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Comment by georgeg23 | Hacker News Reader

Before you do that, you might want to understand the other side, and how ignorance contributes to an unnecessary arms race.

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.

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> The military budget is more than the next nine countries combined

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.

> 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.

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?

> 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.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/two-theatre-war

On the contrary: how does spending more than the next nine countries, all of which have totally unique geopolitical positions and defense needs, have anything whatsoever to do with what we need to spend to achieve our goals? It's like saying Walmart spends more on inventory than the next 9 retailers combined: Walmart has a totally different business than Nike and GAP. In fact it's even more asinine than that: it's like saying that Walmart spends more than the biggest retailers in India and China, countries with different currencies, where quality differs, and where things cost different amounts.

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?

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.

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.

Yes, it is an unfortunate reality of the world we live in, which some people choose to blissfully ignore. Go ahead and ask the Ukrainians how their hospitals and children are doing these days. Since we're playing recite-quotes, here's one: To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace. - George Washington

Russia and China have been weponizing space for decades and they already have working hypersonic missiles.

If you know the history China/Russia are doing smaller-scale R&D type development mainly to respond to to US ditching arms control treaties and building offensive tech first (usually happening when Republicans in power).

> US ditching arms control treaties

Russia broke its agreements first. And I don’t think we have arms control treaties with China.

This is non-sense, unless you are in the know about the Russia’s and China’s space programs. Their space technologies are generally behind the US (although China is working hard to catch up), and are less transparent, so we’ve heard more about initiatives such as SDA. That doesn’t mean their military space R&D are purely in response to US’s programs. Russia intended to use space for reconnaissance very early on after Sputnik [0]. They didn’t wait for the US to make a move first.

[0]-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenit_(satellite)

You are offering a pretty narrow worldview here, and a blatant simplification of geopolitics. Ignoring the elephant USA in the room here who’s militarization dwarfs any competition, then escalation (or even answers in kind) is not the only option on the table. There is also international agreements.

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.

> 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]?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

Exactly. We haven’t seen weapons in space, and I think this treaty is partially to thank for that. International agreements is usually a pretty solid strategy for de-escalation.

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.

So we waste money on space missiles that we probably never use except as a deterrent, and in the process some science comes out of it. It's not optimal but it's probably the best we can do in political reality.

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