China launches two hyper-sonic missiles that essentially render our intercept capability useless.

[22lcidw]

It almost seems by design, doesn't it? I mean-- look how PROFITABLE it has been for BOTH sides.

In mature economies the costs of defense rises in huge ways. We are the super power of the world. Britain was the last Super power of the world. They found defense spending a struggle on their economy as they also had a crude social benefit system at the tine which hurt them as the global policeman of the world. The rest of the world had no social programs. The U.S. was a rising nation. But was slow to become the policeman of the world. It was the economic nation of the world by the beginning of the 20th century. It would take near a half century and two world wars for us to become the military leader of the planet and the main global power. Mainly because the citizens were slow to become warriors everywhere for any reason. Somehow our political class became corrupted as Rome and sold our technologies or let them be stolen and used to build up other nations defenses. There was a time that there were rumors that we actually gave the Soviet Union missile guidance technology as to not destroy the world with massive inaccurate missile launches missing their targets by hundreds of miles so they would launch less nukes .