Trillions were wasted but what could we buy instead

Jack Ma of Alibaba and many others have pointed out that the USA wasted over $14 trillion in fighting wars over the past 30 years rather than investing in infrastructure at home. Others point out that the US spends double the GDP of other developed countries on medical plans while having lower overall life expectancy.

Federal spending has increased on a % of GDP basis or on a per capita inflation adjusted basis but value has not increased.

Even cutting the $1.4 trillion F35 program is somehow controversial. 25 years and over $300 billion later the F35s are still years from being declared fully operational.

Russia is weak economically and other than nuclear weapons is 3 to 5 times weaker than the USA. China economy is coming up but is also far weaker than the US. China is 10-20 years from being remotely competitive with the US militarily.

Social security balancing could follow Canada with a slowly increasing age for government retirement benefits.
Medical programs could pick from any one of the models in other developed countries. Basic services fully covered with something like universal medicare (no age limit) but with various markets for medicare advantage like paid suppplements. Some studies estimate a 25-31% cost savings from universal medicare

Where could better investments be made that re-allocate some of the $1 trillion on military related spending and after savings adjusting social security and medical programs from the $4 trillion annual US federal budget ?

Rapid debt repayment is one option or at least balancing budgets.

Elon Musk has said his global Internet satellite project will take more than five years and $10 billion to complete. Some calculate it could cost twice as much. Analysts once forecast that Google’s plans to build out fiber optics to U.S. cities could also cost $10 billion. Google wants to offer cheap access to support its ad-centric business, but has been scaling back its Fiber plans. Satellite Internet could offer a more cost-effective alternative.

The Elon Musk program could be subsidized to provide multi-gigabit internet across every inch of the planet.

This would provide a boost to economic growth.