This battle was lost 20 years ago, and to reverse it you would need to go back 40 years to prevent US industry from outsourcing to China after it joined the WEF.

You can't divorce engineering from manufacturing, because designing better stuff heavily favors those who also make the stuff. The US was convinced otherwise by economists who don't believe in nation-states, because shareholders correctly saw that they could make massive profits by paying Chinese wages rather than American wages. But now China builds more ships in a year than the US does in a decade, and all of a sudden, the chickens have come home to roost. It will take generations for the US (and indeed the West in general) to regain what was given away, if it's even possible.

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geraneum an hour ago | parent [-]

I’d wager it didn’t happen due to the advice of economists who don’t believe in nation states. What happened is the natural conclusion of optimizing for maximum profit and giving capital (read i.e. corporations) the means to do so.

Any attempt at course correction is now labeled with “government overreach, socialism, communism”, etc. in an absurd way.

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coderenegade an hour ago | parent [-]

It's both. Governments correctly realized that you don't outsource technologies that are critical to your defense toolchain, which is why Boeing still makes planes in Everett and not in China. The oversight was not realizing the extent to which all technologies feed into one another. Eventually, you're trying to get electromagnetic launchers working on your aircraft carriers, and you're discovering that you don't have that capability, because administrations 30 years ago let electronics manufacturing go to China. So not only do you not have the capability of doing the thing that you wanted to do, but your adversary has reached a level of electronics manufacturing that your country never achieved.

It's treason if you or I leak secrets to China, and I'd argue that it would also be treason if Lockheed or Boeing wanted to make jets vital to US military interests in China. But if you sell public assets that are subsequently bought by the Chinese, or you move manufacturing that feeds the logistical supply chain, and subsequently erode local capability, that's apparently fine.

The market will always seek to maximize profits, but it's on the government to actually bat for its own sovereign interests. It's that second part that has been lacking, hence why I said in my previous post that this stuff was given away. It didn't need to be stolen.

	▲	geraneum 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> It's both. True but one is the consequence of the other. > The market will always seek to maximize profits, but it's on the government to actually bat for its own sovereign interests. True that! But the US government is defanged (where it matters), lobbied to death and captured. Also you never know what could one day prove to be critical to sovereign interests. It’s not one industry. It’s all of them together at the same time, from building the screws to hold your phone together to the advanced chips that AI runs on.