patrick.net

"Since 2001" is kind of arbitrary, since that includes one war that has since ended.

And, really, the wars are long since over: What exists in Afghanistan is now simply an occupation. It turns out that, with a military as dominant as ours, the cost of war is nothing compared to the cost of occupation.

Oh well, keep making those useless weapons to keep southerners employed.

Dont forget to add back in the invention of the Transistor, the laser, Satnav and GPS, the DC3, the 737, the Microwave.

We use these in consumer devices now - but dont forget what funded them.

Entitlemented says

Dont forget to add back in the invention of the Transistor, the laser, Satnav and GPS, the DC3, the 737, the Microwave.

We use these in consumer devices now - but dont forget what funded them.

If you think that for one moment that warfare spending is the most efficient way to advance technology, you are sadly mistaken. Wasting resources on war has easily held back human progress by ten thousand years if not a hundred thousand. Had resources spent destroying infrastructure and killing wealth producing people had instead been spent on scientific research and technological development for purposes other than murder, our society would have already built a Dyson's ring and colonized the galaxy.

War is waste.

War is waste, but it is sadly the only way ambitious projects get funded.

We never would have gone to the moon if the government didn't think it was a strategic advantage.

Neil degrasse Tyson wrote a whole book of essays on this subject.