as a percentage of GDP the US government is spending half as much today on defense as we did in the 1980s we’re spending 120th as much on defense as we did in the Korean War Amy zart is a political scientist and a senior fellow at the Hoover institution specializing in US National Security and defense I think there are two problems David one is that we’re not spending enough and two is that we’re not spending wisely enough we need to be spending money on lowcost Hightech affordable unmanned systems and other capabilities the most frustrating part of this story is that there are lots of really talented dedicated people that are trying to change this whole process and they are swimming Upstream so the late Ash Carter Secretary of Defense really started this push for a defense Innovation unit here in Silicon Valley lots of people really worried about the direction of uh spending and the need to actually U produce more capabilities on a faster cycle to adapt to the times and big pentagon is still broken so we have lots of innovation units and they’re doing God’s work but they’re outside the main bureaucracy and of course members of Congress some of them really care about defense Innovation but members of Congress we know care about getting reelected and so there are natural electoral incentives for members of Congress to protect the jobs that they currently have in their District