Comment by echelon
6 hours ago
This order should come with a mandate to build domestic manufacturing capacity.
The drones aren't important. The manufacturing capacity is.
America should be using every opportunity it can to subsidize reindustrialization. Especially for key industries, components and inputs, places where we make our money, critical supply chain items we rely upon, and dual use / defense tech.
Everything important. Machining, electronics, chemicals and plastics, pharmaceuticals...
It's going to be painful to play 20 years of catch up. But we need to bite the bullet and do it.
This is where subsidy and government purchases can really help.
It seems like the USA's goal to bring chip manufacturing back into the country only targeted cutting-edge chips. Refocusing on building "old-gen" chips is quicker and more affordable. Drones don't need the latest tech. Most consumer goods don't. I believe Germany did this to some success.
Luckily we have a lot of fabs in the USA for microcontrollers and the like that drive these smaller robotics.
Isn't TI still doing all of their chip manufacturing in the US?
it's kinda sad to see comments like this implying war with china as some sort of inevitability
we only "need" to bite the bullet if we want to make WWIII economically possible
This isn't about WWIII. This is about influence, dominance, and independence.
The US domestic industrial base is tightly coupled to a China. You need to bite the bullet if you want independence from an adversary and if you want to preserve global hegemony.
The best way to prevent a war with China is to be prepared for it.
> war
Defense.
Peace through mutual respect.
Economic stability and prosperity.
Self-reliance, resilience, competence.
Anti-fragility.
I'm not just suggesting preventing a hot war, but also ensuring we remain an economic peer.
America can't just "not lose" a war. It needs to maintain its economic growth and comfort of living for its citizens. We need lots of opportunity surface area in the future, and that means making sure we're broadly capable and competitive. Not painted into a corner, feeble, dependent.
Playing chess with decades of foresight.
I expect China to do the same. I expect that this rivalry will make both of our nations stronger.
In the three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we've been resting on our laurels. Competition will inject a much-needed sense of mission and urgency.
using all these personal adjectives to describe the world economy strikes me as very chauvinistic, and I am not convinced the cold war was such a good thing that we need another!
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It did, the point is to build up the manufacturing base:
“Driscoll said his priority is getting the United States into a position where it can produce enough drones for any future war, stimulating domestic production of everything from brushless motors and sensors to batteries and circuit boards.”