'I don't think the average American taxpayer got much out of Afghanistan' | John Sopko on America's Endless Wars
Former Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, John Sopko, joins Shane Smith for a conversation about Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and the trillion-dollar cycle of endless war.
After overseeing more than 700 investigations into waste, fraud, and abuse during the 20-year war in Afghanistan, John Sopko explains how America spent trillions, empowered corruption, radicalized populations, and repeated the same mistakes over and over again — while contractors, bureaucracies, and political interests kept the machine running.
Sopko warns that future wars will look nothing like Iraq or Afghanistan, and says the U.S. government is dangerously unprepared for the realities of drone warfare and artificial intelligence.
“It wasn’t just military contractors selling boots and guns and airplanes to the Afghan military, police, and government,” Sopko explained. “It was actually about 30 U.S. government agencies operating in Afghanistan.”
“You have the money going to fight the war- and that was almost $1 trillion. I don’t think the American taxpayer got much out of Afghanistan.”
This is one of the clearest insider accounts yet of how modern wars actually work, and who benefits from them. You won’t want to miss it.
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