The argument that nuclear fatalism encouraged short-term decisions

How did expectations of nuclear war affect investment beyond the armed services?

The answer argues that they encouraged short-term thinking and offers an explicitly personal suspicion about their use to justify spending choices.

The follow-up asks how nuclear-war assumptions affected the country beyond the armed services. Alex argues that expecting destruction soon could discourage long-term infrastructure spending. He also suspects that this argument sometimes served as a convenient reason to reject spending officials already opposed. He explicitly presents that suspicion as his cynical interpretation. The passage identifies an argument about incentives, without demonstrating that one belief caused every later investment decision.