[tw04]

> During WW2, the US fielded ... 111 aircraft carriers. Just a whole different order of magnitude.

And would have absolutely no way to reach that scale again. Or the equivalent in drone production, which is why it’s absolutely preposterous to take a hostile attitude towards our closest neighbors and trade and potentially put our geographical advantages at risk.

[jdeibele]

One of things that's a concern is the consolidation of industry into fewer and fewer bigger and bigger plants. Not only does that mean a bottleneck in one place is far worse, it also means that there's not the depth of experience available many places. There's a handful of production engineers rather than dozens. And there's not the same number of plants that can be converted from sewing machines to rifles or automobiles to tanks.

I was reading something that said militarily, the US is now in the same position that Japan was prior to WWII because we've outsourced so much of our production.