Dwight D. Eisenhower is invoked in these excerpts almost entirely through a single text: his farewell address, remembered for its warning about the military-industrial complex. Two guests on separate episodes cite that speech, each emphasizing a different half of it. Ivan Eland treats Eisenhower as both author and inadvertent architect of the defense establishment he cautioned against; Sterling Burnett treats the address as an early warning about government’s domination of scientific research. Neither excerpt offers biographical detail beyond the speech and Eisenhower’s presidency.
The military-industrial complex
In a discussion of military spending that has little to do with defense, Ivan Eland raised Eisenhower directly. Eland said Eisenhower mentioned the military-industrial complex, and added that Eisenhower also helped to create it. After the Korean War, Eland explained, the defense industry did not go away as it usually did but stayed on in peacetime, leaving the country with defense contractors whose subcontractors are spread around the country. The result, in Eland’s account, is that weapons systems continue to be produced even when they are obsolete or out of date, because defense functions as a political industry rather than a commercial one The Return of Big Spending Republicans? (2017).
Eland described the mechanism in concrete terms. Large defense contractors do most of their work for the government, and they choose subcontractors on the basis of which states they are in rather than to get the best value for the money. Contractors go up to Capitol Hill and say they need a given weapons system, and the most important briefing slide is always the last one, showing where the subcontractors are. Members of Congress look at the briefing, see a subcontractor in or near their state or district, and vote for the program even though they do not really want to. Eland added that people with a lot of defense industries and military bases in their districts tend to gravitate toward the committees where these issues are discussed and the money is appropriated, producing what he called a military-industrial and congressional and even media complex The Return of Big Spending Republicans? (2017).
Eland tied the resulting stockpile of weapons to a question of use. He quoted Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State, asking Colin Powell why the country did not use its big beautiful military, a remark Eland said nearly made Powell pass out. In Eland’s account, having the weapons and power projection capabilities invites others to ask what will be done about various problems, even though the country seldom has an overall strategy. He noted that after World War II the United States squared off against the Soviet Union and used that as a rationale for policing the world, and that after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 the interventions increased because there was no counterweight. He closed the passage on the national debt, arguing the country can no longer afford this, and on wealthy allies who he said need to pay more, citing the figure that the United States pays 75% of NATO defense spending while the alliance has 28 members The Return of Big Spending Republicans? (2017).
The scientific-technological elite
Sterling Burnett, discussing climate science and policy, invoked the same address from a different angle. He told listeners that the corruption of science and its impact on politics was highlighted as long ago as Eisenhower’s farewell address, which he placed in 1960 and described as very famous for its discussion of the military-industrial complex. Burnett’s point was that people remember only that part. In the second half of the speech, he said, Eisenhower talks about how the government has become funding science—not just funding it, but come to dominate the funding and thus the direction of science—and warned, in the same way he warned of the military-industrial complex, of a scientific-technological elite taking over and directing public policy. Burnett said that is precisely what has happened, and invited listeners to read the speech in full and see how far-sighted Eisenhower was How to Spot Tabloid Climate Science (2018).
Burnett applied the warning to climate research. He said the field was small and received relatively little funding before the late ’80s and early ’90s, and has received more money in the past decade than in its entire history cumulatively. To think that this does not affect the kind of research people undertake and the findings, he argued, is to deny human nature in this one area when it is not denied in any other field How to Spot Tabloid Climate Science (2018).
The rest of Burnett’s answer concerned adaptation rather than Eisenhower. He argued that if one is concerned about dangerous climate change, the predicted impacts should be examined directly: for the projected 10,000 to 20,000 additional malaria cases a year a century from now, he said, the better course is to attack malaria now, when two million people are affected and hundreds of thousands die every year, using DDT as was done in the United States in the ’50s and other prophylactics. On sea level rise, he said the seas have risen 400 feet over the past 10,000 years and are rising at a slower average rate now than on average over that period, and that climate change may be adding an additional inch or two. Rather than addressing the extra inch, he said, planning should start today for the full 12 inches that would occur anyway, and governments should stop subsidizing home building in wetlands and coastal waterways and stop subsidizing flood and hurricane insurance, which he said encourages people to move to the coast because they do not pay the full cost when their homes are damaged How to Spot Tabloid Climate Science (2018).
Across episodes
The two episodes touch Eisenhower only through the farewell address, and they do not develop a shared argument about him. Eland, in the earlier episode, treats the military-industrial complex as a description of how defense procurement actually works and notes Eisenhower’s own complicity in building it; Burnett, in the later episode, treats the speech’s lesser-remembered second half as a prediction about government-funded science that he says has been borne out in the climate field. The excerpts show no exchange between the two treatments and no change in how either guest reads the address.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts supply no account of Eisenhower’s presidency, his military career, his domestic policies, or the circumstances in which the farewell address was delivered. They disagree on the speech’s date, with Burnett placing it in 1960; the excerpts do not resolve this. No excerpt states the text of the address beyond the two themes the guests describe, and neither guest is quoted at length from the speech itself.