It may seem obvious that governments should think through their policies before implementing them; if they don’t, they risk encountering the dreaded law of unintended consequences. That’s exactly what’s happening in the United States’ defense-industrial policy.
Those are very much the intended consequences. While some of Trump’s “policies” can be explained by stupidity, greed or Nazi ideology, dismantling the defence industry can not. The only reasonable explanation is that he is doing it at the behest of Putin.
That’s the explanation that requires the least amount of assumptions