Defense contractors have enshittified the defense industry. The defense department is as captured by industry as every regulatory department. And what’s most profitable for defense contractors? If your goal is just raw percentage per year profit margin? You want to produce limited numbers of extreme profit-per-item. As long as demand is guaranteed, you want to be selling a handful of handbuilt supercars rather than millions of cheap Toyotas. And while each one does some really amazing work, there just isn’t a credible way to produce these things at the rates we need at a cost the US can actually afford to pay for. The US budget is already at the precipice of a debt crisis. Capitalism seems to devour everything in the end. The environment. Our sense of worth as human beings. The very dignity of art itself. Even critiques of capitalism become monetized. Ultimately, even basic national defense. What a quirk of history if it turns out that what ultimately does in capitalist hegemony is simple military inferiority? Maybe it’s just the nature of capitalist vs socialist systems that over a long-enough time period, certain kinds socialist systems will tend to achieve greater scientific advancement and defense superiority over capitalist countries. In the grand scheme of history, I don’t suppose that would be the most absurd outcome now that I think about it.