other than capability to know where the adversary is, like bin laden, and to have the ability and speed to respond very rapidly. i think we re caught up of a defense industrial complex of which congress is implicit that s building platforms less good for our warriors of the future. first of all, i couldn t agree more, honestly, with your assessment, having much less information than you do, and i see the panel around the table nodding. i admire you for forcing a conversation that i think has been desperately, is desperately overdue, and i m sorry, emma jean, go ahead. i was actually going to ask a question about nato. all nato countries are supposed to spend 2% of their gdp on defense. the only apart from the u.s. doing that at the moment are the uk and greece. america spends around 4.7% of gdp on defense. my question is, have the other nato countries perhaps cut too much? and would you like to see america cut its spending on defense to save 2% of gdp? well, i think the other cou
colleagues in the pentagon and in congress to actually take on the military industrial complex that you spoke of head on? and to elaborate, how are all of those payoffs not a fundamentally short-term bribes to the politicians in those districts with the threat of taking away jobs in a given election if they cut? with as i alluded to earlier in this conversation, congress is very implicit in this problem. people go to the armed services committee because, yes, they care about defense, but they really care about that shipbuilding base right there at home. what you need is to start artick lating, as general powell did after the cold war, that we are going to end up hollowing our forces with platforms that don t have the capability within them to search, to find, to get the knowledge in order to apply force. let me give you an example. submarines, they cost $2 billion a piece. china already has almost twice as many as we do. do we just build more $2 billion