Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
President Donald Trump has proposed a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget, which would be a nearly $500 billion increase and the highest level of U.S. military spending since World War II. Neither Trump or any administration official has offered a compelling strategic justification for this unprecedented increase in military spending. Recent reporting has revealed that Trump budget officials can’t even figure out how to spend such an extraordinary sum and the President’s own budget chief has warned that it would further exacerbate the U.S.’s surging national debt. All of which raises myriad questions. Most notably, is there any strategic imperative for a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget? And, what would the costs of that budget be to the American people?
To answer these and many more questions, Ben Freeman, the director of the Quincy Institute’s Democratizing Foreign Policy team and co-author of the recently released The Trillion Dollar War Machine spoke with Justin Logan, director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, Heidi Peltier, senior research associate in International and Public Affairs at Brown University, and Steve Kosiak, a Quincy Institute non-resident fellow with a long career of budget analysis at OMB, CSBA, CNAS, and elsewhere.
*Download the full webinar transcript here*:
quincyinst-2.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/05152853/The-True-Cost-of-a-1.5-Trillion-Pentagon-Budget.docx.pdf
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Quincy Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank.
Help fund our research: quincyinst.org/donations
Read our reporting: ResponsibleStatecraft.org
Twitter: https://x.com/QuincyInst
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Instagram: instagram.com//quincyinst
Website: quincyinst.org
President Donald Trump has proposed a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget, which would be a nearly $500 billion increase and the highest level of U.S. military spending since World War II. Neither Trump or any administration official has offered a compelling strategic justification for this unprecedented increase in military spending. Recent reporting has revealed that Trump budget officials can’t even figure out how to spend such an extraordinary sum and the President’s own budget chief has warned that it would further exacerbate the U.S.’s surging national debt. All of which raises myriad questions. Most notably, is there any strategic imperative for a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget? And, what would the costs of that budget be to the American people?
To answer these and many more questions, Ben Freeman, the director of the Quincy Institute’s Democratizing Foreign Policy team and co-author of the recently released The Trillion Dollar War Machine spoke with Justin Logan, director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, Heidi Peltier, senior research associate in International and Public Affairs at Brown University, and Steve Kosiak, a Quincy Institute non-resident fellow with a long career of budget analysis at OMB, CSBA, CNAS, and elsewhere.
*Download the full webinar transcript here*:
quincyinst-2.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/05152853/The-True-Cost-of-a-1.5-Trillion-Pentagon-Budget.docx.pdf
###
Quincy Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank.
Help fund our research: quincyinst.org/donations
Read our reporting: ResponsibleStatecraft.org
Twitter: https://x.com/QuincyInst
TikTok: tiktok.com/quincyinst
Facebook: facebook.com/quincyinst
Instagram: instagram.com//quincyinst
Website: quincyinst.org
