Channeling Ike—Robert Gates's May 8 address at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, got passing attention from the media when he delivered it. Two months later, the speech has taken on a life of its own, in particular at the Pentagon, where it is read as a warning about out-of-control budgets, a dysfunctional appropriations process, and Congressional appropriators force-feeding generals weapons systems they have said they don't want.

Gates said that Eisenhower feared that the country could "turn into a muscle-bound garrison state — militarily strong, but economically stagnant and strategically insolvent."

Gates directed the CIA under George H. W. Bush, served as George W. Bush's defense secretary (replacing Donald Rumsfeld), and was asked by Barack Obama to stay on as secretary of defense. Yet his speech reads as if it were informed by the work of Colonel Andrew Bacevich (author of ).

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