1902

Oh, absolutely… Like I said, I think this is why the actual cost of the wars was higher than if you looked at the Pentagon’s budget over those years.

But in this particular context, I think it’s important to understand, because it explains what the Mother Jones article is bringing up.

They’re saying, “Hey, if we ended the war, why is the pentagon budget going UP!”

And the answer is that the Pentagon budget is the stuff that wasn’t the war.

That on its own might not justify increasing it, but it helps explain the incongruence that Mother Jones is attempting to highlight. And when we account for the fact that the OCO is being eliminated, the overall DoD spending is in fact going way down, I believe.

1903

Actually, it seems the OCO is routinely included in the reported cost of defense spending.

For example, the 2019 defense budget was $616b for normal spending and $69b for the OCO, for an overall budget cost of $688b.

Given that the 2022 defense budget is some $740b, doesn’t seem like there is any money going away at all.

1904

Some concrete numbers:

And then some info about Biden eliminating the OCO:

The actual spending in the FY2022 authorization is covered in a bit here:
https://militarybenefits.info/2022-defense-budget/#:~:text=Basic%20Contents%20Of%20The%20FY,for%20the%20Department%20of%20Defense.

The authorization was above Biden’s request, and the 740B number includes around 30B for national security stuff through the DoE for nuclear programs.

That said, it looks like the OCO spending was not simply eliminated, but was instead rolled into the base budget request now? Although looking at it, I can see where at least some of this money is going.

A big chunk is going to the new GBSD system, which is essentially a renovation of the US’s nuclear arsenal, which probably is in fact something which should be done, given it’s currently using systems that are many decades old.

1905

Gotcha. It is important to keep straight all of the different moving parts, for sure.

1906

I was going to make a snide comment about upgrading from 8" floppies to, perhaps!, 3.5". But it appears they completed the transition away from those floppies in 2019.

1907

The idea of actual modernization is kind of scary though when you think about it.

The entire system now is pretty much air gapped, so you can’t actually jack into it and launch all the missiles, just by virtue of it pre-dating any kind of real connectivity like that.

A real modernization effort is going to require dealing with so many new cyber security threats.

1908

Sneakernet (army boot net?) FTW.

1909

I’m good with nukes being permanently air gapped.

1910

I practically would insist on it.

1911

It’s likely inaccessible through the standard internet, on a custom protocol. Something way beyond SIPRnet.

1912
1913

I’ll say this, the folks I deal with in the private sector that came from the public military sector, even if only on the fringe, are about three steps beyond every other corporation I deal with, and those include lots of state and local governments and utilities. I have very little fear about the DoD becoming the weak link in the chain.

1914

I’m less worried about the DoD than elected officials dictating them to do things, if I’m honest.

1915

Pretty much the best nuke engineers come from the Navy it seems, at least. Not many other places you can get experience running nuclear power these days. Navy folks who have worked on subs or on nuclear carriers, the people I’ve met at least, have been wicked sharp.

1916

I liked a scene in a Larry Bond book where they had a civilian nuclear expert come on board a boomer and when she started explaining things at a media level, the Captain reminded her that pretty much every sailor on the boat was at least mid-undergraduate level in nuclear physics and she could ramp it up a few notches.

1917

I’m sure there is some group of experts around Joe Biden who think this is a really clever bit of triangulation, but my fucking God.

1918

This is getting pilloried by the left-tanky crowd, but this is probably the best option that could be done without getting totally skewered across the board.

Biden’s been left with so many impossible choices.

1919

It’s getting pilloried because it is unambiguously theft and will probably kill thousands of Afghanis, none of whom had anything to do with 9/11. The promise to use half of it for humanitarian aid is a joke — it will all be spent through US or western corporations — but if you’re going to do that, there really isn’t any excuse for not using all of it that way. At least then you can pretend you aren’t actually stealing it. This is a ‘why not cut the baby in half and then eat both halves’ solution.

1920

Hey man, if the Afghanis didn’t want the US to take their cash, they shouldn’t have voted in the Taliban and then fly 2 planes into the World Trade Center.

1921