You Can't go to War With Your Factory
...no one can, or should, defend this
Back in March, Joshua Steinman made a simple request of us all:
If you pay attention to one tech twitter chart this week, I beg you, make it this one
What chart was he referring to?
As Balaji let us know last month:
"The report was issued by Arlington, VA-based Govini which was awarded a five-year $400 million contract from the Pentagon in 2019 to deliver data, analysis and insights into DoD spending, supply chain and acquisition"
I forgot about both the report and the amount of money we - yes kiddies, we - paid for it. Nice snag by their Board of Directors, and … I hope their graphics department was well paid, because this report, now five years old, has some good ones.
I hope we got a lot more than a 12-page document for $400 million. You paid for it, so go here and download your copy.
As I was mowing the yard - wonderful therapy that is in 95 degree heat at 6pm with 85% humidity - it popped in to my head this simple fact; all this talk here and elsewhere of a long awaited ‘Pacific Pivot’ to get ready for a ‘Great Pacific War’ sometime in the Davidson Window™ against the People’s Republic of China … is it all just delusional?
Has the talk about “72-hr Wars” not so much a grand idea - but a requirement? How do we go to war with the same nation who we cannot produce weapons without their factories?
As a Southerner, going to war against your own industrial center is a Lesson Learned, and yet here we are.
Here’s another ponderable chart;
Just look at it. The implications are so … well … shocking that they don’t seem to quite sink in.
This report was funded in 2019 and delivered in 2024, 150% of the time it took for the USA to defeat Imperial Japan in the Pacific.
As such, a lot of that data is reward looking. It begs the question, what progress has been made in the last 5 years to wean ourselves off of relying on our greatest opponent on the world stage?
My thanks to Sal, however I suspect in this article Sal is preaching to the choir as we all are Churchills in the wilderness years. And, many of us are old enough to have been active in the military that President Reagan gave us in the 80's that allowed us to win, win, the Cold War. Here we are with two wars on our hands and a third in the offing in the Pacific and no on in charge speaking of winning.
I would also point out the logistical rot is far worse. Some sixty percent of our pharmaceuticals come that same factory in China. We have no domestic ability to produce penicillin. Or, what about lead? The last of our lead smelting capabilities were shut down by Obama's EPA.
America is addicted to outsourcing. Its dangerous