The Business of War: Who Profits and Who Pays

On a quiet spring morning in 2024, global stock markets surged — not because of a tech breakthrough or diplomatic accord, but because a drone strike in the Middle East triggered fears of supply disruption in the oil markets. Within hours, defense stocks rose, oil prices spiked, and futures traders cashed in.

In a world where news of conflict sends investors into a frenzy, it’s time to ask a troubling question: has war become too good for business to give up?

The post-World War II era was supposed to usher in global peace, bolstered by multilateral institutions, diplomacy, and disarmament. Instead, the 21st century has made war not just persistent — but profitable. Across continents and sectors, conflict has become an economic engine, fueling industries, generating jobs, and driving innovation. But the profits don’t trickle down equally. If anything, war’s dividends are concentrated — and its costs are widely dispersed.

From Missiles to Markets: The Industrialization of Conflict

The numbers speak volumes. Global defense spending hit a record $2.44 trillion in 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. That figure doesn’t just reflect traditional warfare — it’s about cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, surveillance, autonomous drones, and space militarization.

Major defense contractors — Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems — reported bumper profits even as public infrastructure in their home countries struggled for funding. Their contracts, often backed by taxpayer money, are rarely subjected to the scrutiny faced by public health or education budgets.

Why? Because fear sells.

And in today’s media-saturated world, where a missile test in North Korea or a skirmish on the Russia-Ukraine front dominates the headlines, policymakers find it politically easier to boost military budgets than to invest in peacetime initiatives.

War, it seems, is no longer an aberration. It is policy — and business.

The Global Supply Chain of Blood and Steel

The war economy is global. When conflict breaks out, it creates winners and losers far beyond the battlefield.

Consider the Russia-Ukraine war. It devastated Eastern Europe but sent wheat prices soaring in Africa and oil profits skyrocketing in the Gulf. Grain traders in Chicago made billions off food insecurity in Sudan. LNG (liquefied natural gas) exporters from the U.S. struck new long-term deals with Europe as it weaned off Russian gas.

The economic logic is cold, but efficient: instability in one region translates into opportunity in another.

In Yemen, war has created a thriving black market in arms and oil. In Sudan, militia control over gold mines has become a new currency of war. In Gaza, reconstruction after destruction fuels a cycle of contractors and aid agencies, many of them international, who rely — ironically — on conflict continuing.

And while these forces profit, it is often the poorest, most vulnerable communities — women, children, migrants — who lose their homes, their futures, their peace.

A New Digital Warfront

The battlefield is also digital now. Every major conflict today has a cyber dimension — whether it’s Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure or North Korea’s attempts to infiltrate Western financial systems.

Cybersecurity has become a trillion-dollar industry. Governments and corporations are pouring money into digital defense. Surveillance technology companies — some of them operating in a legal grey zone — are exporting facial recognition tools and spyware to regimes accused of suppressing dissent.

The line between private security and public coercion is increasingly blurred. And as states adopt the tools of war to control their own populations, civil liberties are caught in the crossfire.

In authoritarian states, digital repression is sold as “national security.” In democracies, it’s called “public safety.” But the tools are the same — and the suppliers are making a killing.

The Hidden Hand Behind the Chaos

Here lies the darkest truth about war economics: conflict is not always accidental. Sometimes, it is nurtured, prolonged, or provoked — not for ideology, but for interest.

Arms manufacturers lobby for defense budgets. Resource companies benefit from failed states that allow easier extraction. Private military contractors operate with minimal oversight in conflict zones, often profiting from instability.

Even humanitarian industries can become complicit. International NGOs require crises to exist. Reconstruction companies sign contracts before bombs have stopped falling. “Stability” is less profitable than a long war that doesn’t quite end.

And in some cases, governments themselves — pressured by strategic interests or corporate lobbies — choose escalation over resolution. Because in the economy of war, ceasefires don’t move the needle.

Who Pays the Real Cost?

In 2023, the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide reached a staggering 117 million — a direct consequence of wars and political violence. That number isn’t abstract. It’s etched on the faces of children growing up in refugee camps, women navigating war zones without food or healthcare, and young men recruited into militias for lack of alternatives.

It is the Global South — from Tigray to Myanmar, from Gaza to Aleppo — that bears the humanitarian brunt of conflicts engineered, supplied, or financed elsewhere.

Mental health scars are generational. War trauma doesn’t disappear when the guns fall silent. It persists in broken families, shattered economies, and disillusioned youth.

The loss isn’t just human. It’s developmental. Every dollar spent on bombs is a dollar not spent on schools, hospitals, or climate action.

Can There Be a Peace Economy?

This raises a vital question: can we imagine an economy that profits from peace instead?

It’s not a utopian idea. After World War II, the Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe with investments in infrastructure and cooperation. Today, green technologies, education, and public health could be alternative engines of economic growth — if they received even a fraction of the attention and budgets that warfare commands.

But peace doesn’t have a PR machine. There are no lobbyists in Washington or New Delhi pushing for disarmament. No speculative futures market for reconciliation.

That’s why a new generation of policymakers, economists, and citizens must push for a shift in incentives — where peace pays and war costs. Where ethical investments include not just ESG (Environment, Social, Governance), but also “conflict transparency.” Where journalists, educators, and civic institutions hold warmongers — and war profiteers — to account.

The Final Irony

In many ways, war economics mirrors the larger paradoxes of capitalism: efficiency without empathy, growth without justice, innovation without restraint.

It’s a system that rewards fear over hope — and noise over negotiation.

But it is not inevitable. The forces profiting from war are not natural laws; they are human institutions, political choices, market dynamics — all of which can be changed.

The business of war may be booming. But the price is being paid by billions who never signed the contract.

By Shashi Singh