MAYBE STAY off the beach next year. Autonomous mass-killer robots which move underwater will be financed by Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, now being pushed through in Washington DC. But rich investors in weapons firms will get richer, and that, ultimately, is the important thing, right? (Men and women of US Congress rapidly nod their heads in unison.) 明年或許別再去海灘了。水下自主殺傷性機器人將由唐納德·川普的「一樁大美法案」資助，該法案目前正在華盛頓特區推進。但武器公司的富豪投資者會越來越富，而這才是最重要的，對吧？ （美國國會議員們齊聲點頭.)

Cash for the military to build “maritime robotic autonomous systems and enabling technologies” is listed in part 20002.33 of the new law, costing US$188,360,000.

And that’s just one part of the US$150 billion being spent on trying to copy China’s delivery drones, but with guns.

I read as much of the 1,018 page document as I could stomach.

First, there’s a big increase in weapons spending – by a country which has never been invaded and which no one is threatening to invade. So what is it for? The answer is in the last paragraph of this write-up.

OFFENSIVE
The weapons spending is clearly offensive in all meanings of that word.

“Autonomous” means robots are given the power to decide which humans live, not humans. Americans are apparently okay with this. (Has no one from America EVER SEEN A MOVIE?)

Filling the oceans with death-dealers is definitely a theme. The Bill includes US$250,000,000 for the development, production, and integration of wave-powered unmanned underwater military vehicles.

But don’t feel left out if you live on the land. There’s a payment of US$3,700,000,000 (yes, that’s the correct number of zeroes) for some lucky weapons firm to make one “Amphibious Assault Ship”, so they can still crawl out of the water and come and get you. For that price, I may begin making such a ship my living room.

BIG FINANCE ISSUES

The bill’s defenders say it offers tax relief, raising the child tax credit to US$2,500. But that’s a very small bonus in 1,018 pages of tightly typed spending pledges.

What is more worrying is that the bill raises the debt ceiling by more than US$4 trillion. (Think of a sky-high pile of money amounting to a billion dollars. A trillion is a thousand billions, so think of a city covered with a thousand piles of a billion dollars. Now double the vision to two such cities. And then double it again to four cities. That’s four trillion.)

I know there are economists which say the US debt to the outside world will never have to be repaid. America could unilaterally cancel the debt and have a war with the rest of the world instead. (My reply: AND THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE COMFORTING?)

WHERE THE CASH COMES FROM
Where does all this money come from? The One Big Beautiful Bill slashes the budgets for unimportant stuff like environmental protection and citizens’ healthcare.

It gives freedom to big oil to do whatever it likes to mother nature.

So humanity itself and the planet on which we live will suffer terribly, and the world as we know it may actually come to an end.