A House of Dynamite, the latest film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, expertly dramatizes a nuclear attack. The well-researched script depicts just how quickly Armageddon could break out.
Early on, military personnel at an outpost in Alaska detect an ICBM heading for the continental United States. They’re not sure who launched it, and—though they can’t yet figure out which area is specifically being targeted—they already know when the missile will hit its target.
In 19 minutes.
Toward the end of the movie, the American president is asked to decide how to respond to this assault. He’s given a binder that shows him various attack options, and he’s pressured to make his decision without delay.
It doesn’t help that he needs to make this determination on the basis of limited information. For one thing, it’s still not clear who launched the weapon in the first place.
More than thrilling entertainment, A House of Dynamite encourages reflection about military threats that the United States might face at some time.
And, given the movie’s nightmarish vision, it’s unsettling to see how our political representatives in Washington often approach such an important national security issue.
In their 2025 book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine, William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman show how a group of U.S. senators dealt with the matter of nuclear weapons two years earlier.
The occasion: a public hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The committee heard the findings of a Congressional commission that had examined America’s nuclear armaments and the current protocols for deploying them.
The commission’s central recommendation: to comprehensively expand U.S. nuclear firepower, something that many independent observers fear could prompt a dangerous arms race among the United States, China and Russia.
At the time the session was held, the Pentagon was already envisioning a massive $2 trillion program to develop an improved lineup of nuclear-armed missiles, submarines and bombers.
The commission’s co-chairs were now urging that a separate program be initiated in addition to the one that the Pentagon had put forward.
The senators in attendance were given the opportunity to address the topic.
Most of them used their allotted time to praise the military hardware located in or being manufactured in their own states.
For example, Senator Mark Kelly (D–Ariz.) emphasized the importance of the SM-6 missiles being produced in his state. Many of his colleagues on the panel, including Senators Jackie Rosen (D–Nev.) and Tommy Tuberville (R–Ala.), took a similar tack in their remarks.
When Senator Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) spoke, she struck a decidedly different tone.
After admonishing the commission for failing to consider “the serious costs and dangers” of their proposal, Warren asked about its price tag.
As she put it, “I’m willing to spend what it takes to keep America safe, but I’m certainly not comfortable with a blank check for programs that already have a history of gross mismanagement.”
Marilyn Creedon, one of the commission’s co-chairs, told Warren that the group hadn’t established what the cost would be. Despite Warren’s prodding, she couldn’t even offer a ballpark figure.
Hartung and Freeman recount how, just before his presidency ended, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. A powerful lobby that included members of the military as well as arms manufacturers, it focused primarily, in Eisenhower’s view, on increasing its own profits rather than addressing the nation’s security challenges.
Some historians have written that Eisenhower first intended to call this group the “military-industrial-Congressional complex,” given the part that Congressional figures have played in facilitating its aims.
Hartung and Freeman take pains to show how this network has acquired far more clout since Eisenhower’s day. They illustrate how it now deeply influences such sectors of society as higher education, think tanks, the entertainment industry and gaming.
They also delve into the cost overruns and faulty weapons systems that Senator Warren referenced in her remarks in 2023.
One prime example is the F-35 combat aircraft, which the government has funded for more than two decades and which has received $12 billion–$13 billion of annual support.
To put it mildly, the program has been bedevilled by numerous setbacks.
Even three years ago, the plane still had more than 800 unresolved flaws, six of which could endanger the lives of the pilots flying them. The Project of Government Oversight contends that the aircraft might never be completely ready for use in battle.
Another example of a costly procurement problem is the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey, which is supposed to combine features of a helicopter and a plane. Though it was first commissioned in 1986, the Osprey has yet to realize this vision successfully.
To date, in fact, it’s been involved in 10 fatal crashes and caused the death of 64 people.
Such instances of profligate spending become even more disturbing in the light of recent New York Times articles that examine our country’s military readiness.
Its authors argue that “[n]early four decades after victory in the Cold War, the U.S. military is ill prepared for today’s global threats and revolutionary technologies.”
And the government’s spendthrift habits seem to be continuing.
The defense budget that’s been advanced for 2026 contains funding for many unneeded programs, they point out. For example, it sets aside $240 million for the Gray Eagle drone, something that the Army has called “obsolete.”
In fact, members of Congress attached $52 million for items that the Pentagon hadn’t even requested.
The Times writers urge that fundamental reforms be made in the way that military programs are funded.
In addition to such reforms, it might well be high time to look at more fruitful ways to spend money that, for many years, has in effect been frittered away.
Devoting part of the national budget to defense is needed, but it comes at a price, as Eisenhower seemed to grasp.
Early in his presidency, he delivered his so-called Cross of Iron speech. In it, he said that an immoderate emphasis on military expenditures weakens the government’s capacity to tackle important domestic needs.
The wording in his speech reveals the areas that, in his view, the government should truly prioritize in its budget deliberations.
As he put it, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
