Military–industrial complex
In 2011, the United States spent more (in absolute numbers) on its military than the next 13 countries combined.
The military budget of the United States for the 2009 fiscal year was $515.4 billion. Adding emergency discretionary spending and supplemental spending brings the sum to $651.2 billion. This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department's budget. Overall, the U.S. federal government is spending about $1 trillion annually on military-related purposes.
President Joe Biden signed a record $886 billion defense spending bill into law on December 22, 2023.
In a 2012 story, Salon reported, "Despite a decline in global arms sales in 2010 due to recessionary pressures, the United States increased its market share, accounting for a whopping 53 percent of the trade that year. Last year saw the United States on pace to deliver more than $46 billion in foreign arms sales." The military and arms industry also tend to contribute heavily to incumbent members of Congress.

Similar concepts: A thesis similar to the military–industrial complex was originally expressed by Daniel Guérin, in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business, about the fascist government ties to heavy industry. It can be defined as, "an informal and changing coalition of groups with vested psychological, moral, and material interests in the continuous development and maintenance of high levels of weaponry, in preservation of colonial markets and in military-strategic conceptions of internal affairs." An exhibit of the trend was made in Franz Leopold Neumann's book Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism in 1942, a study of how Nazism came into a position of power in a democratic state.
Within decades of its inception, the idea of the military–industrial complex gave rise to the ideas of other similar industrial complexes, including:: ix–xxv 

Animal–industrial complex;
Prison–industrial complex;
Pharmaceutical–industrial complex;
Entertainment-industrial complex;
Medical–industrial complex;
Corporate consumption complex.
Virtually all institutions in sectors ranging from agriculture, medicine, entertainment, and media, to education, criminal justice, security, and transportation, began reconceiving and reconstructing in accordance with capitalist, industrial, and bureaucratic models with the aim of realizing profit, growth, and other imperatives. According to Steven Best, all these systems interrelate and reinforce one another.
The concept of the military–industrial complex has been also expanded to include the entertainment and creative industries as well. For an example in practice, Matthew Brummer describes Japan's Manga Military and how the Ministry of Defense uses popular culture and the moe that it engenders to shape domestic and international perceptions.
An alternative term to describe the interdependence between the military-industrial complex and the entertainment industry is coined by James Der Derian as "Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network". Ray McGovern extended this appellation to Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex, MICIMATT.

See also: Literature and media
War Is a Racket (1935 book by Smedley Butler)
The Power Elite (1956 book by C. Wright Mills)
Why We Fight (2005 documentary film by Eugene Jarecki)
War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2007 documentary film)
The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (2008 book by Nick Turse)
Other complexes or axes
List of industrial complexes

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External links: 
Khaki capitalism, The Economist, December 3, 2011
Militaryindustrialcomplex.com, Features running daily, weekly and monthly defense spending totals plus Contract Archives section.
C. Wright Mills, Structure of Power in American Society, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 9. No. 1 1958
Dwight David Eisenhower, Farewell Address On the military–industrial complex and the government–universities collusion – January 17, 1961
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address As delivered transcript and complete audio from AmericanRhetoric.com
William McGaffin and Erwin Knoll, The military–industrial complex, An analysis of the phenomenon written in 1969
The Cost of War & Today's Military Industrial Complex, National Public Radio, January 8, 2003.
Human Rights First; Private Security Contractors at War: Ending the Culture of Impunity (2008)
Fifty Years After Eisenhower's Farewell Address, A Look at the Military–Industrial Complex – video report by Democracy Now!
Online documents, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
50th Anniversary of Eisenhower's Farewell Address – Eisenhower Institute
Part 1 – Anniversary Discussion of Eisenhower's Farewell Address – Gettysburg College
Part 2 – Anniversary Discussion of Eisenhower's Farewell Address – Gettysburg College