[Who is John Galt?]

[pierrem15]

A solid chunk of our defense budget is basically stolen by a procurement process that sees the procurement process itself as the goal and not delivery of any working & affordable weapons systems. As long as politically connected contractors are paid off, it's a "success."

If all the paperwork gets pushed & all the contractors get paid, they think they've done their jobs. Same with much of NASA's programs like SLS (Senate Launch System).

[marktwain]

Without “normalizing” the budgets for differences in value of local currencies, the graphic is just propaganda.

China’s military budget may be particularly misleading.

Here is a side by side comparison of China vs USA military strengths:

https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-comparison-detail.php?country1=china&country2=united-states-of-america

It places China and the USA as having essentially the same military power.