What's worse is the billions in armored vehicles and weapons that can be used against those who resist them. If anything, the Taliban are now in a stronger military position than in 2001.
That should be obvious to everyone, but in 2001 it was unpatriotic and politically incorrect to ask whether the US was capable of winning the war.
Who cares ?! /s
They can probably figure out how to fix the ground vehicles and keep them running, but aircraft without a proper maintenance schedule will break down very quickly.
They might be able to use all that gear per the manual and best practices, but they'll make use of it however they can. Humans do that.
I hope history will look back at that and see it as a "plowshares" dump, where native ingenuity took tons of scrap iron and reformed into the infrastructure of a better society. I figure it's about as likely as being canrally pleasured by a pink unicorn, but its a pleasant fantasy.
I think right to repair is about ensuring that the customer can make reasonable repairs to the product, and the manufacturer not infringing on their rights when designing the product.
> Manufacturers can prevent the Department of Defense from repairing certain equipment, which puts members of the military at risk.
In this case, the "customer" is a sovereign state that has the ability to set its own laws.
Why does anyone think that "right to repair" applies in this case?
> Ah, I see you don't know that companies can "prohibit" chip manufacturers from selling specific chips to third parties [1,2]. Moreover, schematics, repair guidelines, and all sorts of other tools are not available to independent repair shops, which render repairs very difficult, Louis Rossmann has had frequent rants about this on his channel on Youtube [2], and is one of the most prominent advocates of the right to repair.
> It follows then that unless right to repair passes/exists, obtaining replacement parts for any devices is exceptionally difficult. There is therefore a stark contrast between 1960s cars and their very limited electronics and current tech that relies on often hundreds of chips and software to operate.
> [1] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/3/18761691/right-to-rep...
> [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCFP9P7lIvI
It is not that the right to repair applies in this case, but rather because the right to repair does not exist/has not passed, the procurement of chips and other electronics necessary to repair the hardware may be difficult or outright impossible.
The cars that we compare to (1960) are orders of magnitude simpler than modern day electronics and not reliant on megacorps allowing others to obtain schematics and microchips.
It follows then that unless right to repair passes/exists, obtaining replacement parts for any devices is exceptionally difficult. There is therefore a stark contrast between 1960s cars and their very limited electronics and current tech that relies on often hundreds of chips and software to operate.
[1] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/3/18761691/right-to-rep...
Edit: I am not talking about US-American companies only.
Or do you think it's ok to supply North Korea?
Considering that the Taliban is/was a hostile party to an active US military operation, starting economic activities with them without explicit government approval is probably not a good idea.