The 1 trillion dollars or 1.5 or whatever amount the american president distributes freely for the reconstruction of the american army is a powerful magnet. And the era (especially after the dynamic emergence of drones as precision artillery in the ukrainian battlefield) cultivates great expectations – for the digital (and with neural algorithms) re-industrialization of weapons… and war.
But as with all human endeavors, so too is “boldness,” along with an insatiable appetite for quick profits, shaped by and shaping the specific culture of each state’s capitalist structure. During the so-called “Cold War,” the american military-industrial complex had at its apex the american Pentagon (thus the state) and at its core, on one hand, central planning (the “military doctrines…”) and on the other, private companies as manufacturers. It also had an additional characteristic: the costing of any innovations was done by private contractors/manufacturers each time – the american state simply paid. Thus, costs (and business profits…) were depicted with many zeros, creating the illusion of “superior weapons.” Which were never actually much better than their counterparts built and still being built by purely state mechanisms and companies, far more cheaply but of comparable quality, whether in Russia or China.
The mountains of (somewhat inflationary) dollars on the horizon and the urgency of the american government to get ahead of its competitors – who often technologically surpass the u.s. army – have created a unique opportunity for purely private “ideas,” “initiatives” – even “interpretations” of the technological lag of the american military. Digitization – digitization – digitization; “artificial intelligence,” and more, and even more: these sit on the table as offerings – but without any comprehensive plan to change “doctrines.” Declaring various CEOs of such companies as officers of the u.s. army simply because they are CEOs will create a private – not pentagon – but polygon.
The claim of the Silicon Valley wizards that they can overcome (if not surely their international competitors) state rigidity and moreover quickly is interesting. It will accelerate not power but the inability of the declining superpower – but it will be a well-compensated acceleration-of-gravity…