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What is striking to me is the enormous waste of resources and engineering talent that went in to destructive monstrosities on all sides. I remember having the s

What is striking to me is the enormous waste of resources and engineering talent that went in to destructive monstrosities on all sides. I remember having the same reaction visiting a UK air museum seeing the Vulcan up-close for the first time. Entire generations of the best an brightest roped in to build political brinkmanship tools, never to be used that are now rusting away. Meanwhile, Japan and Germany, the loosers of WW2 that was meant to be kept down, by not allowing them to participate in the arms race built up formidable industrial capacity, that came to dominate many sectors by the end of the cold war.

carapace 6y ago
Alice: Why do you have that cannon in your front yard? Bob: To keep the tigers away. Alice: But there are no tigers around here. Bob: See? It works. - - - - It's hard to credit now, but I recall the real existential dread of the bomb. Reagan talking about the "Evil Empire". As a kid I was scared of nuclear war. Today we still have the nukes but everybody's pretty relaxed about it. Hypersonic weapons are on the horizon (not literally, thank God) which are crazy destabilizing to the international détente. No one cares. "War is so last century."? "Space Force"!? We're not out of the woods yet. The hippies were right: peace and love are the answers.
op03 6y ago
More like a Cost of dealing with people in the neighborhood who want your stuff and/or want you to bend and bow to them. Look at Taiwan today. What other option do they have other than burning billions to buy some deterrence? Same goes for Japan and Germany. They are highly dependent on outside help if the bullies in the neighborhood get a little more ambitious.
- looping__lui 6y ago
  Ever heard of NATO?
  - fastball 6y ago
    Yes, that is GC's point. NATO wouldn't be much of a deterrent to others without the US pumping massive investment into it / its own war machine.
    - looping__lui 6y ago
      Deterring whom exactly? US paid 22% of NATO’s military and civilian budget [0]. No other developed country spends 3+% on fighter jets, drones etc. It’s just a waste of ressources and does not bring any peace and protection to the world. Russia invades Germany: yeah, I’d rather learn Russian than become the nuclear playground for the US and Russia. The world stage has seen enough examples. Like WHY exactly would Russia or China start a war with anybody? Nukes would end the world as we know it. Don’t need 100, just a handful. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44717074 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44717074
      - fastball 6y ago
        Russia is a great example. Russia and China push the envelope whenever they can. The idea is that the US won't just nuke anyone that invades someone else, but they can provide ground/air support (sans nukes). So that's why just having the nukes isn't enough. They're mostly just there so that the US/allies don't get nuked, not good for much else (but very good for that).
        looping__lui 6y ago
        Ok, what do you mean by “Russia and China push the envelope wherever they can”? Like in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria and Libya? “We know that over 182,000 civilians have died from direct war related violence caused by the US, its allies, the Iraqi military and police, and opposition forces from the time of the invasion through November 2018.” [0] [0] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/iraqi#:~:text=No%20one%20knows%20with%20certainty%20how%20many%20people,the%20time%20of%20the%20invasion%20through%20November%202018 https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/ir....
jedberg 6y ago
People say the sam thing about ad-tech today. They even using the exact same phase: "Entire generations of the best and brightest". But look at the innovation that comes from both endeavors and leaks out into the rest of society. Arguably computer technology would not be where it is without the war machine driving the initial innovation. And similarly, web technology, such as Javascript and just the ability to update a webpage without reloading it wouldn't exist without ad-tech.
- citizenkeen 6y ago
  > And similarly, web technology, such as Javascript and just the ability to update a webpage without reloading it wouldn't exist without ad-tech. I don't know what I find more depressing - that somebody thinks this is true, or worse, that somebody thinks this is a good thing.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    We can debate whether or not javascript took off because of adtech, I will concede that. But I think you'd be hard pressed to provide evidence that the web would be better without Javascript. Yes, people abuse javascript and make it do awful things, but think about all the good things Javascript enables. On reddit, you can comment without reloading the page thanks to javascript. There are ton of great games that are all in javascript. Simple things like when you log into a webpage and it shows your username in the corner. Status notification on webpages. Being able to make a request and then continue working while the request processes. Javascript is a tool, and I'd say it's a tool that makes things better overall.
    - UweSchmidt 6y ago
      It's of course subjective, but I've recently rediscovered an old browser-based game from around 2000, pure PHP, zero javascript, zero development in a decade. Just fast-loading websites representing an updated game-state of travelling through space, mining and fighting in real time. Perfect. If you comment on reddit, don't you watch the page to confirm your comment went up? So not necessarily a productivity gain through Javascript. Conscious reloading is nice as there is no distraction: You take an action to see new state like login, new messages and notifications. Again, totally subjective. There were plenty of games made with Flash, so game dev tools were developed independent of ad-tech.
flyinglizard 6y ago
Japan and Germany could do what they did because they were under the US protection of those brinkmanship tools. Furthermore, military tech has a huge impact on everyday life (jet engines, satellites, communications). Even when the tech was not directly invented by the military, it was still at some time a major customer or patron of the tech.
- looping__lui 6y ago
  Protection from whom? Never in the history of time has Russia ever attacked Germany... If we learned anything post-WW II it is that you cannot win wars with technological superiority and they look like a huge waste of ressources. Vietnam, Afghanistan anyone?
  - mperham 6y ago
    the Warsaw Pact and NATO?
    - looping__lui 6y ago
      What would have been the incentive for either side to start a war that would end civilisation for all times? I do understand that a lot of well paid people had us buy weapons we don’t need for decades; they did a good job in convincing our parents and their parents that evil is just about to make its move. Just spend less money and have a compulsory military service. Young men without any military ambition from the very society they are supposed to protect are just very eager not doing anything and not shooting anybody up - until shit really hits the fan in their home country and they have to.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - anateus 6y ago
    Seven Years' War would beg to differ :)
deeviant 6y ago
Entire generations? No. Some amount of each generation? Yes. In general I agree with your sentiment. War = bad. Being a pacific that eschews all ability to make war is not the pinnacle of evolution. At least not in my view of things. A truly evolved species will retain the power to protect innocent again harm and violence, but only use that horrible type of power expressly that purpose.
- fastball 6y ago
  What we need is the kind of tech they have in The Culture series by Iain Banks. They have "effectors", which is highly advanced tractor beam-style technology that allows you to manipulate matter from a distance with a precise field, which can obviously be used for all sorts of scientific / constructive pursuits. But in times of war, the effectors can be used for all kinds of defensive/destructive shenanigans as well.
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
    They have "effectors", which is highly advanced tractor beam-style technology that allow you to manipulate matter from a distance with a precise field, which can obviously be used for all sorts of scientific / constructive pursuits They also have gridfire, a weapon more potent than anti-matter.
    - fastball 6y ago
      Yep, though as with effectors, I'm fairly certain the technology/equipment that enables gridfire is the same that enables hyperspace travel, so it is also dual purpose in peace and war time. Once again showing that The Culture is the coolest idea of a Utopia ever conceived.
- fuzzfactor 6y ago
  Further evolution could make horrible power unnecessary for this purpose too if any predatory nature were to no longer appear.
thwarted 6y ago
It's good that people had jobs and science and technology was advanced. It's bad that it was done under the auspices of war and creating machines for killing and destruction. It's good some of those machines didn't get used. It's unfortunate that humans can find the resources for war but can't find the resources to help fellow humans. But in some sense, the department of defense is a massive jobs program not just in the direct hires but also in the large military industrial complex of military contractors (and you see this in the way politicians work to keep military bases open and contracts for useless jets going) that, as long as we don't go to war, is arguably a net positive. I wish we could admit how much of a jobs program it is and use that money and effort directly for good things.
powderpig 6y ago
Did you know that the Vulcan's engines were developed into the engines that powered Concorde?
- quelsolaar 6y ago
  Yeah, but it wasn't the most straightforward way to go about building a supersonic airliner. The sad thing is that the Vulcan was one of three submission to The UK government to build a long range bomber. The military wanted the Vulcan, but it was seen as risky due to its advanced technology. So they orderd the Vulcan and the Victor, a less risky design as backup. Then they got cold feet and orderd the Valiant too just in case. So they ended up designing 3 entirely different planes with the same Mission profile. Oh, yes then they bought some B-29 Just in case....
  - patentatt 6y ago
    Wasteful, sure. But who here isn’t familiar with triple redundancy for mission critical applications? And what’s more mission critical during the Cold War?
- hermitcrab 6y ago
  More Vulcan trivia: The pilot and co-pilot has ejector seats. The other 3 crew had basically zero chance of bailing out.
crocal 6y ago
Nuclear submarines like this have prevented the world from going to war because some crazy idiot could think he had first strike advantage. Not a bad waste of engineering, especially if not used. In terms of warfare, this is the optimal result.
commonturtle 6y ago
'Waste' is the wrong way to look at it. It's like someone looking at the human body and complaining about the huge amount of energy spent collecting waste from the body and passing it out via the urinary tract. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the body didn't generate any waste in the first place and thus didn't need a urinary tract in the first place? The problem with this scenario is that it is unrealistic, just like assuming there is a way of having an absolutely peaceful world. A planet with billions of agents each who are moderately self-interested will result in the agents trying to take things from each other by force. To protect themselves, the agents form groups and aggregate their resources, using them to produce war-making abilities that can deter other agents. 'Tis the way of the world. The wonderful thing is how far we've come in making the world safer over the last 2000 years. In the west we have a largely functional police force and judiciary that will protect and provide justice to every citizen regardless of their political influence As compared to 2000 years ago of course, as compared to some utopian ideal we have a long way to go, as recent news in the US shows :)
- Retric 6y ago
  The difference between having 1,000 and 10,000 nuclear weapons is fairly meaningless from a MAD standpoint, but the second still costs ~10 times as much. That’s where the waste is, not simply having a military but having a pointlessly large one. Worse, it’s even counterproductive. Investing in useful economic assets pays dividends thus increasing your long term military capacity. Buying excessive military hardware on the other hand just gets outdated over time. So, the winning strategy is to spend slightly less than your opposition.
  - commonturtle 6y ago
    Agree with the need for moderation. But to 'spend slightly less than your opposition' might be insufficient; you don't usually have one opponent but a few. In that case your first opponent knows if you have to spend all your ammunition taking them out you won't have enough resources to fight off the second opponent. So they reason they can push you around quite a bit because you can't afford to retaliate. IIRC in its heydays the British government had 'the rule of three': a policy of making sure the Royal Navy could take on the top 3 naval powers and still come out ahead. Something like that is what the US is going for today, and I'm not sure they're wrong.
Devils-Avocado 6y ago
A far larger amount of money is devoted to the healthcare and welfare of the aged. Italy devotes 17% of its GDP to pensions, for example. In the middle of the cold war USA defense spending never exceed 10%.
- fuzzfactor 6y ago
  Seems to me both countries would be better off spending even more than they are on improving people's living, and less on killing strategies.
echelon 6y ago
If the US weren't spending on its military, Germany and Japan would likely need to spend much more. Japan especially. The US protects G7 interests from Russia, China, and the oil cartel. Russia takes what it can with impunity, but they're constrained to their immediate neighbors out of fear of the US and NATO. China is beginning to behave the same way. In the coming decades, they'll likely begin to act more aggressively. I predict military spending will need to increase and that there is a coming arms race. Once China's military surpasses the US, we'll have nuclear subs off every coast ready at a moment's notice. Shipping and energy interests will be fiercely defended. We're going to enter Cold War II, and it's not going to be fun. Let's hope it stays cold.
refurb 6y ago
"What is striking to me is the enormous waste of resources and engineering talent that went in to destructive monstrosities on all sides." To me, this is like looking at our ability to treat trauma patients and saying "what a waste - if those people weren't hurt in the first place, these great minds could work on something else". Well, sure. And if gravity didn't exist people wouldn't fall and get hurt. But it does exist. And so does war.
hermitcrab 6y ago
>Entire generations of the best an brightest roped in to build political brinkmanship tools, never to be used that are now rusting away. And now they are moving numbers around spreadsheets for hedge funds? I guess it is an improvement, of sorts.
hestefisk 6y ago
I’m with you on this one. The money spent on building expensive rust buckets never used could easily have been redirected more productively to building industrial capability or better healthcare.

carapace 6y ago

Alice: Why do you have that cannon in your front yard? Bob: To keep the tigers away. Alice: But there are no tigers around here. Bob: See? It works. - - - - It's hard to credit now, but I recall the real existential dread of the bomb. Reagan talking about the "Evil Empire". As a kid I was scared of nuclear war. Today we still have the nukes but everybody's pretty relaxed about it. Hypersonic weapons are on the horizon (not literally, thank God) which are crazy destabilizing to the international détente. No one cares. "War is so last century."? "Space Force"!? We're not out of the woods yet. The hippies were right: peace and love are the answers.

op03 6y ago

More like a Cost of dealing with people in the neighborhood who want your stuff and/or want you to bend and bow to them. Look at Taiwan today. What other option do they have other than burning billions to buy some deterrence? Same goes for Japan and Germany. They are highly dependent on outside help if the bullies in the neighborhood get a little more ambitious.

looping__lui 6y ago
Ever heard of NATO?
- fastball 6y ago
  Yes, that is GC's point. NATO wouldn't be much of a deterrent to others without the US pumping massive investment into it / its own war machine.
  - looping__lui 6y ago
    Deterring whom exactly? US paid 22% of NATO’s military and civilian budget [0]. No other developed country spends 3+% on fighter jets, drones etc. It’s just a waste of ressources and does not bring any peace and protection to the world. Russia invades Germany: yeah, I’d rather learn Russian than become the nuclear playground for the US and Russia. The world stage has seen enough examples. Like WHY exactly would Russia or China start a war with anybody? Nukes would end the world as we know it. Don’t need 100, just a handful. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44717074 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44717074
    - fastball 6y ago
      Russia is a great example. Russia and China push the envelope whenever they can. The idea is that the US won't just nuke anyone that invades someone else, but they can provide ground/air support (sans nukes). So that's why just having the nukes isn't enough. They're mostly just there so that the US/allies don't get nuked, not good for much else (but very good for that).
      - looping__lui 6y ago
        Ok, what do you mean by “Russia and China push the envelope wherever they can”? Like in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria and Libya? “We know that over 182,000 civilians have died from direct war related violence caused by the US, its allies, the Iraqi military and police, and opposition forces from the time of the invasion through November 2018.” [0] [0] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/iraqi#:~:text=No%20one%20knows%20with%20certainty%20how%20many%20people,the%20time%20of%20the%20invasion%20through%20November%202018 https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/ir....

jedberg 6y ago

People say the sam thing about ad-tech today. They even using the exact same phase: "Entire generations of the best and brightest". But look at the innovation that comes from both endeavors and leaks out into the rest of society. Arguably computer technology would not be where it is without the war machine driving the initial innovation. And similarly, web technology, such as Javascript and just the ability to update a webpage without reloading it wouldn't exist without ad-tech.

citizenkeen 6y ago
> And similarly, web technology, such as Javascript and just the ability to update a webpage without reloading it wouldn't exist without ad-tech. I don't know what I find more depressing - that somebody thinks this is true, or worse, that somebody thinks this is a good thing.
- jedberg 6y ago
  We can debate whether or not javascript took off because of adtech, I will concede that. But I think you'd be hard pressed to provide evidence that the web would be better without Javascript. Yes, people abuse javascript and make it do awful things, but think about all the good things Javascript enables. On reddit, you can comment without reloading the page thanks to javascript. There are ton of great games that are all in javascript. Simple things like when you log into a webpage and it shows your username in the corner. Status notification on webpages. Being able to make a request and then continue working while the request processes. Javascript is a tool, and I'd say it's a tool that makes things better overall.
  - UweSchmidt 6y ago
    It's of course subjective, but I've recently rediscovered an old browser-based game from around 2000, pure PHP, zero javascript, zero development in a decade. Just fast-loading websites representing an updated game-state of travelling through space, mining and fighting in real time. Perfect. If you comment on reddit, don't you watch the page to confirm your comment went up? So not necessarily a productivity gain through Javascript. Conscious reloading is nice as there is no distraction: You take an action to see new state like login, new messages and notifications. Again, totally subjective. There were plenty of games made with Flash, so game dev tools were developed independent of ad-tech.

flyinglizard 6y ago

Japan and Germany could do what they did because they were under the US protection of those brinkmanship tools. Furthermore, military tech has a huge impact on everyday life (jet engines, satellites, communications). Even when the tech was not directly invented by the military, it was still at some time a major customer or patron of the tech.

looping__lui 6y ago
Protection from whom? Never in the history of time has Russia ever attacked Germany... If we learned anything post-WW II it is that you cannot win wars with technological superiority and they look like a huge waste of ressources. Vietnam, Afghanistan anyone?
- mperham 6y ago
  the Warsaw Pact and NATO?
  - looping__lui 6y ago
    What would have been the incentive for either side to start a war that would end civilisation for all times? I do understand that a lot of well paid people had us buy weapons we don’t need for decades; they did a good job in convincing our parents and their parents that evil is just about to make its move. Just spend less money and have a compulsory military service. Young men without any military ambition from the very society they are supposed to protect are just very eager not doing anything and not shooting anybody up - until shit really hits the fan in their home country and they have to.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- anateus 6y ago
  Seven Years' War would beg to differ :)

deeviant 6y ago

Entire generations? No. Some amount of each generation? Yes. In general I agree with your sentiment. War = bad. Being a pacific that eschews all ability to make war is not the pinnacle of evolution. At least not in my view of things. A truly evolved species will retain the power to protect innocent again harm and violence, but only use that horrible type of power expressly that purpose.

fastball 6y ago
What we need is the kind of tech they have in The Culture series by Iain Banks. They have "effectors", which is highly advanced tractor beam-style technology that allows you to manipulate matter from a distance with a precise field, which can obviously be used for all sorts of scientific / constructive pursuits. But in times of war, the effectors can be used for all kinds of defensive/destructive shenanigans as well.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  They have "effectors", which is highly advanced tractor beam-style technology that allow you to manipulate matter from a distance with a precise field, which can obviously be used for all sorts of scientific / constructive pursuits They also have gridfire, a weapon more potent than anti-matter.
  - fastball 6y ago
    Yep, though as with effectors, I'm fairly certain the technology/equipment that enables gridfire is the same that enables hyperspace travel, so it is also dual purpose in peace and war time. Once again showing that The Culture is the coolest idea of a Utopia ever conceived.
fuzzfactor 6y ago
Further evolution could make horrible power unnecessary for this purpose too if any predatory nature were to no longer appear.

thwarted 6y ago

It's good that people had jobs and science and technology was advanced. It's bad that it was done under the auspices of war and creating machines for killing and destruction. It's good some of those machines didn't get used. It's unfortunate that humans can find the resources for war but can't find the resources to help fellow humans. But in some sense, the department of defense is a massive jobs program not just in the direct hires but also in the large military industrial complex of military contractors (and you see this in the way politicians work to keep military bases open and contracts for useless jets going) that, as long as we don't go to war, is arguably a net positive. I wish we could admit how much of a jobs program it is and use that money and effort directly for good things.

powderpig 6y ago

Did you know that the Vulcan's engines were developed into the engines that powered Concorde?

quelsolaar 6y ago
Yeah, but it wasn't the most straightforward way to go about building a supersonic airliner. The sad thing is that the Vulcan was one of three submission to The UK government to build a long range bomber. The military wanted the Vulcan, but it was seen as risky due to its advanced technology. So they orderd the Vulcan and the Victor, a less risky design as backup. Then they got cold feet and orderd the Valiant too just in case. So they ended up designing 3 entirely different planes with the same Mission profile. Oh, yes then they bought some B-29 Just in case....
- patentatt 6y ago
  Wasteful, sure. But who here isn’t familiar with triple redundancy for mission critical applications? And what’s more mission critical during the Cold War?
hermitcrab 6y ago
More Vulcan trivia: The pilot and co-pilot has ejector seats. The other 3 crew had basically zero chance of bailing out.

crocal 6y ago

Nuclear submarines like this have prevented the world from going to war because some crazy idiot could think he had first strike advantage. Not a bad waste of engineering, especially if not used. In terms of warfare, this is the optimal result.

commonturtle 6y ago

'Waste' is the wrong way to look at it. It's like someone looking at the human body and complaining about the huge amount of energy spent collecting waste from the body and passing it out via the urinary tract. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the body didn't generate any waste in the first place and thus didn't need a urinary tract in the first place? The problem with this scenario is that it is unrealistic, just like assuming there is a way of having an absolutely peaceful world. A planet with billions of agents each who are moderately self-interested will result in the agents trying to take things from each other by force. To protect themselves, the agents form groups and aggregate their resources, using them to produce war-making abilities that can deter other agents. 'Tis the way of the world. The wonderful thing is how far we've come in making the world safer over the last 2000 years. In the west we have a largely functional police force and judiciary that will protect and provide justice to every citizen regardless of their political influence As compared to 2000 years ago of course, as compared to some utopian ideal we have a long way to go, as recent news in the US shows :)

Retric 6y ago
The difference between having 1,000 and 10,000 nuclear weapons is fairly meaningless from a MAD standpoint, but the second still costs ~10 times as much. That’s where the waste is, not simply having a military but having a pointlessly large one. Worse, it’s even counterproductive. Investing in useful economic assets pays dividends thus increasing your long term military capacity. Buying excessive military hardware on the other hand just gets outdated over time. So, the winning strategy is to spend slightly less than your opposition.
- commonturtle 6y ago
  Agree with the need for moderation. But to 'spend slightly less than your opposition' might be insufficient; you don't usually have one opponent but a few. In that case your first opponent knows if you have to spend all your ammunition taking them out you won't have enough resources to fight off the second opponent. So they reason they can push you around quite a bit because you can't afford to retaliate. IIRC in its heydays the British government had 'the rule of three': a policy of making sure the Royal Navy could take on the top 3 naval powers and still come out ahead. Something like that is what the US is going for today, and I'm not sure they're wrong.

Devils-Avocado 6y ago

A far larger amount of money is devoted to the healthcare and welfare of the aged. Italy devotes 17% of its GDP to pensions, for example. In the middle of the cold war USA defense spending never exceed 10%.

fuzzfactor 6y ago
Seems to me both countries would be better off spending even more than they are on improving people's living, and less on killing strategies.

echelon 6y ago

If the US weren't spending on its military, Germany and Japan would likely need to spend much more. Japan especially. The US protects G7 interests from Russia, China, and the oil cartel. Russia takes what it can with impunity, but they're constrained to their immediate neighbors out of fear of the US and NATO. China is beginning to behave the same way. In the coming decades, they'll likely begin to act more aggressively. I predict military spending will need to increase and that there is a coming arms race. Once China's military surpasses the US, we'll have nuclear subs off every coast ready at a moment's notice. Shipping and energy interests will be fiercely defended. We're going to enter Cold War II, and it's not going to be fun. Let's hope it stays cold.

refurb 6y ago

"What is striking to me is the enormous waste of resources and engineering talent that went in to destructive monstrosities on all sides." To me, this is like looking at our ability to treat trauma patients and saying "what a waste - if those people weren't hurt in the first place, these great minds could work on something else". Well, sure. And if gravity didn't exist people wouldn't fall and get hurt. But it does exist. And so does war.

hermitcrab 6y ago

>Entire generations of the best an brightest roped in to build political brinkmanship tools, never to be used that are now rusting away. And now they are moving numbers around spreadsheets for hedge funds? I guess it is an improvement, of sorts.

hestefisk 6y ago

I’m with you on this one. The money spent on building expensive rust buckets never used could easily have been redirected more productively to building industrial capability or better healthcare.