system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Independence Day] What did we do with all that alien technology?

Since we repelled the alien invasion on July 4th 1996 we were left with lots of crashed alien spaceships all over the globe. How have we been using the technology we found aboard?
gpt
Unfortunately, not much of it was salvageable. None of the aliens or their ships surrendered on that day, and without their mothership, they were all stranded here on Earth. With the improvised computer glitch spread throughout their systems, any time one ship communicated with another to find out what was going on, the glitch spread and re-contaminated any systems they may have fixed. The last ship to be brought down was one that took refuge over Antarctica on August 28th, 1996. Scientists at McMurdo Station managed to report the location of it back to U.S. forces via HAM radio and old telegraph wires through South and Central America. The full remaining fleet of U.S. aircraft carriers were deployed to attack the final ship, which proved to be less troublesome than one would think. Due to the chaos of that time, no one is really sure where the ship had originally been fighting at, but it appeared that the ship was badly damaged when the American forces reached it, making the final destruction quite anti-climactic.

With all major population centers destroyed around the globe, and the human race decimated several times over, less than 750 million people remained alive on Earth, most without safe drinking water, adequate supplies of food, medical care, or energy to last more than a few days after the attacks began. Those lucky enough to be around surviving major military centers formed shanty towns and began rebuilding the basics of human society from the scraps left behind by the invasion. A few remaining governments and military groups tried to research what was left of the alien technology, thinking that shields, space travel and advanced energy weapons might give them a great advantage in this new world. However, those endeavors mostly met with failure since all of the major research labs, universities, scientists and libraries were gone, and only a handful of people, scattered around the globe, could even hope to understand the basic premise of most of the alien technology. The one exception was at Area 51 (later renamed New Washington), where military resources were setup to study the alien technology for the previous 50 years. Using their decades of foreknowledge and the large amount of intact technology from the ships that fell over North and Central America, they managed to adapt several technologies for their use to a limited degree. However, with the complete collapse of global industry and trade, the raw materials, rare Earth Metals, radioactive elements, and other components needed to manufacture the resulting devices were simply unavailable in any reasonable quantities. The devices that could be made were kept, secretly, for a small, elite unit of derelict ship scavengers that traveled the globe looking for even more technology and resources to bring back to the U.S. while a second, more public group went around the world trying to restart the global economy and trade schemes in an effort to surreptitiously get the resources needed to support the manufacturing of those technologies.

Both groups met with moderate success, but with the basic problems of food, water, medicine and other basic needs being in the forefront, the development of alien tech remained a very low priority for decades after the attacks, with the only viable prototypes and manufacturing facilities able to produce more sitting below New Washington in the North American Union (Formerly Canada, the U.S., Mexico, and Central America to Panama). The East Asian Federation and the Eurasian Republic suspected the existence of these devices, but could never get solid information on any of it until commodity market manipulations by the North American Union's government in 2108 sparked the first major armed conflicts between nations since the invasion over 100 year previous. During the first few exchanges of fire, everything appeared normal, but in June of 2109 an American frigate fired its railguns across the bow of a super-tanker headed for New Singapore. When the tanker's captain called for assistance, three destroyers from the East Asian Federation responded within minutes, putting the American's at a disadvantage. Instead of withdrawing, as the Asians thought they would, the American Frigate opened fire on the lead destroyer with a modified alien tech artillery round. The live video from the other ships was being sent back to Neo-Tokyo as the battle happened, and the recordings of it were made classified immediately. The first shot was a direct hit to the bridge of the destroyer. Half the ship was instantly disintegrated by the impact and the remaining pieces fell apart and sank almost immediately. There were no survivors. The other destroyers opened fire on the American frigate, doing some minor damage before they, too were disintegrated. The captain of the super-tanker tried to run from the battle, but the Americans opened fire on it, and its cargo of crude oil, creating the worst ecological disaster since the invasion, making that day one of the most horrible in human history. All out global war was inevitable after the battle, and even with the combined resources of the rest of the world against them, the Americans managed to hold their own thanks largely to the advanced weapons they had deployed in their military. As the war went on the development of the alien technology was given high priority and the Americans managed to create a small fleet of attack craft capable of rapid long-distance deployment, sub-orbital space flight, and with a weapon payload capable of wiping out any city on the planet with nothing more than a few moments of warning. Geneva and Neo-Tokyo were destroyed in this manner, and the obvious superiority of the American forces, along with the complete destruction of the Asian and Eurasian political leadership, resulted in the peace treaty of 2121, which established the first truly global central government in human history.

The next 500 years were rough as humanity expanded and developed all new technologies thanks to what they had learned from the aliens. Interstellar space flight was made possible just in time for the resources of Earth to give out, leading to the mass exodus from the planet. The previously unseen reaping technology in the alien craft came in handy at this point, as a suitable location with many worlds was found, but many required terraforming. A new government among the associated planets arose, calling itself The Alliance, but the frontiersman spirit of many colonists caused a split among humanity, leading to the first interplanetary war humanity had ever experienced. The dissenters and frontiersmen were nowhere near as well equipped or trained as The Alliance forces, but managed to hold out for much longer than anyone gave them credit for at the start of the hostilities. The Alliance prevailed in the end, but the spirit of the Browncoats was never fully broken....