They'll never cut defense spending. That's where the most grift and corruption are, and that's the bread and butter for any politician to horse-trade for what they want.
I'm talking about the Trump administration. They ran on strong foreign policy, want to use the military to deport people, and are ramping up to deal with China.
If you take a look at the graph you linked you'll see for the years in Trump's first term (2017 through the end of the time sequence data in 2023) that it goes up (after starting 2017 down as a result of the previous year's budget) year on year, not down.
Stanford is packed with extremely bright, ambitious students. Who can easily optimize their "beliefs and values", for getting ahead.
What's the big downside, from their PoV? Being regarded as "immoral" by a few mostly-impotent-and-irrelevant idealists is probably an upside, due to the cred boost in their new in-group.
As of March 2025, Herbert L. Abrams is the only individual affiliated with Stanford University who has been associated with a Nobel Peace Prize. He served as the founding vice president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), which was collectively awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for its efforts to prevent nuclear war.
It’s an important question. I think of a saying I once heard about picking a SWE job: “back in the day, if you went to finance you were evil and if you went to big tech you were good. Now, you are evil no matter where you go.”
Previously, one could argue that choosing to give your labor to an industry with superior values and alignment of incentives over another would provide the most good as that industry will naturally assert and perpetuate its values and personal interest throughout society and government. However, it’s unclear what industry has superior values and best alignment of incentives with society.
