How do wars make money

Surprising no one, the United States makes more money on war than any other country. Using the arms production database of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute SIPRI as her data source, Bronshtein shows that 40 of the top arms-producing companies in the world are based in the United States, with Lockheed Martin and Boeing being the biggest of the bunch. The visualization represents each company as a circle within the larger circle of its nationality — the bigger the radius, the more money the company or country made selling arms.

There are some surprise outliers. AWS Deloitte Genpact. Events Innovation Festival. Beginning with the 2, American servicemen and women killed over the last 20 years — plus another more than 20, wounded, many with permanent disabilities. These numbers, you see, need to be absorbed and internalized to understand why we were there 15 years too long. Which is why it took so long: Instead of containing bin Laden in Afghanistan after we first got there, a series of blunders enabled him to escape to that neighboring country.

Still, that means we crippled al-Qaida and bin Laden was on the run — so why were we still in Afghanistan? Indeed, we all heard and read about the stories of home-based Americans raising funds to help their sons, daughters, brothers and fathers get the gear they needed. While government money went into the pockets of private contractors who long ago took over many of the tasks previously carried out by service personnel.

For regardless of your feelings about this or any war, the purveyors of weapons of death and destruction always win. The U. Arms sales, including advisory, planes, vehicles and weapons, were defined by sales to military customers, as well as contracts to government militaries.

Like many of its defense-sector competitors, Virginia-based General Dynamics Corp. In its most recent year, the company reported a Army is major customer. The company, which traces its history back to , assisted the United States in multiple wars, as well as the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Raytheon Co. But while the U. BAE Systems is the largest non-U. As the U. In May , the company announced it would close its Armstrong plant — which made tanks for the nation in World War I and had been in operation since — and cut jobs as a result. Last year, Boeing and union workers in Washington state engaged in heated negotiations, with Boeing threatening to move jobs away from the state unless union workers agreed to concessions related to their pension plan.

In , Lockheed Martin Corp. The company, which employed , workers as of , specializes in aerospace, global security and information technology systems for the military.