If this article is interesting to you I highly recommend War of the Whales. It is an interesting look at Cold war science+politics and the environment. A decent part of the book is about SOSUS.
One of my favorite readings from undergrad and grad school was "The Problem of Social Costs" by R. Coase. I'm sorry you think externalities are glossed over by economics, but Im excited to tell you that this is certainly not the case. Coase won the Nobel Prize in economics in large part for his work on externalities. They don't hand out Nobel prizes for glossed over topics. It's definitely worth a read of you wish economics paid more attention to externalities:
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