The Bunker: Debt Bomb

The Bunker, delivered to our subscribers Wednesdays at 7 a.m., is a newsletter from the desk of National Security Analyst Mark Thompson. Sign up here to receive it first thing, or check back Wednesday afternoon for the online version.

This week in The Bunker: interest on the national debt eclipsed the Pentagon budget in the fiscal year just ended for the first time; “gray” actions by China blur the lines between war and peace; the U.S. responds by cloaking its hottest fighter in anti-drone netting; and more.

ULTIMATE WASTE, FRAUD, AND ABUSE

Spending like a drunken sailor threatens national security

There it was October 8, buried discreetly on page 5 (PDF) of yet another eye-glazer from the Congressional Budget Office. In 2023, the nation spent $776 billion on its military — which buys something — and $710 billion in net interest on the public debt — which buys nothing. But in fiscal 2024, which ended September 30, those numbers flipped for the first time in U.S. history: the nation spent more money buying nothing ($950 billion in interest) than it did on its military ($826 billion).

The Bunker has been decrying waste, fraud, and abuse in the U.S. military for nearly a half-century. But everyone’s three favorite whipping boys when it comes to Pentagon spending pale alongside the nearly trillion dollars we spent on interest last year. That’s money we paid to borrowers, so we didn’t have to make the tough decisions required to live within our means.

We have simply opted to kick this annual binge-spending, now approaching $36 trillion, down a generation or two so our kids and grandkids can foot the bill. When The Bunker arrived in D.C. to cover the Pentagon in 1979, the national debt was $805 billion. That’s just over 2% of what it is today. OK, Boomers. Good job! According to CBO, interest paid on the national debt grew by a stunning 34% ($240 billion) from 2023 to 2024 (PDF). Those are numbers that would make an F-35 blush.

Congress approves all government spending, but more than half of the annual budget goes to mandatory programs like Social Security and Medicare locked (for now) into law. The rest — so-called discretionary spending, appropriated annually — is basically split between the Pentagon and everything else the federal government does (education, transportation, justice, the environment, etc.). But as that mandatory spending — and interest on the national debt — grows, there’s less left over for the Pentagon and all that other stuff. Both categories need deep cuts to avert financial disaster.

Neither presidential candidate is riding to the rescue. Vice President Harris’s economic proposals could add as much as $8 trillion to the national debt over the coming decade, according to an October 7 assessment by the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Former President Trump’s fiscal blueprints, the group projected, could add $15 trillion.

Such profligacy eventually will do more harm to U.S. national security than any foreign foe ever could. “We spend,” to paraphrase a recent president. “We spend like hell. And if you spend like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

NO LONGER BLACK AND WHITE

War moves into the gray zone overseas

Generally (pun intended), wars don’t work. After an initial surge of puffy-chested adrenaline, they tend to bog down into what then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to call a quagmire. So, let’s call it a swamp (cf., Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, the Middle East, etc.) instead.

There are growing signs that the all-out war the Pentagon fears most — China’s invasion of Taiwan, in an effort to bring the renegade island under Beijing’s thumb — isn’t going to happen. China, eyeing Russia’s woes in Ukraine, has no desire to get into a shooting war with Taiwan and its allies, possibly including the U.S.

That’s leading strategic thinkers to believe China might move against Taiwan as a python instead of a Pentagon. This so-called “anaconda strategy” involves China’s navy blockading Taiwan and unleashing cyber attacks that ultimately will lead Taiwan to wave the white flag of surrender. “For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), using minimal military force and preserving Taiwan’s infrastructure and economy during reunification are paramount,” the non-partisan Foundation for the Defense of Democracies said October 4. China noosed Taiwan October 14 with a record 125 aircraft after Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te said the mainland has no claim to the island.

Both Taipei and Washington play down these so-called gray gambits, which walk that bayonet’s edge between war and peace. “A growing number of war games and tabletop exercises (TTXs) in Washington and Taipei study the ‘cross-strait invasion’ scenario or the ‘joint blockade’ scenario — what operational planners commonly refer to as the ‘most dangerous’ scenarios,” FDD says.

True, the U.S. military tends to prepare for such worst-case scenarios. That gives the Pentagon the key to the U.S. Treasury, even if such wars are unlikely. “Sometime in the next decade, China will combine economic coercion, malicious cyber activity, and limited military moves short of kinetic attacks to break Taiwan’s societal and/or economic resilience and force a major adjustment in its policy toward unification,” FDD’s analysis of the showdown says. “In this scenario, China learns from Russia’s mistakes and ‘wins’ without a bloody war and widespread condemnation.”

NO LONGER BLACK AND WHITE 2.0

War moves into the gray zone at home, too

Underdogs are forever looking to wage war on the cheap. That’s one reason why the Pentagon spends so much. “The homeland is no longer a sanctuary,” Air Force General Randall Reed said October 9. “We have great, great power to deter in the kinetic” — the old-fashioned, shooting war — “realm. The question will be, how do we continue to get stronger in the non-kinetic and the gray zone realm?”

Thwarting such cheap attacks is one reason why the Air Force is seeking to drape netting around its prized $350 million-a-copy F-22 fighters at Virginia’s Langley Air Force Base. “The intention of the netting is to deter and ultimately prevent the intrusion of UAS’s [unmanned aircraft systems] near airmen and aircraft,” the service said October 4. It names China’s $13,700 DJI Matrice 300 RTK drone as the kind of threat it needs to defeat. Such plastic nets would keep drones from entering the existing open-ended shelters that protect the fighters from the sun. This is no theoretical threat: a mysterious drone swarm buzzed Langley last December.

“This is a concerning trend that has now also been steadily emerging globally,” The War Zone reported October 9. “The ongoing fighting in Ukraine has now fully driven the reality of uncrewed aerial threats … into the mainstream discourse. Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have actively been targeting each other’s aircraft on the ground, including with drones and over great distances.”

WHAT WE’RE READING

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

→ Department of Redundancy Department

The U.S. Army is reaching for the stars as it increasingly moves to bolster its space-warfare expertise, Space News’ Sandra Erwin reported October 14.

→ Re-Braggadocio

Former President Trump has pledged to change the name of North Carolina’s Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg, Politico’s Irie Sentner reported October 4.

→ How complicated are U.S. weapons?

Air Force wrench-turners recently returned an F-15 fighter to operational status after its landing gear broke … more than four years ago, the service said October 4.

Thanks for landing on The Bunker this week. Forward on to a pal so they can subscribe here.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Thompson has been covering the Pentagon for more than 45 years.