Collaborative Writer/Political Anthropologist/Author of the books "The United States of War," "Base Nation," "Island of Shame." https://xitter.cf/t.co/bf8c1I7zCe |https://xitter.cf/t.co/7qz6noS06B

Oakland, CA
Joined July 2009
David Vine retweeted
What if we invested in Americans the way we invest in war? Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, and Sully break down something every American deserves to understand: where our tax dollars go and what else they could accomplish. Using Oreo cookies, we show what a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget looks like and what investing just a fraction of that money could mean for affordable housing, tuition-free public college, ending homelessness, childcare, healthcare, and better teacher salaries. This isn’t about weakening our military. It’s about questioning our priorities. We can have a strong national defense AND invest in the American people. The question isn’t whether we have the money. It’s what we choose to do with it.
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Heidi Peltier, @ocampo_IPS and I show that the Pentagon + others greatly exaggerate the military's economic impact on Hawai'i. @IPS_DC @christineahn
Many have made bold claims about the economic benefits the U.S. military brings to Hawai‘i. The facts show the military’s contribution is significantly smaller than most people think. thediplomat.com/2026/09/bust…
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U.S. military expenditures last year were at least $1.5 trillion, writes Costs of War contributor @davidsvine. "If Congress grants Trump’s requests, we’ll be spending $2 trillion to $3 trillion on the military and its wars."  motherjones.com/politics/202…
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Read + sign The People-First Foreign Policy Pledge @ peoplesforeignpolicy.us The Pledge notes its three positions are broadly popular across party lines + will “advance the safety, security, and well-being of people” in the United States and globally. Signatories include...
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There's still time to ensure Trump + the Pentagon don't get the largest budget in US and world history, $1.5 trillion (yes, TRILLION). I discuss Trump's request in my new article w/ this spot-on quote from Rep. @SaraJacobsCA
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David Vine retweeted
David Vine found a $1 trillion Pentagon slush fund hiding in the federal budget. Yes, you read it right: TRILLION He breaks down the numbers in his latest @tomdispatch and @theintercept theintercept.com/2026/10/01/…
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I'm excited to have published this article showing how Congress + the Pentagon hide hundreds of billions of $ in military spending in other agencies' budgets beyond @DeptofWar Imagine news breaking that the government was hiding hundreds of billions for schools, Medicaid, SNAP
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I'm thrilled to have an article in Mother Jones today showing how people in the US have been spending far far more on the military than we've been told. If Trump's $1.5 trilion Pentagon budget passes, we'll likely be spending $2–3 trillion in actuality.
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The people of Hawai'i (and nationwide) deserve the truth about the military's impacts.
NEW: The Pentagon has long been exaggerating the military’s impact on Hawai‘i's economy while downplaying its harms. As military land leases expire, the people of Hawai‘i deserve a full picture. @davidsvine, Heidi Peltier, & @ocampo_IPS in @Diplomat_APAC: thediplomat.com/2026/09/bust…
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The US military’s economic benefit to Hawai'i is much smaller than most think, while the economic damage + other harms caused by the military remain hidden or overlooked, Heidi Peltier (@CostsOfWar), Omar Ocampo (@IPS_DC), + I show @Diplomat_APAC thediplomat.com/2026/09/bust…
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We show the Pentagon + others have exaggerated the military’s impact by billions of $. Meanwhile the military presence drives up rents, fuels the housing crisis, damages the environment/public health, + holds back other industries that would create > local jobs than the military.
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David Vine retweeted
The Norwegian Consumer Council made a video about enshittification and got 2.5M views and 168K likes on IG. (If the style feels familiar, it was created by NewsLab, the same advertising agency that made the brilliant Visit Oslo video from a few years back.)
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Moving more US military bases + troops to Israel is an incredibly stupid, dangerous recipe for more endless wars in the Middle East + deeper complicity w/ Israel's gencde in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in W. Bank. youtube.com/shorts/VjgTHb5_e…
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The idea's being pushed by people in the pro-Israel lobby who pushed for the disastrous, illegal Iran war + who want to keep sending billions of $ in military aid to Israel + a deeper merger of the US + Israeli militaries. All of which are now hugely unpopular w/ the US public.
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Correct, the overarching liberal FP orthodoxy is the US slipped on a banana peel and destroyed Vietnam, Iraq and killed 20K+ Palestinian children in a bumbling good faith attempt to “defend democracy.” Does it make sense? No. Is it a necessary fiction to maintain empire? Clearly.
We don't interrogate enough the fact that so much of American exceptionalism relies on explaining away each of our atrocities as an oopsie.
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Be an AI doomer because it’s a bubble that’s deskilling white collar workers; it supercharges the surveillance state; and, as this report shows, it’s erasing critical thinking abilities. Don’t be a doomer because you think AI will end the world or become super intelligent
MIT published a brutally honest report on what AI is doing to students. A committee of professors and students spent five months studying how AI changed learning on campus, and the findings read like a warning to every university on the planet. Study groups are disappearing. Office hours are emptying out. Problem sets and take-home exams no longer prove anything, because AI can produce credible solutions to almost any written assignment in the undergraduate curriculum. Students who lean on chatbots lose mastery and confidence, and some slip into what the report calls cognitive surrender, reaching for AI at the first hint of struggle. The numbers are rough. 46 percent of surveyed MIT undergrads use LLMs daily. 90 percent worry about their own overreliance. Undergrads who feel AI makes them replaceable now outnumber those who feel it makes them capable. The committee's answer surprised me. They refused to fight AI with surveillance. The report calls AI detectors unreliable, says lockdown browsers feel like spying, and warns that policing students builds a classroom atmosphere of mutual distrust. Instead, MIT wants to rebuild education around the things AI can't replace. That means oral exams, semester portfolios, in-person project work, and a required social component in every subject. The report even floats the idea of rethinking grades entirely, since without a GPA to optimize, much of the incentive to cheat with AI evaporates. The committee warns professors against replacing undergrad research assistants with AI agents just because they're cheaper, because a university exists to grow people, not output. The most famous tech school on earth admitted the machines broke its way of teaching. Its answer is more humans, not more software.
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The supposed US "munitions crisis"--which isn't a crisis--has been fueled by a Center for Strategic and International Studies report. Has any reporting about the "crisis" said CSIS gets millions donated by munitions makers standing to benefit from the idea there's a crisis?
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