Indeed. In a very real sense, the US was late to this game. Of course they would revise history to obscure their failure.

No, that was the Zuse Z1 in 1938, 8 years before ENIAC. Even the Z4, which was a freaking _commercial_ design was built from 1943 onwards, years before ENIAC.

Fail. The Z1 was the first programmable computer, finished in 1938 by Zuse himself, on private funding.

Actually, Z1 in 1938. But it was not reliable, so design upgrades were required.

ENIAC is merely the first _electronic_ computer. The Zuse Z1 was the first programmable computer, and it was built on private funds, by Zuse himself.

I would love to see the US go broke. (Well, they are, but the thing would be for the rest of the world to realize it...)

In many cases, yes. In other cases, things will escalate slower, which is always a lot cheaper and always a lot better under control. Accelerating military progress is a losing game in a globalized world.

So would have anybody else, as we now would be very deep into an ice-age. Suicide is not a victory.

The reason is simple: Most of today's programmers are not very good at their job. They just do not get what makes these languages impressive and exceptionally effective. As soon as programming is recognized as a very demanding engineering task that actually requires the best and brightest (and that using them pays off handsomely), this will change. Of course, that realization may never materialize.

Those that the US wants to fight with robots will just do the same and everybody will be a lot less safe as a result. These people are incapable of learning from history and just make the same dumb and expensive mistakes over and over again.

Indeed.

Same here. Not that I would want to go to the US though, for a number of other reasons.

What, actual physical properties? These are meaningless for marketing!