"As each of these domains becomes
enlarged and centralized, the consequences of its activities become greater,
and its traffic with the others increases. The decisions of a handful of
corporations bear upon military and political as well as upon economic
developments around the world. The decisions of the military establishment
rest upon and grievously affect political life as well as the very level
of economic activity. The decisions made within the political domain determine
economic activities and military programs. There is no longer, on the one
hand, an economy, and, on the other hand, a political order containing
a military establishment unimportant to politics and to money-making. There
is a political economy linked, in a thousand ways, with military institutions
and decisions. On each side of the world-split running through central
Europe and around the Asiatic rimlands, there is an ever-increasing interlocking
of economic, military, and political structures. If there is government
intervention in the corporate economy, so is there corporate intervention
in the governmental process. In the structural sense, this triangle of
power is the source of the interlocking directorate that is most important
for the historical structure of the present" (The Power
Elite, 1956, pp. 7-8).