85
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-us-global-war-weapons-race/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
The deficit of basic materiel and dearth of capacity to make it reflects a wider problem: The US no longer focuses on making everyday things, even things that can be critical in a crisis. When Covid-19 struck, the race was on to produce more cotton swabs and ventilators. Shortages of auto parts, generic drugs, baby formula and other common goods have become more frequent.
Yeah, people did start to figure this out two years ago, once Russia pulled back and settled in for a long war. NATO governments spent billions more to procure shells and artillery pieces, and on incentives to get the arms industry to build more factory lines and supply lines.
But decades of neoliberalism have gutted the states ability to do anything itself, or to compel a corporation to do anything, even something as simple as build an artillery shell that was designed in the 1870s. The end result is that the incentive money was used to streamline and automate the existing, privately owned, factories, allowing them to fire workers and run more cheaply , but not to actually expand production. And with billions more dollars chasing the same supply of shells, the cost of an artillery shell has now skyrocketed to ~$9,000 a shell.
mom can I have billions upon billions of dollars?
to manufacture munitions for the war?
yeeees
does stock buybacks like a boss ๐๐
Critical support to anti-war weapons manufacturer CEOs, for gutting the global North's war capacity in exchange for short term gains