The Border Fence and Defense Contractors

The defense industry has seen good times in this country in recent years.  And it looks like they will also milk profits out of the current efforts to create fences -- physical and virtual -- along the border.  Eric Lipton reports in today's NYTimes that the administration has already turned to the defense industry for help in this area.  He writes:

Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar federal contract to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along the nation's land borders.

Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these companies have already put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan — like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment — the military contractors are zeroing in on the rivers, deserts, mountains and settled areas that separate Mexico and Canada from the United States.

It's worth thinking about the ways in which broad concepts like "securing the borders" and "ending catch and release" are implemented through policies that have the primary effect of shifting resources from public coffers (where they might be used to improve health care and education for all) to highly profitable private companies.

-jmc