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Talk:Military–industrial complex
Which should we use: A or B?
A: The speech was authored byRalph E. Williams andMalcolm Moos and was foreshadowed by a passage in the 1954 bookPower Through Purpose coauthored by Moos. The degree to which Eisenhower and his brotherMilton shaped the speech is unclear from surviving documents. Planning commenced in early 1959; however, the earliest archival evidence of a military-industrial complex theme is a late-1960 memo by Williams that includes the phrasewar based industrial complex. A wide range of interpretations have been made of the speech's meaning. Looking back in 1985, Williams wrote that he was "astonished" at the attention given to themilitary-industrial complexsound bite, saying that it "has been distorted beyond recognition ... it became red meat for the media".[1]
B: The phrase was thought to have been "war-based" industrial complex before becoming "military", a claim passed on only by oral history.[2]:111Geoffrey Perret, in his biography of Eisenhower, claims that in one draft of the speech, the phrase was "military–industrial–congressional complex", indicating the role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry, but the word "congressional" was dropped from the final version.[3]James Ledbetter calls this a "stubborn misconception" not supported by any evidence.[4] The actual authors of the speech were Eisenhower's speechwritersRalph E. Williams andMalcolm Moos.[5]Uhoj (talk) 20:40, 13 October 2025 (UTC)
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