Ben Freeman is the director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, where his team works to expose how special interests and foreign governments are influencing US public policy. Ben’s work builds upon his book, The Foreign Policy Auction, the first one to systematically analyze the foreign influence industry in the US. Earlier, he was the director and founder of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy. Ben is an expert on the US defense budget and lectures on the topic for the Institute for Defense and Business. He earned his PhD from Texas A&M University, where he also taught in the Political Science Department and the Bush School of Government and Public Policy. Ben’s work has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and he has testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. His latest book is The Trillion Dollar War Machine, which Ben has co-authored with William Hartung.