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Since Donald Trump’s election, a number of Democrats have tried to cast themselves as leaders of the “resistance.” Few have done it with more gusto than Adam Schiff. The California representative has become something like the point man for all things Trump-Russia, using his position as the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Select Intelligence Committee to act as the “guardian against the [administration’s] worst abuses” and making television appearances and public statements to warn about the administration’s alleged ties to Russia. At the same time, Schiff has solidified his status as one of Congress’s leading anti-Russia hawks. He has ardently supported harsher sanctions on Russia, warned of future election interference by the Kremlin, and cautioned that its operatives are trying “to tear us apart” through their online activities. Last year, in response to the GOP’s decision not to endorse sending lethal arms to Ukraine in its platform — a policy he spent years working with Republicans like John McCain to push — he aggressively questioned those involved as part of the Trump-Russia investigation. Schiff’s alarmism has paid off for him personally, catapulting him to national prominence and supplying him a potent theme for fundraising. But it also has the potential to be profitable for another group: the arms manufacturers and military contractors that are among his biggest donors.

The Party Line Iraq isn’t the only Schiff-backed war Parsons has benefited from. After Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi was killed as a direct result of US intervention, the Pentagon hired Parsons to help the Libyans dispose of his chemical weapons. And Parsons equipment has already been sent to the Ukrainian government for defense purposes. Schiff’s public inflation of the Russian cyber-threat may also be serendipitous for the company, which over the past six years has been slowly pivoting away from construction toward cybersecurity and missile defense. It has hosted a Cyber Defense Exercise run by the NSA four years in a row, and recently acquired Williams Electric Co., which is set to boost its work in cybersecurity. Schiff, of course, has been a big backer of US intelligence agencies. Shortly after Trump’s election, he penned an open letter to the intelligence community in which he stressed that its “contribution remains more important to our national security than ever,” and paid tribute to its “commitment to the rule of law,” “unwavering patriotism,” and “sacrifice.” Elsewhere, he has said that criticizing the intelligence community “impairs our national security,” and rebuked Trump for impugning “the tens of thousands of Americans who are at work every day of the year, many in great physical danger, to protect us.” Other Schiff donors would also stand to profit from the military escalations he has supported. In fact, they’ve acknowledged that rising tensions with Russia are good for business, and in some cases have even called for the policy (allowing arms exports to Ukraine) for which Schiff has spent years advocating. As the Intercept’s Lee Fang reported last year, the Aerospace Industries Association, a lobby group that works on behalf of corporations like Lockheed and Raytheon, complained that the Pentagon wasn’t spending enough to resist “Russian aggression on NATO’s doorstep,” and one Raytheon board member called for the US to “raise the cost for what Russia is doing in Ukraine” because “even President Putin is sensitive to body bags.” Lockheed’s vice president of air and missile defense systems said at last year’s Paris Airshow that “the threat [from Russia and others] is absolutely increasing and it’s increasingly rapidly,” spurring greater interest in missile defense. While there, Raytheon’s president of integrated defense systems also commented that countries previously hadn’t been interested in missile defense because “they didn’t see Russia as a threat, but now that has changed.” “As a direct result of the threat dynamic that our customers are seeing, they want to have the ability to protect their sovereignty,” the company’s CEO told CNBC late last year. Similarly, the CEO and chairman of Nothrop Grumman informed investors last month that “the nature of the threat environment that we observe around the globe today” is going to feed into greater national security investment (from which the arms industry profited). And the CEO of Harris Corporation — which has already supplied $21 million worth of military radios to Ukrainian forces — said to investors on a conference call in January that the perceived Russian military threat was driving up demand for their radios. In fact, back in 2015, when the US government was looking to invest in countering Russian and Chinese competition in space, Harris capitalized by stepping up R&D in space protection. It won $184 million worth of government contracts for this purpose. Every one of these companies is a donor to Schiff.