Hell of a comparison. “Why can’t they?,” you ask? I’m not saying they can’t, but for a start, how about the fact that we are no longer fighting a world war?
Or is it that police can drop literal bombs on Black neighborhoods and few will ever know about it?[1]
Or is it that when I'm in the US, I'm more likely to be murdered by police than to be murdered by anyone while in Japan?
Or is it that Chicago has a murder rate 5x that of Somalia?
Or WMD lies? Gulf of Tonkin lies?
You may love this, but does everyone?
Wolf Blitzer said he does: https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-worried-...
1 - https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/05/18/407665820...
But hey, it's a private company, no harm, no foul.
Edit: this came out a bit snide so let me elaborate. There are plenty of reasons you may want to help your military when there isn't a world war going on. You can do it for patriotism. You can do it for the economics. You can do it because military applications of technology are actually pretty cool and can lead to more commercial inventions. Or, to the point in my original response, you can do it because you understand deep down that the threat of military force is what underpins the overall fairly secure world that we live in. Look at the military maneuvers and carrier group movements every time two countries get nervous around each other. Despite (or maybe because of) evolution were still just a step away from clubbing our neighbor (or being clubbed) for resources. So yes, a strong military helps support the country Google was founded in and thrived in, and helps Google and every other company in the US be successful, and makes possible the salaries we all make. So there are definitely incentives for those companies to want to make sure their military is properly supported. And no, I'm not a military man.
The core of my issue with your points is this belief: >the threat of military force is what underpins the overall fairly secure world that we live in
That hasn't been true since some time after the first gulf war. Asymmetrical warfare (good old guerilla/"terrorism", cyberespionnage..) aren't operational theaters on which carrier groups present determining advantages.
The threat of vitrificating entire valleys hasn't really deterred ideological opponents to the USmil and associated economical or strategic partners.
Basically, you're arguing for a variant of the irresistible movement (strong traditional military capabilities), while ignoring why the metaphorical unmoveable object adapts to resist traditional military pressure.
Ask the soviets how Afghanistan went for them despite their vastly superior military capabilities.