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I think there is reason to worry about the effectiveness of the US military.

> The US has the most advance tech

In the Ukraine conflict, drones have played an important role. And China (in DJI) is the undisputed leader in drones. Not only is the US sorely behind in this area, it's unclear if we can even produce drones without buying critical components from China.

> and the largest budget

Similar to many other things, the US pays a lot, but that doesn't guarantee a better result. When the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, articles came out about how Russian troops were wearing fake body armor due to corruption. While the US isn't (AFAIK) quite that bad yet, _everything_ we're seeing with enshittification affects the military as well. When a normal company sacrifices on quality control, or does stock buybacks instead of R&D--that plain sucks. With a defense contractor this impacts the military's effectiveness. If Boeing can't make a civilian plane where the doors don't fall off, should we expect their military products to be any better? And that's to say nothing of the suppliers that _significantly_ overcharge the government for replacement parts.

It costs more and takes longer today to build new planes than it did in the 1940s--and we have computers now. Sure planes are more complicated, but $2 trillion to design a plane--that's absurd!

None of this is new, the military industrial complex has been ramping up for over half a century, but the problems are accelerating. For now, we've avoided this attrition by just throwing more money at the military, but it's not enough. We are buying fewer munitions, fewer planes, because they're just too damn expensive--not because they need to be, but because of grift.

China is currently building ships 200x faster than the US. We rely on them for much of our advanced manufacturing. If we really want to beat China--militarily or economically--our industries will need to focus on producing better products, rather than just increasing shareholder value.

But also, take this with a grain of salt. I'm not an expert--I just dabble :)

ETA: Also, at risk of making this political, China has a much larger population than the US. The US could try to offset their weakness by taking advantage of relationships with other countries--but Trump is currently angling to start trade wars with Canada, Mexico, and the EU. Which is not how you build a coalition against China.


> our industries will need to focus on producing better products, rather than just increasing shareholder value

That will be our downfall though. It became less about providing value to customers and more about providing value to shareholders (even foreign ones). It’s OK to screw everyone (including and especially your countrymen) if you make enough doing it. Not paying taxes is seen as a pro move, not as parasitic.

This is the ultimate synthesis of the current American model; it will make us weaker and weaker as a people until we are defeated from within, with our enemies never firing a shot.


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