The previous sections documented what Americans paid and what they received. The costs were in trillions of dollars. The returns were zero. This raises an obvious question: if the public did not benefit, who did?
The answer is documented in contract records, corporate revenues, and payment structures. One group received direct, reliable, and substantial financial benefit from post-9/11 regime-change wars: defense contractors and associated security industries.
This section documents how that transfer of public wealth to private contractors occurred, using the same accounting standards applied to public costs and returns.