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
The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.
We've come to be consumed by a 24-hour, slash-and-burn, negative ad, bickering, small-minded politics that doesn't move us forward. Sometimes one side is up and the other side is down. But there's no sense that they are coming together in a common-sense, practical, nonideological way to solve the problems that we face.
No part of the education of a politician is more indispensable than the fighting of elections.
I was no party man myself, and the first wish of my heart was, if parties did exist, to reconcile them.
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States.