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> Why not put 1/3 of your insane military budget towards a new mission of going into the places you have the worst reputation, the places you have wronged the most and start building up their infrastructure like water plants and schools?

The critique you refer towards is familiar when we talk about terrorism operations that spin off from less powerful nations, and for many years the "war on terror" has been about detecting such small scale operations that can definitely be traced to all the nasty things the US has done for many decades.

However, this article is mostly referring to Russia and China as the most critical actors in this style of warfare; these are relatively large and powerful nations who have shown to be adversarially aggressive to the US and many other nations so I'm not sure how there would be "peace" with them other than allowing them to continue to wreak havoc in their neighboring nations and territories unchecked, not to mention that they would continue to launch direct attacks on our internal processes, which wouldn't actually prevent a world conflict from occurring, only hasten its arrival. We have already been attacked quite severely in this regard with great success.

Instead of fighting the world we could go around making allies and all stand together against any aggression China and Russia make would be how I envision it but perhaps even that would not work. I just have to believe there is a better future then everyone fighting each other winner take all. Our earth is god damn dying and these people want to convince us the only solution is to get ready for the fight of our life. We are already in it. We need to work together to save the earth not destroy each other.

"Why not put 1/3 of your insane military budget towards..."

Heck, why not put 1/3 of the NSA budget towards hardening computers and networks?

I'm afraid that given the choice between:

. Everyone is surveilled.

. No one is surveilled.

They'll always pick the first, even with the best intentions.

It's for the children.

>"start building up their infrastructure like water plants and schools"

That has been tried. It doesn't work.

TLDR: You can build this stuff. But it's a waste of money without the human resources necessary to keep the infrastructure resources running & maintained.

Who do you think is going to run & maintain schools & infrastructure? Let's delve a little deeper--

If you spend time in a developing country, or research their demographics you'll see why.

Let me give you one example: Mexico.

"While SEP data show that nearly all students who complete lower-secondary education enroll in upper-secondary school, the nationwide graduation rate is currently just 67 percent." https://wenr.wes.org/2019/05/education-in-mexico-2 )

Mexico is doing pretty good actually.

So, let's see about a more relevant example: Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan it has, according publishes UNESCO, an adult literacy rate of 31.74%."

https://countryeconomy.com/demography/literacy-rate/afghanis...

The answer is:

Sure, you can build this stuff. But it's a waste of money without the human resources necessary to keep the infrastructure resources running & maintained.

> muh can't we all just get along

Take the Hitler / Darwin pill: as long as there are separate entities and limited resources, they will be in conflict. Accept it, it's a part of nature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wjMmeNS9wA&t=2m53s