Letters to the editor – March 18, 2026

The spoils of war(s)

John O’Dea, former secretary general of Public Risk Management Organisation (PRIMO) Europe, writes:

The televised horrors of the conflict in Ukraine, the rubble of Gaza, the precision strikes on Iran, and the drone swarms all over the Gulf States and beyond, are often seen by analysts as a larger part of a contest over the global order.

On one side: the US, NATO and the western allies, on the other: countries such as Russia Iran, China and sometimes North Korea challenging that order. A tragical clash of civilisations and a struggle for survival.

A man inspects a site of overnight Israeli airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Photo: AFP

But if one had to follow the smoke to the fire, it stops looking like the tragedy that it is, and starts looking like a business opportunity that is financed by the taxpayer.

In the grim economy of modern warfare there is no such thing as a “stalled” conflict. When the front lines don’t move, the money does. The modern missile doesn’t just fly, it thinks. And every thought it has, is processed through proprietary AI and guided by proprietary satellites. It is a money-making event.

While politicians argue about proportionality, the giants of the so-called defence industries are busy stress testing their latest neural networks. A drone strike isn’t just a tactical move, it’s a live-fire demonstration for a sales presentation to the next buyer.

Behind every surgical strike, is a subscription to a satellite constellation and a proprietary software suite. The more complex the conflict, the more the big tech thrives. We have managed to turn destruction and human misery into a software as a service model.

Wars are great consumers of raw materials, especially fuel, specialised alloys and advanced chemistry that are converted into kinetic energy and grief. News programmes on TV focus on the explosions, but the profit is in the propulsion. 

The specialised fuel and high-performance engines that power long range missiles represent a massive transfer of wealth from the public purse to the military industrial sector.

The democratisation of death and destruction via cheaply produced drones has created a new market for even more expensive counter-drone technology. It’s a perfect self-sustaining loop of planned obsolescence.

We are told these conflicts are about borders, gods and justice. But it’s all about money and profit. War is the ultimate consumer of goods. It is the only market where the product is designed to self-destruct upon use, requiring an immediate, expensive replacement.

As long as a “successful” mission is measured by the destruction of high value targets, the  missiles and the drones will keep flying and the spoils of war – at the time of writing estimated at a cost of $20 billion for the US taxpayer and counting – go to the military industrial sector.