Hello & welcome back to Legacies’ Podcast! My name is Hannah Hayes, and I’m a proud Advocacy Ambassador with Legacies of War.

Today's conversation is about the part of war most people don't see. At Legacies, we focus on what war leaves behind – in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and across the globe. Today we're zooming out to ask: what's going on in Washington that keeps the U.S. pouring money into the next war and calling it 'security,' when in reality it's creating instability overseas and ignoring what people need here at home?

We’re honored to welcome William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman, co-authors of The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home.

Bill Hartung is a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He's one of the most cited researchers in the country on the arms industry and Pentagon spending – really, on how military strategy and corporate money get tangled up together. If you've ever wondered why the U.S. can keep buying weapons systems that don't work as advertised, or how 'national security' becomes a blank check, Bill has spent his career mapping that out for us.

Ben Freeman leads the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at Quincy. He's interested in who's actually in the room when the U.S. decides to go to war or sell weapons: who has influence, who benefits, and why the rest of us don't really get a say. His work is about opening all of that up so regular people can actually follow what's going on.

And their book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine, grows directly from that work. It’s not just a critique of these massive Pentagon budgets, it’s an explanation of a whole toxic system: how runaway military spending doesn’t simply respond to wars, but actually helps produce them.

Thank you for tuning into LEGACIES podcast brought to you by our Innovators Sponsors Akin Gump and ARTICLE22. Please continue to listen and follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. The theme music used in this podcast are by the Lao Jazzanova Band from Vientiane, Laos