Industrial complex

The industrial complex may profit financially, or ideologically, from maintaining socially detrimental or inefficient systems.

This complex involved the military establishment gaining "unwarranted influence" over the economic, political, and spiritual realms of American society due to the profitability of the US arms industry and the number of citizens employed in various branches of military service, the armaments industry, and other businesses providing goods to the US army.

In the address, Biden argued that the growth of the tech-industrial complex poses threats to American democracy, supports oligarchy, and enables the abuse of power.

For example, the purported purpose of the US penal system is to assist offenders in becoming law abiding citizens[3] yet the prison–industrial complex subsists upon high inmate populations, thus relying on the penal system's failure to meet its goal of criminal reform and re-entry.

The industrial complex concept has also been used informally to denote the artificial creation, inflation, or manipulation of an institution's societal value in order to increase profit opportunities, especially through specialty businesses and niche products.