January 17, 1961: President Eisenhower warns us of the growing power of the Military Industrial Complex. 51 years later, have we listened at all?

Fifty years on, we look back on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning against America’s “military-industrial complex.”

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower makes his farewell address, Jan. 17, 1961. (AP)

Dwight D. Eisenhower – “Ike” – was a towering war-time general, a two-term president, and a Republican.

Fifty years ago today, in his farewell speech as president to the nation, he famously warned against what he called “the military-industrial complex”.  Against the influence on America’s democracy, its thinking, its soul of the huge internal interests that gather around military spending and power.

We’re diving in today to what Ike meant, exactly, and the sway of those interests today — listening back to Eisenhower on the military-industrial complex.

-Tom Ashbrook

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