureaucracy models; shows how globalization changes these models  
Kellner, David The Persian Gulf TV War 1992 GMC Describes media coverage of gulf war I; discussion of defense/media conglomerates  
Homer The Odyssey     Sirens poem, Bk. 12 http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/223/1101/frameset.html
Wikipedia "Ada"     C Article on "Ada" programming language, used in defense industry computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_programming_language
>
>
Barstow, David DOD and GAO investigate MAP 2008 MAP   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/washington/24generals.html  
NYTimes 2009 Military Budget Bill Passes in Senate 2008 g   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc  
  Germany reduces defense spending 2004 G   http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00EFDC1330F937A25752C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink  
  Defense Industry Daily Web Site   C   http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com  
  Inside the Black Budget (NYTimes) 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc  
  Secret Military Programs Symbols 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1  
CBSA Defense Budget Data   MC Military spending data and tables http://www.csbaonline.org/2006-1/2.DefenseBudget/Topline.shtml  
Merle, Renae Recruiting Uncler Sam 2004 MC News piece on the revolving door between Pentagon and defense contractors    
Wayne, Leslie Pentagon Brass and Defense Contractor Gold 2004 MC more on revolving door http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07E2DC1538F93AA15755C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print  
Kellner, David Military Correspondents and propaganda 2008 GM Comparing media coverage of the gulf wars, mentions MAP in footnote http://www.ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/266/150  
Laveele, Tara Globalizing the iron triangle 2003 GC Describes iron triangle, bureaucracy models; shows how globalization changes these models    
Kellner, David The Persian Gulf TV War 1992 GMC Describes media coverage of gulf war I; discussion of defense/media conglomerates    
Homer The Odyssey     Sirens poem, Bk. 12 http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/223/1101/frameset.html  
Wikipedia "Ada"   G Article on "Ada" programming language, used in defense industry computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_programming_language  
  Federal Acquisitions Regulations     Statute regulating government procurements. http://www.acquisition.gov/far/loadmainre.html  
 Subject Legend:
  • G = Government/Military

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 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.
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Information Transmission
>
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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.

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 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.

Military Technology and Intellectual Property

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>		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).
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Kellner, David Military Correspondents and propaganda 2008 GM Comparing media coverage of the gulf wars, mentions MAP in footnote http://www.ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/266/150
Laveele, Tara Globalizing the iron triangle 2003 GC Describes iron triangle, bureaucracy models; shows how globalization changes these models  
Kellner, David The Persian Gulf TV War 1992 GMC Describes media coverage of gulf war I; discussion of defense/media conglomerates  
Changed:
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<
Homer The Odyssey ?   Sirens poem, Bk. 12 http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/223/1101/frameset.html
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>
Homer The Odyssey     Sirens poem, Bk. 12 http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/223/1101/frameset.html
Wikipedia "Ada"     C Article on "Ada" programming language, used in defense industry computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_programming_language
 Subject Legend:
  • G = Government/Military

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Nexus: The Pentagon's Military Analyst Program

  • A metaphorical nexus and corrupt offspring of the Siren Triangle

Results

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>
>		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.
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 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.
Changed:
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Quotations

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>

Military Technology and Intellectual Property

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

Media and Government

>
>
  • Eli Whitney's replaceable parts. (Lehman 1996 at 8)
  • Military technology was repeatedly monetized throughout the last century (Cypher 2002).
 
Deleted:
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<		"Military commentators on most U.S. corporate broadcasting networks are mostly propagandists. On the whole, ex-U.S. military personnel with contacts with the administration and Pentagon who serve as broadcasting commentators are largely uncritical and parrot current U.S. military policy and the Pentagon spin of the day. In order to keep their lines of communication to the administration or Pentagon open, they need to transmit the official line of the moment. Most television commentators tend to uncritically support and legitimize U.S. military actions." (Kellner 2008)
 
Changed:
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<		"Analysis of news reports and advertisements suggests that popular culture and mass media depictions of fear, patriotism, consumption, and victimization contributed to the emergence of a national identity and collective action that transformed the meaning of terrorism from a strategy to a condition: terrorism world. Initial declarations about recovery and retaliation to promote patriotism became a “war on terrorism” with no end in sight. In this process, global policing that would justify a “first strike” against sovereign governments was socially constructed as commensurate with personal caring and national identity. These findings are organized around three points: (1) fear supported consumption as a meaningful way for audiences to sustain an identity of substance and character; (2) consumption and giving were joined symbolically as government and business propaganda emphasized common themes of spending and buying to help the country get back on track; (3) the absence of a clear target for reprisals contributed to the construction of broad symbolic enemies and goals." (Altheide 2004)

"The mass media play an integral part in the support of war. The mass media did not start the war with Iraq, but they shaped the context, the audience expectations, the discourse, and the production of symbolic meanings. We live in a postjournalism era, when there is no longer separation between event makers, event promoters, and event chroniclers. All rely on media logic and the sense about what will look good to relevant audiences, how to promote appropriate meanings, and above all, how to market and sell it all as something desirable. We have seen that War Programming is now a package; propaganda is joined to the news process when journalists and news sources operate with media logic, share in the construction and emotional performance of events, and limit the public forums for discussion, especially dissent." (Altheide 2005, footnotes omitted).

Government and Defense Contractors

"The results once again confirm the powerful effects of ideology on defense voting but also indicate that PAC contributions exert a statistically significant (though marginal) impact even when ideological predisposition is controlled. In addition, the results support the argument that those members with weaker ideological predispositions are more responsive to the effects of PAC money. Finally, the results indicate that, even at the margins, PAC contributions from defense contractors can influence the outcome of legislative deliberations, especially when the vote margin is not very large." (Fleisher 1993) "Unranked contractors are penalized heavily for procurement frauds, experiencing both a decline in market value and a subsequent loss in government-derived revenues; Influential contractors, in contrast, are penalized lightly, experiencing negligible changes in share value and government contract revenue." (Karpoff 1999).

"A longtime rule forbade retired military officers from lobbying the Pentagon on behalf of a private contractor for two years. That rule was repealed in 1996 because it singled out retired military officers while civilian Pentagon employees had to wait only a year." (Merle 2004)

"Growing privatization in the US, intense competition and the weakening of rules governing the relationship between contractors and the government have contributed to the “revolving door” phenomenon, which consists of the movement of former federal officials to the private sector, and through their connections and inside knowledge, exerting political influence over the government decision-making process as lobbyists, consultants and board members on behalf of the contractors for whom they work. The revolving door also involves the naming of executives from government contractors to senior positions within the state administration. Spurred by the move to streamline government and involve industry in procurement decisions, contractors and government have developed a symbiotic relationship in the US that is reflected in the fluid movement of key individuals between government and industry. Both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney – when he held this job before becoming CEO of Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root – have tried their utmost to privatize the American military. For Rumsfeld, following corporate strategy, downsizing means moving to “just in time” hiring, using private firms to provide what the military formerly did for itself. He has insisted that it makes no sense to keep and pay for a well-trained standing army, when the US can purchase every sort of service on an “open market” whenever there is a need for military action. Cheney and other proponents of outsourcing ask why should soldiers cook for themselves, move their trash, provide supplies, run and maintain their technology – why not privatize these activities and free the military to concentrate on core tasks only? Even in the case of actual military duty – guarding public officials from hostile attack, fighting terrorist and guerrilla assaults – much of what soldiers traditionally do can be performed by PMCs. All of these services can be hired only when needed, and the army can be kept small, and hence inexpensive in terms of manpower. Thus, on taking office, Cheney named executives from leading military contractors as heads of the three services. James Roche, the secretary of the Air Force, is a former vice president of Northrop Grumman; Gordon England, the secretary of the Navy, is a former executive at General Dynamics; and Thomas P. White, a former secretary of the Army, came from Enron.325 A recent study of defense contracting in the US identified 224 high-ranking government officials over the past seven years who moved into the private sector to work as lobbyists, board members or executives of contractors. Moreover, at least one-third of these former high-ranking former government employees had held positions that allowed them to influence government contracting decisions. A survey of the revolving door phenomenon concluded that “the revolving door has become such an accepted part of federal contracting in recent years that it is frequently difficult to determine where the government stops and the private sector begins.” (Schreier 2005, pg. 90. footnotes omitted).

Defense Contractors and Media

"Defense spending on research and development has sparked much innovation. Microchips, radar, lasers, satellite communications, cell phones, GPS, and the Internet all came out of Defense Dept. funding for basic research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and national laboratories. There were breakthroughs at IBM and Bell Laboratories, and all were commercialized by Intel Corp., Motorola Inc., and other corporations. The same is true of artificial intelligence, supercomputers, high-speed fiber optics, and many other breakthroughs. The bulk of information technologies, in fact, were developed through massive R&D investments in military technology." (Cypher 2002)

Bibiliography

>
>

SourceQuotes?

Bibliography

 
Author Title Year Subject Summary Link
Barstow, David NYTimes article on Military Analyst Program 2008 MAP   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1221408048-NbbOOtV/zAdLhqxAlnmTlw&pagewanted=print
Cypher, James The Iron Triangle 2002     http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_America/Iron_Triangle.html

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The Siren Triangle

  • Interlocking histories: A chronicle of the autocatalytic coevolution of the modern media and modern military.
  • We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We also spend more on the media industry.
Added:
>
>
  • The Siren Triangle is not a conspiracy, with deliberate intent on the part of the actors to conspire against the public interest. Instead, the Siren Triangle is an emergent phenomenon of decentralized social processes, where self-interested activities by separate entities combine into a triangular feedback loop.
 

Media and Government

Changed:
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<
  • Telecommunications Act of 1996
>
>
 
  • 2009 military budget is the highest since world war 2. By contrast, Germany reduced its defense spending in 2004 to $33 billion.
  • Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman.
  • Does the media benefit from war?
Line: 43 to 45
 

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)
Changed:
<
<

The Pentagon's Military Analyst Program

>
>

Nexus: The Pentagon's Military Analyst Program

 
  • A metaphorical nexus and corrupt offspring of the Siren Triangle
Added:
>
>

Results

The horrible side effects and counterproductivity of Violations of international law and norms of 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.

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 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.
Added:
>
>
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 be more likely to gain the nomination.

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.

 

Quotations

Media and Government

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 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.

Body

Added:
>
>
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

 

Introduction

  • 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.
Changed:
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<		Decide whether to organize these sections by line, by point, or by time
>
>		Decide whether to organize these sections by line, by point, or by time
 

The Siren Triangle

  • Interlocking histories: A chronicle of the autocatalytic coevolution of the modern media and modern military.
  • We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We also spend more on the media industry.
Line: 52 to 67
 substance and character; (2) consumption and giving were joined symbolically as government and business propaganda emphasized common themes of spending and buying to help the country get back on track; (3) the absence of a clear target for reprisals contributed to the construction of broad symbolic enemies and goals." (Altheide 2004)

"The mass media play an integral part in the support of war. The mass media did not start the war with Iraq, but they shaped the context, the audience expectations, the discourse, and the production of symbolic meanings. We live in a postjournalism era, when there is no longer separation between event makers, event promoters, and event chroniclers. All rely on media logic and the sense about what will look good to relevant audiences, how to promote appropriate meanings, and above all, how to market and sell it all as something desirable. We have seen that War Programming is now a package; propaganda is joined to the news process when journalists and news sources operate with media logic, share in the construction and emotional performance of events, and limit the public forums for discussion, especially dissent." (Altheide 2005, footnotes omitted).

Added:
>
>
 

Government and Defense Contractors

Added:
>
>
 "The results once again confirm the powerful effects of ideology on defense voting but also indicate that PAC contributions exert a statistically significant (though marginal) impact even when ideological predisposition is controlled. In addition, the results support the argument that those members with weaker ideological predispositions are more responsive to the effects of PAC money. Finally, the results indicate that, even at the margins, PAC contributions from defense contractors can influence the outcome of legislative deliberations, especially when the vote margin is not very large." (Fleisher 1993) "Unranked contractors are penalized heavily for procurement frauds, experiencing both a decline in market value and a subsequent loss in government-derived revenues; Influential contractors, in contrast, are penalized lightly, experiencing negligible changes in share value and government contract revenue." (Karpoff 1999).
Added:
>
>
 "A longtime rule forbade retired military officers from lobbying the Pentagon on behalf of a private contractor for two years. That rule was repealed in 1996 because it singled out retired military officers while civilian Pentagon employees had to wait only a year." (Merle 2004)
Changed:
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<		"Growing privatization in the US, intense competition and the weakening of rules governing the relationship between contractors and the government have contributed to the “revolving door” phenomenon, which consists of the movement of former federal officials to the private sector, and through their connections and inside knowledge, exerting political influence over the government decision-making process as lobbyists, consultants and board members on behalf of the contractors for whom they work. The revolving door also involves the naming of executives from government contractors to senior positions within the state administration. Spurred by the move to streamline government and involve industry in procurement decisions, contractors and government have developed a symbiotic relationship in the US that is reflected in the fluid movement of key individuals between government and industry. Both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney – when he held this job before becoming CEO of Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root – have tried their utmost to privatize the American military. For Rumsfeld, following corporate strategy, downsizing means moving to “just in time” hiring, using private firms to provide what the military formerly did for itself. He has insisted that it makes no sense to keep and pay for a well-trained standing army, when the US can purchase every sort of service on an “open market” whenever there is a need for military action. Cheney and other proponents of outsourcing ask why should soldiers cook for themselves, move their trash, provide supplies, run and maintain their technology – why not privatize these activities and free the military to concentrate on core tasks only? Even in the case of actual military duty – guarding public officials from hostile attack, fighting terrorist and guerrilla assaults – much of what soldiers traditionally do can be performed by PMCs. All of these services can be hired only when needed, and the army can be kept small, and hence inexpensive in terms of manpower. Thus, on taking office, Cheney named executives from leading military contractors as heads of the three services. James Roche, the secretary of the Air Force, is a former vice president of Northrop Grumman; Gordon England, the secretary of the Navy, is a former executive at General Dynamics; and Thomas P. White, a former secretary of the Army, came from Enron.325 A recent study of defense contracting in the US identified 224 high-ranking government officials over the past seven years who moved into the private sector to work as lobbyists, board members or executives of contractors. Moreover, at least one-third of these former high-ranking former government employees had held positions that allowed them to influence government contracting decisions. A survey of the revolving door phenomenon concluded that “the revolving door has become such an accepted part of federal contracting in recent years that it is frequently difficult to determine where the government stops and the private sector begins.” (Schreier 2005, pg. 90. footnotes omitted).
>
>		"Growing privatization in the US, intense competition and the weakening of rules governing the relationship between contractors and the government have contributed to the “revolving door” phenomenon, which consists of the movement of former federal officials to the private sector, and through their connections and inside knowledge, exerting political influence over the government decision-making process as lobbyists, consultants and board members on behalf of the contractors for whom they work. The revolving door also involves the naming of executives from government contractors to senior positions within the state administration. Spurred by the move to streamline government and involve industry in procurement decisions, contractors and government have developed a symbiotic relationship in the US that is reflected in the fluid movement of key individuals between government and industry. Both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney – when he held this job before becoming CEO of Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root – have tried their utmost to privatize the American military. For Rumsfeld, following corporate strategy, downsizing means moving to “just in time” hiring, using private firms to provide what the military formerly did for itself. He has insisted that it makes no sense to keep and pay for a well-trained standing army, when the US can purchase every sort of service on an “open market” whenever there is a need for military action. Cheney and other proponents of outsourcing ask why should soldiers cook for themselves, move their trash, provide supplies, run and maintain their technology – why not privatize these activities and free the military to concentrate on core tasks only? Even in the case of actual military duty – guarding public officials from hostile attack, fighting terrorist and guerrilla assaults – much of what soldiers traditionally do can be performed by PMCs. All of these services can be hired only when needed, and the army can be kept small, and hence inexpensive in terms of manpower. Thus, on taking office, Cheney named executives from leading military contractors as heads of the three services. James Roche, the secretary of the Air Force, is a former vice president of Northrop Grumman; Gordon England, the secretary of the Navy, is a former executive at General Dynamics; and Thomas P. White, a former secretary of the Army, came from Enron.325 A recent study of defense contracting in the US identified 224 high-ranking government officials over the past seven years who moved into the private sector to work as lobbyists, board members or executives of contractors. Moreover, at least one-third of these former high-ranking former government employees had held positions that allowed them to influence government contracting decisions. A survey of the revolving door phenomenon concluded that “the revolving door has become such an accepted part of federal contracting in recent years that it is frequently difficult to determine where the government stops and the private sector begins.” (Schreier 2005, pg. 90. footnotes omitted).
 

Defense Contractors and Media

"Defense spending on research and development has sparked much innovation. Microchips, radar, lasers, satellite communications, cell phones, GPS, and the Internet all came out of Defense Dept. funding for basic research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and national laboratories. There were breakthroughs at IBM and Bell Laboratories, and all were commercialized by Intel Corp., Motorola Inc., and other corporations. The same is true of artificial intelligence, supercomputers, high-speed fiber optics, and many other breakthroughs. The bulk of information technologies, in fact, were developed through massive R&D investments in military technology." (Cypher 2002)
Line: 68 to 86
 
Cypher, James The Iron Triangle 2002     http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_America/Iron_Triangle.html
Cypher, James From Military Keynesianism to Neoliberal Militarism 2007     http://www.monthlyreview.org/0607jmc.htm
Sessions, David Onward, TV Soldiers 2008 MAP Follows up on Barstow's MAP scoop http://www.slate.com/id/2189545/
Changed:
<
<
        http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/washington/24generals.html
>
>
Barstow, David   DOD and GAO investigate MAP 2008 MAP   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/washington/24generals.html
 
NYTimes 2009 Military Budget Bill Passes in Senate 2008 g   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc
  Germany reduces defense spending 2004 G   http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00EFDC1330F937A25752C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
  Defense Industry Daily Web Site   C   http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com
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Kellner, David Military Correspondents and propaganda 2008 GM Comparing media coverage of the gulf wars, mentions MAP in footnote http://www.ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/266/150
Laveele, Tara Globalizing the iron triangle 2003 GC Describes iron triangle, bureaucracy models; shows how globalization changes these models  
Kellner, David The Persian Gulf TV War 1992 GMC Describes media coverage of gulf war I; discussion of defense/media conglomerates  
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<
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Homer The Odyssey ?   Sirens poem, Bk. 12 http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/223/1101/frameset.html
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The Siren Triangle

The government, the media, and the defense industry

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By Elliott Ash

 
Table of Contents

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.
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  • Give account of military analyst program.
  • How did this happen? Why did it happen? This paper will try to explain.
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<		_Decide whether to organize these sections by line or by point_
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>		Decide whether to organize these sections by line, by point, or by time
 

The Siren Triangle

  • Interlocking histories: A chronicle of the autocatalytic coevolution of the modern media and modern military.
  • We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We also spend more on the media industry.
Line: 34 to 34
 
  • A metaphorical nexus and corrupt offspring of the Siren Triangle

Discussion

Changed:
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<		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. On another view, taking a broader view of what steps would realistically 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.
>
>		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.

 

Quotations

Media and Government

Line: 41 to 47
 

Quotations

Media and Government

"Military commentators on most U.S. corporate broadcasting networks are mostly propagandists. On the whole, ex-U.S. military personnel with contacts with the administration and Pentagon who serve as broadcasting commentators are largely uncritical and parrot current U.S. military policy and the Pentagon spin of the day. In order to keep their lines of communication to the administration or Pentagon open, they need to transmit the official line of the moment. Most television commentators tend to uncritically support and legitimize U.S. military actions." (Kellner 2008)
Added:
>
>
 "Analysis of news reports and advertisements suggests that popular culture and mass media depictions of fear, patriotism, consumption, and victimization contributed to the emergence of a national identity and collective action that transformed the meaning of terrorism from a strategy to a condition: terrorism world. Initial declarations about recovery and retaliation to promote patriotism became a “war on terrorism” with no end in sight. In this process, global policing that would justify a “first strike” against sovereign governments was socially constructed as commensurate with personal caring and national identity. These findings are organized around three points: (1) fear supported consumption as a meaningful way for audiences to sustain an identity of
Changed:
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<		substance and character; (2) consumption and giving were joined symbolically as government and business propaganda emphasized common themes of spending and buying to “help the country get back on track”; (3) the absence of a clear target for reprisals contributed to the construction of broad symbolic enemies and goals." (Altheide 2004) "The mass media play an integral part in the support of war. The mass media did not start the war with Iraq, but they shaped the context, the audience expectations, the discourse, and the production of symbolic meanings. We live in a postjournalism era, when there is no longer separation between event makers, event promoters, and event chroniclers. All rely on media logic and the sense about what will look good to relevant audiences, how to promote appropriate meanings, and above all, how to market and sell it all as something desirable. We have seen that War Programming is now a package; propaganda is joined to the news process when journalists and news sources operate with media logic, share in the construction and emotional performance of events, and limit the public forums for discussion, especially dissent." (Altheide 2005, footnotes omitted).
>
>		substance and character; (2) consumption and giving were joined symbolically as government and business propaganda emphasized common themes of spending and buying to help the country get back on track; (3) the absence of a clear target for reprisals contributed to the construction of broad symbolic enemies and goals." (Altheide 2004)

"The mass media play an integral part in the support of war. The mass media did not start the war with Iraq, but they shaped the context, the audience expectations, the discourse, and the production of symbolic meanings. We live in a postjournalism era, when there is no longer separation between event makers, event promoters, and event chroniclers. All rely on media logic and the sense about what will look good to relevant audiences, how to promote appropriate meanings, and above all, how to market and sell it all as something desirable. We have seen that War Programming is now a package; propaganda is joined to the news process when journalists and news sources operate with media logic, share in the construction and emotional performance of events, and limit the public forums for discussion, especially dissent." (Altheide 2005, footnotes omitted).

 

Government and Defense Contractors

"The results once again confirm the powerful effects of ideology on defense voting but also indicate that PAC contributions exert a statistically significant (though marginal) impact even when ideological predisposition is controlled. In addition, the results support the argument that those members with weaker ideological predispositions are more responsive to the effects of PAC money. Finally, the results indicate that, even at the margins, PAC contributions from defense contractors can influence the outcome of legislative deliberations, especially when the vote margin is not very large." (Fleisher 1993) "Unranked contractors are penalized heavily for procurement frauds, experiencing both a decline in market value and a subsequent loss in government-derived revenues; Influential contractors, in contrast, are penalized lightly, experiencing negligible changes in share value and government contract revenue." (Karpoff 1999).
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The government, the media, and the defense industry

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The Pentagon's Military Analyst Program

  • A metaphorical nexus and corrupt offspring of the Siren Triangle
Changed:
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Solutions

Legal Solutions

  • Existing laws
  • Needed changes

Other solutions

>
>

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. On another view, taking a broader view of what steps would realistically 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.
 

Quotations

Media and Government

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  • Break-down of defense spending. Return on expensive programs.

Defense Contractors and Media

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

The Pentagon's Military Analyst Program

  • A metaphorical nexus and corrupt offspring of the Siren Triangle
Line: 42 to 42
 

Quotations

Media and Government

Added:
>
>		"Military commentators on most U.S. corporate broadcasting networks are mostly propagandists. On the whole, ex-U.S. military personnel with contacts with the administration and Pentagon who serve as broadcasting commentators are largely uncritical and parrot current U.S. military policy and the Pentagon spin of the day. In order to keep their lines of communication to the administration or Pentagon open, they need to transmit the official line of the moment. Most television commentators tend to uncritically support and legitimize U.S. military actions." (Kellner 2008) "Analysis of news reports and advertisements suggests that popular culture and mass media depictions of fear, patriotism, consumption, and victimization contributed to the emergence of a national identity and collective action that transformed the meaning of terrorism from a strategy to a condition: terrorism world. Initial declarations about recovery and retaliation to promote patriotism became a “war on terrorism” with no end in sight. In this process, global policing that would justify a “first strike” against sovereign governments was socially constructed as commensurate with personal caring and national identity. These findings are organized around three points: (1) fear supported consumption as a meaningful way for audiences to sustain an identity of substance and character; (2) consumption and giving were joined symbolically as government and business propaganda emphasized common themes of spending and buying to “help the country get back on track”; (3) the absence of a clear target for reprisals contributed to the construction of broad symbolic enemies and goals." (Altheide 2004) "The mass media play an integral part in the support of war. The mass media did not start the war with Iraq, but they shaped the context, the audience expectations, the discourse, and the production of symbolic meanings. We live in a postjournalism era, when there is no longer separation between event makers, event promoters, and event chroniclers. All rely on media logic and the sense about what will look good to relevant audiences, how to promote appropriate meanings, and above all, how to market and sell it all as something desirable. We have seen that War Programming is now a package; propaganda is joined to the news process when journalists and news sources operate with media logic, share in the construction and emotional performance of events, and limit the public forums for discussion, especially dissent." (Altheide 2005, footnotes omitted).
 

Government and Defense Contractors

"The results once again confirm the powerful effects of ideology on defense voting but also indicate that PAC contributions exert a statistically significant (though marginal) impact even when ideological predisposition is controlled. In addition, the results support the argument that those members with weaker ideological predispositions are more responsive to the effects of PAC money. Finally, the results indicate that, even at the margins, PAC contributions from defense contractors can influence the outcome of legislative deliberations, especially when the vote margin is not very large." (Fleisher 1993)
Changed:
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<		"Unranked contractors are penalized heavily for procurement frauds, experiencing both a decline in market value and a subsequent loss in government-derived revenues… Influential contractors, in contrast, are penalized lightly, experiencing negligible changes in share value and government contract revenue." (Karpoff 1999).
>
>		"Unranked contractors are penalized heavily for procurement frauds, experiencing both a decline in market value and a subsequent loss in government-derived revenues; Influential contractors, in contrast, are penalized lightly, experiencing negligible changes in share value and government contract revenue." (Karpoff 1999). "A longtime rule forbade retired military officers from lobbying the Pentagon on behalf of a private contractor for two years. That rule was repealed in 1996 because it singled out retired military officers while civilian Pentagon employees had to wait only a year." (Merle 2004) "Growing privatization in the US, intense competition and the weakening of rules governing the relationship between contractors and the government have contributed to the “revolving door” phenomenon, which consists of the movement of former federal officials to the private sector, and through their connections and inside knowledge, exerting political influence over the government decision-making process as lobbyists, consultants and board members on behalf of the contractors for whom they work. The revolving door also involves the naming of executives from government contractors to senior positions within the state administration. Spurred by the move to streamline government and involve industry in procurement decisions, contractors and government have developed a symbiotic relationship in the US that is reflected in the fluid movement of key individuals between government and industry. Both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney – when he held this job before becoming CEO of Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root – have tried their utmost to privatize the American military. For Rumsfeld, following corporate strategy, downsizing means moving to “just in time” hiring, using private firms to provide what the military formerly did for itself. He has insisted that it makes no sense to keep and pay for a well-trained standing army, when the US can purchase every sort of service on an “open market” whenever there is a need for military action. Cheney and other proponents of outsourcing ask why should soldiers cook for themselves, move their trash, provide supplies, run and maintain their technology – why not privatize these activities and free the military to concentrate on core tasks only? Even in the case of actual military duty – guarding public officials from hostile attack, fighting terrorist and guerrilla assaults – much of what soldiers traditionally do can be performed by PMCs. All of these services can be hired only when needed, and the army can be kept small, and hence inexpensive in terms of manpower. Thus, on taking office, Cheney named executives from leading military contractors as heads of the three services. James Roche, the secretary of the Air Force, is a former vice president of Northrop Grumman; Gordon England, the secretary of the Navy, is a former executive at General Dynamics; and Thomas P. White, a former secretary of the Army, came from Enron.325 A recent study of defense contracting in the US identified 224 high-ranking government officials over the past seven years who moved into the private sector to work as lobbyists, board members or executives of contractors. Moreover, at least one-third of these former high-ranking former government employees had held positions that allowed them to influence government contracting decisions. A survey of the revolving door phenomenon concluded that “the revolving door has become such an accepted part of federal contracting in recent years that it is frequently difficult to determine where the government stops and the private sector begins.” (Schreier 2005, pg. 90. footnotes omitted).
 

Defense Contractors and Media

"Defense spending on research and development has sparked much innovation. Microchips, radar, lasers, satellite communications, cell phones, GPS, and the Internet all came out of Defense Dept. funding for basic research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and national laboratories. There were breakthroughs at IBM and Bell Laboratories, and all were commercialized by Intel Corp., Motorola Inc., and other corporations. The same is true of artificial intelligence, supercomputers, high-speed fiber optics, and many other breakthroughs. The bulk of information technologies, in fact, were developed through massive R&D investments in military technology." (Cypher 2002)
Line: 55 to 64
 
Cypher, James From Military Keynesianism to Neoliberal Militarism 2007     http://www.monthlyreview.org/0607jmc.htm
Sessions, David Onward, TV Soldiers 2008 MAP Follows up on Barstow's MAP scoop http://www.slate.com/id/2189545/
        http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/washington/24generals.html
Changed:
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NYTimes 2009 Military Budget Bill Passes in Senate 2008 M   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc
  Germany reduces defense spending 2004 M   http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00EFDC1330F937A25752C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
  Defense Industry Daily Web Site   DC   http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com
  Inside the Black Budget (NYTimes) 2008 M Information about secret military programs http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc
  Secret Military Programs Symbols 2008 M Information about secret military programs http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1
>
>
NYTimes 2009 Military Budget Bill Passes in Senate 2008 g   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc
  Germany reduces defense spending 2004 G   http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00EFDC1330F937A25752C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
  Defense Industry Daily Web Site   C   http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com
  Inside the Black Budget (NYTimes) 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc
  Secret Military Programs Symbols 2008 G Information about secret military programs http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1
 
CBSA Defense Budget Data   MC Military spending data and tables http://www.csbaonline.org/2006-1/2.DefenseBudget/Topline.shtml
Added:
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>
Merle, Renae Recruiting Uncler Sam 2004 MC News piece on the revolving door between Pentagon and defense contractors  
Wayne, Leslie Pentagon Brass and Defense Contractor Gold 2004 MC more on revolving door http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07E2DC1538F93AA15755C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
Kellner, David Military Correspondents and propaganda 2008 GM Comparing media coverage of the gulf wars, mentions MAP in footnote http://www.ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/266/150
Laveele, Tara Globalizing the iron triangle 2003 GC Describes iron triangle, bureaucracy models; shows how globalization changes these models  
Kellner, David The Persian Gulf TV War 1992 GMC Describes media coverage of gulf war I; discussion of defense/media conglomerates  
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Cypher, James From Military Keynesianism to Neoliberal Militarism 2007     http://www.monthlyreview.org/0607jmc.htm
Sessions, David Onward, TV Soldiers 2008 MAP Follows up on Barstow's MAP scoop http://www.slate.com/id/2189545/
        http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/washington/24generals.html
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NYTimes 2009 Military Budget Bill Passes in Senate   2008 M   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc
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NYTimes 2009 Military Budget Bill Passes in Senate 2008 M   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc
 
  Germany reduces defense spending 2004 M   http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00EFDC1330F937A25752C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
  Defense Industry Daily Web Site   DC   http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com
  Inside the Black Budget (NYTimes) 2008 M Information about secret military programs http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc
  Secret Military Programs Symbols 2008 M Information about secret military programs http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1
CBSA Defense Budget Data   MC Military spending data and tables http://www.csbaonline.org/2006-1/2.DefenseBudget/Topline.shtml
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The Siren Triangle

The government, the media, and the defense industry

Elliott Ash
Table of Contents

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.

Body

Introduction

  • 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 or by point_

The Siren Triangle

  • Interlocking histories: A chronicle of the autocatalytic coevolution of the modern media and modern military.
  • We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We also spend more on the media industry.

Media and Government

  • Telecommunications Act of 1996
  • 2009 military budget is the highest since world war 2. By contrast, Germany reduced its defense spending in 2004 to $33 billion.
  • Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman.
  • Does the media benefit from war?

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.

Defense Contractors and Media

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

The Pentagon's Military Analyst Program

  • A metaphorical nexus and corrupt offspring of the Siren Triangle

Solutions

Legal Solutions

  • Existing laws
  • Needed changes

Other solutions

Quotations

Media and Government

Government and Defense Contractors

"The results once again confirm the powerful effects of ideology on defense voting but also indicate that PAC contributions exert a statistically significant (though marginal) impact even when ideological predisposition is controlled. In addition, the results support the argument that those members with weaker ideological predispositions are more responsive to the effects of PAC money. Finally, the results indicate that, even at the margins, PAC contributions from defense contractors can influence the outcome of legislative deliberations, especially when the vote margin is not very large." (Fleisher 1993) "Unranked contractors are penalized heavily for procurement frauds, experiencing both a decline in market value and a subsequent loss in government-derived revenues… Influential contractors, in contrast, are penalized lightly, experiencing negligible changes in share value and government contract revenue." (Karpoff 1999).

Defense Contractors and Media

"Defense spending on research and development has sparked much innovation. Microchips, radar, lasers, satellite communications, cell phones, GPS, and the Internet all came out of Defense Dept. funding for basic research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and national laboratories. There were breakthroughs at IBM and Bell Laboratories, and all were commercialized by Intel Corp., Motorola Inc., and other corporations. The same is true of artificial intelligence, supercomputers, high-speed fiber optics, and many other breakthroughs. The bulk of information technologies, in fact, were developed through massive R&D investments in military technology." (Cypher 2002)

Bibiliography

Author Title Year Subject Summary Link
Barstow, David NYTimes article on Military Analyst Program 2008 MAP   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1221408048-NbbOOtV/zAdLhqxAlnmTlw&pagewanted=print
Cypher, James The Iron Triangle 2002     http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_America/Iron_Triangle.html
Cypher, James From Military Keynesianism to Neoliberal Militarism 2007     http://www.monthlyreview.org/0607jmc.htm
Sessions, David Onward, TV Soldiers 2008 MAP Follows up on Barstow's MAP scoop http://www.slate.com/id/2189545/
        http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/washington/24generals.html
NYTimes 2009 Military Budget Bill Passes in Senate   2008 M   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc
  Germany reduces defense spending 2004 M   http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00EFDC1330F937A25752C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
  Defense Industry Daily Web Site   DC   http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com
  Inside the Black Budget (NYTimes) 2008 M Information about secret military programs http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html?8dpc
  Secret Military Programs Symbols 2008 M Information about secret military programs http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1
CBSA Defense Budget Data   MC Military spending data and tables http://www.csbaonline.org/2006-1/2.DefenseBudget/Topline.shtml

Subject Legend: MAP = Military Analyst Program

 
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