On his first day back in office, President Donald J. Trump made one thing clear: The Pentagon was going to change. From halving the defense budget to building a space-based missile shield, Trump and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, are certainly ambitious — but have they already gone too far? The current administration’s plans do certainly hold some merit; however, temperance and calculated decisions that serve the people, not corporations, are necessary to properly execute them.
The 2024 fiscal year saw a record $883.7 billion allocated to defense-related spending, and with some GOP leaders like Reps. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Mike Rogers, R-Ala., proposing to increase this to over $1 trillion, there are questions around President Trump’s defense budget plan.
On the one hand, Trump signaled in February a desire to cut defense spending by half if Russia and China were to do the same, mirroring a first-term attempt when he criticized the then $716 billion defense budget as “crazy” and ridiculously bloated. This dialogue parallels the beliefs of the 35% of Americans who believe the Pentagon’s budget is too high.
More concretely, in February, Hegseth promised to cut Department of Defense (DOD) spending by around $50 billion every year for the next five years. Yet, it was then revealed that spending would not be cut; rather, it would be reallocated to other defense projects like border military presence.
Though these shifts remain unimplemented, stocks for American defense contractors, like Lockheed Martin, plummeted, only slightly rebounding in March. Meanwhile, European defense stocks have soared — Italy’s Leonardo stocks increased by 86.41% between January 1 and March 27 — as Europe continues dramatic rearmament, sparked by the Trump administration’s more isolationist attitudes.
According to Hegseth, reallocated funds will come from trimming “waste,” particularly in firing “poor performers.” In reality, this waste primarily lies in the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), which describes the relationship between the military and its private suppliers. While it is necessary for any modern military, following World War II, the MIC has steadily grown in dominance. High defense spending during the Cold War led to a massive consolidation of power for private defense contractors. While President Eisenhower famously warned of the MIC’s “total influence” over politics in 1961, his warnings were not heeded, with 71% of the 2023 DOD budget allocated to contract spending.
Today, the MIC drains the discretionary budget with little return. In 2020, Lockheed Martin received $75 billion from the federal government, more than both the State Department and Agency for International Development combined. In 2023, the government spent the same amount on Lockheed Martin’s F-35 — an almost twenty-year-old fighter jet with a mission-capable rate of just 51%, meaning it’s unavailable for combat nearly half the time — as on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most shockingly, in 2023, the Pentagon paid Boeing over $200,000 for four trash cans used in a surveillance aircraft, which Boeing charged only $300 per can when selling to civilian industries. This bloated, unjustifiable price gouging by defense contractors siphons money away from the American people and puts it in the pockets of wealthy, influential companies.
So why does the government pay these ludicrous price tags? The MIC’s sway relies on the ‘revolving door,’ whereby Pentagon officials in charge of purchasing equipment acquire lucrative positions at defense companies. Past attempts to fix this issue include implementing cooling-off periods that require ex-Pentagon officials to wait one year before joining contractors, but despite these reforms, the revolving door still spins. Therefore, if Hegseth and Trump are serious about trimming waste, they need to completely dismantle this corrupt MIC, starting with sealing the revolving door through an outright ban on ex-Pentagon officials working in the defense industry.
Wherever the funds come from, Hegseth has made clear that they will go towards the new administration’s priorities, namely, research and development in missile defense. Hegseth plans to create his “Golden Dome for America,” previously the Iron Dome for America, a space-based anti-missile defense system echoing President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or “Star Wars.” Though in its infancy, the project will demand vast resources.
While a defense system, the Golden Dome poses a potentially significant threat to world stability. A critical deterrent to nuclear war has been the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the idea that any use of nuclear weapons will ensure complete destruction of all nations. Though often criticized as unstable, as a single nation’s actions or even a false alarm could cause doomsday, MAD is credited with preventing nuclear war during the Cold War.
MAD relies on the threat of mutual destruction, meaning that if any power can neutralize incoming nuclear missiles, the doctrine collapses. Since this is exactly the Golden Dome’s goal, it threatens to undermine MAD. Three outcomes seem possible: a first strike, another arms race, or denuclearization, which have outcomes ranging from relative peace to catastrophe.
Most concerning of the outcomes, major nuclear powers like Russia or China may see the Dome as a direct breach of MAD and, fearing that the U.S. will strike with impunity, launch a first strike before the Golden Dome is completed. Even without nuclear weapons involved, such a war would be apocalyptic.
While preferable to war, a renewed arms race would still be harmful. Russia and China may respond by making defense systems and missiles that pierce the Golden Dome, prompting the U.S. to invest in the same, as was the case when President Reagan launched the SDI in 1983. While it bankrupted the Soviet Union, currently, China and America have comparably strong economies. Though partially anticipated by Hegseth’s nuclear modernization push, the administration must work to avoid a renewed arms race, as it would be incredibly damaging to all parties involved, both economically and with the lives lost should war break out.
Therefore, significant denuclearization would be ideal. Given President Trump’s shift toward denuclearization via diplomacy with both China and Russia, it is clear that this policy is what the administration hopes for. Trump told reporters that “there’s no reason” for continued large-scale nuclear spending when current capacities “could destroy the world … 100 times over.” World leaders that could be faced with the possibility that their nuclear arsenal will be nigh obsolete would weigh their options in this case: either a catastrophic war to prevent the Golden Dome’s construction, a potentially bankrupting arms race to create missiles capable of piercing the Golden Dome, or diplomatic efforts to globally shift away from nuclear weapons to avoid the harms caused by the previous two options.
While certainly the best outcome, actually achieving denuclearization will require delicate and difficult diplomatic maneuvers from the United States to its major nuclear adversaries in Russia and China. Trust and cooperation must be built between historical rivals. While Trump claimed he was “close to a deal for getting rid of nuclear weapons” at the end of his last term, it is unclear how receptive China and Russia are today.
However, if the Trump-Hegseth administration watches its steps carefully and puts the right work in, it could also create a safer world.
Trump’s return to the White House marks a turning point for the Pentagon — one that could reshape America’s defense priorities for decades. Whether it is for better or for worse is entirely up to the Trump-Hegseth administration. Will they reform the budget by cutting the massive waste stemming from the bloated and corrupt MIC, or will they continue the bribery and price-gouging? Will they properly handle the implications of the Golden Dome project and create a better, denuclearized world, or will they cause a disastrous world war or a bankrupting arms race? The Golden Dome and MIC issues are different in scope but stem from the same need for principled, accountable defense leadership. The Trump-Hegseth administration faces a choice: serve the American people with discipline and clarity, or serve the industries that profit from chaos.
