The actual cost to the U.S. federal government of the war against terror is a subject of many heated debates in the halls of Congress. Estimates range from anywhere between the $700 Billion according to the Congressional Research Service, to $4 Trillion according to some private analysts. HSRC’s own analysts estimated a figure of $2.4 Trillion per the calculations in the table below. With so much of the variance due to accounting assumptions, a consensus on the actual amount is likely never to be reached. However, with an estimated one third of that budget ending up in the private market, what is clear is that a market of dozens to hundreds of billions of dollars has already emerged as a result of this war.
