The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

But most forest paths are not driven (or walked) 500 times back and forth. Sometimes just once to go in, cut down and take it out. Enough to cut open the soil with the conventional foresters - but much less intrusive with mechanic legs.

It's true that most forests today are not old growth anymore. They have been cut (usually clear cut) and then either replanted or just naturally reseeded and are now essentially waiting for the next cut. There are some areas where they are monocultural tree farms with not much else growing, but forest industry starts to realize that that's not the most efficient anyway. Most forests today, even those used for lumber (which are almost all) are integrated ecosystems. That's a great benefit to nature.

Clear cutting is quite bad for the surrounding ecosystem. Habitat loss, soil erosion, it's a pretty traumatic event for a forest. (Some shrubs really thrive for a few years after a clear cut though. In Sweden that's when you get to pick tons of wild raspberries, for example.)

An alternative is selective cutting where you only cut the oldest trees and leave everything intact. For that, such a legged harvester would be much better. The traditional method is to use horses, but that's too slow for modern forest industry.

"It's why only tracked harvesters driven by highly-paid fellers are allowed off the gravel."

And this is sadly not true for germany or other parts of europe I know about. I think I never saw a tracked forester in europe. Are they mandatory in the US? That would surprise me, given they have much more lax regulations in general (fracking for example)

Our Douglas Fir stand is on good soil, but getting to it is a little tricky. Getting a bit easier though after 3 years of blackberry removal, and tree limbing (to reduce wildfire risk and improve trails etc).

Planning foot placement is a bit harder but I would say the compute heavy part today would be perception.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950...

[1] as far as I've seen, soviet vending machines used a shared glass. They must've been very confident both (a) that the glasses wouldn't grow legs, and (b) in their public health initiatives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F68bbzOOOdY&t=2644

If you're looking at needing to fight China and Russia, at the same time, over an extended period of time (2+ years), having 9,000 tanks in your back pocket seems like a good idea.

Also, it's a jobs/pork barrel program. Congress keeps ordering tanks that the Army puts into storage because the M1 is a beast of a machine that keeps a lot of people employed. The US manufacturing base is pretty depleted, and ordering tanks you don't necessarily need is a good way to keep the skills and tool chains you could need in the future around.

Give me $30k, and I’ll build you a multicopter capable of delivering a 500lb payload 1km away made mostly out of hobby parts. It’s no longer rocket science.

Reducing America's global footprint would also likely have the effect of producing a massive global political realignment, as nations in an increasingly multipolar world would need to adjust their security policies in order to face the potential challenges of existing without a global hegemony interested in fixing national borders and guaranteeing the secure flow of trade good worldwide.

This resulting uncertainty would, I believe increase the relative value of maintaining a presence large internally stable (relatively speaking) markets like the NAFTA, while reducing the viability of complex, brittle supply chains dependent on outsourcing the production of many individual components overseas.

With companies increasingly incentivised to produce where they sell their good, the power disparity between laborers and corporate entities would be reduced, as their labor force and their consumer base would be either the same, or intermingled. With workers better able to negotiate terms with their employers, rather than be forced to increase benefits for their workers, companies might find it more expedient to outsource the provision of a social safety net to federal and state governments through lobbying efforts.

None of this, of course fixes the general administrative incompetency of the American government. But it also sets the stage for a greater latitude of internal reforms by simplifying the machine that's in motion, as well as reducing its number of foreign dependents.