The Trillion Dollar War Machine by William D Hartung

Author:William D Hartung [William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2025-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

Because think tanks are less regulated, funding them “can be as valuable as spending on lobbyists,” explains Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University who has written extensively about think tanks, including in his book The Ideas Industry.62 At least one foreign government—Israel—has reportedly considered creating a think tank–like nonprofit organization explicitly to avoid disclosure requirements under FARA and the LDA.63

“Scholars, media organizations, and members of the public should be sensitized to the conflicts of interest shaping foreign policy analysis,” wrote Egeland and Pelopidas in their analysis of think-tank funding, nuclear-weapons policy, and exactly how funding influences think-tank work.64 Such influence is achieved primarily through self-censorship and perspective filtering: Big funders can systematically weed out critics of nuclear weapons in the public debate simply by not funding them. These interviews offer inside stories of how this funding shapes think tanks’ publications and public commentary, and ultimately sets the parameters of the foreign-policy debate while drowning out voices calling for peace.

For better or worse, all of this has contributed to the American public’s soaring distrust in policy experts. Less than half (48 percent) of respondents to a 2022 US public-opinion survey believe that “think tankers and public policy experts” are “valuable” to society. In comparison, medical doctors (82 percent), scientists and engineers (79 percent), and even much-maligned lawyers (60 percent) were seen as more valuable than think tankers. “Suspecting the expert may have a hidden agenda” was the number-one reason that respondents cited for their distrust of think tankers, followed very closely by a “lack of transparency around who is funding the expert.”65

Fortunately, there is a rather straightforward solution to this problem: transparency. Think tanks must be required to publicly disclose all of their donors and proactively identify potential conflicts of interest whenever they’re interacting with Congress, the media, or the American public more generally. “We would regard increased transparency as an improvement on the current state of affairs,” according to Egeland and Pelopidas. “Citizens should have a right to know who pays for the reports, op-eds, and articles that shape their world.”66

Congress and the executive branch already have some ready-made tools to increase think-tank funding transparency. Perhaps these would begin to restore public trust in think tanks and open a door for an honest debate about war and peace.

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