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With candor you don’t hear in official circles, top arms contractors say recent violence and tension works in their shareholders’ favor.

By Eli Clifton, Responsible Statecraft

According to chief executives of the top taxpayer-funded weapons firms, their balance sheets will benefit from the U.S. engaging in great power competition with Russia and China, the recent escalations in the Yemen war, and the potential for a Russian invasion of Ukraine. But at least one CEO didn’t want to give the impression that weapons firms are simply merchants of death, claiming that her firm, the third largest weapons producer in the world, “actually promote[s] human rights proliferation.”

Those comments were all made on quarterly earnings calls this week, at which executives for publicly traded companies speak to investors and analysts who follow their industries and answer questions about their financial outlook.

Four missiles point up with a chart of raising stock prices in the background

The occasion brings out a degree of candor about companies’ fundamentals and their business interests that aren’t always disclosed in marketing materials and carefully worded press releases.

For example, CEOs from both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon outright acknowledged that a deteriorating state of global peace and security and an increase in deadly violence are very much in the interest of their employees and investors.

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Militarism and Foreign Policy