Whether visibly or mostly invisibly, the Egyptian military institution was an integral part of Mubarak’s authoritarian regime and its neoliberal economy from 1981 until 2011. Mubarak appointed numerous ex-officers in top administrative positions in the state’s bureaucratic apparatus across the country, and allowed different military corps to expand business enterprises in almost every economic sector in his liberalized economy. Arguably, Mubarak—an ex-officer himself— granted the army such privileged status in order to coup-proof his regime, and appease the generals to secure his civilian son’s succession scheme. Upon the collapse of Mubarak in 2011, such system of military privileges almost fell apart when a massive, under-documented wave of labor protests erupted outside Tahrir Square to target ex-officers and officers in government and business premises. But the military quickly adapted to this crucial moment of change and succeeded in restoring back its supremacy by using repressive means, including anti-strike laws and military police to disperse sit-ins. The Muslim Brotherhood’s regime in 2012-2013 granted the military the exact superior privileges they enjoyed under Mubarak, hoping to co-opt the institution into the MBs' emerging authoritarianism. Although being an essential contributor to both Mubarak and Morsi's regimes, the military posed as the savior and guardian of the nation in deposing them both— with indispensable deployment of nationalistic rhetoric and public propaganda campaigns. Eventually, since retaining the presidential seat to the army in 2014, al-Sisi has launched a new era of unprecedentedly visible military domination over the state and the economy. From a historical perspective and applying a political economy approach, this paper investigates the entrenched role of the Egyptian officers in the bureaucratic apparatus and civilian production and services before and after the fall of Mubarak. It argues that the military institution took advantage of the last five years’ political turmoil to transform its previously mostly covert political and economic privileges into conspicuous monopolies over government posts, projects of public works, and commercial activities. This comes with severe market distortions, clientelism, corruption, decline of public services, and widespread social disparities. Such noticeable militarization impacts various social classes and generates simmering discontent in the localities of Cairo and provincial Egypt. The paper relies on a variety of primary sources, such as Arabic newspapers archives, laws, court records, company profiles, official budget documents, U.S. congressional records, interviews, Facebook pages, etc. It finally addresses the prospects of “demilitarizing” the state and economy under al-Sisi.