Matthew Hoh on the $1.7 Trillion War Budget

Clean water or genocide?

by Matthew Hoh | Dec 18, 2025 | News | 0 comments

The Congress can’t agree on ensuring Americans have healthcare, other than it should be ruinously expensive if you ever get sick, but they sure can agree on spending a gargantuan sum for war.

From today’s interview with Redacted with Natali and Clayton Morris:

When we say the Pentagon budget is $901 billion, that’s leaving out an awful lot. For one thing, there was a supplemental passed by the Congress last spring that added $150 billion to the defense bill, including over $100 billion for FY2026. which means that the actual Pentagon budget for 2026 will be over one trillion dollars but that leaves out a heck of a lot as well.

It leaves out tens of billions of dollars that goes to the State department for military assistance to foreign countries as well as to facilitate weapon sales to foreign countries, but the big money comes in two areas where it misses out.

One is for veterans. This year, or in 2026, the veterans budget will be $440 billion. So that’s what you’re paying for men and women like myself, for our health care, our disability pensions, our benefits, etc. All the consequences of political decisions to go to war.

So this idea that these wars don’t ever end, there’s an economic component to it as well. The other aspect about how these decisions [to go to war] don’t end, is in the interest and debt payments on past wars and military spending. So from 2001 to 2021, at the time of the retreat from Afghanistan by the US government, by the American government, the United States had already spent a trillion dollars in interest and debt payments on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. So for those 20 years, we spent a trillion dollars in debt payments to finance those wars. That number is going to reach two trillion dollars by 2030. That’s just for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When you bring in the larger Pentagon budget over these decades, the estimate is that we spend annually, every year, the United States federal government spends $300 billion on interest payments for past wars and Pentagon spending. So when you put this all together, the Pentagon budget’s not $900 billion. It’s about $1.7 trillion.

And of course, the opportunity costs, as you all can understand, right? I mean, any question that comes up in our country about what are we going to do about health care, what we do about education, what we do about infrastructure, whatever it is, the answer always comes back. It’s too expensive. We can’t afford it.

What are we going to do about this $37 trillion in debt? It’s too expensive. We can’t do anything about it. It just has to continue to pile up. So the opportunity costs are massive, massive for the American people. And I’ll give you one example to close out here. If you go back to the Biden administration,

they had a plan to make sure that we weren’t drinking water out of lead pipes in this country anymore. And that was going to cost about 30 billion dollars. And the Biden administration, the Congress said 30 billion dollars is too much to spend to make sure that Americans aren’t going to get lead poisoning.

What did it cost the last two years to enable, support, supply and defend Israel’s genocide? 30 billion dollars. So our American leadership is okay with Americans with the risk of lead poisoning but the idea of not funding Israel’s genocide is something that they would never ever contemplate.

Cui bono?

Many other details can be added, including that weapons companies will receive more than half of the $1 trillion appropriated to the Pentagon, and half of that goes to just five companies (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, RTX (formerly Raytheon), Northrup Grumman and General Dynamics). From 2001-2021, the US spent $16 trillion on the Pentagon and war. Weapons companies got half of that, $8 trillion. The big five weapons companies got $2 trillion from the Afghan War alone. During that time, the weapons industry spent approximately $1 billion lobbying Congress. You can’t argue with that return on investment…

What about everyone else?

The US accounts for almost 40% of the world’s military spending, and when you add its allies and partner’s military spending, it comes to 70% of total world military spending. That the US spends more than the next nine countries combined on its military is often cited, but what’s often left out is that seven of those nine countries are allies or major defense partners. The Russians spend less than $200 billion on their military, even with the war in Ukraine, and the Chinese spend about $300 billion, so America’s largest adversaries combined spend less than half on their militaries as we do.

However, I don’t like those direct comparisons between the US and other countries, because the primary purpose of the US military budget isn’t to defend the nation or succeed in (mis)adventures abroad but to enrich the weapons companies, ancillary industries (banks, the fossil fuel industry, technology companies, etc.), think tanks, and, ultimately, politicians’ campaign accounts.

Update, Dec 12: A couple of people have asked in the comments about the intelligence agencies, the nuclear weapons funded through the Department of Energy (DOE) and the various homeland security agencies. These are good questions and often come up, particularly as the difference between the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the actual appropriations can be confusing. This is going to be pedantic, be warned.

The NDAA is what I am speaking about in the above clip and is the annual authorization for the country’s national security. It includes not just what falls under the Pentagon but those things related to the military, like intelligence and nuclear weapons that are part of other departments. In this year’s NDAA, not only is the Department of Defense (DOD) covered but also parts of DOE, agencies under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the State Department (the NDAA authorizes additional military assistance funding to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan and sets policies for the State Department, such as limiting State Department assistance for Afghan refugees.). Here is the Congressional Research Service primer on the NDAA process.

The NDAA includes funding amounts but it is much broader than that, it sets Congress’ policies for the military and national security. These policies become laws. In the NDAA you will see both funding amounts, as well as policy, e.g. no withdrawal of troops from Europe or South Korea, a ban on military health care to cover in-vitro fertilization and changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

The NDAA however doesn’t actually fund the departments and agencies that it covers. That’s done by individual appropriations acts for each specific department. So the NDAA authorizes the DOD to spend an amount, while the Defense Appropriations Act provides the actual funding to DOD. All departments and individual agencies in the federal government have separate authorizations and appropriations bills, although for most departments and agencies, the authorization acts are multi-year and not annually like the NDAA.

This is why you will see conflicting figures in discussions on military and national security spending. For example, referring to FY 2025, the NDAA authorized last year a total of $895.2 billion for the entire national security establishment (DOD, DOE, intelligence and State Department). The FY 2025 NDAA authorized directly for DOD $849.9 billion, however the actual FY 2025 appropriation via the Defense Appropriations Act for DOD was $831.3 billion. Yes, it is confusing and it’s a reason why the details of military and war spending are often glossed over by the media and politicians. Is it any surprise that the Pentagon can’t pass an audit (0 for 7) when its top line numbers coming from Congress conflict and vary?

With respect to the intelligence community and the nuclear weapons program managed by DOE:

Intelligence:

The intelligence agencies, both DOD agencies and non-DOD agencies, are included in the NDAA, under the Military and National Intelligence Programs (MIP and NIP). The NIP has its own Intelligence Authorization Act which is included in the NDAA. When it comes time for actual appropriations, the non-DOD agencies, like DNI and CIA, are funded separately from DOD via the Intelligence Appropriations Act. Funding for the military intelligence agencies in the MIP will come from the Defense Appropriations Act. However, most of the military agencies will also receive funding from the NIP. This is one reason why the true funding for the Pentagon will be larger than the appropriated amount, because many, if not all, of the Pentagon’s intelligence agencies will also receive funding from the NIP (again, via a separate appropriations act than the Defense Appropriations Act).

For clarification, the military intelligence agencies include the National Sercurity Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency as well as the individual services’ intelligence activities (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Space Force intelligence). Homeland Security has a myriad of intelligence services through the Coast Guard, FBI, DEA and CBP and other agencies, while the Energy, State and Treasury departments also have intelligence services. Here is the list of the 18 intelligence agencies under the Director of National Intelligence:

Total funding for both the military and non-military intelligence agencies in the NDAA for FY 2026 is $115.5 billion with $33.6 billion for the MIP and $81.9 billion for the NIP (with a large percentage of the NIP going to the Pentagon). In FY 2025, the total amount appropriated for the intelligence agencies, both military and non-military was $101.1 billion.

Like the military intelligence agencies, intelligence agencies that are a part of Homeland Security, State Department, Treasury, etc., will receive funding from both their parent department budget and from the NIP.

Department of Energy:

DOE is responsible for our country’s nuclear weapons program not the DOD; although DOD has operational control of the nuclear weapons and is responsible for procuring, testing, maintaining and operating the launch platforms, like submarines, missiles, and bombers. For example, DOE is responsible for the design, construction and testing of the B61 nuclear bomb, including upgrades. However, the Air Force possesses these bombs, plans for their use, and procures, maintains and operates the B52 and B1 bombers that drop the B61.

Like the intelligence agencies, DOE’s nuclear weapons program funding is included in the NDAA, but the actual funding for the nuclear weapons program, as well as other programs like nonproliferation, are appropriated directly to DOE.

In FY2025, DOE’s Atomic Energy Defense Activities were authorized $33 billion. Of that $33 billion, $24.9 billion was authorized for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). An additional $7 billion was authorized for defense related nuclear cleanup through DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. That program is as it sounds: cleaning up the contaminated mess made by our country’s nuclear weapons labs, tests and waste. You can see a breakdown of DOE’s defense related budget here.

Specifically to nuclear weapons, out of the $24.9 billion authorized for the NNSA, $19.98 billion was both authorized and appropriated for nuclear weapons activities in FY 2025. Details on the NNSA’s nuclear weapons activities are here.

For FY 2026, the DOE’s share of the NDAA authorization is $34 billion with the NNSA authorized $21 billion for its weapons activities. The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation has an excellent summary of the authorizations for nuclear weapons programs contained in the FY 2026 NDAA. In that you will note how DOE is funded for the actual nuclear weapons themselves, i.e. warheads, while DOD is funded to provide the missiles, bombers and submarines that carry those nuclear warheads.

A question was also asked in the comments about homeland security funding. That is separate from the NDAA however, as you can expect there is overlap, whether that comes from the provisioning of police forces with military equipment, through intelligence activities, or by the use of active duty Marines and soldiers and federalized National Guardsmen to police our southern border and occupy our cities.

When you combine both the national security and homeland security parts of the federal budget, you find that 70% of federal discretionary spending, where our income tax dollars are applied, goes to the military or law enforcement/prisons.

*Here are the agencies within DHS that have their own intelligence services:

You can watch my full interview on Redacted here:

Reprinted with permission from Matt’s Thoughts on War and Peace.

Matthew Hoh is the Associate Director of the Eisenhower Media Network. Matt is a former Marine Corps captain, Afghanistan State Department officer, a disabled Iraq War veteran and is a Senior Fellow Emeritus with the Center for International Policy. He writes at Substack.

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