You're talking about the same industry that coined the term "preemptive strike" instead of calling it what it is: starting a war.
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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"I didn't shoot a baby, I neutralized a threat!" - the IDF
funny how the israeli military is called a "defense force". haven't been doing much defending.
But when you're Hamas, defending your country from invaders: terrorists!
I have been calling them the genocide force for the past year
Diaper force
Old joke from when I was in engineering college.
What's the difference between a electrical engineer and a civil engineer?
One builds the bombs one builds the targets.
It's a fairly recent development. It was created as the department of war by Washington and remained that until 1947 where it split into the departments of the air force and army, joining the already existing department of the navy, which together made up the national military establishment (NME), which was renamed 2 years later to the DOD.
Still the work of Edward Bernays and others, the father of modern propaganda.
Oddly enough, this also coincides with the time when the US military was more explicitly about offence rather than defense. After the Revolution, people mistrusted the federal government having a large standing army. The army was raised up in time of war, and everyone went home when it was over.
Post-WW2 was the first time the US kept a large army in "peace". Been that way ever since.
- Military-industrial complex
- War machine
- Merchants of death
There are many names.
A way of keeping people employed usefully in many highly skilled jobs so you don't need to give them social security payouts for being jobless. In this way it is a truly excellent idea.
The problem is that it happens at the expense of other jobs, and the lack of transparency makes corruption way too easy.
"The Ministry of Peace"
-Orwell
The US used to have the Department of War. Then it split up after WWII into the departments of the army, navy, air force and the overseeing department was renamed the department of defense. Probably a branding thing.
edit: a word
The attack industry
Defense does also do defense in a lot of cases
That would imply someone attacking first, no?
Yes, the US has countries and dictators taking pot shots at us all the time.
US tech was/is being used by Ukraine to shoot Russian missiles out of the sky
On the first case, the actual United States territory? Or like US bases in other countries?
Yes
I’ve always heard to it referred to as the “military industrial complex”. Eisenhower tried to warn us about it in the 1950s.
They also cause Famines, Plagues, and Pestilence. They have whole departments devoted to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
They're not a one trick pony.
pollution/conquest, death, famine, pestilence.
For countries like Finland, the Ministry of Defense is not about offense, and is very heavily armed.
WWII was the war to end all wars, so we couldn't have a department of war anymore. Still "needed" and army , navy, marines and all the weapons for them though so we created the department of defense.
Protecting your own country doesn't always involve actively declaring war with everyone. Often it's economic or cyber infrastructure hardening related
Yeah ... no.
Ask Europeans if they feel working in that industry right now feels like anything but for defensive reasons.
Indeedy, my wife works for the German army.
It was the department of war but the government decided that that name was too honest, makes the corpos look bad too
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