The Pentagon’s $51 Billion ‘Black’ Budget
February 16th, 2012If you find this Wired piece interesting, definitely check out, Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World by Trevor Paglen. As an outsider, Paglen has no access to the black world, but he sort of feels around the edges of it and you really start to get a sense of how sprawling and massive it is. (And he doesn’t get into any woowoo at all.)
Via: Wired:
The military keeps a lot of little things secret. It could be the exact range of a jammer, sensitive missile data or the timing of a raid. But the larger context — that jammers and missiles exist, or that our forces conduct raids — is unclassified and even listed in the Pentagon’s budget for all to see.
These secrets are different. Their names are obscured by code words, or simply listed as “classified programs.” But with a little digging, we can get a (limited) sense of how much money is being spent on the U.S. government’s most secret military projects. In fact, you can take a look for yourself. We’ve put together this spreadsheet with the latest information. Feel free to add, subtract and edit it — kind of like a classified cash wiki.
Research Credit: bretwalda
