[roody15]

This is a really unfortunate situation with geopolitical consequences. It weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole.

The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is.

This has real world consequences … when people see the US spends 10 times more than any other nation on its military and its space program it becomes apparent this doesn’t equate to necessarily a 10x factor in results. So yes we may have the best tech/gear in the world but may be spending way too much to only get a slight edge and find this edge is not even sustainable.

[lmm]

> The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is.

I've heard just the opposite about the similar SDI/"Star Wars" - that the US pouring billions into this blatantly impossible and pointless programme, and suffering no real consequences for doing so, was what finally convinced the USSR they couldn't win.

[mnky9800n]

I think this is very naive to the history of the soviet union at that time period, how gorbachev's new policies failed, how chernobyl effected everything, and how much of an internal failure this was. the usa likes to claim they ended the cold war and reagan did so by blah blah blah, however, the soviet union would have collapsed given gorbachev's policies failing no matter what the usa did.

[lmm]

> I think this is very naive to the history of the soviet union at that time period, how gorbachev's new policies failed, how chernobyl effected everything, and how much of an internal failure this was. the usa likes to claim they ended the cold war and reagan did so by blah blah blah, however, the soviet union would have collapsed given gorbachev's policies failing no matter what the usa did.

There's no contradiction. The argument is that Gorbachev felt the need to set those policies because he saw how much more successful the US was being economically.

[jacobwilliamroy]

God I wish we could go back and do 1991 again. Unfortunately time travel is impossible so I need to stop ruminating on it.

[mnky9800n]

1999 my friend. That's when Boris Yeltsin gave up democracy to Putin. Think of the Russia that could have come from before that decision.

[fractallyte]

That was the Russia that invaded Chechnya and committed horrific atrocities, bordering on genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War

[mnky9800n]

As terrible as that war was, I really don't think that compares to the changes that occurred post 1999, the freedoms that were lost, nor the casualties that are a direct responsibility of Putin.

[chii]

> convinced the USSR they couldn't win

i dont think they were convinced they couldn't win - they just realized their economic laggardness.

The remnants of the USSR is still trying to win!

For a real example of "they couldn't win", you'd have to look towards Japan. And is it such a bad thing to "not win"?

[jakobson14]

I don't think the chinese are going to look at this and give up.

They're going to say "we can build our outpost on the moon for way less" and then they'll do it.

[3pac]

SDI is not really comparable. The numbers for the orbital parameters did not add up at the time, but they had Edward Teller behind them.

[nebula8804]

We suffer real consequences in the form of inflation.

[malfist]

Inflation is not tied to military or NASA spending

[philwelch]

It is indirectly when there’s a federal deficit.

[smfugit]

> weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole

That already happened with 2008 GFC. Whats happening with NASA is a small rounding error compared to the amount of pure junk that has accumulated on the FED balance sheet since then, to keep delusions afloat. So the stock market/health care/edu/real estate/iphone/sls prices keep rising. Even though its all pure junk.

[Angostura]

'weakened' is not a binary. Every small step to correct issues is important

[adolph]

> The US can spend this kind of money .. with not much progress .. and no real consequences for failure. Adversaries see this as weakness because that is what it is.

I donno about this. Adversaries might just as well conclude the opposite, that the US can blow that kind of cash on SLS and other dumb stuff all over the world without major problems. IIRC, UBL's thesis was A-stan is/was the graveyard of empires and would also be the US', but it turned out to be an otherwise forgotten Pentagon rounding error.

[elcritch]

I generally agree, but I don't think Afghanistan and Iraq were rounding errors by any factor. It's a major percentage of the US'es debt, as in trillions of dollars.

Perhaps the US economy (and politics) is resilient enough to handle it and not crash outright, but poorer folks in the US feel the squeeze of inflation and lowered wages due to cantillion effects.

[WeylandYutani]

America is in the enviable position that the entire world is obligated to keep giving them money. Too big to fail.

[nebula8804]

Thats just because others need to step up their game.

[adolph]

A truer measure of the [Astan & Iraq] wars’ total costs pegs them at between $4 trillion and $6 trillion.[0] (2015 article)

US debt in 2000: $5.6T, in 2022: $30.9T [1]

The larger wars of this century drove about a quarter of debt growth. Major but not the majority. That more people will risk life and limb to immigrate than emigrate indicates to me that as bad as inflation is, living elsewhere is still worse.

0. https://time.com/3651697/afghanistan-war-cost/

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/187867/public-debt-of-th...

[elcritch]

A quarter sounds about right, and that's a quarter of our debt that could've been used to rebuild decaying infrastructure, increase medical care, housing, etc. Aside from the monetary cost the country will loose out on the dividends those sort of investments would've yielded long term.

Sure the US may still have a higher quality of life than many others, it doesn't mean that Americans lives couldn't have been better. Also I believe the US recently actually had decreases in both life expectancy and younger generations prospering fincially. So we didn't collapse, but we're not healthy either.

[adolph]

The initial conjecture is that the US' "Adversaries see [wasteful profligacy] as weakness." We have established that the US seems to spend wildly with muted negative outcomes. To an adversary, should that be seen as a weakness or a strength?

Could things be better in the US if it did not spend the way it does? That is a difficult counterfactual. The well adapted US political system never voluntarily decreases taxes, so a safe assumption is that spending/deficit/debt would be the same.

A significant amount of war funding was spent on the MIC, which employs upper middle income US persons in engineering, logistics, HR. The rest is spent on consumables (also from the US) and bribery, which eventually finds safe harbor by holding large bricks of US $100 bills on the low end or US luxury dwellings on the high end.

In the counterfactual, what would have happened to all those white collar suburbs and Miami penthouses?

[asadotzler]

The pentagon's budget is pretty consistent regardless.

We'll give them three quarters of a trillion dollars every year no matter what they spend it on so in reality it doesn't matter if they're war fighting or not, they own us, well 50% of our discretionary tax dollars anyway.

[nebula8804]

It was a catastrophic failure in terms of money spent, lives lost and enduring repetitional damage on the US that continues to this day. Vietnam was a harbinger of this but Afghanistan/Iraq cemented the notion that if you operate on long term timescales you can beat the US.

UBL may not have achieved his primary goal but he got many concessions: Americans lost many freedoms, trust in government is significantly lower compared to pre 9/11 and given what happened on Jan 6 and everything that led up to it, we may look back at 9/11 as the point which set the stage for the eventual breakup of the union.

[JeremyNT]

> This has real world consequences … when people see the US spends 10 times more than any other nation on its military and its space program it becomes apparent this doesn’t equate to necessarily a 10x factor in results.

Isn't this already known though?

The US has such vast resources it can afford to squander them freely due to corruption and incompetence without the people involved ever really being held accountable. This is true of civilian infrastructure projects as well. Yet at the end of the day the country is still so massively wealthy, it makes no practical difference.

[rgbrenner]

Which adversary are you thinking of that has less corruption and less waste than the US? And then has the economy to take advantage of this?

[WitCanStain]

I guess China is the obvious candidate due to reduced costs in pretty much everything but they still have immense corruption.

[simonh]

There’s no real way to evaluate the effectiveness of the Chinese military because they’ve not seen significant action in several generations. However that itself is not a good sign.

As for their kit, Myanmar bought some of their planes but none of them are operational. The planes were a joint project by China and Pakistan, but 8 years after the deal was signed apparently have persistent unsolved technical and structural issues.

Meanwhile Thailand bought three of the new Yuan class subs from China, but they aren’t operational either. Problems with the engines so bad that they need replacing.

Meanwhile China now has two aircraft carriers, but still hasn’t committed either of them to long range operations. They have only conducted experimental night takeoffs and landings, their carrier assigned planes are still largely land based, and they have yet to operate the boats beyond range of land based airstrips. Modern carrier operations are as complex as it gets, and they seem to be struggling with it.

[klooney]

I'm not sure it makes much sense to worry about carriers for the war in Taiwan that everyone expects- their aircraft can use their airfields.

Peacetime armies are generally bad, but turnover tends to be high when the fighting starts, and the second or third set of generals is often much better.

The most important advantages China has are pretty overwhelming- a giant population, and they own the global supply chain for microchips and batteries, meaning they can replace smart munitions and systems while their opponents can't.

They also have the best setup for doing go it alone, vertical industrial production, much better than the US or Russia. They're fine in any scenario where they don't get totally blitzed in a week.

[simonh]

A few issues there.

For an invasion of Taiwan numbers are important, sure, but it's a wide channel and amphibious assaults are absolutely the hardest kind of operation an army can attempt. Technical competence, and I would also argue operational flexibility at every level, are absolutely crucial.

In terms of supply chains, that matters for an extended conflict, as we can see in Ukraine. However an invasion of Taiwan would either work in the first week or so, or it's over. I suppose they could try a long terms blockade, but that doesn't seem to be their strategy.

China is extremely vulnerable to a blockade themselves though. They have no control of their essential seaborn supply routes, and are highly dependent on external sources for energy, raw materials, high tech parts, and maybe most importantly food and fertilisers. The US can turn all of that off like a tap at a moment's notice.

The sorts of sanctions levelled at Russia since last year would have China on it's knees in months. The only way to mitigate that would be for the PLAN to go toe to toe gobally with the US, UK, French and Australian and Japanese Navys all at the same time. Also maybe India. The Indian Navy is small but it's no joke, and they have two fully operational carriers.

[nebula8804]

This is word for word regurgitated from Peter Zeihan. Is he your source?

[kjkjadksj]

The state of the peacetime supply chain hardly matters. In a major conflict it should be expected that western democracies revert to the centrally planned economic system they used to win the second world war.

[klooney]

The peacetime supply chain determines the possibilities of the wartime supply chain. You can't open a mine overnight, refineries are incredibly expensive and fiddly and require a lot of very specific knowledge, tool manufacturing capacity is incredibly difficult to bootstrap- you don't want to be like WWII Australia, digging up lathes out of junkyards.

[themadturk]

America doesn't have the manufacturing base it had in WWII. Then, it took months or even years to ramp up the existing manufacturing to wartime capacity. Now a lot of America's manufacturing has been outsourced to China and other far eastern/southern Asian countries. A modern war between superpowers is likely to be won or lost in a week or two at most even without involving nukes, long before major resupply of equipment is even needed.

[nradov]

The first few Chinese aircraft carriers were probably never intended to be fully combat effective and are mainly intended to develop an experienced cadre of naval aviators. The carriers lack catapults, which means they can't really launch tankers (or any heavy aircraft at all). US Navy carriers almost always have at least one tanker up while conducting flight operations. This makes a huge difference in safety because an aircraft that gets into any trouble has an option to conduct aerial refueling instead of having to rush a carrier landing, or divert to a distant land base. The next generation of Chinese carriers are expected to have catapults but those are technically challenging. I'm sure that this is a priority area for their spies.

[simonh]

I'm surprised they don't have them working yet. An Australian carrier was decommed a few decades ago and went to China for scrap. The Australians stripped most of it but left the steam catapults intact, and I know the Chinese were using them for land based experiments.

[nradov]

The Chinese probably intend to skip steam catapults and go straight to electromagnetic (like on the new Ford class carriers). I don't think they want to deal with steam generation and plumbing.

[_lvbh]

> Chinese military because they’ve not seen significant action in several generations. However that itself is not a good sign.

I see that as a good sign. Why fight wars if there is no need to. I hope they stay that way and don’t get themselves involved in Taiwan

[WeylandYutani]

The US hasn't seen action against a peer since 1945. Ofcourse there's a reason for that: nuclear weapons.

[simonh]

I think what matters is generational experience, so there are always officers on duty that have combat experience. Since WW2 they've had the Korean and Vietnam wars, both Gulf wars and Afghanistan, plus numerous smaller operations. All of those except Afghanistan involved significant naval support. That's kept the ball moving forward in terms of real world experience.

I am a bit worried about naval officer training though, there have been damaging cutbacks and compromises made on that front. Nothing that's likely to have long term consequences yet, but they need to fix that before it gets worse.

[kjkjadksj]

Just look at the evolution of the standard issue kit over the vietnam or the iraq wars to see how the US has been able to use first hand combat experience to rapidly iterate on new paradigms.

[dirtyid]

>Myanmar

Pretty much all negative coverage of JF17 (joint PRC+PK manufacturing but so far SOLD by PK) are sourced from Indian tabloid rags with no credibility. Myanmar airforce has 100+ PRC airframes, variety of models in the last 30 years with little issue. Pretty much the only useful piece of info so far is Myanmar doesn't have adequate experience operating tech in 4th gen fighters, most of their fleet is 3rd gen. IIRC Myanmar got the jets before they even got simluators, and then bought 4th gen trainers (JL9) from PRC.

>Thailand

Yuan subs aren't operational because PRC couldn't acquire original specified German engines after EU sanctions. There's a period where Thai Navy was deciding whether to accept PRC engines, which they did. Some analysts implied if Thai did not accept PRC engines it would imply they were unsuitable, even more retarded media then spung that as technical issues with PRC engines. Both complete misinformation narratives since there's no basis for evaluating those unintegrated PRC engines at all.

>aircraft carriers

Training carriers based off RU design that analysis suggest PLAN has more or less maximized sortie potential vs when USSR was running carrier ops on similar flight deck. Late 2022 USNI analysis on PLAN carrier ops is they're basically reached "true" blue water deployment, i.e. a few hundred nms near Guam, 1000nm+ from mainland, with no divert airfrields or aerial refueling as backup. Which is about as far as PRC none nuke carriers need to deploy given strategic considerations. Caveate being conservative sorties and pretty clean (light) load outs to compensate for lack of divertion and ski jump. The struggle with PLAN carriers is they won't have catapults and capabilites that brings until 003 and training was hectic because they only had 1-2 carriers training 3-4 crew rotations, somewhat alleviated by converted cruise/barrack ships. TLDR is I would not characterize as overall carrier ops capabilities as struggling as limited by hardware, which TBH is expected since carriers does not seem particularly high priority outside of prestige - given PRC ship building capacity, they could have rushed 10 carriers like US did Forrestal class. Basically most US analysis of various PRC military modernization is they're lacking and focusing on XYZ, but should get there in a few years. Occasionally throw in the word struggle because they watch CCTV7 where miltiary propaganda talks about how hard they work. A few years later, new analysis that they got there (i.e. asw, jointness), something something evolving, modernizing at astonishing rate, but here's the new struggle. Rinse and repeat. Combined with customary but no real combat experience (which no one has in modern peer warfare). But the underlying pattern if you look at meat of improvements year by year is PLA modernizing fast.

[themadturk]

I wonder if PRC really sees using a navy as a means of force projection as important. They could have a world-spanning navy like the U.S. has, but haven't made it a priority. No one has done it as well for as long as the U.S., but it's also something that could be erased in a few minutes by some well-placed Long Swords.

[dirtyid]

Navy + carrier good for peacetime "diplomacy" via show of force / presence. Hence worth pursuing in some capacity. But ultimately PRC can't have world spanning navy because geopolitical conditions to replicate US global basing not present anymore - would take status quo / order changing conflict. And it would still take decades to train for 10+ carrier groups for parity. Therefore (IMO) PRC doubling down on long range (even global) fires, advanced rocketry that can be acquired and deployed at scale, in relatively short time, to destroy prestige platform from PRC mainland basing, without complex forward deployment or doctorine considerations. Basically make sure you have more missiles and ISR with sufficient CEP than enemies can defend/degrade. Hit aircraft carriers, subs, when they're in port, or the 10 fast combat support ships that sustains most of USN critical deployement options. For as large USN is, the system that sustains fleet is extremely brittle (same with PLAN) - carrier escorts have days of endurance on aggressive tasking. Would take PRC rocketry _minutes_ to take out replenishment ship restocking at port and carriers become single deployment assets. This kind of capability was not technically feasible 10-20 years ago - none of US adversaries could disrupt USN logistics. But now is.

IMO US pretty much understands this as well, for as much reporting there is on dysfunction of navy and urgent need to fix, there hasn't been much actions instead we see doubling down on distributed land based fires and increasing aviation standoff range, and ultimately long range bombers strait from CONUS to reduce basing dependencies abroad.

[gustavus]

> I guess China is the obvious candidate due to reduced costs in pretty much everything

Achievement: You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor.

Get the poster at https://despair.com/products/achievement?variant=2457295683

[troyvit]

The Taliban is a good example. IMO they're evil, but not as corrupt as the US. They did a pretty good job running us out of Afghanistan.

[plandis]

> but not as corrupt as the US

I’m wondering how you determined this?

[riffic]

Lawrence Lessig has extensively talked about the concept of ‘institutional corruption’ in American politics, where the political system is not necessarily corrupt in an explicit, quid-pro-quo sense, but rather is compromised by the influence of money, lobbying, and other factors that misalign the interests of politicians with those of the public. First thing to pop in my mind with your question.

[AnimalMuppet]

OK, but I'm not sure you can argue that the Taliban is more aligned with the interests of the population.

[troyvit]

They are the ones running the country now. Not saying it's a democracy, but they effectively undermined the existing, US backed government by going directly to the population and basically just doing government better.

[troyvit]

Honestly I just felt like they got more done with fewer people and less money, which is a good indicator of a level of focus that can you can only accomplish if you don't have to worry about the friction of dealing with corrupt layers of an organization or a crapload of waste.

I'd read a long time ago about how the Taliban basically formed a shadow government in parts of Afghanistan that provided justice, schools, roads, and other services because the current government couldn't do it. Just found a good article about it:

https://odi.org/en/publications/life-under-the-taliban-shado...

Here's the PDF it references:

https://cdn.odi.org/media/documents/12269.pdf

People flocked to the Taliban's shadow government precisely because it was (at least seen as) less corrupt and more efficient than the services propped up by U.S. and its allies. In the PDF above if you search for corrupt you find the word 7 times in the body of the article, and 6 of those are in regards to how the Taliban fought it.

The article is old (2018) but I think that's the point. They were very organized in how they built their network and we saw the results of it as they ran circles around the U.S. in negotiations both with Trump and Biden administrations.[1]

To me it's a crystal clear example of a less corrupt, less wasteful force completely schooling one with exponentially more resources.

[1] https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal...

[lukas099]

Honestly I would love the US to stop being the biggest spender in so many categories, I just don't think anyone else is really poised to take that spot other than China, which I find even more troubling.

[paulddraper]

> It weakens belief in our system of governance as a whole.

Accurately

[kristofferR]

It's not like the money spent just disappears, though, someone gets it. The SLS is a huge jobs program.

Me and GPT had a good discussion about it: https://chat.openai.com/share/828cb390-dac0-4f3b-a556-f02972...

[wkat4242]

But how much of that ends up in the hands of shareholders and execs? If you want to provide jobs it's better to provide them directly. The shareholders have enough money as it is.

[kristofferR]

True in the logical sense, but not in the practical sense. Just giving regular people good jobs isn't popular in the US, because why would the megadonors sponsor Senator campaigns if they can't profit from it?

In the US system (oligarchic democracy) the wealthy needs to earn their hefty share, otherwise the thing in question likely won't happen at all.

[themadturk]

So what would it take to give NASA the manufacturing infrastructure and expertise to start building its own rockets? Such programs have always been done by contractors, non-government industrial partners. That's part of working in a capitalist economy.