A vision that has become more true than not. His words have not been heeded. We are more and more under the control of government funded science programs. NSA, climate change/green utopias, food pyramids/dietary standards, medical research, and more loom ever more intrusive in our daily lives.

The left always seemed to believe it was only a warning about a bloated military. As a result, they have worked at length, without heed for danger, to make it dangerously small. There was much bloat in the industrial complex that served the military. I saw a lot of it in the 60s and 70s, but that was slowly whittled away. Is there still too much fat? To be sure, but wherever government money and contracts are on offer, there will be con artists and thieves trying to get their share.

But above all, it is these words that have been most ignored:
"As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage."

It was good advice in 1960, and it is too bad nobody in the political establishment paid attention to it. However, it's water under the bridge now.

You didn't beat Hitler, Ike. The Russians did. And they bled for it, as did many other young men of the alliance. Meanwhile you could have repealed socialism security and the rest of the New Deal crap when you became President. But you didn't. Now my generation's retirement money got spent buying Democrat votes by LBJ and every pol since. I'll never forgive you or MacArthur or Patton for what you did to the Bonus Army.

All talk. Eisenhower did what all “conservatives” do: conserve his predecessor’s innovations. He did nothing to roll back the New Deal. Nixon did not roll back the New Frontier. Even Reagan left Carter’s Department of Education in place. Republicans and conservatives have been all talk since 1932.

It was never the military-industrial complex that was a threat. It has always been the political-industrial complex that threatens our existence with politics being the most threatening leg of the two. Politics tries to disarm us by "laws", then spy on us by usurping tech companies, and then will compromise the military by installing "political correctness" officers. As Diane West has pointed out in her new book it does seem that neither FDR, Truman, or Eisenhower lost any sleep over communists in the political system. And it is the political systems worldwide that have killed tens of millions of their own people. Neither industry or the military can operate without the ok of the political realm.

This is the same speech in which Eisenhower warned about the scientific-industrial complex which Al Gore has so successfully ridden to billions of dollars and dozens of accolades.