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IPFS News Link • Science, Medicine and Technology

We Must Cut the Military and Transition to a Science-Industrial Complex

• http://motherboard.vice.com

Many Americans subscribe to the annoying belief that our nation's military-industrial complex is the surest way to remain the wealthiest and leading superpower in the world. After all, it's worked for the last century, pro-military supporters love to point out.

However, America's dependence on warmongering may soon become a liability that is impossible to maintain. Transhumanism, globalization, and outright replacement of human soldiers with robots are redefining the county's military requirements, and they may eventually render defense budgets far smaller than those now. To compensate and keep America spending approximately 20 percent of the federal budget on defense (as we have for most of the last few years), we'll either have to manufacture wars to use all our newly-made bombs, or find another way to keep the American economy afloat.

It just so happens that there is another way—a method that would satisfy liberals and conservatives alike. Instead of always spending more on our military, we could transition our nation and its economy into a scientific-industrial complex.

There's compelling reason to do this beyond what meets the eye. Transhumanist technology is starting to radically change human life. Many experts expect to be able to stop aging and conquer death for human beings in the next 25 years. Others, like myself, see humans merging with machines and replacing our every organ with bionic ones.

Such a new transhuman society will require many trillions of dollars to satisfy humans ever-growing desire for physical perfection (machine or biological) in the transhumanist age. We could keep our economy humming along for decades because of it.

Whatever happens, something is going to have to give in the future regarding military profiteering. Part of this is because in the past, the military-industrial complex operated off always keeping a few million US military members ready on a moment's notice to travel around the world and fight. But there's almost no scenario where we would need that kind of human-power (and infrastructure to support it) anymore.


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