The 2026 National Defense Authorization Act: MAGA Fascism and Trillions for the War Industry

The Resist US-Led War Movement sounds the alarm on the latest iteration of the $1 trillion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and new National Security Strategy (NSS) under the Trump regime.

US Presidents produce a NSS once every term. The NSS serves to present the U.S. war strategy and guides US led war strategy for the period.The one released by trump this December, is the first since Biden’s 2022 document, and lays out the military approach of the MAGA Trump policies. The new National Security Strategy boasts that the Trump administration "began strengthening our military with $1 trillion of investment and "got our allies to contribute more to our common defense", however it is with this massive spending bill that Trump seeks to codify many of his MAGA priorities, and the bi-partisan war machine.

The NDAA is the largest military spending bill that is passed annually with Republican and Democrat support to fund the US military, research and development, weapons production, soldiers salaries and often incorporates major new policy decisions. The final version goes through a "conference" to reconcile House and the Senate versions likely in December (or January if Congress can't finalize it, which could trigger another government shut down). This $1 trillion,will fuel the US budget for war, give military equipment and deploy soldiers against migrants in the US, fuel genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and will arm an aggressive imperialist US strategy for war against Venezuela, Iran, and across the Asia Pacific to provoke China.

Our movements should closely monitor the NDAA results and prepare ourselves to unite and fight against this terroristic and genocidal US war machine.

Convergence and the Hidden Consensus

The current stage of the NDAA bill has competing US House of Representatives and Senate versions for FY2026, typical of the US military budget process, but notably revealing a less than unified defense strategy and more a stark reflection of a fractured political landscape, where the military budget serves as a proxy for ideological warfare of two parts of the same elite and a vehicle for entrenched corporate interests.

Despite their stark differences in tone and partisan adornment, both bills reveal an underlying consensus that support US imperialism.

1. Both chambers propose authorizations near or above $900 billion, following the Trump budget of $1 trillion, a figure so vast it defies meaningful public scrutiny. The debate is never whether to spend this amount, but only how, ensuring a continuous flow of public funds to the war industry.
2. Both bills explicitly protect aging weapons systems including specific F-15 and F-22 models. This is a direct interest of for the congressional delegations from the districts where these systems are built and maintained, showcasing the power of pork-barrel politics in Congress.
3. Full funding for the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile and the Columbia-class submarine in both versions demonstrates the untouchable status of the nuclear modernization program. This is a triumph for the nuclear lobby, a coalition of laboratories, contractors, and strategists, for whom cost overruns and strategic debates are irrelevant next to the guarantee of continued funding for decades.

The Senate Bill
The Senate version, passing with a strong bipartisan majority of 77-20, presents a facade of consensus built on a foundation of keeping the military policy status quo. Its key interests are:
The bill's extensive "Pentagon Reform and Modernization" provisions, which repeal over 100 statutes to "streamline" acquisition, are a massive giveaway to major defense contractors. Framed as "efficiency," these measures systematically dismantle oversight and regulatory hurdles and a more profitable pipeline for weapons systems from contractors to the Pentagon. The establishment of "Portfolio Acquisition Executives with expanded authority" concentrates power, reducing accountability and increasing the industry's influence over procurement. This policy would take the Trump admin's "Transforming the Warfighting Acquisition System" memo and the proposed "FoRGED Act" to create high-level roles within the U.S. Department of Defense giving executives have significantly expanded authority compared to their predecessors, to streamline foreign military sales and weapons acquisition processes.

By requiring briefings before any troop withdrawal from Europe or South Korea and extending Ukraine security assistance, the Senate bill is a direct rebuke of the "America First" politics of the Trump administration which is distancing itself from rules based order and racing to a more aggressive and outright imperialist foreign policy. It codifies a bi-partisan commitment to a forward-deployed, alliance-heavy foreign policy, protecting the institutional interests of the State Department and Pentagon leadership against executive branch whims. This means more terrifying exercises, more drone and missile strikes and more intense experiences of militarism by the people in the regions.

Provisions for an artificial intellegence "sandbox", a new "Biotechnology Management Office," and expanded cyber authorities show a focus on co-opting and institutionalizing commercial tech innovation for military purposes fueling the most profitable war profiteers in the history of US war - high tech corporations. This serves the interests of both Silicon Valley and strategists within the Pentagon, ensuring the defense establishment maintains its technological edge by absorbing, privatizing and contracting to, rather than competing with, the private sector.

The House Bill:
By contrast, the House bill, passed along strict party lines, is a manifesto of the current Republican majority's priorities, where national defense is explicitly fused with the Trump administration's domestic political agenda. Its provisions expose a different set of interests:
The bill's most telling feature is the codification of 15 Trump-era executive orders. This transforms a defense authorization into a vehicle for implementing highly partisan cultural and fascist immigration policies, such as "Ending Radical DEI Programs" and enforcing border-related emergency declarations. The interest here goes beyond a "defense budget" to the cultural re-engineering of the military itself, aligning it with a specific MAGA political platform. The inclusion of "The Golden Dome for America" further signals a prioritization of Trump's signature, although fictional, promises.

1. The House bill takes a more aggressive and explicit stance against China, with outright bans on procurement and a hard deadline to "end critical material dependence by 2030". This serves the interests of economic nationalists and defense hawks who view economic decoupling with China as a core component of national security, although this is more of the US imperialists pipe dream of returning to a unilateral world order since it is being out-competed in the multilateral one today. Given how supply chains to produce for war are incredibly globalized, even the production process for mining, developing, testing and assembling the military's equipment cannot be genuinely decoupled. The $1 billion allocation for Taiwan is both a strategic signal and a direct provocation, reflecting the interest of those advocating for a more confrontational containment policy.
   
2. The bill also reflects a push towards faster war manufacturing, along the lines of the new cold war and arms race. The SPEED Act, which aims to cut acquisition timelines from three years to 90 days, along with the Defense Industrial Resilience Consortium, represents an aggressive, high-risk industrial policy. While also benefiting major contractors, the focus is on smaller, agile firms and a radical overhaul of the Pentagon's bureaucracy. Faced with the US's own stretched supply lines for its defense industry, these policy components push the WWII style "arsenal of democracy" industrial base, referring to the US ability to supply military equipment and technology to support democratic allies, even at the cost of thorough testing and oversight.
   

The final bill will be a product of negotiation between these competing visions, but the real, unspoken agreement is that the military-industrial complex itself and the flow of money and power it represents, remains the primary, bipartisan interest served.

Even the bills to end the government shut down bolstered the US military

The bills passed last week as part of the deal that ended the longest U.S. government shutdown in history include billions of dollars for major Air Force and Navy programs. This includes funds to build new aircraft carriers and submarines, facilities needed for new stealth bombers and nuclear missiles, and research and development spending to keep a major airborne command and control program alive.

When millions of people were struggling with bills, basic food budgets and healthcare access, due to the stranglehold of these power plays by the duolopoly of the Republicans and Democrats, the military budget still came out ahead in the end.

The 2026 NDAA process exposes a fundamental truth: the "defense" in its title is increasingly belicose and war mongering. While the American political system itself is confronted by abuses of power by the executive branch and illegal executive orders that attack migrants, order extrajudicial strikes murdering Venezuelan nationals, and a military that regularly commits evidenced war crimes and crimes against humanity, the defense budget puts the money behind this political agenda. The "rules based order" may be falling to pieces, but the military budget of the United States, driving this process will be backed by almost a trillion dollar arsenal to enforce its imperialist aims. The NDAA specifically, may codify many of Trump's unlawful executive orders, and give even more power to a fascist head of state and the ultra right wing priorities of the MAGA base. This budget continues to fuel a "war industry" that operates with minimal constraint to back up a fascist and aggressive US-led war strategy around the world.