Who Profits From WWIII?

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:


Transcript:

Hi you’re tuned into Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller. The US military industrial complex is alive and well and salivating at the numerous conflicts coming to a boil around the world. And like I said last episode, every government official is going to put their own spin and come up with their own propaganda around why whatever new aggression is just and righteous and worth killing a bunch of innocent civilians over, the one thing that tends to always be the source of truth, of how people are REALLY feeling, is the money. Follow the money, see what the people in power are doing with theirs, and you’ll figure out what they really think and feel about the state of the world. And there are a lot of people who stand to gain a LOT of money in the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. So today we’re following the money and looking at who just cannot fuckin’ wait for World War 3. Let’s get into it.

AD

With all this overwhelming stuff happening EVERYWHERE, the LAST thing any of us wants to deal with is an in-grown hair. Truly they are my worst nightmare I am an exfoliation QUEEN because they are so irritating and can lead to infections and so many other things. And while I experience in growns elsewhere because, alas, I cannot grow a beard, studies show that people who DO grow beards are especially prone to experiencing that uncomfortable in-grown problem, not to mention razor burn and other irritation. In fact studies show that two-thirds of men EXPECT irritation while shaving. Yikes, guys. But in reality, shaving without hurting your skin is surprisingly complex. The hairs on your face are often incredibly coarse, while your skin is soft and elastic–the perfect recipe for discomfort. And did you know that multi-blade razors you get from the drug store can actually pull on the hairs more, causing more irritation? Getting a close shave is one thing, but doing so without irritation–that’s hard to find. That’s where my partner on today’s video Henson comes in. Henson is here to shift the shaving paradigm away from just a “smooth” shave and towards a shave that’s healthy for your skin. The Henson Razor has been precision engineered to aerospace standards, reducing blade chatter and flex, making each stroke both effective and gentle. This precision keeps the blade stable, preventing unnecessary tugging and damage to your skin. The Henson Razor has a gentle, single blade design. Fewer blades mean less repeated contact with your skin, reducing the chances of pushing dirt and bacteria into your pores—great for avoiding acne, razor bumps, and irritation. The Henson Razor works with standard dual-edged blades that cost less than 10 cents each. Once you own a Henson razor, it’s only about $3-5 per year to replace the blades. The razor itself is made of aluminum, and the blades are recyclable. There is zero plastic waste when you use Henson, and it is designed with durability in mind, which I really appreciate. It’s time to say goodbye to razor burn, irritation, and subpar results. Experience a better way to shave with Henson—a razor designed with your skin’s health in mind. Try the Henson Razor today and discover how shaving can actually be part of a healthy skincare routine. Visit hensonshaving.com/leeja and use code LEEJA to get a free tube of Shave Cream with your purchase of a Henson Razor. Thanks Henson!

DEFENSE CONTACTORS:

Of course, when war is happening, the sides fighting the war need materials with which to fight. And there is big business in being an arms dealer. On Monday, after the US bombed Iran, most defense stocks rose 1% on average.

OpenSecrets’ data shows defense contractors like Raytheon (aka RTX Corporation) and Lockheed Martin have spent over $138 million on lobbying in the last 5 years. 60% of lobbyists for the defense industry are part of Washington’s revolving door problem–wherein former government employees become lobbyists or work for private sector industries that they used to oversee as government employees. And there are 850 defense lobbyists crawling around Washington attempting to influence the votes of our elected officials. There are a total of 535 members of Congress, as a reminder. That means for every elected official there are one and a half lobbyists just for the defense industry alone. And again 60% of them are former government employees so they have the right connections and know how the system works. For example, Lockheed Martin has spent over $3.6 million dollars on lobbying so far this year alone, most of that was spent on its own in-house lobbying arm. Of the 19 lobbyists working for Lockheed Martin’s lobbying arm, 16 of them were previously government employees. For example, lobbyist Gwen R. Brown worked for the federal government from 1976 until 2001, and the last 6 years of her tenure were with the department of defense before transitioning to private sector lobbying work, eventually landing at Lockheed Martin in 2011. The lobbying from the defense industry this year has largely been focused on the huge budget reconciliation bill passed in the House that is currently being debated by the senate, because of course that bill determines the US budget for defense spending and currently includes a measure that would boost defense spending by $150 billion dollars, topping out defense spending at over 1 TRILLION dollars for the first time ever. But, of course, endlessly increasing our defense spending isn’t enough. The US accounts for 40% of military spending worldwide, and spends more on its military than the next 10 countries COMBINED. And part of that is due to the fact that these defense contractors, awarded billions and billions of US tax payer dollars in federal contracts, are increasing the price on their missiles, planes, and ships. According to an article written by Bernie Sanders and published in The Atlantic, quote “RTX Corporation, formerly Raytheon, has increased prices for its Stinger missiles sevenfold since 1991, leaving the U.S. paying more than $400,000 to replace each missile sent to Ukraine. Even accounting for inflation and improvements to missile technology, that is an outrageous price increase.” In fact, according to the article, “defense contractors routinely overcharge the Pentagon—and the American taxpayer—by nearly 40 to 50 percent. One company, TransDigm, overcharged by 4,451 percent.” Part of that is due to the waste, fraud, and abuse happening in the Department of Defense, which DOGE seems uninterested in addressing, perhaps because Elon Musk-owned businesses receive millions in defense contracts. The DOD is the ONLY federal agency that cannot pass an independent audit. Last year, it failed its 7th audit in a row. And yet we keep funneling billions and billions of dollars into the defense budget, no questions asked, and awarding those billions to defense contractors who keep raising prices simply because they can, and whose CEOs make, on average, 500 times more money than the average newly enlisted US servicemember. And they are able to do this largely because they have established a monopoly on the market. In the 1990s there were 51 major defense contractors in the US, today there are 5. FIVE. Because of this, they can set prices and reap enormous profits because they have no competition. And they will continue to reap profits, especially in the middle east.

A paper published in 2021 found that the Pentagon had spent over $14 TRILLION DOLLARS since the start of the US war in Afghanistan, with upwards of HALF of that money going to military contractors, specifically, a third of that money went to the five major defense corporations. During that same time, those corporations spent $2.5 BILLION DOLLARS on lobbying over 2 decades.

Many lawmakers who endorsed the US bombing in Iran over the weekend also receive major contributions from defense PACs and military-industrial donors. This includes, of course, Ted Cruz, who sat for an interview with Tucker Carlson last week that was so fucking bleak it almost made Tucker Carlson look sane and measured, including a moment in which Cruz didn’t know the population of Iran, the country he gleefully supports bombing. In fact, Cruz has gone further than even most Republicans are willing to go, calling for the US to seek a full on regime change in Iran. Cruz has received over half a million dollars in campaign funding from AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the largest Pro-Israel lobbying group and one of the most influential lobbying firms in the country, over the last five years and over $200,000 from the defense industry in that time. War hawk Lindsey Graham has received over $330,000 dollars in the last five years from the defense industry. Many members of Congress have made money moves to invest in defense stocks since Trump got elected. According to Sludge, since Trump’s election win, “19 members of Congress have reported household purchases of stock in the companies involved in the Iran strikes and other military contractors listed in the Top 100 of defense revenue by Defense News.” Dozens more already own defense stock. This includes Marjorie Taylor Greene, who bought up to $15,000 worth of shares in Boeing back in May, as well as up to $15,000 in Palantir shares earlier this year. As we discussed in a previous episode, Palantir is signing major contracts with the US government, including the defense industry.

TECH FIRMS

Which brings us to tech firms generally, which are increasingly getting involved with contracts with the federal government, especially in the area of defense, especially since the AI boom began with the launch of ChatGPT in 2023. Meta recently announced a partnership with defense firm Anduril to build AI-powered military systems. Anduril was founded by Trump donor Palmer Luckey, and also counts among its investors 1789 Capital, the venture capital firm of which Don Jr is a partner. 1789 Capital has also reportedly invested over $50 MILLION in Elon Musk firms SpaceX and xAI. So again, to reiterate, the son of the President of the United States is a partner in an investment firm giving money, MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, to donors to his father’s presidential campaign, one of whom is Elon Musk, who has also been overseeing DOGE with direct access to canceling and managing the government contracts that his firms are receiving, so any venture capital firm investing in those companies would stand to make a lot of money the more government contracts they get awarded. But yeah tell me again about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Truly the biggest joke of capitalism in the US is that everything is legal as long as you launder the money properly.

Today we’re focusing on war profits in the US but I would be remiss not to mention the fact that ever since Trump took a strong stance in favor of making Europe increase its defense spending and stop relying on the US for security, European-based defense firms are also seeing increased investment and profits. In fact, just today, Trump attended a NATO meeting at which European members pledged to increase their defense spending to 5% of their budget. And recently, it was revealed that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, through his venture capital firm Prima Materia, led a 600 MILLION euro investing round in AI startup Helsing, a UK and EU-based firm that uses AI to analyze weapons and systems data to inform real-time military decisions. It also manufactures military drones. In the face of tariff uncertainty, European defense firm stocks have seen volatility recently, but this major investment indicates that billionaires still see major profit potential from investing in European military companies, especially the ones leveraging AI to make a quick buck. And also can we just pause to acknowledge how fucking stupid it is that the founder of a music streaming platform is now like involved in the proliferation of AI-based military drone development. That is so stupid. I’ve been meaning to for a long time but I literally cancelled my Spotify subscription as I was researching this video because I’m so skeezed out by Daniel Ek, on top of the fact that Spotify absolutely screws artists over AND the sound quality isn’t that good. Trash. Boycott Spotify.

OIL & GAS

Another skeezy war profiteer: big oil. Following the strikes against Iran over the weekend, crude oil jumped above $78/barrel with analysts suggesting futures could surge to more than $100/barrel, although prices dropped Monday and Tuesday, according to Open Secrets. While analysts are still feeling skittish about potential disruption to crude oil production in the middle east, for the most part oil prices have come back down, for now. But major profits are still on the table for oil producers especially in the US. And they have their fat fingies all up in the pie that is the US Congress.

In 2024 alone, oil & gas lobbying reached $153 million. The spending was meant to push back against Biden-era policies that were pushing for alternative energy solutions. In the first quarter of 2025, oil and gas has spent $38 million to try to capitalize on Trump’s interest in homegrown energy. You know, the whole drill baby drill thing. So you better bet some of these US companies, like ConocoPhillips which oversees the contentious Nuna and Willow projects in Alaska, stand to gain a LOT if we lose access to oil in the middle east and are forced to rely on our own domestic oil production. I’m sure they are GUNNING for Iran to shut down the strait of Hormuz so we come running to them and they can increase profits by matching the rising crude oil prices. Indeed back in April, Exxon, the largest US oil producer, confirmed that higher crude oil prices would lift its first-quarter earnings. And after Israel began attacking Iran earlier this month, crude oil prices shot up 7% in a few hours. However, those prices have continued to fluctuate and are back down to around the level they were before Israel began attacking Iran. According to NPR oil prices haven’t skyrocketed because Iran has, as of now, not done anything drastic to affect the production and transport of oil and because the US has dramatically increased its oil production over the last decade to where now the US is the world’s largest producer AND consumer of oil, so there is less dependence on the middle east, so war there has less of an impact on oil prices. That being said, our increased production means that there’s a huge supply of oil right now, which can depress prices. So even if war in the middle east doesn’t affect prices of oil coming from the middle east, it still would mean a greater demand for US-made oil, of which there is an overabundance, which would benefit producers. Even if crude prices stay relatively stable, the demand will shift from a beleaguered middle east to an overplentiful American supply, benefiting US producers. So that’s why you see millions and millions of lobbying dollars in Congress from the gas and oil industry, they’re producing a fuck ton of oil, thanks to the politicians they’ve bought out who promote policies favorable to big oil companies, AND demand for their supply could go up should the middle east fail to keep production flowing.

OpenSecrets data shows ExxonMobil and Chevron are among the top 20 corporate political donors in the energy space. And guess who was the top recipient of oil and gas money during the 2024 political races? Donald Trump, who received over $2.1 million in campaign contributions. Don’t get it twisted though, Kamala Harris came in second with 1.3 million dollars in contributions. In Congress, Ted Cruz was the largest recipient of gas and oil money, accepting over $1 million in campaign contributions from gas & oil during the 2024 election cycle alone. Ted Cruz is also heavily INVESTED in gas and oil industries, claiming between 815,000 to 2 million dollars in his investment portfolio invested in various oil and gas stocks. This is another indicator of the types of conflicts of interest members of congress have when they are receiving campaign dollars and investing in stocks from industries they are supposed to be regulating. Of the top 20 recipients of oil and gas campaign contributions in 2024, other than Kamala Harris the only Democrat is Colin Allred of Texas, who lost to Ted Cruz in the 2024 election. Despite being endorsed by End Citizens United, an org pushing to get money out of politics, Allred accepted over $400,000 dollars from oil and gas for the 2024 election, likely because despite his generally liberal record, Allred criticized Biden-era climate legislation for potentially costing “thousands of jobs” and hurting the oil and gas industries. He is from Texas, after all. So while they put most of their weight behind Ted Cruz, they also threw some money at the Democratic candidate just in case he won and they also needed him in their back pocket. Additionally, Marco Rubio was one of the top recipients of money from the oil and gas industry in 2015 and 2016 during his bid for the presidency, receiving nearly a million dollars from the industry. This is an example of the long game that monied interests play in our politics. Here we are, a decade later, and Rubio is the Secretary of State, actively managing relations with the middle east while having close ties and having previously received monetary gains from an industry with deep interests in what happens to oil in the region.

CONGRESS

Through all of this information, I hope a pattern has become clear. In addition to the private industries, major defense companies, tech companies, and oil & gas companies, that are set to gain huge dollars in the ongoing wars being fought by the Trump regime, at home and abroad, some of the biggest beneficiaries of those profits are our elected representatives. Without any guardrails around outside spending on our elections and lobbyists flooding the halls of Congress, we are seeing spending on elections balloon out of control and monied interests spending billions of dollars on lobbyists who can then get in the ears of our elected officials and persuade them to vote a certain way, no matter what the will of the people is. And these elected officials know that if they play nice the revolving door in Washington will land them a cushy lobbying job whenever they decide to leave Congress. And those lobbyists, whether or not they are part of the revolving door, stand to gain BILLIONS of dollars as firms pay more and more money to influence our elections, and the lobbyists get to play middle man. For example, in the months after the October 7th Hamas attacks in Israel, AIPAC’s monthly donations tripled. That means not only are they flush with money for lobbyists, lobbyist that are increasingly pushing for the US to support Israel militarily, but that also means they’re flush with cash to donate to pro-Israel candidates or, equally as important, to punish those elected officials who speak out against Israel by doing everything in their power to oust them from Congress, like they did to Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, who both lost their primaries after AIPAC spent nearly $10 million and over $5 million respectively to make sure they were defeated.

This is the US military industrial complex in action on a global scale, wherein the people with the most money and power–the President, his son, our elected officials, the founder of Spotify, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and more–have the most to gain, and are able to literally toy with the lives of all the rest of us. They cheer while human beings are killed around the world. And they throw more money at it, salivating for the carnage to continue. Because the reality is that these people don’t give a fuck whether you or I live or die. And rampant deregulation since the 1980s, thanks to Ronald Fucking Reagan, combined with, or you could say even culminated in, the Citizens United supreme court decision, and has unleashed a tidal wave of money into Washington that now poisons the interests of nearly every politician on both sides of the aisle. We are now left with a handful of billionaires and the politicians they own, including the President of the United States, running the planet into the ground. It is absolutely infuriating to be part of this timeline.

I know you guys always want me to give you concrete calls to action instead of just being doom and gloom on here, so first cancel your Spotify subscription holy shit. It takes literally 30 seconds. Tidal and Apple Music both pay artists more, though of course there are criticisms of all streaming services so I also try to buy tickets, merch, and physical vinyl from artists I want to support, and monthly memberships to podcasts I listen to a lot. And consider paying more attention to local politics. Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral primary, which is the first faint glimmer of hope I’ve felt since November. I think the people who make it to Washington, for the most part, are too sick in the brain to give two shits about their constituents. They get wrapped up in the power and something in their brain breaks. But the people at the local level, the city council members, the state representatives, people like Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman, who in the month before she was assassinated had to make a difficult vote that she was literally in tears over, they do care. Not all of them, a lot of them suck, too. But many of them do genuinely care and want to make positive change and actually listen to their constituents and still have the capacity for empathy. Focusing on local issues when the world is burning isn’t exactly easy, but it might instill within you a sense of agency that can help quell the anxiety we’re all feeling. Action is a great antidote to anxiety. So yeah the military industrial complex wants to see the world literally burn and doesn’t care if any of us lives or dies, but, you know, maybe your local city councilperson is interested in promoting that community garden you’ve been wanting to spearhead. It’s the little things, it’s finding joy despite it all, that is unfortunately all we can do right now.

If you want to support my work, all my videos are completely ad free and uncensored over on Patreon, Patreon dot com slash leeja miller.

Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Philly Tech Dude, Marc, Sarah Shelby, Art, David, R_H, L’etranger (Lukus), Thomas Johnson, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!

And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from last week about the Israel, Iran conflict explained.

Leeja Miller
Next

The US Just Bombed Iran… Now What?