> Thats just pointless argument to make

Defense spending is our third largest expense, behind Social Security and Medicare. It's not a pointless argument to make.

We should be taking a machete to the military industrial complex welfare state in the US.

Its not about if the expense on something else is useful or not. My point was about the effectivness of what is currently spent.

And If that defense spending is used to fund R&D projects that ultimately benefit society, would you still feel the same way? (ARPAPNet for one example?)

Although the internet was many years ahead of the BBS scene and Fidonet in the sophistication of its technology and its online culture, the BBS scene and Fidonet would have by now become a global network integrated into commerce, government and other aspects of daily life if the internet had not gotten there first. Or the technology behind France's Minitel would have been adopted globally and gotten there. Or something like that.

So you're suggesting we keep drowning the department in cash, hoping that one of the projects they build has a happy side effect of not murdering or spying on people.

Take the same money and spend it on R&D projects whose purpose is to benefit society from the get-go.

Which of these 19 operational US aircraft carriers are used for R&D and not force projection?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_s...

I would love, love, love to see defense spending cut and have a chunk redirected toward non-defense R&D.

But it's too binary to argue that the production of high-tech defense systems (like planes and carriers) doesn't involve a large amount of R&D.

But it's not; it's used instead to send our aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, etc. into dangerous places and stir up geopolitical trouble. How much research could you fund with the price of a single multi-million-dollar gas station in Afghanistan?

Defense is a pretty inefficient way to fund R&D. I don't know the numbers but the percentage of the defense budget that actually goes into R&D is probably pretty low.

just one example out of many - F22/F35 program costs (is it still 1.5 trillion USD?), which cover just one tiny (albeit important) piece of US military offensive power (calling it defense is just a bad joke).

plenty of nasty diseases could be put out of existence with just a fraction of that, for example