Podcast: Industrial policy to counter China with Emily de la Bruyere
I was pleased to have Emily de la Bruyere join me on the Acquisition Talk podcast. She’s a co-founder of Horizon Advisory, a geopolitical consultancy, […]
Search Results for mobilization
Is a Russian invasion of Ukraine imminent? And when will acquisition get serious?
Here is Dmitri Alpervitch, co-founder of the largest cybersecurity firm in the world Crowd Strike, in a viral twitter thread: There are numerous signals that […]
There are 50 single-points of failure in the microchip supply chain — Challenges of industrial policy
I am a fan of the way interdependency makes war between great powers illogical — because the supply chain for microchips are many, many countries […]
The problem of shipbuilding capacity in expanding the Navy’s fleet
We’ve paired our shipbuilding capacity down to the bone. You see it not just in shipbuilding but in ship maintenance. We just can’t get ships […]
Will technology bring a return of the citizen-soldier?
I think it’s time to drastically reduce the active military, and turn to a citizen soldier society. That doesn’t mean we don’t need things like […]
The indecision problem of capital investment during times of crisis
One of the biggest lessons I had reading through WWII industrial mobilization literature is the waffling that goes on in the early days. Companies are […]
Redefining military readiness for Great Power Competition
Under the current readiness paradigm, our answer to “what needs to be ready?” is “the stuff we have today.” However, as we observed earlier, the […]
How the US won World War II with economic policy
It is hard for us to imagine today how such an entrepreneurial spirit could co-exist with war mobilization, but one did. One reason, of course, […]
Air Force contracting chief talks budget reform, Covid-19, and great power competition
This applies to Covid, it applies to emergencies and to great power competition: We have got to figure out a way to let Congress oversee […]
How long are lead times to surge military materiel?
New manufacturing facilities are certainly one of the keys to increasing production. Today, it takes a company 3 to 5 years to build a new […]
Nassim Taleb says prepare for the worst-case in fat-tailed events like pandemics and war
Russ Roberts: Another way to say it–and, again, to put it into folksy terms that I also got from you–is that you care about–you don’t […]
Views on US-China tensions, preparedness, and the great decoupling
Tech companies with operations in both China and the United States are increasingly struggling to comply with values and laws that are systemically in conflict. […]
Government should prepare domestic industry for black swan events
Covid-19 proved the United States was industrially unprepared for an emergency. Pre-pandemic N95 mask production stood at just 4 percent the peak requirement of 100 […]
Neglect of small business at the start of WWII
… little actual headway was made in 1940, primarily because the Army and Navy field procurement officers had been sharply reminded, in the course of […]
Is it time for bold changes to weapon systems? Lessons from Germany’s WWII experience
The success of the Nazi drive across Europe proved what the military of other nations had long suspected: that the complete disarmament of Germany after […]