Technologist, Investor, Foreign Policy Realist
Edgemont
Joined December 2008
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Flintstone's Bedrock vs. Jetson's Orbit City: A roadmap for rebuilding US manufacturing. @AmericanAffrs
americanaffairsjournal.org/2…
Lowering upstream costs and rewarding domestic manufacturing with transferable tax credits. Make manufacturing more profitable and lower costs: rebuildingmanufacturing.com.
America’s defense industrial base has a metal parts problem. Since the 1980s, the U.S. has lost roughly 1,600 foundries (~50% of the domestic base) and 4,400 metal casting facilities (~75% of the base). Critical cast and forged alloys now face 70–80 week lead times.
The 155mm artillery production effort shows what this erosion looks like in practice. The Army has invested $4.5B since 2022 with the goal of producing 100,000 rounds per month. As of March 2026, output was 36,000 rounds per month.
Much of the constraint sits upstream in qualified projectile metal parts production. A ~$500M Texas facility designed to produce 30,000 parts per month had yet to produce a single contract-compliant part as of March 2026.
That same supply chain weakness affects missile production, propulsion, drones, shipbuilding, and other critical systems. These programs depend on the ability to produce complex metal components at speed and scale.
Rebuilding the industrial base requires more than new factories. It requires qualified domestic capacity to cast, forge, machine, inspect, and produce complex metal parts – plus flexible manufacturing capacity that can shift across programs as demand changes.
This is the defense industrial base challenge.
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Winning means drawing skills and supplies across industries. We shouldn't try to pick or define who wins.
highcapacity.org/p/chinas-te…
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For those keeping score on drones at home. The DOD, under the now-consolidated and energized Project Agincourt moniker led by the estimable Owen West, is now fielding serious attritable drones, counter-drone capabilities, and near-serious scale.
defensetechacquisition.com/p…
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Probably nothing.
🚨 中国在168小时内刚刚采取了5项行动。全部围绕台湾。没有一项有名称。
而没有人把这些点联系起来。
行动1：100多艘中国军舰和海警船遍布西太平洋。
台湾11月3日表示，它们已经部署到位。
来自3个战区的4个特混编队横亘在台湾与关岛之间。
一道隔开台湾与其朋友的墙。
行动2：中国3艘航母中有2艘同时在海上。
辽宁舰编队位于菲律宾海。
最新的福建舰于11月2日驶离海南，向东航行。
第三艘山东舰于11月1日出坞，进行海试。
航母已经出动。
行动3：仅11月2日一天，中国军机就出动49架次。
其中36架次在台湾岛以南飞行。
天空也加入了海上的行动。
行动4：第二道、更近的包围圈。
至少6艘海警船，外加海军舰艇，环绕台湾本岛。
截至今天早上6点：10艘中国海军舰艇和3艘公务船。
包围圈仍然在那里。
行动5：没有宣布。没有名称。
北京为其最近4次围台大规模演习都起了名称。
ISW：这可能表明中国能够随心所欲地从空中和海上切断台湾与外界的联系。
在这一切之前：
巴基斯坦对所有台湾航空公司关闭了领空。
4艘中国科考船在连接台湾与世界的海底电缆上方停留或减速。
把这些点联系起来：
100多艘舰船 = 关岛之前的一道墙
2艘航母出动 = 外圈
49架次 = 天空中的包围圈
环岛舰船 = 内圈
没有名称 = 下一次没有任何预警
这不是混乱。
这是一场封锁演练。
一艘接一艘。
一圈接一圈。
无需入侵。
一场没有名称的演习就没有结束日期。
台湾每天早上公布新的舰船数量，而我发布动向。关注我，看下一道包围圈如何形成。
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A flexible manufacturing system can build all sorts of specialty things at scale and price.
The BYD Yangwang Dingyao (internationally named Yangwang Altior) is BYD's ultra-luxury executive flagship EV, designed to rival elite benchmarks like Rolls-Royce and Mercedes-Maybach.
Power: Equipped with BYD's quad-motor e4 platform, it delivers over 1,000 kW (approx. 1,300 horsepower).
Length: It features a massive, full-size sedan stance measuring 5,600 mm (5.6 meters / ~18.4 ft) in length with a 3.5-meter wheelbase.
Price: Expected to start above 2,000,000 RMB (around $280,000+ USD).
Key highlights include coach doors (suicide doors), active air suspension, and advanced autonomous technology.
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Domestic manufacturing required. Not rocket science, although Elon does that too.
马斯克可能是全美最清醒、也最敢讲真话的人：在物理世界的牌桌上，中国的工业统治力已经是“断层式”的降维打击。
看看他在这段视频里承认的几组恐怖数据：
1、 矿石精炼规模：中国一家，直接干到了全球其他所有国家总和的 2 倍；
2、 发电量硬指标：2026 年中国发电量将超过美国的 3 倍以上。
很多搞金融和纯软件的人根本不懂这意味着什么。GDP 可以靠律师费、医疗账单和金融衍生品注水，但发电量和矿产吞吐量从不撒谎。
马斯克看得很透，他把这几句话连在一起，其实揭开了 AI 下半场最残酷的搞钱真相：
1. 算力的尽头是电力，AI 的尽头是重工业
别再天天盯着聊天机器人看热闹了。当 AI 走向具身智能（人形机器人），拼的早就不是谁的代码写得漂亮，而是谁能用更便宜的电、把更多的矿石精炼成电机、电池和减速器。中国这 3 倍的电力和 2 倍于全球的精炼底盘，就是未来全球最大的“硅基劳动力兵工厂”。
2. 唯一的胜负手：算法奇点 vs 供应链阳谋
马斯克最后那句大实话几乎是在给美国敲警钟：“靠人力我们肯定赢不了……如果没有突破性的创新，中国将占据压倒性优势。”
这就是明牌的阳谋：只要技术进入工程化量产阶段，没有任何国家能卷得过中国的电网与全产业链。
给想在 AI 时代发财的人提个醒：
纯靠套壳软件赚钱的红利期已经死了。未来 5 年真正的暴利，要么去押注那种能打破物理规律的“0 到 1 颠覆式算法”，要么就老老实实深耕中国绝对垄断的“电力基建 + 储能 + 机器人硬件供应链”。
手握全球最强的电网和工业底盘，你觉得在接下来的“机器人时代”，中国供应链会直接接管全球利润吗？评论区聊聊你的判断👇
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Nvidia allows up to 49 percent of its cloud capacity to be sold to Chinese clients.
I guess that gives the other side a 2 percent overall advantage, depending on customer concentration.
ft.com/content/1902df70-1380…
Does a virtual Moore’s law for satellite bandwidth kill telecom infrastructure? Curious minds want to know.
~100 lasers per satellite, each operating above 10 Tb/s, with over 100k satellites should be able to outcompete undersea cables.
Speed of light in space is ~40% faster than cable and the path is direct, instead of following the outline of land masses.
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Fund alignment R and D.
DOJ just stood up a Super Intelligence Task Force.
Prosecuting foreign and criminal misuse of SI is useful. America should lead there.
It still doesn’t make the models aligned.
A task force after a bio or cyber incident doesn’t untrain a model. “Guardrails” don’t either.
The thing that actually lowers the risk is alignment R&D, which is still critically underfunded.
nitter.gq/TheJusticeDept/status/…
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Reindustrialization is possible. We just need to incentivize the market. Entrepreneurs are an American superpower. Direct them to manufacturing instead of Wall Street.
This quoted post is unavailable.
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Supply chains pervade all types and forms of stuff. You can’t pick winners.
One of my favorite examples of Chinese tech spillovers:
China doesn’t just make solar panels. It makes solar manufacturing equipment too, including equipment for slicing silicon wafers.
This wafer-slicing equipment typically uses diamond-coated wires. China also has the world’s largest synthetic diamond industry.
These capabilities also benefit China's silicon carbide (SiC) industry. SiC is one of the hardest industrial materials and requires specialized cutting equipment, often using diamond abrasives. Chinese companies like Gaoce have expanded from solar wafer-cutting equipment into SiC semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
SiC semiconductors are increasingly important in power electronics, particularly EVs, high-power industrial motor drives, and emerging solid-state transformers.
Solid-state transformers are a promising technology for managing complex power grids, especially those with lots of clean energy. As well as AI data centers.
(And now China is considering placing export controls on some of this solar manufacturing equipment)
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The U.S. has depended on Chinese parts for many years. Still, nine million parts, 3,000 U.S. military weapon systems, and more than 28,000 unique components across 1,400 weapon systems.
This is structural failure.
twz.com/news-features/these-…
Living in an AI world requires personal AI working 24/7 for safety reasons. A new market.
Grok bot found a hidden camera and microphone inside our Tesla taxi. my wife was in the back seat on the phone with her bank. the camera was pointed at her screen, every word she said was being transcribed on a server in Hong Kong, and someone was watching it live. i checked the account it uploaded to. same account. 212 cars.
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the ride felt off. the driver used her name before she told him. i opened my laptop and asked Grok to scan every wifi and bluetooth device around us.
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→ wifi → 14 networks
→ bluetooth → 23 devices
→ open hotspot → 'IPC_7F3A' → a cheap shenzhen ip-camera module
→ one unnamed bluetooth device → -41 dBm → not a phone
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we drove 2.1 km. the signal never changed. it was inside the car.
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→ device 1 → dashboard vent → inside the air freshener
→ device 2 → rear headrest → 40 cm from my wife's head → microphone
→ camera angle → the back seat, at phone-screen height
→ not a Tesla part → aftermarket, plugged in by someone
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the car had free wifi. my wife was connected to it. so was the camera.
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→ upload every 30 seconds → 47.243.***.18 → Hong Kong
→ 1.8 MB per upload → video and audio
→ audio → speech-to-text → keyword filter
→ keywords → card, code, password, pin, address
→ live stream → 1 viewer online → right now
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i stopped scrolling. the 1 didn't go away.
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i asked Grok to trace the account it uploaded to.
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→ account → fl33t_***
→ 212 cameras → all moving → all in cars
→ 14 cities → mostly airport routes after 10pm
→ 31,000 rides recorded in 7 months
→ every ride auto-tagged → bank, crypto, home address
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then Grok found our ride. and the one before it.
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→ tagged HIGH VALUE → 4 minutes ago
→ transcript → her bank call → card ending 4417 → "the code from the sms"
→ a second recording of her → same car → 19 days ago
→ drop-off point on that ride → our home address
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that's how the driver knew her name.
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→ next stop → a telegram channel
→ 9,400 buyers → $25 per high-value ride
→ 3 rides from this same car already sold today
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what Grok did next:
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→ saved 41 files of evidence → timestamps and gps track
→ blocked card 4417 → bank fraud team notified
→ 11 minutes later → someone tried to spend $3,800 on it → declined
→ filed a safety report with the ride app → driver and plate
→ drafted a police report → ip, account, channel, both recordings
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the driver was suspended 6 minutes after the report. we got out at the next light and walked home the long way.
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211 other cars on that account are still driving tonight. most of them are waiting at airports.
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if you take taxis at night, open your laptop next time you get in. it takes 2 minutes.
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the prompt is in the comments. save it and send it to anyone who rides alone
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picking winners is not an industrial strategy.
US industrial policy has reached peak comedy 🤣
China is now the cash cow subsidizing US "decoupling"
Washington wants SK Hynix to spent $100B on shiny new memory fabs in New York. Hynix basically replied: "Ok our IPO flopped, so we need to print cash at our Dalian plant in China to pay for your American dream. Give us the damn export licenses for US chipmaking tools so we can upgrade and expand our fab in Dalian"
Cos small-brained White House reshoring plans assume companies simply move capital from China to the US - Job done! In reality, building cutting edge fabs in the US requires massive upfront cash flow that, after Solidigm's failed IPO, can only be generated by scaling up lower-cost, high-margin production inside China first
Now Lutnick’s Commerce Dept and Treasury are stuck in endless meetings trying to figure out how to sanction China without bankrupting the exact company funding their "reshoring" victory lap
To decouple from China, Washington literally has to greenlight more advanced chipmaking in China first. Art of the Deal, semiconductor edition 🥂📉
Reuters has more details on the "snag"👇
reuters.com/world/china/sk-h…
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Ford waking up. Great to see.
Ford has already cast more than 5,000 Gigacastings for the upcoming $30,000 Fathom 🏭
Approved batches are shipping to Louisville Assembly Plant for process testing and prototype builds ahead of the midsize electric pickup’s 2027 launch.
Each Fathom uses a front and a rear Unicasting. Together they replace 146 structural parts.
Ingots are melted at about 700°C, injected, quenched, trimmed and machined, then cleared through dimensional checks, industrial X-ray, optical scans, and lab tensile and chemistry tests before any batch leaves Shelbyville.
Ford says the team is still cutting cycle time, and the parts are designed for modular repairability.
This sits inside the $2 billion Louisville overhaul for the Universal EV Platform. Unicasting is the structural core of the parallel “assembly tree” Ford said can cut assembly time by about 15% net.
On the recent earnings call, COO A. Kumar Galhotra said about 90% of validation testing was done, first production-line vehicles had been built in Louisville, and supplier readiness at rate was the main remaining risk. Ford expects Fathom launch in Q4 2027.
📰 Full article industryarsenal.com/p/ford-c…
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Shifting operating expenses to the balance sheet. Real savings.
Built in Tasmania, now sailing in South America. The world’s largest battery-electric ferry carries 2,100 people & 225 vehicles. Up to 4 crossings per day, each taking about 75 minutes. Estimated fuel savings: US$4.5m a year. Projected payback: 5–8 years.
newatlas.com/marine/incat-hu…
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