CEOs of arms
manufacturers and their investors are confident about their prospects,
regardless of which candidate wins the election.
By Greg
Shupak
The Nation
This summer,
Dave Calhoun, CEO of Boeing—builder of the intercontinental ballistic
missile—declared himself cheerfully indifferent to the presidential election.
“I think both candidates, at least in my view, appear globally oriented and
interested in the defense of our country and I believe they’ll support the
industries,” he said on a media call. So don’t expect any official endorsements
from him and his colleagues. “I don’t think we’re going to take a position on
one being better than the other,” he concluded. While many industries fret over
how potential election outcomes could affect their profits, US military
contractors like Boeing—whose Apache helicopter is seen killing civilians in
Wikileaks’ infamous “Collateral Murder” video—are directly and indirectly funding
both President Trump and former vice president Biden’s campaigns.
According to
the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), a nonpartisan research group that
tracks the effects of money and lobbying on politics, one of the top
contributors to Biden’s campaign is Paloma Partners, a multibillion-dollar
hedge fund and Democratic coffer-stuffer. The fund has given Biden just under
$10 million, at least 90 percent of which comes from S. Donald Sussman [former husband of Maine's Democrat Congresswoman Chellie Pingree],
Paloma’s founder and chief investment officer. And apart from Joe Biden for
President, a branch of the campaign, the vice president’s largest source of
funding is the PAC Priorities USA Action, which has chipped in $125
million—Paloma is one of the groups most responsible for the PAC’s war chest.
Securities and
Exchange Commission filings also indicate that Paloma has more than 260,000
shares in Raytheon, a preeminent weapons manufacturer. Raytheon is a major
supplier of weapons to Saudi Arabia, which has dropped the Massachusetts-based
company’s bombs on such places as a funeral hall in Sanaa, Yemen, killing at
least 140. Raytheon’s CEO, Gregory Hayes, concurs with Calhoun. “Defense has
always been a bipartisan issue,” he recently told CNBC, dismissing the idea
that Biden might cut military spending.
President
Trump’s reelection campaign’s funders have similar ties. One key contributor is
an Arkansas-based private investment company called Stephens Inc, which owns
roughly 213,000 shares in Raytheon, 27,000 in Boeing, and 18,000 in Lockheed
Martin, manufacturer of a missile system with which NATO once killed 12 Afghan
civilians. Stephens also has 50,000 shares in Kratos Defense, whose products
include unmanned ground vehicles and the XQ-58 Valkyrie drone—the US Air
Force’s top acquisition official envisions the Valkyrie as part of a prototype
artificial intelligence program called Skyborg.
In the same
vein, Euclidean Capital has lavished Biden with $7 million. Euclidean is the
family office of the billionaire Jim Simons—Jim and Marilyn Simons account for
90 percent or more of the organization’s political largesse. Jim Simons founded
the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies and, while he retired from the firm in
2010, he continues to have a role at a Renaissance and to benefit from its
funds. According to CRP, Renaissance’s “individual members or employees or
owners, and those individuals’ immediate family members” have given to the
Biden campaign to the extent of putting Renaissance in the top 10 of Biden
contributors; both Euclidean and Renaissance are in the upper tier of
Priorities USA financers.
Renaissance
holds 1.2 million shares in Raytheon worth almost $75 million, and has over
130,000 shares in Lockheed Martin valued at nearly $50 million. Among
Lockheed’s most lucrative clients are Israel and Saudi Arabia, two vital US
proxies and central contributors to Middle Eastern bloodshed. Israel used
Lockheed’s F-35 Lightning II aircraft to bomb Gaza as well as Iranian and
Hezbollah targets in Syria. In 2018, a US-Saudi coalition air strike hit a
Yemeni school with a 500-pound laser-guided bomb made by Lockheed and killed
dozens of children.
Others
making a killing off killing include the $500 billion private equity firm
Blackstone Group, a leading Trump backer. The company has 100,000 shares in
Kratos. Blackstone’s chief executive, Stephen Schwarzman, has spent $27 million
bankrolling Republican candidates this election cycle, including the president,
and is an unofficial Trump adviser. In August, Blackstone hired lobbyist David
Urban, a member of Trump’s reelection advisory committee and a crucial architect
of the president’s successful 2016 campaign, in an effort to try to work with
the Department of Defense and State Department on “issues related to military
preparedness and training.” The pipeline
goes both ways—Trump’s administration already bears evidence of weapons
industry ties, featuring both Defense Secretary Mark Esper, a former Raytheon
lobbyist, and Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, once a vice president at
Lockheed. Further back, William Lynn was Raytheon’s top lobbyist before the
Obama administration made him deputy secretary of defense. Tom Kelly, deputy
assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military
Affairs, said of arms exports under the Obama-Biden administration in which he
served: “[We are] advocating on behalf of our companies and doing everything we
can to make sure that these sales go through.” In 2017, Kelly became Raytheon’s
vice president for policy and advocacy.
It’s difficult
to imagine that the wealthiest investors in the world disburse millions of
dollars to political campaigns without the occasional peep at their portfolios.
The institutional logic at work here is such that, no matter the outcome of
Tuesday’s vote, the occupant of the White House for the next four years will be
there thanks in considerable part to people with a stake in Boeing, Raytheon,
and Lockheed’s earnings.
War industry
firms themselves directly donate to candidates in a fairly bipartisan fashion.
Aerospace companies in the war business focus their political donations on
members of the House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees, which dole out
federal money, and on members of the Armed Services committees, who help shape
military policy and thus can create demand for what this industry sells. Of the
money this sector has donated to 2020 presidential candidates, slightly more
has gone to Trump. Yet the opposite is true of “defense” electronics, the field
concerned with components and systems designed to ensure technological
supremacy in war. Companies working in this arena have given more to Biden than
to Trump, even though this sector has tended in the past to direct its money to
the party in power. CRP numbers that take into account PACs and individuals who
gifted $200 or more to candidates show that the weapons industry as a whole has
given $1.6 million to Trump and $2.4 million to Biden.
While Trump
has made a show of disavowing any involvement in quid pro quos with American
corporations like Exxon, it’s safe to say that major industry sees government
as a source of opportunity. Arms dealers and their patrons are no exception;
they exist to make money. They don’t pour cash into the political system out of
pure ideological commitment—they expect a return on investment. Whoever is
inaugurated in January, companies whose profits depend on the US military can
be expected to have his ear.
~ Greg
ShupakGreg Shupak writes fiction and political analysis. He teaches English and
media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber, and is the author of the book
The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, and the Media.
