7 ms·

Uh, guys, we should think about spending more on defense in the US

50 points by throw0101a 3y ago

throw0101a 3y ago
Where are the dollars that show up on spreadsheets going? > So anyway, if we’re going to be able to match Chinese military power — even in concert with all our friends and allies — we need to spend a lot more on the military. If you say this in public, someone will inevitably reply that “we spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined”,[1] and call for cutting defense spending in order to fund either social spending or tax cuts, depending on which side of the political aisle they fall. But what does it mean for the U.S. to outspend all other nations when China can build warships at 200 times the rate we can? What does it mean for the U.S. to outspend all other nations if we can’t even keep up enough munitions production to supply Ukraine? > Nothing. Dollars on paper mean nothing; shells and missiles and ships are real things that can be counted. As with health care and housing and train stations and everything else,[2] Americans have deluded themselves into believing that as long as they allocate dollars to something in a spreadsheet, then valuable and useful real stuff is actually getting built. Again and again, that delusion has been shattered when excess costs and interminable delays block the paper dollars from becoming real tangible goods.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  The delusion here is that some Americans believe that they can remain #1 forever. The hard truth is that countries like India and China that have 4x the population will ultimately have much larger economies and will thus be able to have larger military capabilities.
  - Mountain_Skies 3y ago
    Nigeria also has a rapidly growing population that likely will exceed that of the United States in a couple of decades but that alone isn't the secret sauce to passing the US economically and militarily.
  - OO000oo 3y ago
    If the US still made things and still made children, it could do a lot better than it is.
    - abracadaniel 3y ago
      US manufacturing is an all time high and the population is still growing. China has been below replacement levels for birth rate long enough that their population is actually shrinking.
      - OO000oo 3y ago
        The US makes almost nothing on its own and I expect you know that, and the US population would be shrinking at a suicidal rate if not for mass human labor trafficking from the 3rd world.
      - howmayiannoyyou 3y ago
        This is absurdly incorrect in the context of the article. As just one example - the US shuttered more than half of its ship building capacity after the Soviet Union fell. You cannot convert a foreign owned Toyota auto assembly plant into a shipyard. And, it would be nice if US economic stats made a distinction between manufacturing and assembly. A lot of what you call manufacturing is simply the low skilled combining of parts made overseas.
        mcphage 3y ago
        > You cannot convert a foreign owned Toyota auto assembly plant into a shipyard. As long as it’s in the US—yeah, you can.
        fragmede 3y ago
        The US government coming in and forcibly taking control of a Toyota auto assembly plant located on US soil won't do anything to move it 320 miles down 65 from Huntsville, Alabama to the (gulf) coast. I'm no shipbuilder, but I get the impression that shipyards are typically near the ocean.
  - Jevon23 3y ago
    Bit like saying there's no point in wearing a seatbelt because "you're delusional if you think you can live forever." Sure, nothing lasts forever. Doesn't mean we just roll over and give up.
    - beardyw 3y ago
      It is better for a country to be realistic about it's place on the world. I live in the UK. There are still people here with an exaggerated idea of our importance which helps no one.
    - hackinthebochs 3y ago
      But if you're incapable of recognizing your reduced standing in the world, you can end up miscalculating the resistance from other nations as you promote your interests. Being unable to accurately assess the expectations of success of other nations in promoting their interests will just lead to runaway escalation and potentially a world war.
  - beardyw 3y ago
    History tells us that nothing remains constant so even those changes will come and go.
  - Avshalom 3y ago
    Well china currently has a larger population, but here's Noah asking us to make enough bullets to change that.
    - marricks 3y ago
      What a beautiful dream Noah promises us all.
    - NhanH 3y ago
      Just to put actual number into sight: that’s at least a billion people we are talking about. Even if a war happen 20 years from now and the US double its population while China has a population collapse, it’s still 400 million people++
      - galangalalgol 3y ago
        The problem isn't the absolute nimber, it is the ratio of producers and consumers in general to consumers of food.
        giardini 3y ago
        It's really about the number of young men of the age to be conscripted.
    - inconceivable 3y ago
      noah is a prototypical 90's-era weeb who worships japan and absolutely despises china and chinese people in general. i'm surprised in 2023 people aren't yet tired of this schtick. it's getting old.
    - giardini 3y ago
      Need we fear a war of bullets with China? Is this not merely another diabolical plot to kill the remaining Boomers (the last American generation who know how to shoot guns and save money) by engaging them in a war of attrition with China's analogous elderly population?
  - mpalmer 3y ago
    > will ultimately have much larger economies Will they necessarily? I would expect culture and system of government to be factors in whether a country can not only support 1 billion plus people, but grow their economy too. Let alone natural resources
  - rhaway84773 3y ago
    Except the rich and educated Indians and Chinese want to move to the US. India and China having 4x the US’s population doesn’t mean anything if the top 5-10 productive percentile of their population emigrate to the US. Further, unlike India and China which literally share a contested border, the U.S. is surrounded by extremely friendly nations and 2 oceans. Further, the US has a 200+ year history of a relatively stable democracy whereas India is currently turning into whatever clown show Modi is trying to turn it into, and Xi Jinping has turned China into the kind of autocracy where he is telling highly educated Chinese that they should go back to their villages and try their hand at subsistence farming. I would have thought the last 6 months of Chinese collapse, which should have been a post Zero COVID era of epic growth would have disabused people of the notion that people automatically means growth and success. China is currently beyond their demographic dividend and is now in the payback stage, having f’ed their demographics massively with their 1 child policy. India is in the peak of their demographic dividend but instead of utilizing it to productive ends is engaged in the promotion of religious infighting and autocratic tendencies all to satisfy the power lust of 1 man and his lackeys.
    - klyrs 3y ago
      > India and China having 4x the US’s population doesn’t mean anything if the top 5-10 productive percentile of their population emigrate to the US. The richest, in India, China, and the US are not the "most productive" by any means. They're the most extractive. If we were immigrating hard workers, we wouldn't have labor shortages. Instead, we're immigrating investors who drive up real estate costs.
  - sureglymop 3y ago
    Also, why should the US be #1? What is so much _greater_ about the US?
    - cosmic_quanta 3y ago
      Honestly, it's its geography. Only friendly neighbours on the same continent, vast swaths of some of the most fertile land in the world, water access to Europe AND Asia, etc. Regardless of the difference between Chinese and US citizens / culture / government, geography will always remain an advantage
      - dirtyid 3y ago
        Geographic benefits erodes with technology. Technology has compressed the world, global shipping gives actors with money and leverage access to resources around the world. Post war US power projection is based off the fact it has technology to reach others while others cannot reach CONUS. Which has/is going to change shortly. Now techology like precise long range strikes makes CONUS no better than Saudi. Having resource autarky =/= resource security when modern missiles can take out critical infra on CONUS. Geography matters less than ever.
      - mytailorisrich 3y ago
        As it happens, China is the same size as the US, has a lot of natural resources, and also large swaths of very fertile land (which partly explains why they have always had a large population) and, for instance, they are the largest producer of both wheat and rice in the world.
        hollerith 3y ago
        I recently heard (on some youtube video) that China has 10% of the world's farmland and 20% of the world's population. Also, any country that is not extremely poor does mechanized farming, which has been described as "using land to turn petroleum into food", and most of the petroleum China uses comes from the Persian Gulf or even further away. (For example, I'm pretty sure that most of Russia's flow of petroleum to China comes via ports on the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea.) In contrast, (because of the fracking revolution) the US produces all the petroleum it needs domestically. If that changes in the future (for example because of a commitment to reducing carbon emissions cause regulations that discourage petroleum production in the US) then the US can probably make up any shortfall with petroleum from Canada. And I'm pretty sure China must import most of its needs for 2 of the 3 major fertilizing commodities (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium). And they get a lot of grain and oilseed for example from Ukraine or at least they did until Russia stopped the flow (according to a Youtube video I recently watched). I see a lot of statements here to the effect of how screwed the US would be if it suddenly couldn't import things from China, but very little on how much more screwed China would be if it couldn't import things from other continents. At least the US can feed its population, keep the electricity on and keep the trucks moving on its highways without imports.
  - galangalalgol 3y ago
    According to Zeihan, China, and to a lesser extent India, have a horrible demographics problem looming. The prediction was for a dramatic collapse in manufacturing capacity. China at least might have the central authority to kill all those too old to work or consume, but my understanding is that doesn't fit well with the predominant culture there which highly respects age. Also, the whole killing people thing... All the nations, especially those that industrialized quickly are facing this problem. As industrialization correlates strongly with smaller families (don't need children to work the farm). But China compounded it with the one child policy. And they industrialized faster than almost anyone. India went straight for a service economy, that may be even worse. Russia... Not sure about Brazil. The US delayed its demographic collapse via immigration. It might even effect a soft landing relative to the rest of the world if it can ramp back up manufacturing in a way that doesn't destroy shared resources or enforce permanent underclasses leading to revolt. That isn't an easy task.
    - inconceivable 3y ago
      pretty much everyone else with a public platform in geopolitical analysis has a low opinion of zeihan. this includes shapiro, papic, and other stratfor alumni who i pay attention to. zeihan's analysis is performative and is designed to make him money, not provide value to anyone in the real world. wow, america's geography makes it invincible and china will collapse any day now because they suck at innovating. that's super insightful and original. i definitely haven't been hearing that repeated ad nauseum for literally 40 years.
      - galangalalgol 3y ago
        I'd like to read them, his stuff does seem entertainment heavy. And I spot some errors in places I have expertise, if small ones. Not this Shapiro right? This one is mostly agreeing with Zeihan. https://www.dailywire.com/news/bank-on-it-ben-shapiro-predicts-the-one-move-china-will-make-towards-taiwan-thanks-to-the-biden-administration https://www.dailywire.com/news/bank-on-it-ben-shapiro-predic...
        3y ago
  - foogazi 3y ago
    > The hard truth is that countries like India and China that have 4x the population will ultimately have much larger economies and will thus be able to have larger military capabilities. meanwhile they are still fighting with sticks in the Himalayas
    - giardini 3y ago
      foogazi says "meanwhile they are still fighting with sticks in the Himalayas." But the rats are well-fed: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=indian+temple+feeding+the+rats&iax=videos&ia=videos https://duckduckgo.com/?q=indian+temple+feeding+the+rats&iax...
  - nradov 3y ago
    China has geographic and natural resource constraints which will make it quite difficult for them to ever surpass the USA regardless of population. They are deficient in most of the things necessary for a strong industrial economy including iron ore, fossil fuels, productive farmland, fertilizers, and navigable waterways. The authoritarian dictatorship system they have adopted is also highly unstable. Dictatorships are only stable until some sort of catastrophic "black swan" event occurs, and then everything collapses faster than anyone expected. Their history is full of violent uprisings and civil wars. I wouldn't be surprised to see another one within our lifetimes. Even just maintaining the security apparatus necessary to control the populace is a huge drag on their economy.
- Retric 3y ago
  It boils down to economies of scale. The DoD requires a significant percentage of war materials to be manufactured in the US for strategic reasons. You don’t to be unable to make bullets/boots/etc in a war because all the factories that manufacture that stuff are in the country you’re fighting. But that also extends to the components to manufacture that stuff like shoes laces, optical cables, screws etc etc. However having small scale manufacturing in the US inherently means less automation and high labor costs. Meanwhile China which is already manufacturing most things at scale doesn’t need to pay a premium for this stuff. It’s debatable how much this is necessary, but war is more about logistics than most people assume.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  Does China have more or less corruption with their military spend? Who gets more for their money, US or China? Is there a case for a US military manufacturing corp?
short_throw 3y ago
If you aren't familiar with Ray Dalio's Principles for a Changing World Order, I can't recommend it enough (both the book and the YouTube video). You'll understand a lot better where the U.S. is in it's history and why so much is the way it is. https://youtu.be/xguam0TKMw8 https://youtu.be/xguam0TKMw8
- constantly 3y ago
  Which, to make sure your lede is unburied, is past its prime according to Ray, if I remember the book correctly.
- maxbond 3y ago
  I enjoyed that video, as well as this rebuttal (specifically to his arguments about China) from Money & Macro. https://youtube.com/watch?v=s1iv0q_SW3E https://youtube.com/watch?v=s1iv0q_SW3E
Tempest1981 3y ago
As an engineer, I would like to see improvements in efficiency: > Americans have deluded themselves into believing that as long as they allocate dollars to something in a spreadsheet, then valuable and useful real stuff is actually getting built. Again and again, that delusion has been shattered when excess costs and interminable delays block the paper dollars from becoming real tangible goods. From construction of transportation to housing to energy infrastructure, things seem to take forever to build. California's high speed rail may never be completed.
- LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
  It doesn’t help that there’s a historic shortage of construction labor[0]. Efforts to improve throughput are meaningless if the most important resource, labor, cannot be procured. https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1158576556/where-did-the-workers-go-construction-jobs-are-plentiful-but-workers-are-scarce https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1158576556/where-did-the-work...
  - linuxftw 3y ago
    I will go work construction tomorrow if the pay is right. I like being outside. Of course, there's never a labor shortage, only a wage shortage.
    - jewayne 3y ago
      Exactly. You know Bill Burr's joke about how every racist conversation begins with "I'm not racist, but..."? I feel like these "labor shortage" statements should preface themselves with "I don't believe in forced labor, but..." There's no acknowledgement of the rights and agency of the workers themselves.
    - DANmode 3y ago
      Regularly labor shortages, depending on where you are. Depending on what you do, probably also want to aim for a slot or two higher than "just walked onto the team laborer".
travisporter 3y ago
Ugh substack - no one wants a quick way to “quote” something. People please don’t mess with right click and text selection!!
CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
I don't think the amount of money spent is the problem; https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/06/20/the-pentagons-52000-trash-can/ https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/06/20/the-pentagons-5...
VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
A defense industry think tank that exists solely to siphon money from the defense budget thinks the defense budget should be even larger!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- constantly 3y ago
  Do you have a rebuttal to the arguments presented?
666satanhimself 3y ago
[dead]
LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
> And when we look back at our history, we see that in the 1950s and 1960s — the glorious postwar years of rapid and equitable growth and plentiful jobs — we spent far more on our military than we do now. Yeah, but two important words in this sentence are no longer true today: equitable growth. We taxed the ultra wealthy at a much, much higher rate than we do today and individual purchasing power was much higher. The household median income in the U.S. in 1950 was $2,990 — roughly 40% of the median home value of $7,354 at the time, according to census data. This is no longer true as a median income doesn’t even qualify for 80% of purchasable homes today[0] 0: https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/eighty-percent-homes-market-arent-affordable-households-earning-median-incomes-or-less https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/eighty-percent-homes-market...
- howmayiannoyyou 3y ago
  | equitable growth. | We taxed the ultra wealthy at a much, much higher rate than we do today and | individual purchasing power was much higher. This is so tangential to the article that is borderline off topic. You don't solve the US defense problem by attempting to tackle something as politically challenging as major changes to US tax policy.
  - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
    It’s not tangential at all. A key argument of the article is that we should spend more on the military like we did in the 50s. It’s important to point out how much the income structure of the government has changed since then.
    - foogazi 3y ago
      What does that matter for defense purposes? the tax base is much bigger now. We have an integrated economy. Whole sectors like tech were not even around before
      - peteradio 3y ago
        Tech is two parts wealth extraction for every part generation.
rndmwlk 3y ago
If all out war breaks out between two nuclear powers I don’t think 155mm production/stockpiles are going to be quite as impactful as these folks say. A lot of these screeching hawks are the same who were warning about the capabilities of Russia. China is still well behind technologically, and is also highly dependent on key imports for a lot of military components.
- matthewfcarlson 3y ago
  If all out nuclear war breaks out, we have much bigger problems than building boats. Do you have any sources for the china claims?
- adventured 3y ago
  > If all out war breaks out between two nuclear powers I don’t think 155mm production/stockpiles are going to be quite as impactful as these folks say Yes they are. Traditional war will occur right up to the point where one of the two sides begins to lose particularly badly and throws down the nuclear card as a fail safe. The nuclear card would not be thrown in the beginning in a war between two major powers, that would only happen early on in a situation where eg Iran had nukes and got into a war with the US (weaker power vs superpower, early nuke card).
- dcow 3y ago
  What do you think the US will reach for if it cant make ordinary supplies? The nukes. We don’t want that. And even if we did who says China can’t shoot our nukes down? All our eggs in the nukes basket is not a good strategy. It doesn't work in Civ either fwiw.
DannyBee 3y ago
"But what does it mean for the U.S. to outspend all other nations when China can build warships at 200 times the rate we can?" Nothing - Physical attacks are becoming increasingly uninteresting, and our ability to target areas and kill everyone in an area don't need hundreds of warships anyway. That's only necessary if you want to be careful. But much more importantly, taking out useful infrastructure no longer requires bombing literally all of it. Increasingly, you can render large swaths of civilian infrastructure totally unusable (and cause many many casualties) without firing many bullets or bombs. As a result, being able to outgun China is becoming increasingly useless as a measure of whether you can "win". (and this assumes nobody wants to just obliterate each other, but instead wants people left standing or land left usable) This isn't to say there is no transition period, but this article definitely doesn't make an argument for skating to where the puck will be in the future, only skating to where the puck might be in the past.
- throw0101a 3y ago
  > Nothing - Physical attacks are becoming increasingly uninteresting, and our ability to target areas and kill everyone in an area don't need hundreds of warships anyway. That's only necessary if you want to be careful. It does if you want to ship raw materials and goods to and fro, especially via sea lanes. It is if you want to get access to the sources of raw materials and can place troops in those areas to prevent someone else from getting access to them. That was a large part of the context of WW2 in the Pacific.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  Have you been asleep since February 2022? Physical warfare is as relevant as ever.
- dcow 3y ago
  When push comes to shove, the bigger stick wins. You can’t win a war today on just the cyber front, either. The military isn't blind, they have cyber offense and defense programs, bio programs, even a freaking space force. I don’t think the puck has really moved much at all and we haven’t had a war to “skate to” anyway so nothing you say comes from any experience with war. I think the article is simply arguing that we need to get back in shape, and we have to do that based on the programs and exercises that we know work.
rhaway84773 3y ago
The U.S. military has turned into little more than a glorified but lethal jobs program. Since the U.S. doesn’t do “socialism” but some degree of socialism is very useful to keep your population productive, the US government has decided to hide its socialism in the guise of the military instead of just having a normal jobs program and/or industrial policy. If the U.S. were to actually run the military for defensive purposes right now half the states in the country would go bankrupt and it would hit a massive recession. Fortunately within the past year or so the US has begun returning to actual industrial policy so hopefully it can now start shifting its military to focus on actual military ends rather than as a job works program.
mistrial9 3y ago
military expansion into real territory and economic territory have some similarities; civilian economic activity produces goods and services (and culture) while military simply consumes, at least. cage the beast edit in fairness, some technology from dot-mil is quite good, and this forum is an indirect descendant of that. Dot-mil, in return for ample budgets and long timelines, brings tech back to civilian purposes, including addressing Climate and related. So, partnering with good limits, not blank checks, seems productive and appropriate. Dot-mil can pay society for producing and enriching them.
ParetoOptimal 3y ago
Can we ban "sign up to read more" sites like substack to discourage their use in our corner of the internet?
turnsout 3y ago
First line of the article: > The United States is in big trouble militarily. That’s the upshot of a new RAND publication… So the defense think tank says we need to spend more on defense. Stop the presses! Listen, if China literally attacks the US directly, the whole world has already lost. You might as well worry about how well-prepared we are for a direct comet strike.
- DANmode 3y ago
  At the end of the day, aren't we all just hoping a special plane or balloon doesn't visit our city?
  - turnsout 3y ago
    Hope isn't a strategy
politician 3y ago
@dang Does this need to be flagged? Increased defense spending or changing defense spending priorities is an interesting topic that dovetails with both entrepreneurship and emerging technologies.
matthewfcarlson 3y ago
I’m surprised that that the Ukraine war wasn’t talked about more. Not only did we go through a significant number of shells, but it also shows that the traditional warfare that large countries like the USA and Russia are geared for is out of touch. It’s like bringing a knife to a metaverse fight. Drones, portable missiles, and small groups have proven incredibly effective. Ukraine doesn’t even have a navy and Russian ships are wary of coming within a few dozen miles of the shore. Not only do we need to refactor our military for productivity, but we need to rethink what we want to build.
AA6YQ 3y ago
I once gave a presentation to a group of Senior Department of Defense managers on the role that management must play in the transition to modern software engineering. After I introduced risk-driven iterative development and it's ability to reduce waste and improve predictability by identifying and resolving big risks before making large investments, one of them suddenly rose and exclaimed "If I had a nickel for every time we flushed $50M down the toilet, I'd be a rich man!" There is enormous waste in the Department of Defense. Eliminating it would provide all of the funding needed - and then some.
howmayiannoyyou 3y ago
Does a weaker US conventional military make nuclear war more or less likely? Does it make the world more or less stable. Does it cause alliances of democratic nations to strengthen or weaken, particularly in countries like South Korea? These are questions worth asking as one considers priorities.
vandyswa 3y ago
Last I checked, the USA spends more on military than the next nine nations, combined. Do we need to spend _more_, or do we need to change how we spend the vast amounts already collected?
johnea 3y ago
This may be the stupidest thing I've ever heard...
- lamontcg 3y ago
  I was struggling to figure out how to engage with all this articles presuppositions, but I think you've basically nailed it.
MilStdJunkie 3y ago
Let me tell you a story. I'm coming at this from the technical publications side of things, but the same story is true for literally everything in MIL-STD acquisitions / procurement. Let's say I'm a single-digit-headcount business and I have an amazing cupholder for the US Army. It's absolutely bulletproof, it fits all their vehicles, it's got a printed circuit thing in it that does all sorts of stuff, and it's maintenance-free (only needing to be tossed into the return bin when it goes bad). I go to sell it to the army. "But wait!" they say. "You need to provide MIL-STD-3031 documentation!". OK. Where do I learn how to make documents in 3031 format? "Ah, here is the standard implementation from LDAC. Pretty sweet, huh? Off you go!" I page through 3031's LDAC implementation, and, lo-and-behold, the only spec files are for PTC Styler, an inordinately priced (and terrible) piece of software. "Just add it to the contract!" says the Army. My LRIP charges go up by almost double, and now I have an entirely separate doc toolchain that needs to be sustained basically forever. I float a review of the documentation, but it finds its way beyond the Procurement guys to the actual Program Office. The Program Office says, "3031?! No one uses 3031. It's faggy Euro S1000D crap. Use 38784 (MIL-STD-38784)." 38784 comes from where? "Oh, call these guys. Five Old Ex-Officers, Incorporated. They'll set you straight. Add 'em to the contract. They'll know how to do it. They're old buddies." But wait, I say. What about 3031? "Oh, just do a 3031 release for the requirement, and do rev service in 38784." Needless to say, Five Old Ex Officers has me on a whole different toolchain, with no overlap whatsoever. The 3031 toolchain is running parallel. Needless to say, neither of these doc formats is parseable by any software written in the last two decades. Do you want to know the running tab for documentation on this goddamn cupholder, before a single document has been put to paper? Assuming one writer and two reviewers, we're up to more than 150k annually, just for license costs and basic "maintenance" (which you can't opt out of - that's in the spec too)- not including styler, initialization, or whatever else, which will also include paying to bring a vendor team on-prem because you can't do cloud anything (due to ITAR and other requirements). That's going to be, over five years, well over a million dollars. A million dollar cupholder manual - not even including the charges for doing any of the actual work (charges which will, themselves, be inflated because of the toolchain idiocy). Now, repeat this for literally everything in the US Military. Yeah. These shenanigans need the world's biggest sledgehammer, yesterday, because I guarantee the PLAN doesn't do this bullshit. They need a manual, they find the best way to do a manual for the mission. You screw with that, you get re-educated. Of course, "mission" is a big part of our problem here - the damage done to procurement over the period of the aughts was awesome, and can't be overstated. The GWOT was a farce. The Obama-era "drone war" was horribly counterproductive. The fact that we had only "acting" executive leadership from 2016-2020 didn't help things either; there are a lot of things that "Acting" SecDefs can't sign off on or force. Anyway. It's nothing a determined polity can't overcome. It all depends on how "determined" we want to be. I suspect that, as with 1941, "determination" will be fueled by dead and dying sailors in far off ports.

50 points by throw0101a 3y ago

Where are the dollars that show up on spreadsheets going? > So anyway, if we’re going to be able to match Chinese military power — even in concert with all our friends and allies — we need to spend a lot more on the military. If you say this in public, someone will inevitably reply that “we spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined”,[1] and call for cutting defense spending in order to fund either social spending or tax cuts, depending on which side of the political aisle they fall. But what does it mean for the U.S. to outspend all other nations when China can build warships at 200 times the rate we can? What does it mean for the U.S. to outspend all other nations if we can’t even keep up enough munitions production to supply Ukraine? > Nothing. Dollars on paper mean nothing; shells and missiles and ships are real things that can be counted. As with health care and housing and train stations and everything else,[2] Americans have deluded themselves into believing that as long as they allocate dollars to something in a spreadsheet, then valuable and useful real stuff is actually getting built. Again and again, that delusion has been shattered when excess costs and interminable delays block the paper dollars from becoming real tangible goods.

mytailorisrich 3y ago
The delusion here is that some Americans believe that they can remain #1 forever. The hard truth is that countries like India and China that have 4x the population will ultimately have much larger economies and will thus be able to have larger military capabilities.
- Mountain_Skies 3y ago
  Nigeria also has a rapidly growing population that likely will exceed that of the United States in a couple of decades but that alone isn't the secret sauce to passing the US economically and militarily.
- OO000oo 3y ago
  If the US still made things and still made children, it could do a lot better than it is.
  - abracadaniel 3y ago
    US manufacturing is an all time high and the population is still growing. China has been below replacement levels for birth rate long enough that their population is actually shrinking.
    - OO000oo 3y ago
      The US makes almost nothing on its own and I expect you know that, and the US population would be shrinking at a suicidal rate if not for mass human labor trafficking from the 3rd world.
    - howmayiannoyyou 3y ago
      This is absurdly incorrect in the context of the article. As just one example - the US shuttered more than half of its ship building capacity after the Soviet Union fell. You cannot convert a foreign owned Toyota auto assembly plant into a shipyard. And, it would be nice if US economic stats made a distinction between manufacturing and assembly. A lot of what you call manufacturing is simply the low skilled combining of parts made overseas.
      - mcphage 3y ago
        > You cannot convert a foreign owned Toyota auto assembly plant into a shipyard. As long as it’s in the US—yeah, you can.
        fragmede 3y ago
        The US government coming in and forcibly taking control of a Toyota auto assembly plant located on US soil won't do anything to move it 320 miles down 65 from Huntsville, Alabama to the (gulf) coast. I'm no shipbuilder, but I get the impression that shipyards are typically near the ocean.
- Jevon23 3y ago
  Bit like saying there's no point in wearing a seatbelt because "you're delusional if you think you can live forever." Sure, nothing lasts forever. Doesn't mean we just roll over and give up.
  - beardyw 3y ago
    It is better for a country to be realistic about it's place on the world. I live in the UK. There are still people here with an exaggerated idea of our importance which helps no one.
  - hackinthebochs 3y ago
    But if you're incapable of recognizing your reduced standing in the world, you can end up miscalculating the resistance from other nations as you promote your interests. Being unable to accurately assess the expectations of success of other nations in promoting their interests will just lead to runaway escalation and potentially a world war.
- beardyw 3y ago
  History tells us that nothing remains constant so even those changes will come and go.
- Avshalom 3y ago
  Well china currently has a larger population, but here's Noah asking us to make enough bullets to change that.
  - marricks 3y ago
    What a beautiful dream Noah promises us all.
  - NhanH 3y ago
    Just to put actual number into sight: that’s at least a billion people we are talking about. Even if a war happen 20 years from now and the US double its population while China has a population collapse, it’s still 400 million people++
    - galangalalgol 3y ago
      The problem isn't the absolute nimber, it is the ratio of producers and consumers in general to consumers of food.
      - giardini 3y ago
        It's really about the number of young men of the age to be conscripted.
  - inconceivable 3y ago
    noah is a prototypical 90's-era weeb who worships japan and absolutely despises china and chinese people in general. i'm surprised in 2023 people aren't yet tired of this schtick. it's getting old.
  - giardini 3y ago
    Need we fear a war of bullets with China? Is this not merely another diabolical plot to kill the remaining Boomers (the last American generation who know how to shoot guns and save money) by engaging them in a war of attrition with China's analogous elderly population?
- mpalmer 3y ago
  > will ultimately have much larger economies Will they necessarily? I would expect culture and system of government to be factors in whether a country can not only support 1 billion plus people, but grow their economy too. Let alone natural resources
- rhaway84773 3y ago
  Except the rich and educated Indians and Chinese want to move to the US. India and China having 4x the US’s population doesn’t mean anything if the top 5-10 productive percentile of their population emigrate to the US. Further, unlike India and China which literally share a contested border, the U.S. is surrounded by extremely friendly nations and 2 oceans. Further, the US has a 200+ year history of a relatively stable democracy whereas India is currently turning into whatever clown show Modi is trying to turn it into, and Xi Jinping has turned China into the kind of autocracy where he is telling highly educated Chinese that they should go back to their villages and try their hand at subsistence farming. I would have thought the last 6 months of Chinese collapse, which should have been a post Zero COVID era of epic growth would have disabused people of the notion that people automatically means growth and success. China is currently beyond their demographic dividend and is now in the payback stage, having f’ed their demographics massively with their 1 child policy. India is in the peak of their demographic dividend but instead of utilizing it to productive ends is engaged in the promotion of religious infighting and autocratic tendencies all to satisfy the power lust of 1 man and his lackeys.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    > India and China having 4x the US’s population doesn’t mean anything if the top 5-10 productive percentile of their population emigrate to the US. The richest, in India, China, and the US are not the "most productive" by any means. They're the most extractive. If we were immigrating hard workers, we wouldn't have labor shortages. Instead, we're immigrating investors who drive up real estate costs.
- sureglymop 3y ago
  Also, why should the US be #1? What is so much _greater_ about the US?
  - cosmic_quanta 3y ago
    Honestly, it's its geography. Only friendly neighbours on the same continent, vast swaths of some of the most fertile land in the world, water access to Europe AND Asia, etc. Regardless of the difference between Chinese and US citizens / culture / government, geography will always remain an advantage
    - dirtyid 3y ago
      Geographic benefits erodes with technology. Technology has compressed the world, global shipping gives actors with money and leverage access to resources around the world. Post war US power projection is based off the fact it has technology to reach others while others cannot reach CONUS. Which has/is going to change shortly. Now techology like precise long range strikes makes CONUS no better than Saudi. Having resource autarky =/= resource security when modern missiles can take out critical infra on CONUS. Geography matters less than ever.
    - mytailorisrich 3y ago
      As it happens, China is the same size as the US, has a lot of natural resources, and also large swaths of very fertile land (which partly explains why they have always had a large population) and, for instance, they are the largest producer of both wheat and rice in the world.
      - hollerith 3y ago
        I recently heard (on some youtube video) that China has 10% of the world's farmland and 20% of the world's population. Also, any country that is not extremely poor does mechanized farming, which has been described as "using land to turn petroleum into food", and most of the petroleum China uses comes from the Persian Gulf or even further away. (For example, I'm pretty sure that most of Russia's flow of petroleum to China comes via ports on the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea.) In contrast, (because of the fracking revolution) the US produces all the petroleum it needs domestically. If that changes in the future (for example because of a commitment to reducing carbon emissions cause regulations that discourage petroleum production in the US) then the US can probably make up any shortfall with petroleum from Canada. And I'm pretty sure China must import most of its needs for 2 of the 3 major fertilizing commodities (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium). And they get a lot of grain and oilseed for example from Ukraine or at least they did until Russia stopped the flow (according to a Youtube video I recently watched). I see a lot of statements here to the effect of how screwed the US would be if it suddenly couldn't import things from China, but very little on how much more screwed China would be if it couldn't import things from other continents. At least the US can feed its population, keep the electricity on and keep the trucks moving on its highways without imports.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  According to Zeihan, China, and to a lesser extent India, have a horrible demographics problem looming. The prediction was for a dramatic collapse in manufacturing capacity. China at least might have the central authority to kill all those too old to work or consume, but my understanding is that doesn't fit well with the predominant culture there which highly respects age. Also, the whole killing people thing... All the nations, especially those that industrialized quickly are facing this problem. As industrialization correlates strongly with smaller families (don't need children to work the farm). But China compounded it with the one child policy. And they industrialized faster than almost anyone. India went straight for a service economy, that may be even worse. Russia... Not sure about Brazil. The US delayed its demographic collapse via immigration. It might even effect a soft landing relative to the rest of the world if it can ramp back up manufacturing in a way that doesn't destroy shared resources or enforce permanent underclasses leading to revolt. That isn't an easy task.
  - inconceivable 3y ago
    pretty much everyone else with a public platform in geopolitical analysis has a low opinion of zeihan. this includes shapiro, papic, and other stratfor alumni who i pay attention to. zeihan's analysis is performative and is designed to make him money, not provide value to anyone in the real world. wow, america's geography makes it invincible and china will collapse any day now because they suck at innovating. that's super insightful and original. i definitely haven't been hearing that repeated ad nauseum for literally 40 years.
    - galangalalgol 3y ago
      I'd like to read them, his stuff does seem entertainment heavy. And I spot some errors in places I have expertise, if small ones. Not this Shapiro right? This one is mostly agreeing with Zeihan. https://www.dailywire.com/news/bank-on-it-ben-shapiro-predicts-the-one-move-china-will-make-towards-taiwan-thanks-to-the-biden-administration https://www.dailywire.com/news/bank-on-it-ben-shapiro-predic...
      - 3y ago
- foogazi 3y ago
  > The hard truth is that countries like India and China that have 4x the population will ultimately have much larger economies and will thus be able to have larger military capabilities. meanwhile they are still fighting with sticks in the Himalayas
  - giardini 3y ago
    foogazi says "meanwhile they are still fighting with sticks in the Himalayas." But the rats are well-fed: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=indian+temple+feeding+the+rats&iax=videos&ia=videos https://duckduckgo.com/?q=indian+temple+feeding+the+rats&iax...
- nradov 3y ago
  China has geographic and natural resource constraints which will make it quite difficult for them to ever surpass the USA regardless of population. They are deficient in most of the things necessary for a strong industrial economy including iron ore, fossil fuels, productive farmland, fertilizers, and navigable waterways. The authoritarian dictatorship system they have adopted is also highly unstable. Dictatorships are only stable until some sort of catastrophic "black swan" event occurs, and then everything collapses faster than anyone expected. Their history is full of violent uprisings and civil wars. I wouldn't be surprised to see another one within our lifetimes. Even just maintaining the security apparatus necessary to control the populace is a huge drag on their economy.
Retric 3y ago
It boils down to economies of scale. The DoD requires a significant percentage of war materials to be manufactured in the US for strategic reasons. You don’t to be unable to make bullets/boots/etc in a war because all the factories that manufacture that stuff are in the country you’re fighting. But that also extends to the components to manufacture that stuff like shoes laces, optical cables, screws etc etc. However having small scale manufacturing in the US inherently means less automation and high labor costs. Meanwhile China which is already manufacturing most things at scale doesn’t need to pay a premium for this stuff. It’s debatable how much this is necessary, but war is more about logistics than most people assume.
candiddevmike 3y ago
Does China have more or less corruption with their military spend? Who gets more for their money, US or China? Is there a case for a US military manufacturing corp?

short_throw 3y ago

If you aren't familiar with Ray Dalio's Principles for a Changing World Order, I can't recommend it enough (both the book and the YouTube video). You'll understand a lot better where the U.S. is in it's history and why so much is the way it is. https://youtu.be/xguam0TKMw8 https://youtu.be/xguam0TKMw8

constantly 3y ago
Which, to make sure your lede is unburied, is past its prime according to Ray, if I remember the book correctly.
maxbond 3y ago
I enjoyed that video, as well as this rebuttal (specifically to his arguments about China) from Money & Macro. https://youtube.com/watch?v=s1iv0q_SW3E https://youtube.com/watch?v=s1iv0q_SW3E

Tempest1981 3y ago

As an engineer, I would like to see improvements in efficiency: > Americans have deluded themselves into believing that as long as they allocate dollars to something in a spreadsheet, then valuable and useful real stuff is actually getting built. Again and again, that delusion has been shattered when excess costs and interminable delays block the paper dollars from becoming real tangible goods. From construction of transportation to housing to energy infrastructure, things seem to take forever to build. California's high speed rail may never be completed.

LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
It doesn’t help that there’s a historic shortage of construction labor[0]. Efforts to improve throughput are meaningless if the most important resource, labor, cannot be procured. https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1158576556/where-did-the-workers-go-construction-jobs-are-plentiful-but-workers-are-scarce https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1158576556/where-did-the-work...
- linuxftw 3y ago
  I will go work construction tomorrow if the pay is right. I like being outside. Of course, there's never a labor shortage, only a wage shortage.
  - jewayne 3y ago
    Exactly. You know Bill Burr's joke about how every racist conversation begins with "I'm not racist, but..."? I feel like these "labor shortage" statements should preface themselves with "I don't believe in forced labor, but..." There's no acknowledgement of the rights and agency of the workers themselves.
  - DANmode 3y ago
    Regularly labor shortages, depending on where you are. Depending on what you do, probably also want to aim for a slot or two higher than "just walked onto the team laborer".

travisporter 3y ago

Ugh substack - no one wants a quick way to “quote” something. People please don’t mess with right click and text selection!!

CrzyLngPwd 3y ago

I don't think the amount of money spent is the problem; https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/06/20/the-pentagons-52000-trash-can/ https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/06/20/the-pentagons-5...

VWWHFSfQ 3y ago

A defense industry think tank that exists solely to siphon money from the defense budget thinks the defense budget should be even larger!

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
constantly 3y ago
Do you have a rebuttal to the arguments presented?

666satanhimself 3y ago

[dead]

LapsangGuzzler 3y ago

> And when we look back at our history, we see that in the 1950s and 1960s — the glorious postwar years of rapid and equitable growth and plentiful jobs — we spent far more on our military than we do now. Yeah, but two important words in this sentence are no longer true today: equitable growth. We taxed the ultra wealthy at a much, much higher rate than we do today and individual purchasing power was much higher. The household median income in the U.S. in 1950 was $2,990 — roughly 40% of the median home value of $7,354 at the time, according to census data. This is no longer true as a median income doesn’t even qualify for 80% of purchasable homes today[0] 0: https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/eighty-percent-homes-market-arent-affordable-households-earning-median-incomes-or-less https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/eighty-percent-homes-market...

howmayiannoyyou 3y ago
| equitable growth. | We taxed the ultra wealthy at a much, much higher rate than we do today and | individual purchasing power was much higher. This is so tangential to the article that is borderline off topic. You don't solve the US defense problem by attempting to tackle something as politically challenging as major changes to US tax policy.
- LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
  It’s not tangential at all. A key argument of the article is that we should spend more on the military like we did in the 50s. It’s important to point out how much the income structure of the government has changed since then.
  - foogazi 3y ago
    What does that matter for defense purposes? the tax base is much bigger now. We have an integrated economy. Whole sectors like tech were not even around before
    - peteradio 3y ago
      Tech is two parts wealth extraction for every part generation.

rndmwlk 3y ago

If all out war breaks out between two nuclear powers I don’t think 155mm production/stockpiles are going to be quite as impactful as these folks say. A lot of these screeching hawks are the same who were warning about the capabilities of Russia. China is still well behind technologically, and is also highly dependent on key imports for a lot of military components.

matthewfcarlson 3y ago
If all out nuclear war breaks out, we have much bigger problems than building boats. Do you have any sources for the china claims?
adventured 3y ago
> If all out war breaks out between two nuclear powers I don’t think 155mm production/stockpiles are going to be quite as impactful as these folks say Yes they are. Traditional war will occur right up to the point where one of the two sides begins to lose particularly badly and throws down the nuclear card as a fail safe. The nuclear card would not be thrown in the beginning in a war between two major powers, that would only happen early on in a situation where eg Iran had nukes and got into a war with the US (weaker power vs superpower, early nuke card).
dcow 3y ago
What do you think the US will reach for if it cant make ordinary supplies? The nukes. We don’t want that. And even if we did who says China can’t shoot our nukes down? All our eggs in the nukes basket is not a good strategy. It doesn't work in Civ either fwiw.

DannyBee 3y ago

"But what does it mean for the U.S. to outspend all other nations when China can build warships at 200 times the rate we can?" Nothing - Physical attacks are becoming increasingly uninteresting, and our ability to target areas and kill everyone in an area don't need hundreds of warships anyway. That's only necessary if you want to be careful. But much more importantly, taking out useful infrastructure no longer requires bombing literally all of it. Increasingly, you can render large swaths of civilian infrastructure totally unusable (and cause many many casualties) without firing many bullets or bombs. As a result, being able to outgun China is becoming increasingly useless as a measure of whether you can "win". (and this assumes nobody wants to just obliterate each other, but instead wants people left standing or land left usable) This isn't to say there is no transition period, but this article definitely doesn't make an argument for skating to where the puck will be in the future, only skating to where the puck might be in the past.

throw0101a 3y ago
> Nothing - Physical attacks are becoming increasingly uninteresting, and our ability to target areas and kill everyone in an area don't need hundreds of warships anyway. That's only necessary if you want to be careful. It does if you want to ship raw materials and goods to and fro, especially via sea lanes. It is if you want to get access to the sources of raw materials and can place troops in those areas to prevent someone else from getting access to them. That was a large part of the context of WW2 in the Pacific.
mvdtnz 3y ago
Have you been asleep since February 2022? Physical warfare is as relevant as ever.
dcow 3y ago
When push comes to shove, the bigger stick wins. You can’t win a war today on just the cyber front, either. The military isn't blind, they have cyber offense and defense programs, bio programs, even a freaking space force. I don’t think the puck has really moved much at all and we haven’t had a war to “skate to” anyway so nothing you say comes from any experience with war. I think the article is simply arguing that we need to get back in shape, and we have to do that based on the programs and exercises that we know work.

rhaway84773 3y ago

The U.S. military has turned into little more than a glorified but lethal jobs program. Since the U.S. doesn’t do “socialism” but some degree of socialism is very useful to keep your population productive, the US government has decided to hide its socialism in the guise of the military instead of just having a normal jobs program and/or industrial policy. If the U.S. were to actually run the military for defensive purposes right now half the states in the country would go bankrupt and it would hit a massive recession. Fortunately within the past year or so the US has begun returning to actual industrial policy so hopefully it can now start shifting its military to focus on actual military ends rather than as a job works program.

mistrial9 3y ago

military expansion into real territory and economic territory have some similarities; civilian economic activity produces goods and services (and culture) while military simply consumes, at least. cage the beast edit in fairness, some technology from dot-mil is quite good, and this forum is an indirect descendant of that. Dot-mil, in return for ample budgets and long timelines, brings tech back to civilian purposes, including addressing Climate and related. So, partnering with good limits, not blank checks, seems productive and appropriate. Dot-mil can pay society for producing and enriching them.

ParetoOptimal 3y ago

Can we ban "sign up to read more" sites like substack to discourage their use in our corner of the internet?

turnsout 3y ago

First line of the article: > The United States is in big trouble militarily. That’s the upshot of a new RAND publication… So the defense think tank says we need to spend more on defense. Stop the presses! Listen, if China literally attacks the US directly, the whole world has already lost. You might as well worry about how well-prepared we are for a direct comet strike.

DANmode 3y ago
At the end of the day, aren't we all just hoping a special plane or balloon doesn't visit our city?
- turnsout 3y ago
  Hope isn't a strategy

politician 3y ago

@dang Does this need to be flagged? Increased defense spending or changing defense spending priorities is an interesting topic that dovetails with both entrepreneurship and emerging technologies.

matthewfcarlson 3y ago

I’m surprised that that the Ukraine war wasn’t talked about more. Not only did we go through a significant number of shells, but it also shows that the traditional warfare that large countries like the USA and Russia are geared for is out of touch. It’s like bringing a knife to a metaverse fight. Drones, portable missiles, and small groups have proven incredibly effective. Ukraine doesn’t even have a navy and Russian ships are wary of coming within a few dozen miles of the shore. Not only do we need to refactor our military for productivity, but we need to rethink what we want to build.

AA6YQ 3y ago

I once gave a presentation to a group of Senior Department of Defense managers on the role that management must play in the transition to modern software engineering. After I introduced risk-driven iterative development and it's ability to reduce waste and improve predictability by identifying and resolving big risks before making large investments, one of them suddenly rose and exclaimed "If I had a nickel for every time we flushed $50M down the toilet, I'd be a rich man!" There is enormous waste in the Department of Defense. Eliminating it would provide all of the funding needed - and then some.

howmayiannoyyou 3y ago

Does a weaker US conventional military make nuclear war more or less likely? Does it make the world more or less stable. Does it cause alliances of democratic nations to strengthen or weaken, particularly in countries like South Korea? These are questions worth asking as one considers priorities.

vandyswa 3y ago

Last I checked, the USA spends more on military than the next nine nations, combined. Do we need to spend _more_, or do we need to change how we spend the vast amounts already collected?

johnea 3y ago

This may be the stupidest thing I've ever heard...

lamontcg 3y ago
I was struggling to figure out how to engage with all this articles presuppositions, but I think you've basically nailed it.

MilStdJunkie 3y ago

Let me tell you a story. I'm coming at this from the technical publications side of things, but the same story is true for literally everything in MIL-STD acquisitions / procurement. Let's say I'm a single-digit-headcount business and I have an amazing cupholder for the US Army. It's absolutely bulletproof, it fits all their vehicles, it's got a printed circuit thing in it that does all sorts of stuff, and it's maintenance-free (only needing to be tossed into the return bin when it goes bad). I go to sell it to the army. "But wait!" they say. "You need to provide MIL-STD-3031 documentation!". OK. Where do I learn how to make documents in 3031 format? "Ah, here is the standard implementation from LDAC. Pretty sweet, huh? Off you go!" I page through 3031's LDAC implementation, and, lo-and-behold, the only spec files are for PTC Styler, an inordinately priced (and terrible) piece of software. "Just add it to the contract!" says the Army. My LRIP charges go up by almost double, and now I have an entirely separate doc toolchain that needs to be sustained basically forever. I float a review of the documentation, but it finds its way beyond the Procurement guys to the actual Program Office. The Program Office says, "3031?! No one uses 3031. It's faggy Euro S1000D crap. Use 38784 (MIL-STD-38784)." 38784 comes from where? "Oh, call these guys. Five Old Ex-Officers, Incorporated. They'll set you straight. Add 'em to the contract. They'll know how to do it. They're old buddies." But wait, I say. What about 3031? "Oh, just do a 3031 release for the requirement, and do rev service in 38784." Needless to say, Five Old Ex Officers has me on a whole different toolchain, with no overlap whatsoever. The 3031 toolchain is running parallel. Needless to say, neither of these doc formats is parseable by any software written in the last two decades. Do you want to know the running tab for documentation on this goddamn cupholder, before a single document has been put to paper? Assuming one writer and two reviewers, we're up to more than 150k annually, just for license costs and basic "maintenance" (which you can't opt out of - that's in the spec too)- not including styler, initialization, or whatever else, which will also include paying to bring a vendor team on-prem because you can't do cloud anything (due to ITAR and other requirements). That's going to be, over five years, well over a million dollars. A million dollar cupholder manual - not even including the charges for doing any of the actual work (charges which will, themselves, be inflated because of the toolchain idiocy). Now, repeat this for literally everything in the US Military. Yeah. These shenanigans need the world's biggest sledgehammer, yesterday, because I guarantee the PLAN doesn't do this bullshit. They need a manual, they find the best way to do a manual for the mission. You screw with that, you get re-educated. Of course, "mission" is a big part of our problem here - the damage done to procurement over the period of the aughts was awesome, and can't be overstated. The GWOT was a farce. The Obama-era "drone war" was horribly counterproductive. The fact that we had only "acting" executive leadership from 2016-2020 didn't help things either; there are a lot of things that "Acting" SecDefs can't sign off on or force. Anyway. It's nothing a determined polity can't overcome. It all depends on how "determined" we want to be. I suspect that, as with 1941, "determination" will be fueled by dead and dying sailors in far off ports.