I suppose I am one who is guilty of this offense, or so I learned from North Mountain here on FR. I would appreciate knowing what is the proper term for that vast group of people, in government, and in industry, who want to "increase defense spending" without ever defending anything.
I accept your very strong point that defense is constitutional, and certainly the trillions that the government throws around should be wasted on the military before it is wasted on anything else.
I can only provide my own experience in reply. Early in my military career, I was a 'tip of the spear' guy, flying off carriers and dropping ordinance on targets located by all sorts of intel gathering systems and sources. As a tip of the spear guy, I didnt always know or care where that targeting came from, but I wanted it to be good, just like I wanted my weapons systems to be top notch.
Later (post Gulf War 1) I moved over into the military acquisition side of those systems, and after retiring from the military, to the contractor side.
In all those years, going on four decades now, all the people I worked with or for were focused on mission success, having the best weapon system and the best intel to provide the highest probability of finding the bad guy, killing the bad guy, and returning home safely to family.
So I heard the stories about the $100 hammers and the $1000 toilet seats, but as bad a public relations scandal those may have been, they were exceptions, not rule, and the application of ethics rules goes at least as far back as my full career does.
You can always find bad apples, and clearly today, at the political level, its a problem, but I just have never run into folks trying to scam the system, and since I run into so many in the system, I have to infer its not that vast a group, percentage wise anyway. But where they exist, you could call them crooks, or worse, since there is an element who are working for our enemies and our downfall.