You can't measure the ROI, and honestly the ROI argument is as rhetorical and handwavy as the "TSA makes us safer" argument. It only feels somewhat plausible, b

You can't measure the ROI, and honestly the ROI argument is as rhetorical and handwavy as the "TSA makes us safer" argument. It only feels somewhat plausible, but is so utterly vague and unmeasurable that there's simply no way to make it not an empty statement. Also, I'm as anti-warmongering as everyone else here, but it's a patently false claim to say that the industry of war doesn't drive massive leaps in science and technology. Silicon Valley itself was birthed out of massive military research funding post-WW2. The Internet started as a DARPA project. The foundational technology we built on top of to get the moon was reversed engineered in large part out of deadly German V2 rockets captured during the war. Hell, one of the biggest chief architects of the US space program was Wernher von Braun, whose rocketry expertise came out of Nazi Germany. The Russians weren't exempt either - all of their early satellite and manned mission launch vehicles were derivatives of ICBMs - Sputnik, the first satellite in orbit, launched from a R-7 ICBM. I wish it weren't the case, but there is tons of evidence, all around the world and all throughout history, that the waging of war drives a shitload of science.