Eisenhower foretold the future
Fifty years ago today, on Jan. 17, 1961, U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower famously warned Americans that an emerging “military-industrial complex” would wield unhealthy and unwarranted influence — “economic, political and even spiritual” — over their political life if it were left unchecked.
The warning came in Eisenhower’s extraordinary farewell address to the nation — days before John F. Kennedy entered the White House — in which he described the unprecedented “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.”
A half-century later it is clear Eisenhower’s warning was both prescient and ignored.
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