The mass media are reporting that the Biden camp has selected former general Lloyd J. Austin III to be the next secretary of defense, assuaging fears among antiwar activists that the position would go to bloodthirsty psychopath Michele Flournoy as commonly predicted.

As has become the standard ritual for Biden's cabinet picks, the mass media are holding a parade to celebrate the fact that Austin would be the first black chief of the US war machine, while virtually ignoring the murderous agendas he has facilitated throughout his career. As head of Central Command, Austin actively campaigned to resurrect the Pentagon's spectacularly failed program of trying to arm "rebels" in Syria to fight ISIS, and in 2014 he backed immunity for US troops from war crimes prosecutions by the government of Afghanistan. He helped spearhead the Iraq invasion, and he is a member of the same private equity fund which invests in defense contractors as Flournoy and Biden's warmongering pick for secretary of state, Tony Blinken.

Austin is also a member of the board of directors for the war profiteering corporation Raytheon, where he went immediately after his military career. Raytheon spends millions of dollars a year actively lobbying the US government to advance policies which are beneficial to the multibillion-dollar arms manufacturing giant, which of course means lobbying for military expansionism and interventionism. The previous secretary of defense, Mark Esper, also worked for Raytheon, spending years as one of the top corporate lobbyists in DC under the position of 'Vice President for Government Relations'.