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AI in daily life, war, repression, surveillance, and work; historians on Twitter

When the Defense Department flunked its first-ever fiscal review, one of our government’s greatest mysteries was exposed: Where does the DoD’s $700 billion annual budget go?

In the upcoming season of presidential politics, the nuclear question belongs at the top of every candidate’s agenda. It belongs at the center of every forum and at the heart of every voter’s decision.

Today’s National Guard represents the evolution of the original state militias, created for military purposes -- fighting enemies from Indian nations on this continent to rebels in the Philippines.

The world has since got so used to companies taking over what were long functions of the state that the Trump administration is now considering handing over the Afghan war to them.

“Through a multiyear commitment from Raytheon, Girl Scouts will launch its first national computer science program and Cyber Challenge for middle and high school girls,” states a promotional page.

"That a network insider has blown the whistle on how all this works, and how MSNBC and NBC have become Ground Zero for these political pathologies of militarism and servitude to security state agencies, while not surprising, is nonetheless momentous

The essence of the Pentagon’s scheme for making America safe for a never-ending policy of war preparations (and war) is to organize as much of the economy as possible around the needs of military production.

The Border Patrol not only recruits from the military and receives military training, but uses military equipment and technology prodigiously. The monoliths of the military-industrial complex have long been tailoring their technologies to homeland security operations.

Seymour Melman believed that both political and economic decline could be reversed by vastly scaling back the U.S. military budget which represented a gigantic opportunity cost to the national economy. He believed in a a revolution in thinking and acting centered on the reorganization of economic life and the nation’s security system.  The core alternative to economic decline was the democratic organization of workplaces.