Comment by Cthulhu_

There's economic / capitalist pressure to reduce cost / increase revenue and optimize for short-term profits; that's on the corporate side, anyway.

But applying the military hardware stuff to software is IMO a bit of a leap; I get the similarities, but where demand for software hasn't slowed down at all, demand for military hardware and ammunition just wasn't there.

The alternative would have been to keep all the factories alive, maintained, staff employed (or training staff ready to onboard rapidly hired staff when capacity had to go up), supplied stockpiled (and rotated), etc. And who would be willing to pay for that?

In times of peace the voter wouldn't want the government to spend billions on the military if it wasn't necessary... except for the US which still spends billions a year on the military even in peacetime. But not on their production facilities it seems.