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Is the military industrial complex really that big? I’m under the impression that it’s honestly pretty weak and fragile.

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Yep, the current Russian war in Ukraine exposed the fact that the western 'military complex' isn't that industrial anymore, as (for example) the total annual production of artillery shells is less than what we'd shoot in a single average day of WW2.

There's still a lot of money spent, but it's spent less on actual industrial capacity but rather mostly on various high-tech R&D things - probably because then you can convert a larger portion of the order to profits instead of hardware.

Yes that was what I meant. Lots of RD. probably an army of contractors.

But industry? I really don’t think so. Still curious if others have evidence otherwise

I'd say that, colloquially at least (and maybe in a literary sense as well), the "military industrial complex" broadly covers the flow of money from a government and its military to the defense industry at large. (terms again can be a bit strange here, but the "defense-industry" describes an area of economic activity not "the refinement of raw materials into products").

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