War profiteering
Some have argued that major modern defense conglomerates like Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Boeing, BAE Systems, General Dynamics, and RTX Corporation fit the description in the post-9/11 era.
[6] In 1777 a mob of Boston women beat the merchant Thomas Boylston and confiscated his stock for hoarding coffee and sugar to drive up the price.
In Beverly, Massachusetts a mob of 60 women and some additional men forced local merchants to charge the same price for sugar in American paper money and gold coin.
After failing to produce a single musket, he was called to Washington to defend his expenditure of the treasury funds before a committee that included both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
[9] A prominent example of the impact arms-producing industries have over American policy is evident in the case of Lockheed Martin donating $75,000 to House Armed Services Committee chair Representative Mac Thornberry (R-TX).
[10][dubious – discuss] Politico has stated that Thornberry was the "highest overall recipient of contractor contributions among all of the 89 members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
In the case of IBM they developed technologies that were used to count, catalog, and select Jewish people whom could then be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, consolidation in ghettos, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation.
[citation needed] More recently, companies involved with supplying the coalition forces in the Iraq War, such as Bechtel, KBR, Academi (formerly known as Blackwater) and Halliburton, have come under fire for allegedly overcharging for their services.
[18][19] On the opposing side, companies like Huawei Technologies, which upgraded Saddam's air-defense system between the two Gulf Wars, face such accusations.
For instance, during and after World War II, enormous profits were available by selling rationed goods like cigarettes, chocolate, coffee and butter on the black market.
The charge could also be laid against medical and legal professionals who accept money in exchange for helping young men and nascent politicians evade the draft.
Numerous officials such as President Eisenhower's Under-Secretary of State (and formerly director of the CIA) Walter Bedell Smith was a candidate for an executive position in the company while at the same time he was helping to plan the intervention.
Georgia Quartermaster General Ira Roe Foster attempted to increase the supply of material to the troops by urging the women of his state to knit 50,000 pairs of socks.
The historian Jeanie Attie notes that in 1861, an "especially damaging rumor" (later found to be true) circulated in the North, alleging that the Union Army purchased 5,000 pairs of socks which had been donated, and intended for the troops, from a private relief agency, the United States Sanitary Commission.
[32] As the Sanitary Commission had done in the North, Foster undertook a propaganda campaign in Georgia newspapers to combat the damaging rumors and to encourage the continued contribution of socks.
[33] He offered $1,000.00 to any "citizen or soldier who will come forward and prove that he ever bought a sock from this Department that was either knit by the ladies or purchased for issue to said troops.
[34] Steven Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation think tank, has accused former CIA Director James Woolsey of both profiting from and promoting the Iraq War.
[36][37][38] Financial disclosure forms indicate that as of January 2020 51 members of Congress and their partners own between $2.3 and $5.8 million of stock in the top 30 corporations that sell goods and services to the U.S.
[39] Indicted defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes was reported to be ecstatic when hearing that the United States was going to go to war with Iraq.
However, the Congressional Research Office discovered Cheney held 433,000 Halliburton stock options while serving as Vice President of the United States.
[55][56][57][58] The term "ABCD" refers to the four companies – ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus – that dominate world agricultural commodity trading.
The ABCD commodity-trading companies have seen large profits as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and rising food prices.
[64] In September 2022, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck accused the United States and other "friendly" gas supplier nations that they were profiting from the Ukraine war with "astronomical prices".
In the 1985 film Clue, Colonel Mustard was a war profiteer who sold stolen radio components on the black market.
The film The Third Man features a war profiteer named Harry Lime, who steals penicillin from military hospitals and sells it on the black market.
In the 2011 film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Professor Moriarty acquires shares in many military supply companies and plots to instigate a world war and make a fortune.
In Book 2 of The Legend of Korra, the character Varrick attempted to incite and encourage a civil war among the water tribes to make profit from selling weapons.
In the film Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Finn, Rose Tico and BB-8 travel to Canto Bight, a coastal city catering to the galaxy's rich and elite.
[69] Also, the character of DJ shows Finn that the owner of the ship they're on made his profit selling weapons to the good guys (the Resistance) and the bad (the First Order).
