To “counter Russia’s nuclear blackmail,” the Atlantic Council confidently asserted, “NATO must adapt its nuclear sharing program.” This includes moving B-61 atomic bombs to Eastern Europe and building a network of medium-range missile bases across the continent. The think tank praised Washington’s recent decision to send Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles to Germany as a “good start” but insisted that it “does not impose a high enough price” on Russia.

What the Atlantic Council does not divulge at any time is that not only would this drastically increase the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear war, but that the weapons they specifically recommend come directly from manufacturers that fund them in the first place.

The B-61 bombs are assembled by Boeing, who, according to its most recent financial reports, gave tens of thousands of dollars to the organization. And the Tomahawk and SM-6 are produced by Raytheon, who recently supplied the Atlantic Council with a six-figure sum.

Thus, their recommendations not only put the world at risk but also directly benefit their funders.

Unfortunately, this gigantic conflict of interest that affects us all is par for the course among foreign policy think tanks. A MintPress News investigation into the funding sources of U.S. foreign policy think tanks has found that they are sponsored to the tune of millions of dollars every year by weapons contractors. Arms manufacturing companies donated at least $7.8 million last year to the top fifty U.S. think tanks, who, in turn, pump out reports demanding more war and higher military spending, which significantly increase their sponsors’ profits. The only losers in this closed, circular system are the American public, saddled with higher taxes, and the tens of millions of people around the world who are victims of the U.S. war machine.

The think tanks receiving the most tainted cash were, in order, the Atlantic Council, CSIS, CNAS, the Hudson Institute, and the Council on Foreign Relations, while the weapons manufacturers most active on K-Street were Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics.

These think tanks directly affect conflicts around the world. CSIS, for example, are among the loudest advocates for arming Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel, even as the latter carries out a genocide in Palestine. A recent report lays out a shopping list of U.S. weapons that would help the Israeli military, including Excalibur artillery projectiles, JDAM bomb guidance systems, and Javelin missiles. Those weapons are manufactured by Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin, respectively, all of whom are among CSIS’ top funders.

U.S. arms are being used daily to carry out illegal and deadly attacks against civilian populations in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, making arms manufacturers directly complicit in war crimes.

One example of this is the recent Israeli bombing of the Al Mawasi humanitarian zone in Gaza. Israel dropped three one-ton MK-84 bombs on the camp, killing at least 19 people. Dozens more are still missing.

According to the UN, MK-84 bomb blasts rupture lungs, tear limbs and heads from bodies, and burst sinus cavities up to hundreds of meters away.

The MK-84 bombs were produced in the U.S. by General Dynamics and sent to Israel with Washington’s blessing. General Dynamics has made huge profits from the slaughter; the D.C.-based arms manufacturer’s stock price has jumped by 42% since October 7.

Conflicts and Conflicts of Interest

Think tanks are an essential part of K-Street, the collective term for the assembly of lobbyists, trade associations and other organizations that attempt to alter government policy. Think tanks are groups of intellectuals who come together to discuss and advocate for policies in the hope of affecting government policy and the public debate. They carry out and publish in-depth research on government policy, help write laws, and serve as go-to experts for the media. Many talking heads on cable news or guest writers penning op-eds in newspapers work at think tanks. As such, they are a key driver of political discourse across the country.

They also serve as sources for political administrations looking to fill out government positions. When one party loses power, prominent former government officials often take jobs at think tanks to tide them over until their side regains the White House. As such, they exist as a kind of private government in waiting, putting out policy recommendations they hope they will one day have the power to carry out themselves.

All those staff and their fancy New York or D.C. offices do not come cheap, however, and there are largely only two sources of funding: government contracts or corporate America. However, this money comes with strings attached. U.S. corporations sponsoring think tanks expect to see their own interests being advanced. The business lobby pays think tanks that advocate for lower taxes and fewer regulations, while the defense industry gives money to the most hawkish groups who advocate more military spending and more war.

As such, some have argued that think tanks are not neutral arbiters of good ideas but corporate- and government-backed actors pushing agendas while attempting to maintain a veneer of objectivity and respectability.

There is obviously a massive conflict of interest if groups advising the U.S. government on military policy are awash with cash from the arms industry. This study attempts to quantify that conflict of interest. It analyzed the top 50 most influential foreign policy think tanks in the U.S., according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Global Go to Think Tank Index, and tracked the funding of these 50 organizations to ascertain how much money each received from the weapons industry. A comprehensive funding spreadsheet containing all the numbers used in this study can be found here.

Figures were taken from each group’s websites, funding lists, and financial declarations for the last financial year available. In total, the arms industry donated at least $7.8 million to those think tanks.

This, however, is certainly a significant underestimate for several reasons. Firstly, think tanks do not have to divulge their funding sources under U.S. law, and many do not, meaning the dataset is incomplete. Furthermore, those that do are often distinctly hazy on the specific amounts given to them. For example, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) notes that groups such as Leonardo S.p.A, Lockheed Martin, Huntington Ingalls Industries, and Northrop Grumman all donated at least $250,000 to them in the past financial year. However, CSIS has no upper band on its donation limit, meaning “$250,000 and up” could mean $251,000, $1 million, or $100 million. Yet this study counted all those donations as merely $250,000.

Tanks and Think Tanks

The results were both worrying and unsurprising, as this study found that giant arms manufacturers quietly bankrolled many of the largest and most influential groups advising the U.S. government on its foreign policy. The Atlantic Council alone is funded by 22 weapons companies, totaling at least $2.69 million last year. Even a group like the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, established in 1910 as an organization dedicated to reducing global conflict, is sponsored by corporations making weapons of war, including Boeing and Leonardo, who donate tens of thousands of dollars annually.

The five think tanks that received the most funding from the arms industry are: The Atlantic Council, $2.69 million; Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), $2.46 million; Center for a New American Security (CNAS), $950,000; Hudson Institute, $635,000; and the Council on Foreign Relations, $300,000.

At least 36 weapons manufacturers provided funding to major American think tanks. The most “generous” among them were Northrop Grumman, $1.07 million; Lockheed Martin, $838,000; General Atomics, $510,000; Leonardo S.p.A., $485,000; and Mitsubishi, $443,000.

When presented with these findings, peace activist David Swanson, author of “War is a Lie,” appeared disgusted but not surprised. Swanson described the role of arms industry-funded think tanks as such:

They have to build up through endless repetition and through debates that remain within their bizarre parameters the idea than wars are won, that wars are defensive, that nuclear weapons deter wars, that enemies cannot be spoken with, that weapons spending is a public service that nations should do to the maximum extent possible while stripping funding away from human needs, and similar outrageous pieces of nonsense.”

He Who Pays the Piper

It is no coincidence that the groups receiving the most weapons industry money are home to some of the most hawkish, pro-war voices to be found anywhere. The arms industry, like all corporations, does not donate out of the goodness of their hearts but is instead looking for a return on their investments.

Influential think tanks like CSIS are certainly giving their benefactors bang for their buck, consistently agitating for more military spending and more war around the world, whatever the consequences.

In 2022, CSIS argued that Russia’s Ukraine invasion constituted a unique opportunity to “transform and rationalize” European defense, i.e., to push through huge military spending hikes. It warned that this must be done quickly, as the moment to do so could be “short-lived,” that Europe must “avoid a piecemeal approach” to its military and must not “continue to rely on the United States for its defense.” The following year, it argued that the two percent of GDP target for NATO countries to spend on their militaries was far too low. Instead, it advised doubling military spending across Europe to four percent. That this would be an enormous boon to their weapons company backers was not mentioned.

European countries, CSIS also insisted, must “pull their weight” in NATO, transforming their societies into ones every bit as militarized as the U.S., for the sake of “global democracy.”

Meanwhile, writing in The Atlantic, Eliot A. Cohen, CSIS’ Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, demanded an escalation in the West’s involvement in Ukraine. “We need to see masses of Russians fleeing, deserting, shooting their officers, taken captive, or dead. The Russian defeat must be an unmistakably big, bloody shambles,” he wrote, adding that “To that end, with the utmost urgency, the West should give everything that Ukraine could possibly use.”

This included long-range missiles and F-16 and F-35 fighter jets.

What neither Cohen nor the Atlantic noted, however, was that the weapons he demanded to be bought and sent to Ukraine are made by General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin, groups that directly fund CSIS.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, like the Atlantic Council, CSIS also advocates for keeping American nuclear weapons across Europe, lest they need to be used quickly.

Dovish voices at the think tank are, at best, few and far between. Indeed, a study of a year’s worth of CSIS op-eds and quotes in the New York Times by media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found zero examples of the organization advocating for curtailment or caution in U.S. military policy.

However, the relentless pro-war voices were hardly limited to CSIS. In fact, every think tank taking substantial arms industry cash maintained a notably hawkish stance. The Atlantic Council, for instance, policed European nations’ NATO spending in an attempt to pressure them to purchase more arms and has advocated that the U.S. create a new “Indo-Pacific intelligence coalition” that would ramp up tensions with China. CNAS, meanwhile, has claimed that the U.S.’ supposedly muted response to “Chinese provocations” has eroded its “credibility” on the world stage.

Speaking on what think tanks have achieved, Swanson told MintPress:

They’ve normalized the idea of measuring war spending as a percentage of an economy, and the idea that there is no such thing as too much of it. They’ve normalized the idea of only one solution to all problems, even problems created by that one solution, namely war. [And] they present endlessly endlessly endlessly ‘defensive alliance NATO’ with not a soul noticing that NATO’s wars have all been blatantly aggressive.”

The American public is generally skeptical of war. Surveys show that two-thirds of the country wants Washington and Ukraine to directly engage in diplomacy with Russia, even if that means conceding Ukrainian territory. Most Americans are against sending more U.S. troops to the Middle East as well, even if it were only to “defend Israel.”

They hold these positions despite what they are constantly told in the media. A study by the Quincy Institute found that, when discussing Ukraine, 85% of all think tanks quoted in major outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal received funding from the military-industrial complex. Most prominent among these were CSIS and the Atlantic Council.

Making a Killing from Killing

In his hit 1970 song, “War,” Edwin Starr claimed that the practice was a “friend only to the undertaker.” But war has also been excellent news for weapons contractors. In the past five years, General Dynamics’ stock price has jumped by 103%, Lockheed Martin’s by 107%, and Northrop Grumman’s by 110%.

Arms industry shareholders have seen massive returns on investment, thanks to the actions of a nation addicted to conflict. The United States has been engaged in warfare for 231 of its 248 years as an independent country. According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, a U.S. government institution, America has launched 469 foreign military interventions between 1798 and 2022 and 251 since 1991 alone. This has included special operations, targeted assassinations of foreign leaders, military coups, and outright invasions and occupations of other countries.

More than half of all discretionary Federal spending goes to the military, whose budget is closing in on $1 trillion annually. American military spending rivals that of all other nations combined. The United States also maintains a network of around 1,000 bases around the world, including nearly 400 in a ring encircling China.

This feeds the insatiable appetites of weapons manufacturers, who, therefore, have even more money to spend buying influence and lobbying the government for more war and antagonistic policies that benefit them. Part of their strategy is funding think tanks in Washington, D.C. For the likes of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, it is a no-brainer, an astute business investment. A few hundred thousand dollars per year spent bankrolling think tanks like CSIS, CNAS or the Atlantic Council translates into billions of dollars worth of more orders for tanks, ships and aircraft.

By 2016, the United States was bombing seven countries simultaneously. And yet, militarism and the danger to the planet have only increased since then. The U.S. is currently gearing up for potential wars against both Russia and China – two of the largest and most populous states on the planet, and both ones with large stockpiles of atomic weapons. A war with either would risk Armageddon.

This is all great news for the military-industrial-complex, however, who are making a killing. And that is why it is imperative that they be stopped; it is literally a life-and-death issue for all of us.

Feature photo | The North Atlantic Council meeting begins to fill during the meeting of Defence Ministerials at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium, February 12, 2020. Photo |DVIDS

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

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