[photochemsyn]

The latest estimates of the military budgets of the USA and China are 768 billion and 270 billion, respectively - yet China seems to be equalling if not outpacing the United States on speed of technological innovation as well as on international trade arrangements.

Calling on private capital to make risky investments in new technologies that only have one likely customer - the US government (well, maybe some Third World petrodollar recycling options, who knows) - seems to avoid discussing how the current gigantic military government budget is being spent.

Fundamentally, military expenditures don't have much in the way of additional positive economic effects. Say you're producing construction cranes, for example - each crane facilitates further economic activity, in building projects. If you're producing tanks - well, unless your economic model is to raid other countries for raw resources, it's not going to have that same effect. There's also little likelihood for a large consumer market for your product.

[killjoywashere]

This is very short-sighted. Gemini astronauts rode Titan 2 rockets to orbit (just an ICBM with a different payload). The space shuttle was designed mainly to insert Keyhole satellites. The internet was developed in pursuit of developing a robust means to route message traffic in the event of nuclear attack. DARPA's IPTO influenced the development of time-sharing. JPEO CBRND is catching a bunch of vaccine developers who are about to fail, sorting the wheat from chaff, and having them develop vaccines for orphan diseases and use cases that US pharma doesn't see as useful. JPEO CBRND funded the development of the Biofire PCR arrays that were widely deployed early in the pandemic as a load-and-go testing solution for minimally equiped labs.

The flush-head rivets were developed by Howard Hughes, ostensibly for his racing H-1, but his aircraft company was keen to sell to the military (air war was highly anticipated during the interwar years, so speed and endurance were first order motivators).

I mean, the list goes on and on. It's true, we invest in war machines, but as a percent of GDP, it's been going down for quite a while and now rivals the EU at something in the vicinity of 2% (we're over, they're under): https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2002099941...

Turns out out, not dying is a hell of a necessity that mother'd a lot of invention. And at a national scale, sovereignty is the equivalent. And the enemy gets a vote. See Putin.

Working in this space on projects ranging from cancer to comms, I'm hear to tell you, biologists have a much harder job than weaponeers, but it's human nature, not US defense policy that's an issue.

[philwelch]

> Calling on private capital to make risky investments in new technologies that only have one likely customer - the US government (well, maybe some Third World petrodollar recycling options, who knows) - seems to avoid discussing how the current gigantic military government budget is being spent.

Historically, there has been no shortage of entrepreneurs chasing defense dollars. Lots of iconic weapons, from the Thompson submachine gun to the Spitfire to the Colt revolver, were developed speculatively and later sold to militaries that hadn’t initially requested them.

> Fundamentally, military expenditures don't have much in the way of additional positive economic effects. Say you're producing construction cranes, for example - each crane facilitates further economic activity, in building projects. If you're producing tanks - well, unless your economic model is to raid other countries for raw resources, it's not going to have that same effect. There's also little likelihood for a large consumer market for your product.

Lots of military procurement expenditures have resulted in products with immediate civilian applications: rockets, radios, first aid equipment, antibiotics, encryption, highways, helicopters, jet engines, radar, sonar, Kevlar, canned food, computers.

[kilroy123]

It's far more complicated than that.

https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/how-does-chinas-defense-spendin...

[throwaway6734]

>China seems to be equalling if not outpacing the United States on speed of technological innovation as well as on international trade arrangements.

What is this based on?

[imwithstoopid]

they already have a larger Navy and will soon pass us in aircraft

while we were blowing up the Middle East, they were building shipyards

[option]

Military spending on chip tech is a large part of how SV started.

We should definitely do so with AI now.

[ekam]

China pays personnel way less and a huge chunk of that budget is personnel costs

[stametseater]

In addition to lower personnel costs, their manufacturing industry is generally more efficient. The result is they get a lot more "bang for their buck" and you can't compare military spending just by looking at capital expenditure and currency conversion rates.

They also have different goals. America spends to maintain global hegemony, which means a huge fleet of aircraft carriers meant to operate around the world. China isn't (yet) spending in that way, they're a lot more focused on regional objectives.

[imwithstoopid]

oh they are definitely thinking about carriers - specifically ways to kill them

China has invested rather deeply in the space of carrier-killer missiles, which are cheap enough to build that it will always be possible and economical to sink any carrier, including Ford class

[QuarterReptile]

You're restating parent's point, which is that China invests in cheaper regional objectives.

[imwithstoopid]

The gaps in US/China arms will never be closed by startups...no startup is going to start churning out Columbia-class subs or F35s.

We screwed up and lost decades on crap like the Zumwalt class, the LCS and numerous other boondoggles that easily cost us a decade and $100 bln++. The LCS really deserves special mention for a unique level of stupidity - we are scrapping them pretty much as they come off the line. Its crazy - we don't want these ships, have committed to scrapping them...and we're still ordering them! Only in America.

Let's not forget how much we built and burned in Iraq and Afghanistan. How many subs and carriers could have been built with the resources squandered? We sure did buy a lot of Humvees that never came back.

Even without those epic failures, it isn't clear we could beat the Chinese in manufacturing. Throwing bodies at a problem is definitely in their wheelhouse.

While we were bombing, they were building. Now we get to deal with it.