[ncmncm]

SDI (Reagan "Star Wars") spent a great deal of money to little direct effect other than enormously enriching recipients, but freaked out the Soviet military to the point that they crashed the Soviet economy, resulting in the collapse of the USSR and ultimately the rise of Putin. It is hard to say whether it is an improvement, for us or for the citizens of the former SSRs.

I traveled to a semiconductor conference in Hungary on SDI money dispensed by US AFNOR. The paper was on migration of point defects in semiconductors. Defect research was of great interest to Soviets because their devices had a much higher concentration of them than the West's, and they hoped to make them work anyway.

Arguably the actual purpose was the enrichment, and crashing the Soviet economy an unpredicted result. Billionaires generated by the program, as by the Iraq invasion, have been reliable providers for corrupt politicians since.

[Finnucane]

> but freaked out the Soviet military to the point that they crashed the Soviet economy

No, that was not really the cause of the collapse of the Soviet economy.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

And I thought it was Chernobyl.