she points out we think about defense budgets in a fundmentry erroneous way, tying it to gdp. but the defense budget should be related to the threats the country faces, not the size of its economy. if a country's gdp grows by 30%, it has no reason to spend 30% more on its military. to the contrary, unless threats worsen, you would expect that over time defense spending of a growing economy should decline. the united states faces a world in flux to be sure. but surely not a more dangerous world than during the cold war. it now spends more than the next ten countries in the world put together, six of which are close allies like brittain and france. and the real threats of the future, cyber war space attacks, require different strategies in spending, and yet washington keeps spending billions and billions on aircraft carriers and tanks. in the case of the latter, matthews points out the army tried to get congress to stop spending on new ones.