KEY POINTS

  • Defense stocks dropped sharply Thursday afternoon after President Donald Trump suggested the U.S. could massively cut defense spending.
  • Trump has sent mixed messages on military spending throughout his 2024 campaign and in the early days of his presidency.
  • MuskyMelon@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Oh if anyone is going to be successful in Kennedy-ing a President, it would be the military-industrial complex.

    Keep cutting spending Donald, you’re doing a great job!

      • MrEff@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        I was already going hard on AI stock, then day of inauguration when he sent the clear message of where tech companies stand in running this country I dumped ALL investment money into AI stock. If I have to live in this hellscape I better at least get to retire in it.

        • abrake@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          My brother, have you heard about the benefits of diversification? If you want to retire at all, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

    • Bakkoda
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      5 days ago

      Everybody was panic buying ! Those stocks were fast as lightning!

    • Sc00ter@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      I bought lockheed martin call options after the way the steel markets rebounded

      Edit: just checked volume on LMT. 2.4M today vs an average of 1.35M. Yeeeeeeah. Lot more buyers than usual today

      • oyo@lemm.ee
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        5 days ago

        Yay for incredibly immoral investments. It’s disgusting how stock trading has been gamified and divorced from what it actually is, owning and supporting a company.

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 days ago

      Since the entire thing is contingent on China and Russia agreeing to half their defence budget too, the only thing to bet on is when it will be rescinded.

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    If he actually halves Pentagon Spending, that would be… the first good deed he’s ever done.

    • answersplease77@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      He never will. He sent a message for weapon manufacturer CEOs to chip in, and off course they will gladlyl buy him just like how silicon techies did

      • tempest@lemmy.ca
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        4 days ago

        Exactly, this is just fishing for a bribe, just like the tariffs. Bribe Trump enough and your program or industry will get a loop hole or passed over for 6 months or whatever.

    • bitchkat@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      I can see him doing away with seasonal clock shifts by accident at some point.

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    I don’t like it when I agree with the general notion of something Trump says or does. Makes me feel dirty.

    • MothmanDelorian@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Wait until you see how i gets halved. Im willing to bet they axe the VA, any scholastic programs, ROTC et al as most policies are about destroying America.

    • Stern@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Broken clocks. If its any consolation he could be, variously-

      1. Floating random shit. Common Trump talk.
      2. Actually wanting to weaken the U.S. militarily, to the benefit of his leash holders.
      3. Fishing for bribes.
    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Thats the magic of trump though, when he’s vague about things he can sometimes spin them as something agreeable. My guess is he’ll keep the regime change bullshit and nix stuff like burn pit procedures, ukraine support, and veterans benefits

    • WoodScientist
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      4 days ago

      He’ll direct the savings to creating a new internal police force.

  • Norgoroth@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Please keep fucking with the defense contractors, surely they won’t take any drastic measures against you

    • Lucidlethargy
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      5 days ago

      No, he wants to annex Canada, Greenland, Gaza, and Panama.

    • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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      5 days ago

      Seems like the strategy is for us Canadians to feel so sorry enough with the state of affairs over there, that we’d join the states out of sympathy. Nice try.

      • forrgott@lemm.ee
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        5 days ago

        Lemme guess, it would only be a 3 day special military operation? 🙄

      • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Crippling Canada’s military would be relatively easy. Holding the country would be absolutely impossible. It’s enormous geographically and occupation requires around 20 to 25 soldiers per thousand residents.

        We would have to dedicate a cool million soldiers for the 40 million residents of Canada. The US had only 450k-ish army members in 2023, so that would be difficult.

        • Atom@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Not to mention triggering Article 5 for the rest of NATO and shattering every defense agreement at once. You know, Putin’s wet dream.

          • Serinus@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            If there’s going to be a world war, I’d prefer to not be on the side of Russia and China.

            • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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              5 days ago

              On the side of China? Their side is is sitting it all out and letting the U.S. and Russia devour themselves while picking up all the trade deals, currency holdings and eventually all the economical losses that will make it the strongest economy I’m the world by far. What do they have to do? Keep giving a nudge here or there, and watching egomaniacs devour their fellow citizens and the citizens eventually fight back to regain their freedoms. China wins every time Trump opens his mouth. But I don’t feel they are on the side at all, just happily enjoying the little puppeting they need to do.

              • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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                5 days ago

                The US is basically China now. Xi remains in power because he convinced the Chinese people that China needs a strong man to run the economy and protect them from the evil foreigners. Trump has done the same. They’re both corporate socialist countries now.

                There is one big difference and no, China is not “sitting things out.” A lot of the brouhaha over Greenland stems from China trying to use soft power to gain influence there. As they’ve done in Panama. Soft power means spending money and Trump’s too simple minded to understand the concept of spending money to gain influence. So US soft power doesn’t exist anymore which is why Trump can only make threats. It’s the only lever he has because he doesn’t know anything about the other levers. Of course his threats only further destroys US soft power, but Trump (along with most Americans) simply can’t understand the concept so they see that as good thing. Hell they’re trying to shut down USAID entirely, should be an indication they don’t understand it at all.

                China very much understands soft power and is using it everywhere. So that’s what we have to look forward to… Chinese soft power being met with threats from Donald Trump.

      • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        You guys are so enamoured with Nazis you forget Vietnam.

        Previous losers willing to kill millions for a win.

      • MasterBlaster@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Didn’t they and Britain burn down the white house in the war of 1812? They seemed pretty fierce in WWII. As an American, I suggest we not fuck around, lest we find out. I’m much happier with Canada as ally, thank you very much. From wikipedia:

        By the end of the war Canada had the world’s fourth largest air force,[6] and third largest navy.[7] The Canadian Merchant Navy completed over 25,000 voyages across the Atlantic,[8] 130,000 Allied pilots were trained in Canada in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. On D-Day, 6 June 1944 the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division landed on “Juno” beach in Normandy, in conjunction with allied forces

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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        5 days ago

        An occupation will. And the US has an extremely bad track record with occupations. That’s just a fact.

        You go on counting troops and getting boners when warplanes fly over sports arenas, while Canadians are figuring out how many strategic targets in the US are within drone range. This wouldn’t be an overseas war where you just need to tell someone in uniform some bullshit “thank you for your service” remark and that would be your only exposure to it. It would be a guerilla war on the North American continent, and your dear leader is gutting the FBI’s counter intelligence capabilities.

      • sepi@piefed.social
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        5 days ago

        Found Putin’s fedi account. 3 days to Ottawa, eh? Will work just like the last one, eh?

        • atzanteol
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          5 days ago

          Pffft, like we’d believe that Ottawa is the capital of Canada. On to Toronto!

      • kandoh@reddthat.com
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        5 days ago

        We would probably surrender and then work diplomatically to regain independence or some other-outcome that would be better than blowing our neighbours up.

  • cultsuperstar@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    It doesn’t need to be halved. They just need to figure out where a large portion of the money goes, since they can’t seem to account for it.

  • Zink@programming.dev
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    4 days ago

    I had the “wait, a good thing?” reaction too.

    But thinking about potential underlying motivations, it makes complete sense that the compromised traitor holding the reins would want to weaken the military at the same time as destroying the government.

    Or maybe it isn’t to help other dictators, and he just wants the opportunity to weed out more people who are loyal to the constitution.

    • ⛓️‍💥
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      4 days ago

      This may signal he is getting pushback from the military which is a very good thing. If he is serious about Canada and Greenland he will need a strong military. It makes no sense to start cutting the budget now.

      Refusing unlawful orders is always cool and moral.

  • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
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    5 days ago

    I’m guessing this is all just a ploy to make Lockheed, Northrup, and Raytheon kiss the ring.

    Next week, all the classified work will be contracted to them for a steal of only thrice the price, but only once they’ve publicly kissed his ass enough.

  • MetalMachine@feddit.nl
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    5 days ago

    Would be a good thing if it would actually happen but we all know it won’t. Happy to be proven wrong however

    • MothmanDelorian@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      The military is a jobs program. It’s paying for a ton of education and scientific research too. The first thing to go is going to be the scholarships not the guns.

      • pregnantwithrage@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        We spend more on our military than the next 9 countries combined not including our dark operations that we can’t account for in our budget already.

        We could cut our military in half and still be the best funded military in the world.

        That problem isn’t other nations, it’s the US and the military industrial complex

        • Sc00ter@lemm.ee
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          5 days ago

          Have you ever read the unclassified annual threat assessment? There is an official report the intelligence comminity puts out every year detailing what other nations are doing around the world. And that’s just what theyre allowed to tell us.

          Ive read it, and if you look at what they detail out for chinas militarzation moderniation plans, theres not many reasons theyre doing what theyre doing unless to compete with the USA. Not to mention, chinas going faster than what originally was thought, and theyre becoming less reliant on other nations to do it. Thats just 1 nation. The usa has stuck its nose in too many peoples business that if they stop the arms race, there could be a lot of nations coming knocking. Weve painted ourselves into a corner (or at least have the perception of it).

          Edit: all that said, theres definitely ways to be more fiscally responsible with our military spending… just look at the f35 or the sentinel program

        • shastaxc@lemm.ee
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          5 days ago

          But we also sell a lot of that military equipment to allies, making everyone stronger and recouping some of that spending at the same time.

          A quick search shows about $300b in sales last year with a spending budget about $800b. Of course, that depends on whether Ukraine survives to be able to repay its debt. But even if it can’t, all the military spending goes to US owned companies or citizens (our soldiers) which circulates in the domestic economy.

      • MetalMachine@feddit.nl
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        5 days ago

        Considering how we’ve used that power in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam? Yes, its a good thing.