War machines fuse political, military, and mercantile authority into one organization.

Evidence

A war machine combines a plurality of functions. It has the features of a political organization and a mercantile company. It operates through capture and depredations and can even coin its own money. — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 129

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the privateering/mercenary literature and to Weberian questions about where legitimate violence actually resides. — connects to: War and politics are two codings of the same force relations — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 296; The war replaced heroic entrepreneurs with a private-public technostructure — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 146; Personnel rotation across military, political, academic, and corporate spheres sustains empire
• SEED: Potential angle: modern PMCs and armed corporations as contemporary war machines that already coin their own ‘money’ through logistics contracts and resource extraction.

Related

• The war replaced heroic entrepreneurs with a private-public technostructure (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• War and politics are two codings of the same force relations #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 296