War and technological advances have always gone together - from well before #Archimedes.
I’m not a fan of war, but it’s a harsh reality.
Other investments work well though, the space program for example generated tons of great things.
It will be very interesting to see where #AI and #robotics take us.
PCs were the first stage, smart phones were the next. Affordable personal robots of some sort (full self driving cars?) will be common in 10 years or so.
As an "ex" US federally funded scientist, I can't understand how this is correct.
During war, government will direct vast resources for both technological and scientific development in war related areas. Areas not related to war might be underfunded, but what are those? Even law and the arts have huge war potential.
After WW2, retardation of science didn't occur in the US for a long time because of--more peace time war.
@deshipu@dpfyhrie@PChoate The Nazis were famously terrible about not sending scientists and engineers to the front: Schwarzchild in WW1, but in WW2 it was repeated with Godel, Zuse, the entire jet engine team in late 1940 (they thought the war would be over by 1942 and jets wouldn't be needed)...
@deshipu@dpfyhrie@PChoate "Dumb trooper" ... let me remind you there's a reason large enterprises love to recruit former senior staff officers as executives: a general is used to managing organizations with thousands of workers, and aside from the uniforms/saluting/shooty-bang-bang stuff, both armies and corporations are bureaucratic institutions with a lot of the same coordination issues.
(Also, Generals are used to working hard for far less pay than a typical civilian CEO.)
@rrb@cstross Supposedly what brought the UK to negotiate with the Irish Republican Army was when the IRA switched from assassinations to bombing the London financial district.
@60sRefugee@rrb The key part of that statement is "London". The Tories gave no fucks about violence in Northern Ireland, but having their banking hours disrupted hurt them ...
@cstross I'm just grateful it has a human in the loop and isn't some AI monstrosity. Which you just know some western defence contractor is working on...
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