Right now, the foxes are running the hen house and the future taxpayers (it’s all debt) are getting plucked. The military industrial business model is the same as US private equity (or the mafia). They take over a ‘company’, load it up with debt, and then bleed the carcass dry. And everybody’s in on it. Right now, a Raytheon board director (Lloyd Austin) is running the Defence (re: War) Department, and few US citizens are aware of this violent conflict of interest. The military industrial complex is running the whole show, under the command of General Fuckery.
The core reason America’s military is the same reason my Toyota Vitz fell apart on the highway. Maintenance. America had a strong military generations ago, but those assets have long since depreciated and become liabilities. They keep covering this up by buying shiny new stuff, but that stuff doesn’t even work and it’s all depreciating into dust and fairy dust as we speak.
The problem with American military infrastructure is the problem with American infrastructure in general. It’s all supposed to be run by ‘the market’ and the market does not give a fuck about maintenance, repair, or anything long term. Why would it? It’s algorithmically programmed to think in quarters and not the long term and, as Keynes said, in the long term we’re all dead. If you can make a billion dollar sale now and the liability falls on someone else’s head decades later, who gives a shit? This isn’t the fault of individually evil people, though these are individually evil people. If they didn’t do it the ‘shareholders’ would throw them out and install someone that did. They’re just cogs in the capitalist machine, and war is peak capitalism. Making really expensive products and immediately exploding them? Chef’s kiss.
This article is very well written.