The Killing Machines

Governments and Technology Obsessing Over Efficient Death

I was recently watching footage of the NATO Summit held July 7–8, 2026, in Ankara, Türkiye. I couldn’t help but notice how similar the gathering looked to the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) shows I used to attend while working in the music business in Hollywood. Every year, all of us music nerds would get excited to head to the huge convention center in downtown L.A. to see the newfangled hoopla the music merchants were releasing that year. We gobbled it up, of course.

The NATO event looks like essentially the same thing—a trade show—except the newfangled hoopla is of a different kind. World leaders, all decked out in fine suits (nerds of a special kind), stroll the aisles admiring missiles and tanks engineered for maximum lethality. Billions are spent to make killing more efficient. While societies debate the cost of keeping one person alive in their final months, trillions flow into perfecting the technology of death. People who still think can see the terrible clarity in this inversion: when the soul recedes and the material world reigns, efficiency in killing becomes one of the highest values of our age.

Personally, I don’t think there is a better definition of insanity than the way humans delight in war and death. Yes, there was a time when killing your neighbour because they wouldn’t let you eat an apple growing on their side of the tribal fence made a tiny bit of sense. But what it has evolved into today is pure insanity. Humans are supposed to be capable of compassion. We are supposed to be able to sort out our differences with other tribes. We are supposed to care more about human life than we did in the cave days, when it was all about survival and who would or would not get the apple. What happened to all of that? For any of us to justify wholesale killing the way we do only proves we haven’t gotten anywhere in hundreds of thousands of years.

It is all so screwed up, as is nearly everything. Nothing makes sense anymore. It is crazy to me that, for one small example, Canada can go ga-ga over its health system paying for the last months of a citizen’s life—spending millions if necessary to keep them alive—yet the same government will spend roughly $2.2 million on a single Tomahawk cruise missile, a weapon designed to destroy high-value targets and capable of killing dozens of people (or more) in one strike. This is the kind of arithmetic they are running through their heads while strolling the aisles at their NATO war show: “Now tell me again—how many people will this weapon kill, and how much does it cost? That’s some nice bang for the buck! I’ll take 20 of ‘em!” Insane.

I just read that Canada is deep in debt and running persistent deficits, while Ukraine sits on roughly $4 billion worth of gold reserves. So, Canada (and everyone else that can) keeps giving money to a country that already holds billions in gold, all so more people can be killed. And don’t tell me, “Russia ruthlessly attacked Ukraine! They should pay for it!” Yeah, right. If you are saying that right now, you are, unfortunately, still thinking like an ignorant caveman. That is not the whole story; in fact, it is very little of it. But Russia doesn’t get off the hook either. Grow up, people. Figure this shit out and quit acting like ten-year-olds playing in the backyard with stick guns.

At least the stick guns don’t deplete the treasury and suck the tax-paying population dry. It is astounding to think that most of us work a lifetime just so our country has the resources to kill—or help kill—thousands of other working stiffs who are simply minding their own business and trying to get through life in one piece. Almost no one fighting in these wars has any real inkling why they are out there killing other people. The idea of the apple as something needed to survive is long gone. It is all a game now—not for the people dying from the weapons their leaders are buying, but for the leaders themselves and the oligarchs who own the companies making all this hardware. It is their little game. And they are having a blast.

I’ll say it again, and I’ll keep saying it until I’m blue in the face. It is all a game—a sophisticated 3D chess game. And we, the common useless eaters, are not at the table playing it. In fact, we barely even exist to the real players. Sure, they use us for kill stats. The more of us who die, the more some oligarch or world leader can claim victory and collect his chips.

Look at the actual numbers if you still doubt it. According to the latest available data from SIPRI and the International Institute for Strategic Studies:

The United States leads the world by a wide margin, spending roughly $920–950 billion a year on its military.

China follows at around $250–340 billion.

Russia is third at approximately $186–190 billion (about 7.5% of its GDP).

Germany has surged to over $100–114 billion.

India sits near $90 billion.

The United Kingdom spends close to $90 billion.

Ukraine, despite its size, is now pouring roughly $84 billion into its military—an almost unimaginable 40% of its entire GDP.

Saudi Arabia, France, Japan, and others round out the top tier with tens of billions each.

Canada, after years of lagging, has ramped up significantly and is now spending in the range of $35–40 billion (with recent announcements pushing it higher to meet NATO targets).

These are not abstract figures. These are the concrete resources extracted from ordinary people—through taxes, inflation, and delayed infrastructure, healthcare, and housing—so that a small circle of decision-makers can keep the machinery of death humming. Trillions of dollars every year, worldwide, flow into the business of preparing for, and conducting, the efficient slaughter of other human beings.

And still the game continues. The leaders meet, the contracts are signed, the missiles are ordered, the justifications are written, and the body counts are tallied. The rest of us are expected to cheer for “our side,” wave the correct flag, and never ask why the same people who claim to care so deeply about human life are so eager to spend our money perfecting the art of ending it. And nobody seems to care. As long as their game of pickleball is not disrupted, the leaders they seem to adore so much can continue to play their game to their heart’s content.

I don’t know how much longer this particular round of the game will last. I only know that as long as we keep accepting the premise—that war is inevitable, that leaders know best, that the dead on the other side somehow matter less—the players will keep dealing the cards and raking in the chips. The rest of us will keep paying the price, both in treasure and in blood.

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