A. J. Murphy, "Pentagon Capitalism: How the Cold War US Military Modeled Itself on Private Business" (Harvard UP, 2026)

The strategic landscape of the Cold War generated political support for a permanent US military force of unprecedented scale. Faced with the problem of managing this behemoth, leaders of the defense bureaucracy looked to private industry for inspiration: since the military now resembled a huge industrial conglomerate, they reasoned, it should be run like a business. In Pentagon Capitalism: How the…