Wikipedia

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Language and linguistics

The following discussions are requested to have community-wide attention: You can sign up to receive a user talk page invitation to participate in discussions of interest to you, see Wikipedia:Feedback request service

Talk:Military–industrial complex

Which should we use: A or B?

A: The speech was authored by Ralph E. Williams and Malcolm Moos and was foreshadowed by a passage in the 1954 book Power Through Purpose coauthored by Moos. The degree to which Eisenhower and his brother Milton shaped the speech is unclear from surviving documents. Planning commenced in early 1959; however, the earliest archival evidence of a military-industrial complex theme is a late-1960 memo by Williams that includes the phrase war based industrial complex. A wide range of interpretations have been made of the speech's meaning. Looking back in 1985, Williams wrote that he was "astonished" at the attention given to the military-industrial complex sound bite, saying that it "has been distorted beyond recognition ... it became red meat for the media".[1]

B: The phrase was thought to have been "war-based" industrial complex before becoming "military", a claim passed on only by oral history.[2]:111 Geoffrey Perret, in his biography of Eisenhower, claims that in one draft of the speech, the phrase was "military–industrial–congressional complex", indicating the role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry, but the word "congressional" was dropped from the final version.[3] James Ledbetter calls this a "stubborn misconception" not supported by any evidence.[4] The actual authors of the speech were Eisenhower's speechwriters Ralph E. Williams and Malcolm Moos.[5] Uhoj (talk) 20:40, 13 October 2025 (UTC)


  1. ^ Ledbetter, James (2011). "5: The Speech". Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex. Yale University Press. pp. 106–131. ISBN 978-0-300-15305-7.
  2. ^ Ledbetter, James (2011). Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-15305-7.
  3. ^ Geoffrey, Perret (1999). Eisenhower. New York: Random House. ISBN 0375500464.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  4. ^ Ledbetter, James (25 January 2011). "Guest Post: 50 Years of the "Military–Industrial Complex"". Schott's Vocab. New York Times. Retrieved 25 January 2011.
  5. ^ Griffin, Charles "New Light on Eisenhower's Farewell Address", in Presidential Studies Quarterly 22 (Summer 1992): 469–479