What criticisms of the military budget always fail to take into account is that the military budget funds science too. The US Government is the largest sponsor of science in the world, and the military currently funds more science dollar for inflation adjusted dollar than it did even during the cold war.
The military's budget for Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation in 2016 was 69B, or 11.9% of the total budget.
development, testing and evaluation in a military context does not sound like fundamental science at all...
sure there will be research, and some of it will be open, but all the research behind closed doors does not enjoy the scrutiny of normal research, so there is plenty of opportunity to waste money on nonsense "research" ...
Observing the superior tech used by even standard military it's obvious that there is a fuckton of pure reserch going on, most of it will be top secret for many years though. NSA records this message and will apply some superhuman quantum algorithms to it and theres nothing I can do about it. Hail our petrodollar overlords!
sure there will be research, and some of it will be open, but all the research behind closed doors does not enjoy the scrutiny of normal research, so there is plenty of opportunity to waste money on nonsense "research" ...