STEM has indeed been wrecked in the west.
In dark ages, art declines, great buildings decline, ordinary people’s living standards decline, people harrow the ground with stones tied to bits of wood instead of iron plows, but weapons technology usually goes right on improving.
U.S. production of tritium, a critical strategic material for nuclear weapons, is now insufficient to meet the forthcoming U.S. nuclear force sustainment demands, or to hedge against unforeseen developments. Programs are planned, but not yet fully funded, to ease these critical production shortfalls.
The U.S. is also unable to produce or process a number of other critical materials, including lithium and enriched uranium. For instance, the United States largely relies on dismantling retired warheads to recover lithium to sustain and produce deployable warheads. This may be inadequate to support the nuclear force replacement program and any supplements to it.
Attempts to build new nuclear reactors in the US keep running into indefinite delays. To make significant amounts of plutonium 239 will need new reactors.
Money, “full funding”, is unlikely to be the issue. Obama threw stupendous amounts of money at the Obamacare website, and the site did not come up. It only came up when a conspicuously undiverse team of white and east Asian heterosexual males led by white heterosexual males took over the job.
https://blog.jim.com/war/technological-decline-3/ 
