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Unlike the stable genius who's bragging how he "aced" not one, but four! cognitive tests
they will of course double down the next time they are in power, and you will have President Hegseth sometime next decade.
Don't Look Up was supposed to be satire.
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How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ? Looked at from a policy maker's viewpoint, things look very different.
Wouldn't take very many at all, we've now learned these past four years (and even the past 2 months). All you need are drones, that are pennies on the dollar cheaper than trillion-dollar militaries. Depending on the munition, a single bomb we drop on Iran could cost between $40,000 and a couple million dollars. Think of all the high-end drones you could buy instead. Everything is changing. Including our influence.
The US war on Iran also demonstrates the problems of drones too: the US is currently able to wage a war 6000 miles away from its shores, because of the use of an awful lot of weapons systems that aren't drones. Iran is unable to dislodge that military, or even meaningfully impact its ability to carry out said war, not 100 miles away from its shores, despite a heavy use of drones to attempt to do so.
The war also demonstrates another big issue... the continued delusion of many civilian and military leaders that strategic bombing alone is sufficient to win a war despite this failing literally every single time it's been attempted in the past 100 years.
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> People actually believed the idiotic notion that "other countries" pay the tariffs. Many believed this, think about how many Americans do not understand the Progressive Tax system. I believe it has been intentional for many years to keep up some of these misunderstanding of basic governance.
I mean, I guess? I don't really feel like I needed to be taught that tariffs would raise prices. I'm not some hypergenius, it really seems pretty obvious to me.
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How not? Precision kills with 0 warning. You can just bring one on a plane to whatever country and have the thing charge with solar/powerlines until your target is getting coffee outside on a nice day. Or whatever.
Ok, I'm not even sure what to reply here, that makes no sense and doesn't accomplish any of the things I mentioned. It's also not even particularly feasible and just not at all how any sort of wartime operation is likely to work at scale. But I am sure of who I wouldn't put in charge of critical military operations.
What really puts all of this into perspective for me is I work in academia and one of my friends works for a defense contractor. He told me the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student. It's crazy basic science is what's been the focus of so many cuts while it's so cheap.
How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ? Looked at from a policy maker's viewpoint, things look very different.
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I’m sure this has nothing to do with 3.1 million graduate students versus 500 F-35s. For actual context, F-35 program receives $9B per year (amortized over lifetime), which is $3000 per year per graduate student. Erasing the F-35 program entirely would make something like a 10% difference in graduate wages, while destroying the US Air Force as a modern military. So no — your request to fund graduate students is more…
Where did you get that the number of federally funded graduate students is 3.1 million? Note that many will have industry, international or self funded (for MS it is less common to have funding). The 9B figure for maintaining the F35 you just said is very close to the entire annual budget of the NSF. Which is the main funding source of most of non medical research. Also we are not talking about military budget, just…
I took the total number of graduate students, to spread the money across them. We could also look at the same number as, eg, funding an increase from 3.1M to 3.3M or 3.4M graduate students.
I stand by my original claim:
A 10% increase in graduate salary or number of students doesn’t justify dismantling our air force.