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The Siren Triangle

The government, the media, and the defense industry

By Elliott Ash

Abstract

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

Body

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.

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.

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 and CBS own defense-industry assets (Kellner 1992)

The Pentagon's Military Analyst Program

  • A metaphorical nexus and corrupt offspring of the Siren Triangle

Discussion

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

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

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

More long-term solutions would be increasing transparency.

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

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)

"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

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/
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

Subject Legend:

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

 
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