Apr 12, 2022 •
Aditi Ramaswami
&
Andrew Perez
The Defense Industry’s Ukraine Pundits
To explain the crisis, corporate news networks are leaning on hawkish ex-military officials — without disclosing their current defense industry ties.
Last week, CNN brought on former U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for his fourth recent appearance to talk, once again, about Russian President Vladimir Putin's deadly invasion of Ukraine.
“I think we need to understand that there is only one thing that Putin understands, and that's force,” said Panetta on Newsroom.
The former CIA director added: “I think the United States has to provide whatever weapons are necessary to the Ukrainians, so that they can hit back, and hit back now.”
At no time did Panetta nor CNN mention that he’s a senior counselor at Beacon Global Strategies, a defense industry consulting firm that has reportedly represented weapons manufacturer Raytheon. The firm doesn’t disclose its clients, but Raytheon and the defense industry generally stand to benefit from the conflict in Ukraine.
The episode is part of a broader pattern and practice: Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, cable news networks have routinely called on defense officials-turned-consultants to offer analysis and help the American public make sense of the crisis. Often, these analysts have used their TV time to call for greater U.S. involvement and bolder moves that could ratchet up tensions between two nuclear-armed superpowers.
The networks have consistently failed to disclose these analysts’ day jobs, describing them instead by only their former high-ranking military or government roles — leaving viewers in the dark about the analysts’ financial ties to defense contractors that stand to profit from increased or prolonged conflict.
more
https://www.levernews.com/the-defense-industrys-ukraine-pundits/
