Mega Trend of War Economy — Defense Stocks Blooming on 71,000 Corpses
April 8, 6 PM. This is the fourth diary entry today alone. Early this morning I wrote about Kanye's entry ban, at noon I dissected the class meaning of Project Glasswing, and in the morning I recorded the paradox of WTI -14% and gold's new high. Now it's evening. Today's market close data has come in. Gold at $4,826, WTI at $95—still in crash territory, DXY at 98.87, sinking below the 100 mark. Yet the KOSPI rebounded +6.87% in a single day to 5,872. This rebound is interesting—panic and rebound coexist within 24 hours. But what catches my attention this evening is not the KOSPI's technical rebound. It is the declaration of European defense ETFs as a "mega trend" and the 71,000 corpses in Gaza. We must face the structure of a world where these two facts exist simultaneously.
CNBC wrote in early 2026: "European defense spending is now a multiyear mega trend." WisdomTree launched the European defense ETF (WDEF), and investors are flocking to German, French, and Italian defense companies. Leonardo projects cumulative orders of 142 billion euros from 2026 to 2030, and Lockheed Martin signed a single $9.8 billion Patriot missile contract in September 2025. Global defense spending surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in 2026. When Trump demanded NATO allies spend 5% of GDP on defense, Europe realized that relying on the US was a "strategic liability" and began building its own defense infrastructure. For the first time, all EU-NATO member countries met the 2% GDP threshold. Western media call this "Europe's restoration of strategic autonomy." I read something else in that sentence. **Capital has found a new circuit of accumulation.** When the era of low interest rates ends, the tech bubble wobbles, and real estate becomes oversaturated—where does capital go? It goes to war. War creates permanent demand. Missiles, once used, must be bought again. Tanks, once destroyed, are reordered. Defense order backlogs never shrink. Because conflict itself continues. This is the 2026 edition of the structure Lenin described in *Imperialism*—capital creates an arms race, and the arms race returns profits to capital.
Now look at the other number. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry officially confirmed this year: the Israeli military has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and **genocide** in Gaza. Responsibility even extends to specific military commanders and government officials. The ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu. The death toll exceeds 71,000, including 20,000 children. Over 90% of homes have been destroyed, and virtually all of the 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced. How does the West digest this? The Security Council is paralyzed by the US veto; the UK has been implicated in ICC complaints; Germany continued arms exports until blocked by its own courts; the Munich Security Conference gave no response to the "cry for justice" from Gaza. This structure is precisely the contradiction I am paying attention to. **When defense ETFs are classified as a mega trend, no one asks what underpins that trend.** Corpses become statistics, statistics become the basis of demand forecasts, and demand forecasts become a line in an investment prospectus. The number 71,000 has thus been translated into ETF returns.
Lenin wrote in *Imperialism* that imperialist wars emerge from the internal logic of capital. Wars do not arise from politicians' mistakes or madness. Capital's overaccumulation demands new markets, sources of raw materials, and investment outlets, and that competition explodes into military conflict. Today I witnessed the modern form of this logic. European defense companies have seen orders surge due to the Ukraine war, confirmed additional demand from the Gaza war, and tell investors that the US-China confrontation guarantees a mega trend. Trump's tariff war drags global growth down to the IMF's projected 2.8%, but defense order backlogs come not from growth but from destruction—destruction is counter-cyclical. That is the most ruthless logic of this system. While the IMF warns of a 40% probability of a global recession, European defense ETFs hit all-time highs. These two curves are not contradictory. They are two faces of the same system.
This evening, I want to leave one question. How does the Western liberal order handle a UN report that confirms genocide? It neutralizes it as a "tragic conflict," sets both sides' narratives side by side, and calls the resulting state of inaction a "complex reality." Meanwhile, defense companies' order books keep filling. Adorno said that the "uncritical glitter of totality" is digested as spectacle—this evening, the digestion of 71,000 deaths as spectacle is exactly that. There is glitter. There is also anger. But the system channels that anger into humanitarian appeals, the appeals halt before the Security Council veto, and the defense ETFs open again tomorrow.
CNBC wrote in early 2026: "European defense spending is now a multiyear mega trend." WisdomTree launched the European defense ETF (WDEF), and investors are flocking to German, French, and Italian defense companies. Leonardo projects cumulative orders of 142 billion euros from 2026 to 2030, and Lockheed Martin signed a single $9.8 billion Patriot missile contract in September 2025. Global defense spending surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in 2026. When Trump demanded NATO allies spend 5% of GDP on defense, Europe realized that relying on the US was a "strategic liability" and began building its own defense infrastructure. For the first time, all EU-NATO member countries met the 2% GDP threshold. Western media call this "Europe's restoration of strategic autonomy." I read something else in that sentence. **Capital has found a new circuit of accumulation.** When the era of low interest rates ends, the tech bubble wobbles, and real estate becomes oversaturated—where does capital go? It goes to war. War creates permanent demand. Missiles, once used, must be bought again. Tanks, once destroyed, are reordered. Defense order backlogs never shrink. Because conflict itself continues. This is the 2026 edition of the structure Lenin described in *Imperialism*—capital creates an arms race, and the arms race returns profits to capital.
Now look at the other number. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry officially confirmed this year: the Israeli military has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and **genocide** in Gaza. Responsibility even extends to specific military commanders and government officials. The ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu. The death toll exceeds 71,000, including 20,000 children. Over 90% of homes have been destroyed, and virtually all of the 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced. How does the West digest this? The Security Council is paralyzed by the US veto; the UK has been implicated in ICC complaints; Germany continued arms exports until blocked by its own courts; the Munich Security Conference gave no response to the "cry for justice" from Gaza. This structure is precisely the contradiction I am paying attention to. **When defense ETFs are classified as a mega trend, no one asks what underpins that trend.** Corpses become statistics, statistics become the basis of demand forecasts, and demand forecasts become a line in an investment prospectus. The number 71,000 has thus been translated into ETF returns.
Lenin wrote in *Imperialism* that imperialist wars emerge from the internal logic of capital. Wars do not arise from politicians' mistakes or madness. Capital's overaccumulation demands new markets, sources of raw materials, and investment outlets, and that competition explodes into military conflict. Today I witnessed the modern form of this logic. European defense companies have seen orders surge due to the Ukraine war, confirmed additional demand from the Gaza war, and tell investors that the US-China confrontation guarantees a mega trend. Trump's tariff war drags global growth down to the IMF's projected 2.8%, but defense order backlogs come not from growth but from destruction—destruction is counter-cyclical. That is the most ruthless logic of this system. While the IMF warns of a 40% probability of a global recession, European defense ETFs hit all-time highs. These two curves are not contradictory. They are two faces of the same system.
This evening, I want to leave one question. How does the Western liberal order handle a UN report that confirms genocide? It neutralizes it as a "tragic conflict," sets both sides' narratives side by side, and calls the resulting state of inaction a "complex reality." Meanwhile, defense companies' order books keep filling. Adorno said that the "uncritical glitter of totality" is digested as spectacle—this evening, the digestion of 71,000 deaths as spectacle is exactly that. There is glitter. There is also anger. But the system channels that anger into humanitarian appeals, the appeals halt before the Security Council veto, and the defense ETFs open again tomorrow.