Consider what we have given up spending that money.

Education, healthcare, infrastructure, science.

And what did we get with that money

A military that runs out of critical munitions after 53 days of combat.

A military that cannot defend itself against cheap munitions deployed by a 3rd rate military.

A military that is completely and utterly incapable of resolving a conflict with a poor country.

One of the root causes of this problem is capitalism.

Capitalism and national defense are not mutually beneficial. In fact, the former works at odds to the latter.

Capitalism and the military industrial complex prioritizes profit over national defense needs.

Defense contractors will, as a result of pursuing profit will seek more complex and thus more easily trademarked combat systems with strict proprietary limits on the use of their systems.

That means the systems get more complicated and expensive and the defense contractors are highly reluctant to share the technology-look at the defense contractor not wanting to license patriot missiles to Ukraine.

Because Ukraine could make the missiles far more cheaply and at scale-the MIC cannot have that

So, the MIC is incentivized to more complicated (and thusly more profitable) systems. The production of these complicated systems are limited, severely limited.

The limits come in 2 ways-demand and supply chain. Defense industries are not going to build the systems without contracts guaranteeing profit.

So the defense contractors will only produce and build manufacturing processes to build the contractually limited number of munitions.

then there is the supply line. These high tech systems use rare earth and other limited supply items (like skilled labor).

the result is slow production of the combat systems.

thus when an idiot starts a war we quickly run out of these complex systems.

And there is no way to ramp up production quickly.

Some of these systems take YEARS to produce and China controls the rare earth metals needed to produce them

I have been shaking my head over the past couple of months-mind boggled that the US military is completely and utterly incapable of defending itself or projecting power to subdue a 3rd rate enemy

One primary issue is that the defensive systems are not nearly as effective as advertised.

Secondly Iranian munitions and operations are far more effective than was anticipated.

Iran has destroyed multiple American bases in the region. Destroyed.

in fact, the primary reason piggy TACO'ed out during the latest round was the bombing of our base in Jordan. Our defenses were completely overwhelmed.

Iran has been able to target our most critical infrastructure to reduce our defensive abilities-the radar network

Our military has not prepared for this new warfare.

They have watched the Ukrainian war for 4 years, watched it evolve

And done nothing to prepare

Iran, China, Russia are far better equipped to respond to defense demands.

Because they are not capitalist societies.

As onerous as those regimes are, they are effective in one aspect-having a defense system that can respond, quickly, to changes in military technology.

We have a for profit system that cannot replace critical munitions for years.

Years

Compound that system with the fact that our MIC is in many ways a corporate welfare system and so large that it cannot be changed without decimating areas of our economy.

But don't worry the shareholders of the defense contractors are sitting pretty. they are making a killing.

And trust me that much financial power drives policy, it is not about to let something like war and peace get in the way of their profit motive.

So, yeah, we have been spending trillions, more than dozens of other countries spend in toto.

Every single year

And look what it got us

A lost war

And an incentive structure that refuses change and only demands more money