Politics & Power Quote by George Wald

“So-called defense” is the dagger here: Wald isn’t disputing that a nation needs security; he’s disputing the branding. By putting “defense” in verbal quotation marks, he frames the category as a political spell word that turns any spending into unquestionable virtue. The move is classic scientist-as-citizen rhetoric: strip away the euphemism, replace it with numbers, and force the listener to see policy as measurable trade-offs rather than patriotic posture.

The percentages do double duty. “Sixty per cent of the national budget” lands like an ethical accusation about priorities inside government; “twelve per cent of the Gross National Product” widens the blast radius to the whole society. Wald is saying: this isn’t just a line item, it’s a defining national project. The subtext is austerity by another name: if defense eats the budget, everything else is implicitly on a diet - schools, public health, housing, research, the infrastructure of ordinary life. A scientist pointing this out also carries an extra sting: he’s speaking from inside the ecosystem that military spending often bankrolls, especially in Cold War America.

Context matters. Wald, a Nobel-winning biologist and outspoken critic of the Vietnam War and militarism, is speaking into an era when “national security” was used to launder intervention abroad and expand the permanent defense apparatus at home. His intent is to puncture complacency: once you see the scale, you can’t pretend it’s merely protection. It’s governance by weaponized priorities.