Actually there was an explosion of jobs with the automation of elevators. Previously only a few luxury buildings could afford to have an elevator and operator, safety and reliability improvements along with automation put an elevator in every building. Automated elevators also allowed a huge boom in high rise building construction, previously most of New York City was buildings six or fewer floors tall.

And yet somehow we manage to spend 45-55% of that budget every year in useless war toys to massacre innocents across the entire planet. I guess it's easy to see where the priorities of our leaders are.

If we are ever to get off this single planet and expand into the larger universe we need to learn how to live elsewhere, and the only way to learn that is to go do it. Otherwise we go the way of the Neanderthal. Staying on Earth ensures our ultimate extinction, while if we move into the larger universe the possibilities are quite literally infinite.

On the other hand, if you're a fan of the Singularity just staying with robotic exploration for now would make sense, gaining experience for when your mind can eventually be downloaded into a permanently upgradable electro-mechanical body.

Just look at the flying kluge of the Space Shuttle, which is what you get when politicians and generals think they know how to design a spacecraft better than actual rocket scientists.

NASA as an organization doesn't so much "lack courage" as they lack funding. For a measly 4% of the Federal budget we landed on the moon, now NASA gets less than 10% of that amount. Had their budget continued at that level an ISS equivalent would have been launched by 1979, and a permanent moon base was planned to open in the mid-'80s. Instead Congress in its infinite wisdom decided that the advance of science and exploration needed to be abandoned.

All NASA budgets since its foundation, combined, including all of Apollo - $680 billion
2024 Pentagon budget, without intel agencies or Black Budget - $841
2024 NASA budget - $24 billion
2024 Space Farce budget - $30

This is why we can't have nice things.

On what planet would Vietnam be considered a Western country?

Take power AGAIN? What flavor is that koolaid you're drinking? How in the world can you fantasize that a silver-spoon born-insider is somehow not part of the permanent power structure? Taking away freedom of speech, religion, association, press, habeas corpus, privacy, protection from warrantless seizure, allowing posse comitus, these are all supposed to be GOOD things? I really don't understand how some people's brain works.

Unless you're able to call up the assistance of someone fairly high on the food chain, at which point the process can take weeks, am I right? At least that's the way it is in most of the world.

That's like saying the only possible purpose of a stick of dynamite is to blow up a visiting dignitary's vehicle, ignoring the whole plethora of other uses from mining, farming, construction and general amusement.

Pretty much how they always determine that sort of thing, they reached into their nether regions, pulled something out, washed it off and said, "We saved the world AGAIN!!!"

If you mean home security systems, BFD. Home security alarms are the very last priority for dispatchers because (literally) 95+ percent of them are false alarms. The dispatchers that I've worked with say that kids smoking weed in the park are a higher priority than home alarms.

If you want someone to actually respond to your home alarm system either 1) cough up the extra cost to have the alarm company dispatch someone to investigate, or 2) get an alarm that is so freaking loud and obnoxious that the neighbors will call the police to get it shut off.

Yes, and due to public pressure they're addressing the issues, the same as the US did.

Iran's air defense system was taken offline by a remote exploit before the attack commenced, the supposed 'stealthiness' of the flying trailer park had nothing to do with it.

Indeed. Wamsley has an article about fire trucks here in the US, which is a monopoly situation with only three vendors. A basic ladder truck now costs $2-2.5 million dollars and delivery times are 2-4 years, with replacement parts having 3-6 months backorder times (one of the reasons why the Palisades fire was so devastating was the number of inoperable trucks awaiting parts). That same truck from China is $400,000 and delivery times run around 4-6 weeks. Unfortunately we're not allowed to buy them here in the wonderful Free Market (sic) of the Untied States.

That would include all of the NATO militaries. It only takes one bribed/threatened/tricked/stupid low level flunky to run a cable from Point A to Point B somewhere in the system and you can be seriously screwed, as every ransomware exploit against supposedly "air gapped" SCADA networks has demonstrated.