Engineers play one of the most pivotal roles in war and loss of human life, and many don't even realize it. Something that needs to be reflected on more.
We in the US have driven most provocation in space. The military budget is more than the next nine countries combined (including China). Whether it be the Strategic Defense Initiative, unilaterally leaving the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Prompt Global Strike, hypersonic missiles, the US is developing escalatory weapons tech then justifying it with delusions that the same exists in other countries, like those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Weaponization of space has always been touted as the ultimate high ground, but we seem to have forgotten the lessons and mistakes of raising the stakes, https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
In an age of nuclear weapons, new "disruptive" strategic technology development can be extremely dangerous and destablizing.. this is not a game humanity can afford to play.
That's because it's more expensive to pay people in a wealthy nation than a poor one. 25% of the budget just goes to paying salaries. You are totally uninformed about what you're talking about, and beyond naïve to think that the US can just stop investing in defense and somehow end up in a more peaceful world. Please stop stoking ideological arguments, we are in a forum about technology.
It's uncool to accuse people of stoking ideological arguments because they stated a relevant fact.
And can you please use better reasoning? How, in your view, does spending 25% of a budget on salaries explain a budget that's higher than the next nine countries combined?
America’s win two-theatre war doctrine [1] absolutely mandates the largest military in the world. Not sure how the comment you’re replying to even contemplates challenging that. But if America paid Chinese wages, its budget at all levels would be smaller. We pay more for every soldier, bullet and missile because Americans are better paid.
But anyway. Suppose we spent only as much as China does, the #2 defense spender. They spent $229 billion. They also don't really value human life, soldiers are expendable in vast quantities if it advances the aim of the state--loss of life is much less tolerable in America. Do you think that would be sufficient for the US defense goals? We currently spent $173B just on salaries for servicemen, and then another $286 billion on operations, followed by $141 billion for procurement and $106 billion for research and development. Yes there is waste in the military, but is there $450 billion worth of waste and cruft? Are we to believe that are leaders and generals have miscalculated by more than 50%? Should we fire half our soldiers, scuttle our carrier strike groups, and abandon efforts to modernize the air force?
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
- Eisenhower
You really ought to read the original comment you replied to again - their point about unnecessary arms races seems to have triggered some kind of automatic defense in your brain.
Russia broke its agreements first. And I don’t think we have arms control treaties with China.
International agreements has proven much more effective as a grand strategy then escalation. The nuclear non-proliferation is a good example, but so is the Iran nuclear deal (which even gives us an AB testing scenario since Iran’s nuclear armament became much closer to reality after the USA withdrew).
Now if USA was really concerned about militarization of space, then they would have pushed for international agreements long ago.
Like the Outer Space Treaty [1]?
If the USA would be concerned about foreign powers using satellites to spy about their military activity, or otherwise plot and command an invading armies and weapon systems, they wouldn’t try to one-up these foreign powers with their own spying and communications infrastructure, they would push for strict international regulation for what you can do with data collected from space, as well as for what kind of information and commands you can upload to which kind of vehicles on or near the ground.