Tucker Carlson

And Putin bad, okay, Zelensky's Jesus got it, but like, what has this got to do with us?

And why is it good for us?

And the answer that

we all received from members of Congress, Republicans in the Senate, and Democrats was, it's a great deal.

Actually, it turns out, this is like congressional accounting, actually, that money, which seems like it's going to a foreign country, actually comes back to us because it goes to American defense companies, Raytheon and the rest, Lockheed.

And so what we're really doing is funding American jobs.

This is industrial policy, really.

And so it's a kind of sleight of hand where we seem like we're being generous, but actually we're benefiting.

And there may be some truth in that, by the way.

It's not totally... I mean, you can assess whether that's like the kind of country you want to live in where the only real manufacturing base is weapons.

Probably not.

But that's where we are.

And it's not a crazy argument to make on a practical level.

I mean, there are...

military contractors in every congressional district or always were.

And so it does produce American jobs.

But it also sets up an incentive for those companies and the lawmakers who fund them to maintain the status quo.

And the status quo is, of course, always going to favor larger, more expensive weapons systems because those are the most profitable.

A system like that will never invest meaningfully in, say, drone technology because there's not enough money in it.

But you watch the war in Ukraine and you watch the 40-odd days of the war with Iran and you realize, well, wait a second, maybe we should have invested more in drone technology or taken a big picture look at what the United States would need to project military power across.