A 50% increase in defense spending will be a boon to military re-armament and American re-industrialization. It also has the potential to accelerate real scientific breakthroughs that may define the economy of the future 🧵 0/

1/ U.S. defense R&D used to be a much larger share of the global total R&D spend, as well as a much larger contributor to the U.S. economy during the 50's - 80's The result? Indispensable technologies we can hardly imagine living without, such as...

2/ **The Internet**: Cold War research into communication networks resilient to nuclear attack created ARPANet, and the foundational packet-switching protocols we use today. What began as a way to ensure command and control survived a strike became the backbone of modern civilization and the modern digital economy.

5/ **Jet Engines**: The leap from propellers to the Jet Age was fueled by WWII and Cold War requirements for speed and altitude for long-range bombers and interceptors. Boeing’s 707, the plane that made global air travel accessible, was essentially a civilian sibling of the KC-135 military tanker. And without military dollars, the civilian airline industry would have never taken off, being far too capital-intensive to be sustained by the private sector alone.

6/ Without these four technologies/industries precipitated by U.S. defense investment, the modern, interconnected world that we know today wouldn't exist. Here are four new breakthroughs on the horizon that might be made a reality through additional defense spending and investment: