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Comment by exelius | Hacker News Reader

Jack Ma summed it up pretty well — the US spent something close to $15 trillion fighting wars over the last century. China has been taking that money and investing it in building future economic advantage instead because it believes the wars of the future will be economic rather than kinetic.

Who do you think has a brighter future?

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If you subtracted $15 trillion from the US GDP over the last 16 years (no need to go last century), it would still have been higher than china’s.

So I’m not sure what this factoid is proving about bright futures.

The elite of china spend their time protecting their power from the people. That's why they can't really project outward as much.

There is waste and fraud everywhere, including China. You can also find anecdotal evidence everywhere. It's impossible to piece this together into a singular narrative.

I think it's fair to say fraud is pervasive in China in a way that's not in many other western countries. Every time I have to do anything with China businesswise I'm reminded of that reality.

A lot of US Military spending is wrapped up in infrastructure too.

US Army Corps of Engineers for example maintains levees and dams throughout the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Corps_of_En...

Yeah, that's part of the DoD budget. Really weird, but that's how we budget for things in the USA.

Then there are mixed-projects, like Military colleges and schools. Officers are all college-educated, so when they leave the military, they still benefit private industry all the same. Or DARPA's contributions to the advancements of science (Adoption of TCP/IP and other long-term research projects)

> Yeah, that's part of the DoD budget.

$4.8 billion / $639.1 billion = 0.75%

It's a minuscule part of the DoD budget. A rounding error.

The majority is spent by the army, navy, and air force. The biggest expenditure category is operation and maintenance, followed by personnel, then procurement.

Wars are not one dimensional. Having a superior economy also doesn't mean you'll have a strategic advantage in the field.

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