Although some members of the general public might have raised an eyebrow upon hearing Ike's "Farewell Address," the speech surely rustled the jimmies of anyone involved in the military-industrial complex. A lot of those people probably thought they were just patriotic Americans helping the country defend their freedoms, and here was Ike talking about how dangerous that business was.

Just kidding—they knew they were in it for the money.

Nowadays, Ike's "Farewell Address" is almost exclusively mentioned in conversations about the military-industrial complex (a phrase now in common usage thanks to Ike), American military interventionism, and the massive military/defense budget the U.S. has to this day. But is anyone answering his challenge to decide how much is too much?

As his granddaughter Susan Eisenhower pointed out in 2011, the arms industry has kept expanding beyond what Ike could ever have imagined. In the decade after 2001, the defense budget more than doubled. We spend more on defense than the rest of the world put together and allocations for defense spending outpace diplomatic budgets by a mile. (Source) Not to mention the financial meltdown of 2008, which was in part was a result of that greed and over-consumption that Ike warned about in his last address.

Ike looked earnest and convincing at the time of the speech. Today he looks like a genius.