Lifestyles of the rich & famous ‘Lords of War’

This article is co-published in partnership with The Intercept

For the first time, the Pentagon budget topped $1 trillion and private contractors now receive more than half of all the tax dollars flowing to the Pentagon.

Few have profited from this privatization of the U.S. military more than the CEOs of Pentagon contractors.

While these companies often advertise their work as supporting the troops, the fact is that many servicemembers live in appalling housing conditions, while military-industrial contractors’ profits soar and their CEOs live in luxury.

The lavish lifestyles of these CEOs is laid bare in the new mockumentary “Lords of War,” co-produced by the Quincy Institute and The Intercept. The short film pulls no punches as it lampoons an industry held aloft by hundreds of billions of public funds every year.

“Lords of War” connects exorbitant Pentagon spending to the luxury enjoyed by the CEOs of its top contractors. As the film notes, Lockheed Martin is regularly the largest recipient of Pentagon contracts, raking in $75 billion in revenue in 2025 — more than 72% of which came from the U.S. government. As Lords of War’s faux real estate aficionado explains, Lockheed’s CEOs have used their $20-plus-million-dollar compensation packages to buy luxury real estate from the D.C. suburbs to the shores of Miami.

Despite its care-free tone, the film highlights very real problems within the military-industrial complex. As research by William Hartung and Stephen Semler for Brown’s Costs of War Project showed, 54% of the Pentagon’s annual spending now goes to private contractors — up from 41% in the 1990s.

The top Pentagon contractors’ revenues and stock prices also skyrocketed as they’ve begun to devour an ever-larger share of the military budget. They converted their revenue from the military into line-items on their own budgets that do nothing to improve U.S. national security. They hired armies of lobbyists that now outnumber all members of Congress by a nearly two-to-one margin; billions of dollars in stock buybacks; and, of-course, CEO compensation packages on par with those of NFL quarterbacks.

The contrast of these CEOs’ rock-star lifestyles — Lords of War reveals that one chief executive bought pop star Lenny Kravitz’s Miami mansion — with those of the military servicemembers they purport to serve is striking. As the film notes, Lockheed Martin’s CEO, Marilyn Hewson, received $33.7 million in compensation in 2015, which is more than 150 times as much as the average compensation package for an enlisted servicemember. While Hewson and other Pentagon contractor CEOs have been buying-up mansions, the basic pay of servicemembers has been relatively stagnant for the past 20 years when controlling for inflation.

Worse, the conditions servicemembers have been living in are deteriorating. A 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office found that two-thirds of servicemembers think their housing is unaffordable. And servicemembers often face “long commutes, leave families behind in other states, and work 2 jobs to afford housing,” according to the GAO report.

A July 2026 Senate investigation, meanwhile, revealed dangerous living conditions at military bases in Georgia, including “reports of lead exposure affecting newborn health, severe mold contamination leading to emergency room visits, flooding in living areas, and more.”

Wartime environments have been no better, as evidenced by the deplorable conditions — including food shortages and inoperable plumbing — during the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln’s extended deployment near Iran, which ultimately led multiple sailors to attempt to jump overboard.

Unfortunately, it’s your tax dollars that are paying for this gaping chasm between the lives of contractor CEOs and the troops. As one of the stars of Lords of War notes in a quick cut that seamlessly blends the rabid patriotism of a Top Gun montage with the horrors inflicted in Gaza, “It’s thanks to your generosity in the form of tax dollars that these illustrious executives are on the case.”

“Lords of War” is one of the few films about the military-industrial complex that you find hilarious, but its subject is no laughing matter. The private firms we’re entrusting with U.S. national security are doing more to defend their own share prices than they are to defend the nation. If we keep trusting this broken system to keep us safe, then, ultimately, the joke is on us.