A Warning Renewed

Chapter 1 provides a broad history of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address and the author’s methodology for estimating the true size of the government-industrial complex workforce. The chapter begins with Eisenhower’s decision to deliver a nationally televised speech warning the nation of the grave threats created by the conjunction of an imperative, but immense military and armaments industry. The chapter explores the history of the speech and the president’s chosen words for characterizing the military-industrial complex. The chapter continues with a discussion of the method used for estimating the true size of the federal, contract, and grant workforces. The method converts federal spending into estimates of the full-time-equivalent contract and grant employment for use in side-by-side comparisons to the federal workforce. The chapter ends with a discussion of the data deficit surrounding the government-industrial complex and warns readers that all data have expiration dates, including the data used in the book.