World military expenditure passes $2T for first time
I really don&#x27;t know what to think about this. Military spending makes me feel very conflicted inside.<p>I&#x27;m the kind of weird pacifistic person who literally sat down at school and took the beating from the bullies, safe in the knowledge that I had the moral high ground. It didn&#x27;t make me feel much better when they broke my ribs, but I&#x27;ve never punched someone in my life.  I&#x27;ve always loved the look of fighter jets and the fact that humans can hop in and go faster than the speed of sound in them, but I&#x27;ve always hated their application. The engineering is amazing; the technology brilliant and the things that are discovered along the way undoubtedly serendipitous. Unfortunately, I know that for a human population to completely disarm is to invite trouble: and armies can and do far worse things than just beat you.<p>I once went on a trip as a fresh-out-of-college person to a firm that made &quot;kinetic armaments&quot;; I went in with an open mind and left, three days later and with an (unaccepted) job offer, with a very shut one. That was a career pathway that was decidedly not for me.<p>Eisenhower&#x27;s famous quote sums it up quite well.<p>&gt; “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”