[echelon]

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.

[justaman]

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.

[scld]

Luckily we have a lot of fabs in the USA for microcontrollers and the like that drive these smaller robotics.

[NitpickLawyer]

Isn't TI still doing all of their chip manufacturing in the US?

[Palomides]

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

[echelon]

> 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.

[Palomides]

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!

[echelon]

Everyone has a personal ideal view of what life should be. Some people are content to chill and have creature comforts, no stress. I've no problem with that view, but it's not my disposition. I want to push boundaries.

It just so happens that competition pushes technology further. It puts a sharp edge on investment dollars and intellectual capital. A lot of money gets spent, but it gets spent smartly.

WWI and WWII - horrible and tragic - pushed us so hard that people alive as teenagers during the invention of flight lived to see a man walk on the moon.

The cold war created the PC, internet, and planted the seeds for the smartphone and AI.

We had a whole lot of incrementalism in the 00's - 20's. Ad tech, emojis on smartphones, so many social networks. I want to see all of that turned on its head, everything pushed forward 10x. By the time I die, I want to see robots, whole body transplants, autonomous everything, brain uploads, VR indistinguishable from life, cures to every cancer, decelerated aging, widespread access to middle class standard of living. I have so much desire for this and it's all I want for.

That's going to require pushing through an economic and technological salient. Competition accelerates that.

It's time for America to stop being weak and naive. Lazily greedy. To stop spending on ad tech upgrades and instead sow the seeds of a scientific and industrial powerhouse.

When we focus on protecting rather than optimizing eyeball engagement and becoming pilfering middle men, we make the greatest strides.

[fny]

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.

[HWR_14]

The best way to prevent a war with China is to be prepared for it.

[Gagarin1917]

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.”