Lockheed Martin is a key contractor for the THAAD missile system in South Korea - a system that CSIS has also advocated for without disclosing their conflict of interest. Notably, a New York Times investigation in 2016 found that, based on a cache of email leaks, CSIS was effectively doubling as a weapons industry lobbying firm, pushing for expanded drone sales. Among the weapons that Northrop Grumman manufactures are drones, which have been used by the US military in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, among other locations. Raytheon is a key supplier of bombs to the US-Saudi war in Yemen, and has aggressively lobbied to prevent any curbs on arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition. CSIS is a hawkish and influential foreign policy think tank that receives funding from General Dynamics Corporation, Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, and other weapons manufacturers and defense contractors, as well as oil companies. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is listed as the “most recent employment” of three individuals on Biden’s Department of Defense agency review team: Kathleen Hicks (a former defense official under President Barack Obama), Melissa Dalton, and Andrew Hunter. These figures may be an undercount, as the writer was not immediately able to exhaustively source the funding of every employer.

Of the twenty-three people who comprise the Department of Defense agency review team, eight of them - or just over a third - list their “most recent employment” as organizations, think tanks, or companies that either directly receive money from the weapons industry, or are part of this industry.

On November 10, Biden announced his agency review teams, which he says “are responsible for understanding the operations of each agency, ensuring a smooth transfer of power, and preparing for President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris and their cabinet to hit the ground running on Day One.” In July 2019, while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president, Joe Biden declared in a foreign policy speech, “It’s past time to end the Forever Wars, which have cost us untold blood and treasure.” But the president-elect - who, as vice president, oversaw wars in Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, and more - is already embracing personnel with strong ties to the military apparatus driving this endless combat.

Us military think tanks