Yeah - I think that this comment here is pretty good. Simplicius has over-estimated the ability of Western Elites.

https://open.substack.com/pub/simplicius76/p/sitrep-112523-major-avdeevka-breakthroughs?utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=44292361

I believe you confuse the respective militaries - which are part of the government - with military industrial companies - which are private companies in the US case and state owned companies in the Russian case. A state owned company is not quite the same thing as part of the government - among many things, ownership may not be completely government; the state owned company could very well be profit oriented (see Gazprom); the state owned company could operate with various degrees of freedom, etc etc.

As for "planners" - the presumption is that there is actual planning from multiple aspects ranging from MIC logistics to overall economic to capital projects etc etc.

My view is that the West has very little planning of any kind. Everything is either left to the private sector or is simply left to rot. The elite classes in charge are uncompetent - they don't know what they are doing in any sense of the word - they just push fictional counters around a fictional board because of their utter divorce from reality or accountability.

Government in the West may well be a criminal enterprise - although I don't believe so. It is acting in a way contrary to its fiduciary responsibility, but that is a function of a dysfunctional and uncompetent bureaucracy, political class and executive class all subsumed within an ever wealthier but shrinking elite class.

The rest of the world - even the most corrupt governments - are more accountable than the majority of the West simply because real world limits force them to be even as there are many examples of governments which clearly are excelling.

So returning to your statement that "the MIC has first to build the factories" - yes that's obvious but I actually don't see it happening. There is very little evidence that the West has the will and willingness to seek optimal results as opposed to optimal profit. My view is that the most likely outcome is going to be ever more white elephant junk whether drone or AI or whatever nonsense a la F35 is pushed by the MIC. I just saw an article where "ramjet artillery rounds" were being touted as the next big thing - an artillery round with range comparable to a 1970s era missile. This is probably a leading candidate for the next white elephant - new tech, expensive, complicated, useful only against 2nd tier or worse opponents because accuracy must be governed by GPS systems, no short or medium term accountability, complexity to substitute for functionality that addresses a known need, etc etc.

This isn't government as a criminal enterprise problem - this is government failing to rein in abuses of the private sector (the MIC in this case).