There is no plausible theory under which the record of the Pentagon Papers can be interpreted as relating to the national defense.
That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques the process of privatization, highlighting the method used to transition public services to private ownership.
Noam Chomsky's quote explains a strategic approach to privatization wherein a public service is deliberately underfunded and neglected to incite frustration among the public. This anger then paves the way for privatization, allowing private entities to take over services that were once publicly managed, often with the promise of efficiency or better management, but usually at the cost of accessibility and quality for ordinary people.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a political debate about the future of public services, one might quote Chomsky to highlight the dangers of privatization.
More from Noam Chomsky
All quotes βThe 'free-floating intellectual' may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.
If you're teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.
There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster;' instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.
The Republican Party has become overwhelmingly so extreme that it's hardly a traditional political party anymore.
There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information - the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.
Similar quotes
A good government may, indeed, redress the grievances of an injured people; but a strong people can alone build up a great nation.
Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop. All that progressives ask or desire is permission-in an era when 'development,' 'evolution,' is the scientific word-to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.
I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today.
The socialism of centralised state control of industry and production, is dead. It misunderstood the nature and development of a modern market economy. It failed to recognise that the state and public sector can become a vested interest capable of oppression as much as the vested interests of wealth and capital. it was based on a false view of class that became too rigid to explain or illuminate the nature of class division today.
Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen's faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.
I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.