Glenn Greenwald: Defense budget is spent 'spying on American citizens' rather than defending the nation

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Greenwald: 'Massive defense budget' isn't spent on protecting America

Journalist joins 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' to discuss the growing number of cyberattacks against the US

Journalist Glenn Greenwald joined "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Thursday to discuss where the nation’s "massive defense budget" is largely being spent.

GLENN GREENWALD: It’s obviously bizarre in the sense that we’re constantly talking about our massive defense budget. We spend ten times more on defense than the next 12 countries combined. It is run through the Department of Defense, constantly this world is invoked to justify these huge bureaucracies and huge military budgets. We have to defend the country and yet when you look at the defense budget very little of it is about defense. Things like protecting our industries, our food supply and energy supply from actual hacks. Spending money to fortify these systems that would be defense. There’s very little spent on that. You see this over and over. When I did the Snowden reporting in 2013, which is about eight years ago when that report came out, $75 billion was spent on the intelligence budget. Almost all on spying on American citizens, hacking into the systems of other countries. Virtually none was spent on defending our own country. Even during Russiagate, all the hysteria about the Russians attacking our election system, Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said if you’re worried about it, pass a bill to provide paper ballots to make sure there was no hacking. There was no interest in that. It seems like there’s a real interest in hyping this enemy constantly creating new programs and bureaucracies that take billions of dollars. But simple solutions to actually provide defense don’t generate much interest in Washington.

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