In 1961, US President Dwight Eisenhower pointed to “the total influence” of a vast arms industry, which he famously called the military-industrial complex. He argued that the complex had undue influence on US policy. Making use of, for the most part, Indonesian land and labour, Indonesian and Malaysian companies have created a comparable transnational oil palm ‘complex’ that puts profits well ahead of people or planet. In the shadow of this complex, we can identify three major trends.