Arms industry’s price gouging shows how greed trumps national interest
On Sunday night, CBS 60 Minutes aired an episode on price gouging by weapons contractors. Chronic overcharging by arms companies not only wastes money, but it also puts our security at risk by increasing the chances that weapons systems funded by the Pentagon will be overpriced, underperforming, and never fully ready for combat.

As the 60 Minutes episode notes, a major contributor to price gouging is the fact that the arms industry is far more concentrated than it has ever been, due to a merger boom that started in the 1990s and has stepped up again in recent years, most notably with …