I think the point is to look at the US requirements compared to the cost and explore ways that a country could gain strategic advantages by building objectively worse products. (But cheaper/faster, gaining an asymmetric advantage in the offense/defense scaling)

I used to think the US dollars were well spent, because we felt it was morally important to deliver precision strikes which had higher cost requirements. Recent evidence demonstrates that is insufficient when the wetware making the targeting decisions is faulty.