(Zero Hedge)—The world now teeters dangerously close to a major military conflict. This brewing storm of global unrest in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the South China Sea signals a chilling reminder of the world on fire.
The shift towards a multipolar world has led to a surge in military spending by countries. New data from the Financial Times reveals that the world’s top defense firms have been bombarded with orders from tanks to fighter jets to missiles.
Britain’s BAE Systems, South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace, and the United State’s Lockheed Martin, along with twelve other defense firms, were found to have combined order backlogs of $777.6 billion at the end of 2022, up from $701.2 billion two years earlier – or about a 10% increase.
During the first half of 2023, the combined backlogs for the top 15 defense companies reached $765 billion, driven by surging war risk in Ukraine and the South China Sea, which forced governments to continue placing orders. The explosion of a possible regional conflict in the Middle East will likely result in surging orders in 2024.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, total global military spending increased 3.7% in real terms in 2022 to a new record high of $2.24 trillion.
Defense stocks have soared as war risk surges. MSCI’s global defense benchmark is up 14% on the year and breaking out to new highs.
A breakdown of individual defense firms on a year-over-year price change since January 2022 shows monster gains across the board.
“The reality is lead times for policymaking, budgets and placing orders are so long that the invasion of almost two years ago is only just appearing in orders and barely in revenues, except for a few shorter-cycle specialists such as Rheinmetall,” Nick Cunningham, analyst at Agency Partners, said.
The order pipeline for defense firms will remain robust as the realities of a multipolar world continue to emerge.
Independent Journalism Is Dying
Ever since President Trump’s miraculous victory, we’ve heard an incessant drumbeat about how legacy media is dying. This is true. The people have awakened to the reality that they’re being lied to by the self-proclaimed “Arbiters of Truth” for the sake of political expediency, corporate self-protection, and globalist ambitions.
But even as independent journalism rises to fill the void left by legacy media, there is still a huge challenge. Those at the top of independent media like Joe Rogan, Dan Bongino, and Tucker Carlson are thriving and rightly so. They have earned their audience and the financial rewards that come from it. They’ve taken risks and worked hard to get to where they are.
For “the rest of us,” legacy media and their proxies are making it exceptionally difficult to survive, let alone thrive. They still have a stranglehold over the “fact checkers” who have a dramatic impact on readership and viewership. YouTube, Facebook, and Google still stifle us. The freer speech platforms like Rumble and 𝕏 can only reward so many of their popular content creators. For independent journalists on the outside looking in, our only recourse is to rely on affiliates and sponsors.
But even as it seems nearly impossible to make a living, there are blessings that should not be disregarded. By highlighting strong sponsors who share our America First worldview, we have been able to make lifelong connections and even a bit of revenue to help us along. This is why we enjoy symbiotic relationships with companies like MyPillow, Jase Medical, and Promised Grounds. We help them with our recommendations and they reward us with money when our audience buys from them.
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Even our faith-driven precious metals sponsor helps us tremendously while also helping Americans protect their life’s savings. We are blessed to work with them.
Independent media is the future. In many ways, that future is already here. While the phrase, “the more the merrier,” does not apply to this business because there are still some bad actors in the independent media field, there are many great ones that do not get nearly enough attention. We hope to change that one content creator at a time.
Thank you and God Bless,
JD Rucker
