By dropping bombs on the enemy's strategic assets that enable him to make war.

Bridges, railways, factories, communication nodes.

Grandma and grandpa used to tell me stories about how when the Germans invaded and started bombing Kiev, they were sent east of the Ural mountains, along with all the factory machinery that could be put on railcars, so that the munitions plants could keep running (staffed by kids too young to fight and oldtimers too old to fight) to keep the front lines supplied.

How do they identify a robot? Flash up a naked circuit board for the captcha and see if there's a complaint about pr0n on the bank login!

Pork barrel? Nah it'll be the green chile barrel, and I'd be OK with that.

Maybe the could fund replacement emergency spare tires for all. After all you're not really meant to put 100k miles on one.

and countries are still maneuvering to gain the best position, and that includes the US.

Are they? The US isn't, it's bending to the whims of an angry, stupid, corrupt and senile old man bent on getting as rich as possible. Needlessly burning allies doesn't put the US in a good position.

meaning Russia and China's nuclear arsenal is effectively useless

Russia's nuclear arsenal is already very close to being effectively useless. Not a chance they've been doing good stockpile stewardship while the entire rest of the armed forces (and its tyres) rots into the ground.

And why would Trump/America care?

When America lost 3000 people on 9/11 and called for aid, Europe stood up.

The question was not why should America care, but why would America care.

There's a good chance they simply won't. America has not had a great record of being a reliable ally over the years.

No, just right wing economists. History has demonstrated that Keynes was right all along.

The problem with right wing economists like Friedman is that they started with the conclusion they wanted (let the rich do whatever they want) and then created all these absurd theories to try and justify that conclusion.

Also profiting off of crime and fraud is morally questionable.

Unless all profits go to real charity, people that watch this support fraud.

That's like saying people that watch true crime shows about murder support murder.

All centralized power will work to expand its reach. Sometimes nakedly as in Germany or the Soviet Union (neither place having developed a generations-long tradition of self-rule that makes such things taboo). Sometimes subtly, through agencies' expanded remits or assertions of authority to fill a vacuum. But nearly always in the name of some common good. Populism is a dirty word among some folks, you equate it with reactionary politics, but what word would you use to describe exercising "the people's power" on their behalf?

Republicans used to be protectionists until the middle of 20th century. Milton Friedman convinced a lot of people there were no downsides to outsourcing so long as the quarterly numbers were good. Dude even had the chutzpah to say it's okay to let the defense industry wither away because "steel can be stockpiled."

He was certainly influential. But now that I'm older and wiser, he's the poster child for why economists should be treated with all the respect that practioners of voodoo are due.

And the defined benefits get paid for with...

Well, in the automotive industry, which never fully off-shored, there are plenty of domestic suppliers in places like Alabama and Tennessee, where the factories have always been.

There were plenty of domestic electronics suppliers back in the 70s and 80s when Macs and IBM PCs and peripherals were mostly assembled domestically too. The final assembly went chasing slave labor overseas and surprise surprise the supply chain here withered away (or off-shored, too).

In aerospace where off-shoring is flat-out illegal in most cases (ITAR), the domestic supply network for both mechanical and electronics is quite robust.

Oh and I forgot to mention, places like Brazil have domestic production quotas for electronics too. Maybe they were helped along by the fact that until recently we had no such trade barriers in place. Or as a certain favorite politician opined, they were taking advantage of our trade policies to benefit their workforce.

Totally unique to the business schools. Absolutely none of that behavior among English majors or engineering undergrads. Anywhere. Ever. Born 40, all of them.

One of several that have developed in our system.

Greed is human nature. Profit-driven business decisions at their best harness this aspect of human nature to productive means, such as as making and selling widgets for the glory of your wallet; as opposed to destructive means such as warmaking for the glory of the state.

Profit as a destructive force in society is very much in the eye of the beholder. One man's ruthless cost-cutting to make the shareholders happy is another man seeing good returns in his retirement fund or his kids' college fund. To take one example.

The problem is UK energy policy. It is to build large amounts of intermittent power generation in places where there is no demand.

Not really, or rather only in as much as this is because we have other problems. The problem is a massive lack of investment in infrastructure (i.e. the grid), and absolutely zero long term planning. Sure there might be plans, but they'll change every 5 minutes anyway, just to ensure that no companies invest properly either.

The result is that the UK has to build a hugely expensive new transmission network from the wind farms off the north coast of Scotland to the Midlands and South.

It's called "investment". The reason the UK is such a shitshow in so many ways is we have the least investment of the G7. We are not going to get better by continuing to not invest in important infrastructure because it's too expensive.

the only solution is of course gas fired generation, but that is politically incorrect.

"politically correct" lol.

No, the problem is with like everything else we underinvest. We have a crappy, ageing grid which can't move electricity around the way we need. We keep trolling industries by making grand plans and cancelling them so no one can productively invest. The solution sure as shit isn't just using gas: that's why we've in the hole we're in now. Because gas is critical electricity prices are tied to the price of gas.

Having more gas isn't going to make the electricity prices less tied to gas.

The program also involves large amounts of solar. However, the UK is the second worst country in the world for solar power generation (the worst is Ireland).

Well apart from that not being 100% correct... so? Solar in a lot of places is just stupidly good. It's only a bad idea if it doesn't have sufficient ROI compared to other options.

doing what we've done for the last 30 years (that is, not investing in, well, anything and tying the price of electricity to gas) is not going to change where we are relative to the last 30 years.