In 1992
The Brothers Blue
Knew that unmanned aerial behicals, UAVs, drones, were going to be the next big thing.
Happens that back in the 1980s an Israeli, Abroham Karem, helped design Israel's first drones for use in the Yom Kippur war. Karem set up a small shop with DARPA funding to replicate and improve the technology on U.S, soil. Karem's little thingamabob was called "The Predator". But the Predator was going nowhere until the Blues, Neal and Linden, came along with their man, former Navy admiral Thomas J. Cassidy Jr.
Guv'ment lobbying big time:
A 2006 investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that General Atomics was among the biggest sponsors of congressional trips, outspending other defense contractors by 50 times or more--and that's not counting the roughly $2.5 million a year it spends on lobbying.
Paying off big time: public data show General Atomics took in just under $5 billion from U.S. taxpayers from 2000 to 2009, with current annual revenue estimated at between $600 million and $1 billion, about 80 percent coming from government defense contracts.
General Atomics now dominates 25% of the UAV market. And they are headed to dominate more with a stealth jet bomber drone that will compete with Lockheed Martin's RQ–170 Sentinel.
According to James Risen, Pay Any Price: greed, power and endless war, 2014:
The Blue brothers are among the oligarchs of 9/11, the people who have earned vast wealth from businesses involved in the nation's most controversial counterterror policies and programs. There is an entire class of wealthy company owners, corporate executives, and investors who have gotten rich by enabling the American government to turn to the dark side. But they have done so quietly. They have largely avoided the scrutiny and infamy that dragged down the post 9/11 operators who garnered too much attention, like Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater. The new quiet oligarchs just keep making money.
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