Endless war and militarism have its obvious faces: the Boeing, the Lockheed Martin, the Raytheon arms–producing corporations. The other side of the coin is the restructuring of civilian productive resources on many levels to feed into the war machine. The missiles now bombing Iran and Venezuelan fishing vessels and the armed tankers blockading Cuba from getting oil represent the diversion of  public assets from real-life problem solving that could benefit working people in the U.S. to the dealing of death. 

In the absence of government development programs, towns and cities across the country are made dependent for jobs and investment on companies that serve  the military. Across the Midwest and the country at large, a pattern emerges of Democratic-leaning cities being the location of  weapons manufacturers. Strategically, these locations are political. They manufacture and secure consent for further war by molding the Congressional map in favor of endless confrontation.

For example, in Missouri and Kansas the war machine has significant influence over both the economy and education. From the Boeing Defense, Space and Security headquarters in St. Louis MO, to Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologist (FM&T) in Kansas City MO, weapons manufacturers have set up shop in this region and have monopolized job markets. 

Two  universities connecting these two states, the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC) and the University of Kansas (KU), located in Lawrence, also play a significant role in this production of misery. Over the last ten years, KU and UMKC have received tens of millions in grants and contracts from the Department of War and its subsidiaries like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) or the Department of the Navy to do research with military application. KU even has an entire office dedicated to this, called the Office of National Defense Initiatives

Schools used to fast-tract students into defense contractor roles 

In Kansas City’s 6th district, Honeywell FM&T operates the Kansas City National Security Campus. The facility has for decades produced 80% of the components used in nuclear weapons, and is at the center of the Obama-initiated trillion dollar nuclear weapon modernization program. 

Honeywell FM&T has for decades held the economy of the Kansas City area in a chokehold, making it difficult for cities and governments to change course. They shape the environment in both subtle and overt ways. For example, they have a Honeywell Educators at Space Academy program that sends teachers to NASA-based training to inspire STEM teaching. They grant STEM scholarships and host Girls in Science camps for primary school aged students. These examples on paper do not raise alarm, but when the end result is another engineer for the KCNSC, the realization of investment feeds into a system of organized violence.

Honeywell has influenced K-12 curriculum development by investing $400,000 to develop educational pipelines in the Kansas City area. They gave the Grandview School District a $125,000 grant in 2024 to establish an Advanced Manufacturing Pathway, refurbish a metal shop, and provide training for teachers to meet their needs. Grandview is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. 

This type of investment is predatory in nature, filling the gaps left by a lack of government investment for much needed civilian use especially since the neoliberal turn of the 1970s, as well as preying on the financial insecurities of students who are faced with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt for a higher education. 

These pathways fast-track students into defense contractor jobs in an economy barely holding itself together, as many households are overwhelmed with personal debt.  For example, in Grandview, Honeywell gifted $50,000 to Great Jobs KC, who are actively using classrooms in Grandview High School to directly train students on “what to expect on the floor of a manufacturing plant.” This represents an erosion of the line between corporate power and public education, with the school district allocating a percentage of its student body to be directly trained for roles at the KCNSC.

Honeywell also granted $150,000 to Project Lead the Way for STEM development, and signed a $75,000 contract with PREP-KC for a dual-credit program for high school seniors through the Metropolitan Community College. 

New advanced weapons production leads to new wars

All of these investments in the last decade have helped put the U.S. on a crash course toward global war. The research  at UMKC and KU revolve around the question of conflict with a near-peer adversary. 

KU has heavy investments from the DOW in the computing aspects of warfare: drone technology, chips, communications networks. UMKC’s partnership with the DOW focuses more significantly on the modernization and maintenance of nuclear weapons. 

The Honeywell-managed plant at the KCNSC represents the nexus of the current nuclear weapons modernization drive. All of the switches, monitoring systems, advanced materials and parts are produced  in KC and then shipped out to be fitted to modern nuclear weapons. 

The U.S. recently allowed the last nuclear treaty with  Russia, NEW START, to lapse, while pointing the finger at China for not engaging in dialogue. Work being done by the universities in Missouri and Kansas , however, confirms that the U.S. has no intention of slowing down nuclear production or disarming.

Working to meet human need brings more to society than building bombs 

This region’s  students, workers, community and future deserve better. Local organizers have always championed a transition to civilian production. There is no need to ask workers to sacrifice their livelihoods for peace. City governments need to stop selling out the community to weapons profiteers.

Economic conversion models show that redirecting military expenditures to infrastructure, education, healthcare, and clean energy would generate a net gain of hundreds of thousands of jobs. A large-scale transfer of military spending to civilian priorities would not shrink the workforce, it would grow it. It would also grow the economy.

Military spending is one of the least efficient ways to create jobs. Research by Costs of War Project found that every $1 million spent on defense creates only 6.9 jobs, while the same investment in education creates 19.2 jobs, nearly three times as many, and healthcare creates 14.3 jobs. 

Over the long term, military spending contracts the broader economy. Studies by the Peace Science Digest show that a sustained 1% increase in military spending decreases a country’s economic growth by 9% over 20 years. The working class bears the cost of this contraction while corporations like Honeywell extract the profits.

Workers whose labor produces all value, should have a right to decide what they produce. The skills that a worker in Honeywell has belongs to the worker, who can be retrained to build housing, transit, renewable energy and public health. This is not a radically new idea. After World War II, the United States converted 40% of GDP in defense spending to civilian use within a few short years. 

A democraticly planned economic conversion, with full retraining, income support, and community reinvestment, is not only possible, it is the socialist alternative that actually serves working people rather than the arms industry.

Why are our universities deepening collaboration with arms of the military industrial complex instead of working with a company developing green technology or advances in medicine? Engineers and other highly skilled workers could be trained to tackle our world’s most pressing issues, but instead they are siphoned into privately designed pathways that trap them inside the logic of capitalism and imperialism.

A socialist system, run by workers and based on meeting human need,  can guarantee what all workers desire and deserve: meaningful and stable employment, peaceful cooperation and the unity of nations, and real investment in our future. 

It is necessary to organize to demand an end to corporate collaboration with the Pentagon that only serves the interests of the billionaire class and its endless wars.

It will take a struggle to end  this unholy alliance of corporate and military power that is shaping our public education and job opportunities. We must fight for socialism.