Earlier quoted context omitted.
An aircraft carrier is expensive because it requires an entire fleet to support it. The carrier isn't the expensive part - the dozen screening vessels that protect it are. That fleet can be taken out with a single tactical nuclear weapon. A nuclear submarine can operate on its own, and carries more firepower (If we count by number of capitalists/communists/unaligned people it can kill) than an entire carrier group. A…
> than it was about power projection That part came from people singing "The Internationale" all over the world, but it started to come apart in the 1960s, and by the 1980s it had disintegrated, and so did the Soviet Union. Ah, well, interesting times.
The AI and (insert unknown political change) might enabled a very different version of Internationale, that might arise in our lifetime.