"Bush official claims US built secret $21T underground ‘city’ for rich and powerful to live if ‘near-extinction event’ happens"
May 06, 2025
At first I was very, very skeptical of this. To spend a total of "$21 trillion" over eight years and keep it secret is, even for the federal government, unbelievable. But . ..
It's based on an investigation by Mark Skidmore who is a chaired professor of economics at Michigan State.
Professor Skidmore co-authored an article about it published in Forbes--one of three--with Lawrence Kotlikoff, who's an even better-known economist.
And we know that the Pentagon has recently had its "7th failed audit in a row, since the Department of Defense became required to undergo yearly-audits in 2018".
So there's maybe a small chance that it's partly true. (Where's DOGE when we need it?)
Note: in the second of the two Forbes articles referred to above Kotlikoff and Skidmore report testimony from the Comptroller of the Defense Dept that addresses the expenditures. The bottom line seems to be a claim that the missing money was just due to accounting adjustments. But that answer, without much further elaboration, doesn't satisfy Kotlikoff and Skidmore.