> Europe needs conflict to thrive, but as an European I'd prefer this conflict to be external to Europe.
Eh, I'm not sure you get the tech benefits of a war when it's a foreign war of choice.
I mean, WW2 coincided with computers, radar, rocketry, modern control theory, jet engines, and so on because in an existential war you throw everything you've got into winning it.
But you look at wars of choice, like Iraq? All that came out of it was moderate upgrades to prosthetic limbs and drones. The major innovations of the period, like smartphones and cloud services, were unrelated to the wars.
Post-cold-war, progress in things like IT infrastructure have been driven much more by the private sector than by military needs.
Look at rocketry for example. The moment the impetus of a serious threat is gone, the US decided to put all their space money into a useless boondoggle that was more about spreading the pork around into the right congressional districts than seriously advancing rocketry or space exploration.
Eh, I'm not sure you get the tech benefits of a war when it's a foreign war of choice.
I mean, WW2 coincided with computers, radar, rocketry, modern control theory, jet engines, and so on because in an existential war you throw everything you've got into winning it.
But you look at wars of choice, like Iraq? All that came out of it was moderate upgrades to prosthetic limbs and drones. The major innovations of the period, like smartphones and cloud services, were unrelated to the wars.