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I recently heard a terrifying prediction: Advances in defense technology will change the way war is waged today as much as industrialization did in World War I. If true — and I don’t know one way or another, my area of expertise is economics — then we could be facing casualties on an unimaginable scale, just as the mechanization of weaponry produced in the early 20th century.
As I said, however, I am an economist, and this prediction got me to thinking: What will this transformation mean for the US and global economy? In the past, increases in military spending have acted as a kind of stimulus. But there are reasons to doubt that will happen this time, at least in the same way.
As in the early 20th century, global politics and technology are resulting in more spending on defense. A more fragmented world brings more risk and less cooperation, so countries are spending more on their own military capabilities just as technology is producing new tools of warfare.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Bloomberg Opinion (paywall)
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Allison Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.