[klooney]

> Feels a bit like saying that subsidising personal cars is good for the tank business.

I mean, in WWII, a lot of car manufacturers made tanks instead. Buick made the Hellcat, Chrysler, Ford and a variety of train manufacturers made the Sherman, and on and on. The skills are much more transferable than a lot of other fields.

In fact, this is explicitly why the US and others subsidize their passenger car industries.

This probably wouldn't work as well today, because most modern automakers just do engine design, assembly, and pick some parts out of a Bosch catalog, but I bet the more ambitious, vertically integrated automakers like BYD or Tesla could do an OK job in a pinch.