In “The Secret of Directional Investing,” longtime political columnist and former White House staffer James Pinkerton offers a guidebook for making money. By spotting and shaping future economic and political trends, Pinkerton argues, you can leave Warren Buffet’s investment magic in the dust by, for example, investing in custom-tailored medical care made possible by AI.

As the Danish proverb goes, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” Historians have forecast many turns in history that didn’t turn. After Hiroshima, Nagasaki and “Atoms for Peace,” Chairman Lewis Strauss of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954 predicted the future would see unmetered nuclear energy and an end to famine: “It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter, will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history…”

We are still awaiting the chairman’s utopia.

Pinkerton is much more than a modern-day Nostradamus. With his keen insight, guided by the bright light of experience, he offers multiple appealing opportunities to become ultra-rich. But his investment canvas for the future seems incomplete.

He neglects the role of the multitrillion-dollar military-industrial-security complex and the surveillance state in tomorrow’s investment landscape. They grow annually by leaps and bounds, with overwhelming bipartisan support, to fortify the American empire in its quest for a risk-free existence. Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s “One Percent Doctrine” is now orthodoxy, i.e., preemptively attacking and destroying every 1% risk.

The yearly national security budget in the United States now tops $1 trillion, and developing more proficient means of killing humans is a permanent and global growth industry. Defense contractors like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics are too big and important to fail. Just look at how the Nixon administration bailed out Lockheed in 1971 with a $250 million loan guarantee. Today, Lockheed’s F-35 program is projected to cost the United States more than $2 trillion. With government support and limited oversight of spending on state secrets, there will never be a recession in the military-industrial-security complex.

The surveillance state is similar. The American empire pursues limitless spying and data collection at home and abroad. The objective is to bring the risk of another 9/11 to zero, even if it means targeting the infinite “not-yet-guilty” targets of the government’s scrutiny.

Commercial data storage centers to meet the surveillance state’s hunger for data are soaring, with marquee companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook leading the way. In 2023, the U.S. data center construction market was valued at more than $24 billion, and it’s projected to grow to more than $47 billion by 2029. In the digital age, everyone leaves endless digital footprints that can be retrieved and evaluated by commercial companies for targeted advertising.

Besides Pinkerton’s neglect of these goliath industries, I would quibble with him in only a few respects. One is his prediction that the federal government will be eclipsed by the states. The annual budget of the former has mushroomed to more than $6 trillion — more than a fifth of gross domestic product. The national debt has spiked to nearly $35 trillion and is climbing. Federal lawmakers treat a decrease in the rate of spending as if it were a budget cut. The administrative state grows like bamboo. The Code of Federal Regulations sports a staggering 200,000 pages with thousands more on the way.

As Ronald Reagan once observed, “Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.” Our leaders have little desire to downsize government and diminish their own power and celebrity.

With all this said, “The Secret of Directional Investing” is a must-read for those who want to see the future of money-making and prosperity. But wasn’t the United States born of more lofty stuff, of a quest for justice and celebration of the march of the mind? The Founding Fathers knew of the fate of the 3,000 idolaters who prayed at the golden calf while Moses conversed with God on Mount Sinai, and of the money-changers driven from the Temple by Jesus. James Madison instructed in Federalist No. 51, “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society.”

I would urge Pinkerton, with his considerable and unique talents, to consider a sequel book, “The Secret of Liberty,” to complement “The Secret of Directional Investing.” Both will sparkle on bookshelves.

Bruce Fein (X: @brucefeinesq; www.lawofficesofbrucefein.com) was associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and is author of “American Empire Before the Fall.”