When the ‘“department of government efficiency” was raging unchecked through the federal government in February 2025, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered his subordinates to find cuts of 8% a year for the next five years, theoretically trimming a total of $340m from the Pentagon budget.
The disclosure briefly sent Palantir and defense stocks tanking – though soon the plan evaporated, as if it never existed.
Instead, Hegseth is now demanding a $454bn increase for 2027 military spending, to a total of almost $1.5tn, in what he describes as a “generational investment”.
Adjusted for inflation, that would for the first time match – and even exceed – US military spending at the height of the second world war during national mobilization, according to a chart prepared by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.