Lockheed Martin Just Found a NEW Way To Price Gouge Us

追加: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]This is a golden opportunity right now based on who's in government, the demand that they have. Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order cracking down on weapons companies saying they were too slow, make too much profit, and spend too much money paying their shareholders.

[00:00:15]>> We'll be discussing the pay to executives where they're making 45 and 50 million dollars a year and not being able to build quickly.

[00:00:23]>> A lot of people celebrated this as a good move, but what they missed is that Trump and his Pentagon spent the last year changing the rules that stop weapons companies from price gouging American taxpayers, [music] accelerating a trend that's been happening for decades. And they're doing it at a time when the military budget in this country is already the highest it's ever been.

[00:00:42]>> The statutes that are meant [music] to protect the taxpayer from arms industry price gouging, these regulations are essentially formalities at this point.

[00:00:52]There are so many carve-outs. Typically, when the government buys something, they use competitive contracts. This is meant to ensure that taxpayers get a fair price, but the government is now giving itself permission to ignore its own rules, to buy weapons not with competitive contracts, but by going directly to the companies they want to work with and buying what they need.

[00:01:12]People like Pete Hegseth say this is what the military needs, that this is a fast and efficient way to rebuild weapon stockpiles.

[00:01:18]>> Urgency informs everything we do. We're rebuilding a military that the American people can be proud of. But in many cases, this increased speed just leads to increased cost and a less prepared military. More money has not yielded [music] better results when it comes to weapons acquisition, and the folks who continue to push budget increases and deregulation are lying to themselves that they are going to achieve a different result by doing the same thing over and over again.

[00:01:47]>> Of course, weapons companies are cheerleading this trend. For them, it's a massive opportunity to now price gouge the government and the American taxpayer even more.

[00:01:54]>> We're seeing more use of OTAs and other non-traditional contracting mechanisms.

[00:02:00]All of these are positive for industry, and [music] I don't see a desire by the department to push [music] industry profitability down. It's quite the contrary. And you know what? That makes sense to me. But what I wanted to understand here is why. Why would the government do this? The government has all the power here. They're the only customer for these weapons and for these companies in many cases. Why give up their ability to negotiate? Lawmakers, many of whom are in the pockets of military contractors, have deregulated the way that we buy weapons.

[00:02:36]>> The people in Congress who make the rules are lobbied extensively by weapons companies. They directly benefit from a bigger defense budget and a higher profit margins.