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Without context, this is verging a little bit into conspiracy territory. Literally in the first reference, the first reference given of the 'Goldman Man' ... i
by jasmer 3y ago
Without context, this is verging a little bit into conspiracy territory.
Literally in the first reference, the first reference given of the 'Goldman Man' ... is Steve Bannon (!) as if he's part of that crew.
Goldman is the top financial firm in the world, and yes, they're going to use their status to move people in and out and leverage relationships.
That does not mean they are working for Raytheon trying to start wars.
The AWS statement doesn't add anything to the position - Amazon is one of the biggest employers in the US, and a huge DoD contractor, it's entirely rational for them to be hiring out of the DoD, and they do it from the rest of government as well. CGI (contractors in Canada) hire a ton of ex-gov people from Ottawa and the Military. It doesn't mean they are leaning on policy makers to start wars.
The fact of the matter is there isn't a lot of direct influence to start wars 'because future projects'. Obviously that is a constituency, and sometimes there is a big conflict of interest (as mentioned below Dick Cheney) but even aside from Halliburton relationships I actually don't doubt Cheney would have the same position otherwise.
So if you mean to say certain alpha corporations have undue influence via networked relationships within governance - yes - but that doesn't map at very well to 'they are pushing to start wars for Raytheon'. Aside from the Bushes, you'd have to go back to maybe 1 or 2 presidents during the intervening war periods to say that's even kind of true, or you might be able to throw Reagan in there as a 'Cold War Mega Buildup' guy but he wasn't swashbuckling around trying to start wars either, rather, he 'built out gear faster than the Soviets'.
The Military Industrial Complex is a real thing with real influence, it was no less than former Supreme NATO Allied Commander that gave us the starkest warning about that system, but it's also something that is misrepresented due to a lack of context about how that power really works.