Maybe you did? What are they buying with that money, or if it's siphoned off where is it sent? Especially military aid, if they don't use it to buy from Russia the money probably goes back to the US, as the nr. one arms exporter by a significant margin (https://www.statista.com/statistics/267131/market-share-of-t...).
With large weapons systems come decades of additional purchases, for training, upgrades, maintenance, spare parts, and an increased chance for buying other systems. That "aid" today can buy a lot of income over time, so rather than aid it actually is a kind of purchase itself.
Googling I see a lot of links telling us how much the US is "giving" in aid. But few of those pages bother mentioning what happens with that money next. "Hoes does the US spend foreign aid" is common (to whom and where does it go), "What does the US buy with foreign aid" is not. How much aid really is free no strings attached? I guess that's most likely for emergency funds after some catastrophe. As I see it, aid more often than not is a purchase too, but few bother finding out what the US purchased. It may be they don't buy anything concrete, but so do businesses investing in PR.
With large weapons systems come decades of additional purchases, for training, upgrades, maintenance, spare parts, and an increased chance for buying other systems. That "aid" today can buy a lot of income over time, so rather than aid it actually is a kind of purchase itself.
Googling I see a lot of links telling us how much the US is "giving" in aid. But few of those pages bother mentioning what happens with that money next. "Hoes does the US spend foreign aid" is common (to whom and where does it go), "What does the US buy with foreign aid" is not. How much aid really is free no strings attached? I guess that's most likely for emergency funds after some catastrophe. As I see it, aid more often than not is a purchase too, but few bother finding out what the US purchased. It may be they don't buy anything concrete, but so do businesses investing in PR.
Example: "What we buy with foreign aid" -- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12289893/