So far in 3 years of war the US has, for something like <10% of their military budget, destroyed a huge chunk of Russian military capabilities, without having to set a single US boot on the ground or losing a single US citizen. On purely selfish terms, that's an undeniably great investment.
But it's not only that. The US has an immense amount of soft power that it squanders if it completely mistreats, and even blackmails, its own allies — which it is doing right now — to appease hostile powers like Russia.
So with that being said:
It's ridiculous to jump to "we're gonna have to deploy x y and z batallions" when the US administration is not even doing the BARE MINIMUM, many tiers below that: they are publicly praising Putin and berating Zelensky. So it's pointless to talk as if this was about direct military intervention when in fact even soft diplomacy is going to the way of appeasement.
Part of the issue with tech people discussing this is that they assume there is a tech solution to "human meat sacks are needed in order to control a geography". There isn't, at least not yet or anytime soon.
So far in 3 years of war the US has, for something like <10% of their military budget, destroyed a huge chunk of Russian military capabilities, without having to set a single US boot on the ground or losing a single US citizen. On purely selfish terms, that's an undeniably great investment.
But it's not only that. The US has an immense amount of soft power that it squanders if it completely mistreats, and even blackmails, its own allies — which it is doing right now — to appease hostile powers like Russia.
So with that being said:
It's ridiculous to jump to "we're gonna have to deploy x y and z batallions" when the US administration is not even doing the BARE MINIMUM, many tiers below that: they are publicly praising Putin and berating Zelensky. So it's pointless to talk as if this was about direct military intervention when in fact even soft diplomacy is going to the way of appeasement.