person to make clear to me just how much military manufacturers think about the subject of waste in that third sense, that is, about how all products eventually fall into disuse. Even during its initial design, manufacturers are thinking about the end of a product’s life. This is an altogether different way of conceiving of waste, as the inevitability of entropic loss rather than the by-product of inessential and self-interested human decisions. And, as I will argue, it is important for casting or avoiding blame for moral wrongdoing, or waste in the first sense.
Military manufacturers like Simon also spoke about wasted time and money, but these were also typically interpreted in a way that not only differed from the military industrial complex critique, but anticipated and deflected such blame. Based on interviews with current and former military industry insiders, I argue that some forms of waste are meant to build relations of trust between military manufacturers and the defense establishment, while others are incorporated into design and testing production processes, as with the Seahawk helicopter. Far from an irresolvable contradiction within circuits of capital, waste is actively managed and imagined within military industries as they endeavor to build enduring customer relations and durable machines. I do not accuse military manufacturers of being wasteful, in the first, moralizing sense, per se; rather, I review the ways in which they knowingly produce or avoid waste while pursuing other ends, including but not limited to private self-interest.
Drawing on interviews conducted with current and former employees of the US DoD and Lockheed Martin, I focus on the reflexive practices of military producers themselves, that is, what they know and how they talk about what it is they do. As Collier and Ong characterize it, reflexive practices are “modern practices” that “subject themselves to critical questioning” (2005, 7). Critical questions possess political, technological, and ethical dimensions that test normative assumptions about how things are built. The three sections of this chapter focus on these dimensions in turn. Rather than pure, impersonal greed or corruption, the actions of arms manufacturing insiders appear governed by a variety of personal motives and social values. Rather than conceive of military waste exclusively in terms of money, moreover, they tend to frame waste in terms of engineering practices, which—far from being purely technical—may alternatively depoliticize and de-moralize the waste of the American military, or identify altogether new targets for public scorn.
My goal is not to trivialize the very real dangers that the military industrial complex poses, but rather to make it easier to relate to the permanent war economy, which can otherwise appear governed by impersonal entities (the DoD, Lockheed) and irresistible forces (greed, corruption). Talking about human stories and motivation scales such phenomena down to size and makes the abstract complex a matter of ordinary people struggling for themselves and their communities. The point is not only to make it easier to understand those making a living off of an entrenched system, in this case the permanent war economy, but also to sharpen our ability to critique and rethink that system in response.
IBMERS
The Owego Lockheed Martin plant began as an IBM facility, and locals still refer to all those who work or worked there as “IBMers.” The plant supplied high-end electronic equipment to the US military since the time of the Second World War. IBM was especially critical in the development of the Cold War continental surveillance system, Semi-Atomic Ground Environment (SAGE), “the single most important computer project of the postwar decade” (Edwards 1997, 75). IBM gained its reputation for computing as a result of its work on SAGE for the Air Force and would continue this relationship with the military for the rest of the twentieth century. The IBM facility in Owego was built as part of a general shift toward high-tech military weaponry. Part of IBM’s Federal Systems Division, the Owego plant helped to develop technology for government censuses, satellite programs, and other high-tech equipment. IBM was attracted to the area because of the existing manufacturing base, established by the Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company (known as EJ), which had flourished from its own military contracts, producing boots for infantry until as late as the Vietnam War. EJ is credited with building up the tri-city area, from parks and carousels to residential areas and large factories.10
The end of the Cold War meant a radical reduction in military production all over the world, the effects of which are also debated. After military buildup in the 1980s, US defense budgets fell by nearly 30 percent, more than two million service members and civilians lost their jobs, and over a hundred military bases closed. Though military spending increased in the early twenty-first century with the new War on Terror, the impact of spending cuts was felt throughout the country. The results were uneven—just as military buildup impacted different regions in different ways, so too did the radical reduction and restructuring of defense spending that followed the end of the Cold War.11
IBM eventually sold off the military division during the post–Cold War spending cuts of the 1990s, leaving the area almost entirely not long after. When EJ and IBM eventually sold off their local capital and shuttered their doors, the local community was devastated, leaving very few still employed in manufacturing. If one goes by voting results, locals tended to believe Hillary Clinton in 2006 when she ran for her New York seat in the US Senate and promised to bring work back to the Southern Tier. They also supported Governor Cuomo when he said the same thing in 2010, and some blamed him when, for example, Restore New York grants from Albany failed to support local initiatives. On the same day that Albany announced it would not support a local bid to develop two casinos, in 2015, the state government also issued a ban on fracking to extract energy from the gas-rich Marcellus Shale, which includes all of New York’s Southern Tier region (as well as neighboring Pennsylvania, where the practice is allowed). This was enough for various towns across the Southern Tier to begin talk of seceding from the state to gain the attention of lawmakers (Susman 2015). It is no accident, therefore, that most voters in this area did not support Clinton’s presidential run in 2016 or Cuomo’s reelection for governor in 2018. When Southern Tier voters changed allegiances and overwhelmingly voted for Trump, unlike New York State as a whole, it was in part because he claimed he would bring back American manufacturing.
On the one hand, these losses, hopes, and disappointments are a familiar part of the gradual process of deindustrialization affecting the whole country and many parts of the world. Christine Walley (2013) points out that this is more aptly characterized as reindustrialization, or accumulation by dispossession, as global markets are used as an excuse to introduce more flexible and profitable arrangements (i.e. reduced wages and benefits) and overall “leaner” workforces. On the other hand, for military manufacturers, the gradual disappearance of military contracts from the area is part of a general geographical shift. The economic effects of permanent war preparation have never been uniform, throughout either the United States or the world. The Cold War ushered in the growth of an American gun belt, stretching from the Pacific and Mountain regions across the South Atlantic and into New England (Markusen et al. 1991). As the gun belt grew, people suffered in those regions historically dependent on manufacturing, including the Midwest, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic, leaving a rust belt behind.
In an online discussion forum known as City-Data Forum, a thread was created in 2009 titled “is binghamton, ny really that bad . . .?” One person, self-identifying as a lifelong resident, summarized the city’s history in this way:
Once upon a time, the entire Southern Tier was a great place to live and then one by one, the factories and big-businesses moved out. Some of the most important to the area: Endicott-Johnson Shoe Factory closed it’s [sic] doors, IBM-Endicott closed their doors; NYSEG downsized and laid-off, Frito-Lay has downsized and laid-off, basically over the years business has declined or moved. Now, Binghamton has a large population of senior citizens and students and an even larger population of people who are “stuck.” This area is a vacuum it sucks you in and you can’t get out because you never have the available resources.12
What is stuck in the tri-city area is not only people, but buildings. Much of the previous gun belt has begun to rust. Urban spelunkers record their journeys into old EJ factories with Go-Pro cameras mounted to their heads, posting them on YouTube or bragging about them on Reddit.
