The Bunker: Cope Fear
This week in The Bunker: President Donald Trump galumphs around the globe, lighting fuses and daring them not to explode; he calls for inflating Pentagon budgets from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion virtually overnight; he trains his fire on hidebound and well-fed defense contractors who would most benefit from such force-fed cash; and more.
This week in The Bunker: President Donald Trump galumphs around the globe, lighting fuses and daring them not to explode; he calls for inflating Pentagon budgets from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion virtually overnight; he trains his fire on hidebound and well-fed defense contractors who would most benefit from such force-fed cash; and more.
MEANWHILE, BACKSTAGE
Inflating defense, deflating defense contractors
Like any good illusionist, President Trump knows how to employ sleight-of-hand. Last week, one of Trump’s hands was busy trying to remake the global order: Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Greenland, and even NATO are all now in his crosshairs. The other hand, hidden in the shadows and smoke generated by those actions, is seeking to remake the Pentagon in two fundamental ways.
We’ll get to that in a bit. After all, we here at The Bunker prefer to focus on the nuts and bolts of building and maintaining the U.S. military (if you want gaseous geostrategic piffle, visit the Council on Foreign Relations). Yet it is striking how much international applecart upsetting Trump has wrought in the past month. He’s like an exploding Roman candle, armed with hubris and howitzers. Fear has replaced consent as the nation’s driving force on the world stage for the first time in U.S. history.
Thanks to an AWOL Congress, Trump is unilaterally and brazenly retooling the post-World War II global order. That’s great if you think he’s the greatest thing since sliced Kissinger, but not so good if you deem him a short-sighted, kleptocratic, nepotistic narcissist. He is swapping a system based on rules and accords for a perturbing potion of intimidation and might-makes-right. He’s promiscuously lighting fuses around the world, trusting that any blasts will kill or maim foes but not America.
It’s a remarkable act — thus far — given that Trump won less than 50% of the popular vote in 2024. Of course, like any fireworks display, most of us are mere observers. Our fingers are crossed. We’re betting on hope, instead of history, that one of those flaming Roman-candle orbs doesn’t veer into the crowd and hit you — us — smack dab between the eye-told-you-sos.
INSANITY ON PARADE
$1.5 trillion or bust!
It wasn’t so long ago that national-security nerds were debating when the U.S. would begin spending $1 trillion a year on the Pentagon. This year’s current budget, helped by some fancy Trump administration arithmetic that any legit accountant wouldn’t approve, crossed that threshold.
“But wait!” as the TV hucksters used to say. “There’s more!”
Indeed. As hard as it is to believe, on January 7 Trump said the nation should spend $1.5 trillion on its military next year. “I have determined that, for the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars,” he posted on social media. “This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe.”
A “nightmare military” is more like it.
Yet it’s pretty much the only way Trump can fund his Pentagon pipe dreams, including the Golden Dome aerial shield and his back-to-the-future Trump-class battleships, part of his so-called Golden Fleet (their shared nomenclature suggests why more money is needed).
The notion of boosting defense spending by 50% in one year is loony. Even if you think it makes sense — and no, The Bunker doesn’t — the Pentagon lacks the capability to absorb such a tidal wave of cash so quickly. It would be buying inefficiency, warping other elements of the U.S. economy, and fattening already corpulent defense-contractor coffers. Predictably, Pentagon-supplier stock prices surged following Trump’s post.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (such a quaint name!) estimated that Trump’s increase would boost the national debt by $5.8 trillion through 2035. It derided his claim that increased tariffs would pay for the added defense spending. “In reality,” it calculated, “the military spending increase would be about twice as large as expected tariff revenue.”
“In reality”? Such a quaint notion.
DEFENSE-CONTRACTOR PAIN
Trump proposes some common-sense changes
But even as Trump sought to boost Pentagon spending, he was zinging defense contractors for paying their executives too much, for issuing too-high dividends, and for buying back their stock to inflate its value rather than investing in new and bigger factories. Frankly, it was a refreshing change for a war-mongering U.S. president. Or any president, for that matter.
“Defense Contractors are currently issuing massive Dividends to their Shareholders and massive Stock Buybacks, at the expense and detriment of investing in Plants and Equipment. This situation will no longer be allowed or tolerated!” Trump thundered January 7, a date that will live in infamy (in certain quarters) in the unlikely event he follows through. “Also, Executive Pay Packages in the Defense Industry are exorbitant and unjustifiable given how slowly these Companies are delivering vital Equipment to our Military, and our Allies. Salaries, Stock Options, and every other form of Compensation are far too high for these Executives.”
In a second post, Trump carpet-bombed RTX (once known as Raytheon), the Pentagon’s 2nd-largest supplier, for being “the least responsive” to the Defense Department’s needs among major contractors. Meanwhile, the total compensation of RTX’s chief executive grew from $5.6 million in 2021 to $18 million in 2024, a 221% increase. Unsurprisingly, the RTX PR staff apparently crawled into a bunker after reading Trump’s post, and declined to speak on the topic to the outside world.
The broadsides marked Trump’s latest volley in his lengthy more-bile-than-bite war with U.S. military suppliers. Industry insiders are fretting over what Trump could do absent congressional action, and what it might mean for major multi-billion-dollar defense programs now in development. Trump’s executive order gives Defense Secretary Pete “Hands-off” Hegseth 30 days to determine which contractors are running afoul of these new Pentagon rules.
U.S. defense contractors suddenly find themselves, like a growing number of nations around the world, the targets of an increasingly erratic and impulsive president. Both contractors and countries share an emotion. “Fear of the Trump administration has become a significant factor in corporate decision-making,” Reuters reported following Trump’s defense-contractor tirade. “One industry executive viewed the order as unenforceable and vague but said his company would strive to comply for fear of angering the administration.”
That should come as no surprise. “Real power is, I don’t even want to use the word, fear,” Trump said months before his 2016 election.
Perhaps. But The Bunker thinks Umberto Eco put it more succinctly, and pungently, in his 1980 novel, The Name of the Rose. “Nothing gives a fearful man more courage,” the Italian author-philosopher said, “than another’s fear.”
WHAT WE’RE READING
Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently
Army War College professor John Nagl spelled out the three reasons the U.S. doesn’t win (most of) its wars January 12 in Real Clear Defense (in a nutshell: ignorance of whom we’re fighting, failure to follow through after initially prevailing, and the nation’s “excessive belief in our ability to accomplish political tasks through the use of arms”).
Banana Republic 1.0(PDF)
Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), filed this suit January 12 challenging Defense Secretary Pete “Hands-off” Hegseth’s power to censure him for saying U.S. troops don’t have to obey illegal orders.
The Pentagon press corps has curdled into a sycophantic cheerleading squad for Defense Secretary Pete “Hands-off” Hegseth and his minions, Scott Nover and Drew Harwell reported January 7 in the Washington Post. Reporters “covering” Hegseth on a recent trip included representatives from the maritime website gCaptain, Mike (the pillow guy) Lindell’s media outlet, and The Federalist. The Post noted that The Federalist Pentagon reporter’s “two previous articles for the right-wing news site included a list of the ‘10 biggest media hoaxes of 2025’ and an essay titled, ‘Ladies, you’re loading the dishwasher all wrong. Here’s how to do it the right way.’” It makes The Bunker’s long-ago Pentagon travels with reporters from the Associated Press, Reuters, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal seem, well, almost quaint.
Thanks for a-quainting yourself with The Bunker this week. Please send along to an acquaintance so they can subscribe here.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Thompson, a national security analyst for the Center for Defense Information at POGO, has been covering the Pentagon for more than 45 years.
