Debt doesn't really mean anything at this scale. Especially when the debt is denominated in US dollars and the debtor operates an extraordinary number of aircraft carriers.

It's that old saying "if you owe the bank $1,000 then you have a problem. If you owe the bank $1 trillion the the bank has a problem.

The grandparent mentioned debt, but the U.S. spends over a trillion every year in defense spending, which doesn't include other funding and tax breaks. Nearly every major technological innovation and thus corporations that use those have been born out of government defense research. Even entire universities, such as MIT, were created for this reason.

Chomsky has argued this, that we dump public funds into entities that end up being completely private. This is even worse than what happens in China. Because the government loses the return in investment and ends up being "purchased" by these corporations and their ilk. It's really a sick system.