"Seriously spent" where serious is less than the cost of a single bomber for the military. I forget what Geoffrey Hinton said it was, but it was an embarrassingly small pittance.
Military spending is largely economic dead weight, roughly the equivalent of handouts. And the end result is deterrence in a game of prisoners dilemma. Yet it is sacrosanct, and subject to ever increasing budgets for no gain.
The % of US GDP spent on defense has been going straight down ever since Eisenhower gave that speech about the MIC.
(Another fun fact is defense companies make fewer profits during war, not more. Presumably because they have to make real products instead of designing imaginary ones.)
The appropriated funds were only 4% of the defense budget, a lot of which still hasn't been handed out, and half of the handouts weren't even weapons and other military supplies. You could fund 10 Ukrainian wars at the same level and still have an extra 150% idle capacity.
military spending being dead weight is the most ridiculous statement I've heard in a long time. Do you know nothing about US, British, and Dutch history?
The main way the US, UK, and the Netherlands historically became rich was through maritime trade. Maritime trade was basically only possible due to those countries' military expenditures on having strong navies. I know the media makes a big focus on US special forces and other things, but the US Navy is basically the most important and foundational part of all of the US military power. The US and Allies were always interested in maintaining freedom of navigation and trade at the seas.
Just take a look at how much money was lost due to trade shipping costs due to the Houthis in Yemen. Consider that today it's cheaper than ever to ship things, and even today, it was so terrible. Shipping by land is terrible. The only historically economically feasible way to do maritime trade has been with Navies to provide protection from pirates.
Military spending is largely economic dead weight, roughly the equivalent of handouts. And the end result is deterrence in a game of prisoners dilemma. Yet it is sacrosanct, and subject to ever increasing budgets for no gain.