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War must always be considered, if you want to keep existing as a nation.

People have been repeating "Si vis pacem, para bellum" for thousands of years for a reason.

Semiconductors and aerospace are important to war efforts, and having domestic manufacturing capability is a big deal if you have serious, wealthy, technically advanced adversaries.

Reality is complicated and many-faceted, and there are a number of reasons to keep Intel alive as far as the govt goes: war, staving off brain-drain, keeping a lot of jobs, etc.

Your praise of war comes off quite naive. Perhaps you figure "war" or violence as viable solutions despite being a much more connected world where diplomacy and fairness can be judges more democratically. Such talk of war is neccesary is an utterance of someone born on the right side of the fence and quite clearly no clue as what they are talking about.
Ask Ukraine about the practicality of disregarding defense as a necessary evil.

It’s hardly naive to assume that, since there has always been conflict, that conflict will continue for the foreseeable future.

Take this from an extremely liberal and war-abhorring person: If your argument is that a country should not take steps to secure it's supply chains in the event of a war because <morals or something>, then you are the naive one.
That's why diplomacy works for the vast majority of countries. War is expensive and the costs are always more than anyone ,regardless of how sophisticated they believe themselves, could possibly imagine.

Take that from someone who lost a large chunk of his family currently in an African - shithole as the US president aptly put it- country. I'm on HN because this is the most peaceful time in recent memory. Do me the favour, at the very least, to put a handle on your dillusions grandeur. In our connected world diplomacy should be the only way to resolve national conflicts.

Sure, but countries also need not to be codependent for diplomacy to succeed. Diplomacy and trade are the basis of an international peace that might last centuries, but to work properly it is necessary that countries strive to also be potentially independent otherwise you get global crisis and situations where military threats are necessary to force diplomatic relationships.