@stavvers @mekkaokereke True, but i can't help remembering that during the Bush era the US intelligence bureaucracy got so arcane that they had to create another agency—the US Intelligence Community—just to organize liaisons between the nineteen classified agencies who admit to being members of USIC. They also have at least three space programs (not just NASA!), and their Navy has its own Army which in turn has its very own Air Force (the US Marine Corps Air Arm) with its own aircraft carriers.
@stavvers @mekkaokereke I have a REALLY BAD willing-suspension-of-disbelief problem with most SF, and especially Space Opera, because the interstellar governments/empires are insanely simple, efficient, streamlined, and lack any semblance of the baroque weirdness and dusty nooks and crannies you'd expect in even a medium-sized city's government.