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Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

It's hard to overstate how many shells were fired on the western front during the war. It's estimated that about a tonne of ordnance was fired per square meter of the front. An absolute gobsmacking amount of ordnance was fired, not even including small arms and grenades.

Unfortunately, a huge percentage of those shells just ... didn't go off. As many as 1/3rd of them failed to detonate and embedded themselves deep in the mud. To this day there are areas in France that are completely off limits to everyone, both due to the unexploded ordinance and the amount of toxins those areas. Even outside of those areas there is a a process known as the "Iron Harvest", where local farmers will dig up artillery shells regularly; there is usually an official process for where farmers put these shells for regular disposal.

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It really adds a dimension to Eisenhower's famous speech:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

It is also spending the health of the world's fragile ecosystems.

Damn, I wish our current leaders talked about the military-industrial complex like Ike did...

> military-industrial complex

Here's a link [1] to the list with the world's richest persons. Can you tell me how many of them made their fortunes in the military-industrial business?

To spare you a click, here's the top 10: Bezos, Arnault, Musk, Gates, Zuckerberg, Buffet, Ellison, Page, Ortega, Brin. Tech (7), fashion (2) and finance (1). You can go on and on. I'd be very curious at what position you can find a military-industrial billionaire.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#31614dc93d78

Yet, despite that, military spending dominates government budgets in the US.

> Yet, despite that, military spending dominates government budgets in the US.

Only when you ignore the nearly 2/3 of spending that is “mandatory spending” and focus exclusively on “discretionary spending" does military dominate; it's about 1/6 of overall spending; healthcare, which is a major component of mandatory spending and also has some share of discretionary is about a time and half as much.

US has enormous per GDP, and even moreso per capita, defense spending, there's no need to exaggerate it's significance.

Might want to look up how Silicon Valley came to be called Silicon Valley, and how it came to be a tech hub. Bezos and Zuckerberg may not be the CEO of Raytheon, but that doesnpt mean MIC money wasn't involved in making their vast fortunes.

This doesn't seem to refute any kind of point made by Ike or OP. It's quite possible for a military-industrial complex to exist and it only generates a bunch of little rich people(20-100M), since the government spreads its patronage out over a large section of the population instead of tech which concentrates wealth into single individuals. If one person is reaping most of the rewards, it's easy to knock down the system. If a lot of people are benefiting a little bit, you'll have far more supporters for your policies.

Yes, exactly. Most mature industries are no longer run by the founders who own a lot of stock, but professional management with far less compensation.

The real questions about the military industrial complex are:

(1) Are we producing the right systems for today's defense environment? (hard to say)

(2) Are we doing this cost effectively for the country? (not at all)

(3) Is the structure of the industry healthy to best achieve 1&2 without being subject to regulatory capture / corruption? (It's an oligopoly of rent seekers with a revolving door between the gov't and industry, so very likely not)

Whether it makes people rich is beside the point. The question is whether it makes us safe at a fair price. It doesn't seem like you can say it does so.

It might not be a good look to flaunt wealth by way of being a weapons maker. Much less weapons used by government.

I Like Ike “The Draft Eisenhower movement was the only successful political draft of the 20th century to take a private citizen to the Oval Office.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_Eisenhower_movement

Depending on the sources, between 45 or 53 millions shell were fired for the battle of Verdun (it lasted 10 months).

My great grandfather was wounded there and subsequently died from his wounds. I still have his medals.

"The battle lasted for 302 days, the longest and one of the most costly in human history. In 2000, Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann calculated that the French suffered 377,231 casualties and the Germans 337,000, a total of 714,231, an average of 70,000 a month. In 2014, William Philpott wrote of 976,000 casualties in 1916 and 1,250,000 in the vicinity during the war. In France, the battle came to symbolise the determination of the French Army and the destructiveness of the war."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun

Every year I go with an old group of ex colleagues to northern France. One of the guys is a former historican who spends his free time investigating lost/unknown trenches. During those trips we walk across the many farm fields and forrests. He uses various maps and letters to understand were original battles took place. Everywhere you can find artifacts. Bullets, shells and other metal. There are also abandoned concrete bases still containing all the equipment to operate cannons. None of these areas are closed for public. Most are in fact just farm fields or public forrests. Accidents are not that frequent anymore. But not long ago each year someone died from an accident with unexploded grenates or shells. And it is still dangerous at some places. I know places where you will still find live explosives lying everywhere. Those areas are still a moonlike landscape with craters just everywhere. Unimaginable amount of shells were shot at the same place. I have a few interesting artifacts which I found during those trips. A bayonet of a french rifle. Completely intact gun clips from German, British and French rifles. An intact flask. Belts. Shells and their detonation devices (little clocks). Hundreds of copper balls from explosives.

Stack of spent shells

http://www.eureferendum.com/images/000a%20Verdun-029%20003.p...

"Stack"? That's a sea!

We actually had two of those by my parent's fireplace at home. It was a long time before I realized they weren't random brass cylinders, but in fact two spent artillery shells that my maternal grandfather brought home from WW1.

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