Andrew Cockburn is a veteran journalist who serves as the Washington Editor of Harper's magazine. His new book, The Spoils of War: Power, Profit, and the American War Machine, available from Verso collects his reporting on the military-industrial complex and the way the public coffers are looted by profiteers. He joined Nathan to discuss why he thinks the ever-bloating military has become an out-of-control "virus," as well as:

- The bureaucratic waste that means the US military isn't even good at defense

- Why profit, rather than war, is what the military is built for

- The defense companies that depend on constantly manufacturing new threats, which conveniently pop up just when it looks like the military budget might be scaled back

- Why the new stories about Chinese hypersonic missiles are exactly this kind of self-interested threat inflation

- The alarming situation with nuclear weapons, which are far too close to being used for anyone's comfort

- Why defense spending isn't even a good way to "create jobs"

- Why progressives should not just focus on critiquing "militarism" and disastrous wars but on scaling back the giant institution that channels so many of our social resources into manufacturing "weapons that don't work for threats that don't exist"