> Remember, defense funding is what fueld the tech sector's birth

And the surveillance economy is what keeps it in place. For all the FAANG name dropping around here, I wonder if most realize they're really just a few degrees separated from an Intelligence agency contractor.

As for Space Force spending, only if 80%+ can be used for civilian purposes, like debris clean up of GEO stationary, or advanced asteroid monitoring and shielding.

Anything short of that, and all it will be is anther pork trough by which lobbyists at ULA/NG/Raytheon et al will be feeding at--I think this is why prior to SpaceX aerospace wasn't anything worthy of much praise, despite all the achievements, because all they did was abuse tax funded programs.

I was at the LA Space museum years ago and I can tell you that Endeavor is a relic of the past I hope we never go back to. The 'Space Force' can easily be that again if we're not careful: $15 Billion is a lot, Nasa's budget is $22 Billion.

By contrast I was at the SpaceX HQ Factory and the Launch Facility in Texas and just seeing Raptors and Dragon Heat Shields lying about feels incredibly exciting by contrast.

The more subtle thing to consider is that the amazing tech stuff whose development we tend to think of as being paid for by defense funds was developed prior to ARPA becoming DARPA in 1972, and more importantly, prior to the Mansfield Amendment's passage in 1973. This limited funds appropriated for defense research to projects with a direct and obvious military application.

ARPA always was funded by the DoD: https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/dod-establishes-arpa

Nothing in my comment above was meant to imply otherwise.

The trouble with the Mansfield Amendment (there are some on hn infinitely more qualified to comment on this) was that generally cool, but not necessarily defense-oriented, stuff falling out of defense spending directed towards basic research went from being considered a good thing to being considered a bad thing, or more precisely, a wasteful thing. The idea was that the NSF would pick up the slack after DoD tightened up the requirements for what sorts of research they would fund, which for a variety of reasons never really happened.

DoD ends up funding quite a lot of science and engineering research. They're also quite big on trauma medicine.

>For the record, GPS infrastructure was DoD funded.

Correction: GPS infrastructure is DoD funded, not was. It has ongoing maintenance costs and its being upgraded.

Yeah, it's crazy to see how much has been funded by DARPA in particular:

https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/darpa-history-and-timeline

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA#Projects

Some of the greatest hits, at least from my perspective:

The ARPANET -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

The mother of all demos (GUIs, mouses, word processors, video conferences, windows, version control, etc) -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

BSD OSes -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLSI_Project

Tor/.onion routing -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_routing

Siri -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO

Boston Dynamics robots -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_(robot)

High productivity computing systems -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Productivity_Computing_Sy...

Autonomous vehicles research -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

Software-based approaches to biology/cancer research -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_mechanism

The precursor to GPS -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_(satellite)

Shakey the Robot -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakey_the_robot

Don't forget the DARPA sponsored AI research, which supported the original lisp work I believe.

I guess it technically isn't (I believe force multiplier would be the term) but GPS is an extremely powerful weapon if only one side has such capabilities

Not so much a weapon system as an information and coordination system.

It's like calling the camera that looks at stars for determining position a weapons system. GPS and astro guidance are both part of a redundant navigation system.

Sure. However, secrets are hard to keep.

Remember, “defense” funding also killed several (>5) million people since the US was founded in several wars of aggression, including about a million in the current generation.

Don’t believe the hype.

NASA put people on the moon and brought them back. They could design, launch, and operate GPS like they do Hubble and other satellites. It’s well within their expertise. We don’t need to accept DoD funding of violent undertakings that end up killing millions simply for the meager benefits we get as a side effect sometimes.

As a counterexample: the military has had supersonic jets for two generations, and there is no civilian supersonic transport. The only one that did exist was an european undertaking. You get no benefit from any of the billions spent on fast planes by the war machine. None.

Massive defense spending only trickles down to defense contractors. This is just public-to-private wealth transfer, nothing more.

> As a counterexample: the military has had supersonic jets for two generations, and there is no civilian supersonic transport. The only one that did exist was an european undertaking.

This undermines your main argument, because it shows how the military explores territory that would otherwise remain largely unexplored.

...with no benefit to humanity, only huge financial and humanitarian costs. That’s the argument, and it is a perfect example.

The benefits of military research are often non-obvious. Supersonic flight needed fine control, so electric flight control systems (fly-by-wire) were developed and put into use on fighter jets.

When Concorde was on drawing boards, the same tech was re-used and developed further. Supersonic flight turned out to be a dead end, but the control system developed for Concorde (originating from fighter jets) proved valuable and was carried over to later Airbus A300 and Airbus A320 designs, and has given remarkable safety improvements.

While we don't have supersonic flight in 2020, the legacy of early Anglo-French fighter jets and commercially unsuccessful Concorde lives on in every Airbus plane and many other influenced designs.

What evidence do we have that any of that military technology was directly reused in the civilian applications? Furthermore, to make such claims is to say that the military developing this technology, plus the associated mass murder that results, is somehow a better deal than privately paying to develop this technology from scratch independently without the associated violence.

It’s the second part that is the nut that your argument must crack, and that is a very difficult bar to clear indeed if you in any way value human life.

  there is no civilian supersonic transport

Civilian supersonic transport isn't necessary. It's an environmental disaster. It's conspicuous consumption for the sake of conspicuous consumption.