As America reindustrializes, industries that are starved for technical talent should study the U.S. Navy’s nuclear training pipeline. Under Admiral Hyman Rickover, the Navy proved that ordinary recruits can transform into elite technical operators through rigorous academics, hands-on qualification, relentless standards, and real responsibility. The Navy nuclear model is simple yet demanding. Students first master fundamentals: math, physics, reactor theory, thermodynamics, electrical and mechanical systems, chemistry, and radiological controls. They must explain, calculate, defend, and prove understanding. Then they move to real nuclear plants, where theory becomes action through oral checkouts, evaluated watches, drills, and qualification under pressure. This rigorous training works because of the culture of excellence instilled by Rickover himself. “Good enough” is not good enough. Competence is built through repetition, ownership, hard study, and instructors who know both the equipment and how to develop people. Qualification is only the beginning. Continuous training, audits, daily drills, critiques, and root-cause analysis keep standards from decaying. Civilian industry can’t simply copy the Navy. Companies can’t compel their employees the way the military can. But they can adapt the principles: paid intensive training, labs, simulations, mentored on-the-job qualification, clear standards, frequent evaluation, strong instructors, career ladders, and retention incentives tied to real advancement. Manufacturing, energy, semiconductors, defense production, data centers, and advanced nuclear all need this mindset. If these industries want workers, they will have to grow their own. Rickover’s legacy is about more than nuclear submarines. It is proof that excellence can be engineered. If America wants to rebuild its industrial strength, it must stop waiting for talent to appear and start replicating the pipelines that can produce it.

Read the full article from @glittle2026 and Ian Crone: firstbreakfast.com/p/combat-…

In 1980, Detroit thought it was losing to Japan on fuel economy and labor costs. It was actually losing on something far more consequential: the Toyota Production System. Toyota had integrated workers, suppliers, engineers, logistics, and quality control into a continuously learning enterprise. By the time Detroit understood what was happening, it had fallen far behind. Something similar is happening now with America’s defense industrial base. The U.S. still has extraordinary advantages: world-class engineers, innovative companies, leading research institutions, unparalleled allies, and more. But these strengths are treated as a collection of programs rather than as a system that adapts and improves over time. Program offices optimize individual weapons. Contractors optimize contracts. Suppliers optimize schedules. Each performs its assigned mission while the ecosystem underperforms. Leaders can see which ships are where but the supplier bottlenecks that are constraining an entire portfolio of missiles are invisible. Meanwhile, China is operating an integrated industrial system: large, well-coordinated, adaptive, and inherently dual-use (drones, ships, autos, etc.). The solution is treating industrial power as a systems problem. We call this War Machine. Artificial intelligence and modern software can now create what the defense ecosystem lacks: visibility across the fragmented base, feedback loops connecting operators to factories to suppliers, and the speed to identify constraints before schedules slip. The goal is not a better dashboard but a shared operating picture connecting demand with production capacity, workforce, supplier risk, and delivery timelines. Detroit's mistake was believing it was competing car against car when it was competing system against system. America can’t afford to repeat the error in defense today, when the stakes are higher and the margin of error narrower.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has released “Science: A New Golden Age,” a comprehensive R&D roadmap that represents the most significant rethink of American science and innovation since Vannevar Bush wrote “Science, the Endless Frontier.” The report challenges how the federal government funds research. And it could shape where American innovation happens. Here’s how. THE PRIMACY OF PEOPLE Instead of channeling money through universities, it proposes directing resources directly to scientists with grants that are portable if recipients move institutions or start companies. It advocates for longer funding horizons and empowers program managers to make substantial bets on breakthrough research, similar to DARPA's portfolio approach. The report argues that the old, institutional model of R&D is bloated and unsuited to developing long-term talent and commercial breakthroughs. Universities extract significant overhead while relying on temporary PhD candidates for core research. Academic incentives prioritize publications over genuine exploration. This model, the report argues, undermines long-term knowledge retention and risk-taking. PROVING GROUNDS FOR INNOVATION Beyond funding, the report emphasizes that innovation requires ecosystems for testing and tinkering. It highlights the importance of testing infrastructure like the proving grounds that developed American aerospace in the last century. New public-private research organizations, mission-focused consortia, and tight integration between scientific breakthroughs and domestic manufacturing capacity are equally essential. PRODUCTION POWER The report also stresses the importance of linking innovation to production. Too often, the United States has invented cutting-edge tech only for foreign countries to scale and produce that tech. American taxpayers ended up funding the prosperity and power of other countries. The lesson is clear: American innovation must translate to American production. The report is sure to provoke the administrators and institutions who depend on the old model of science and innovation funding. But a new era of technological competition calls for new approaches, and this report deserves serious attention from policymakers, researchers, and regional leaders. Read @ThomasLDay’s full assessment of the OSTP report and the opportunity for regional innovation. 👇

Daryl Wieland: Get the allies involved.

Chase Dalton: Send a *real* demand signal by putting a price on the wartime outcomes you want.

.@vc: Launch the materials Manhattan Project

Nadia Schadlow: First, check your work. @HudsonInstitute

Will Thibeau: Support the SME industrial base—and let 'em build.

.@ChairmanG: Stop lighting money on fire. Pass the FIRES Act.

Kevin Capozzoli: Accelerate the qualification process

.@ssankar: Open the Magazine

On August 5, Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg lit a fire under industry to solve America's munitions production problem. He sent a memo to industry leaders giving them 21 days to submit plans to “drive significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities. . . " We put the question to some of our favorite doers in the industry: If you had free reign to fix America’s munitions bottleneck, what would you propose? It's been three weeks, so we’re sharing the best—and hottest—takes we received. 👇

The deep sea is an arena of strategic competition. America is behind—but that wasn’t always the case. In the 1970s, U.S. intelligence programs mapped the seabed in remarkable detail. In 1980, Congress passed laws paving the way for deep-sea exploration and mining. The CIA even faked a deep-sea mining expedition as a cover to recover nuclear codes and intelligence from a lost Soviet submarine. But the strategic knowledge faded after the Cold War ended. The statutory authorities gathered dust and were forgotten. China has picked up the baton that America dropped. Beijing has spent a decade quietly locking up the richest untapped resource on Earth: the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a stretch of Pacific seafloor packed with more cobalt, nickel, and manganese than every known land reserve combined. China’s state-owned COMRA holds 5 of ~30 international seabed exploration licenses—more than any other nation. China has research vessels, deep-sea submersibles, and commercial mining trials already underway. Beijing is racing to unlock the critical-mineral treasure chest hidden beneath the waves. It is comfortably in the lead. The good news: America still has statutes on the books to catch up. The 1980 Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act lets NOAA issue exploration and mining permits outside the ISA’s slow-moving multilateral process. A 2025 executive order activated it. Crucially, the tech to turn legal authority into reality is maturing fast. American startups are close to commercial-scale proof of concept. This could be deep-sea mining's SpaceX moment, turning existing technology into a new industrial base with focused capital and urgency. The legal authority and tech are here. Will America deploy the capital and demonstrate the political will to explore the deep once again? firstbreakfast.com/p/the-sea…

Analysts and appropriators in the Beltway measure military strength by counting platforms: fighter jets, submarines, aircraft carriers. But a fighter jet without a steady supply of munitions is a liability more than a capability. A submarine stuck in dry dock waiting on spare parts isn’t deterring anyone. As appropriators in Congress consider a historic defense budget, a fundamental mindset shift is needed: Start thinking about manufacturing capacity itself as the strategic asset. Today on First Breakfast, @HudsonInstitute’s Nadia Schadlow and @MarlinspikeVC’s Mislav Tolusic argue that Congress and the Pentagon should adopt a "Capacity-as-a-Service" (CaaS) model to prioritize dynamic production capability over static hardware buys. Borrowing the logic of SaaS, DoW could pay manufacturers ongoing retainers or subscriptions to keep flexible, scalable production capacity on standby—much the same way it already pays commercial shipping companies to guarantee capacity during emergencies. As Congress debates next year's defense budget, the question isn't just what weapons to buy, but what manufacturing capacity to own, fund, or incentivize so industry can produce at whatever scale a future conflict demands. Defense acquisition needs an update to reflect that reality. Read the full argument on our website below 🔗👇

From Last Supper to First Breakfast

The U.S. military is responding to the drone revolution at the technological level. The number of counter UAS systems that are being developed and deployed is growing. What about the military's approach to training and personnel? In today's guest post, @KevMcCarville brings insight from the field—and highlights a disconnect between leaders' understanding of the problem and how it's trickling down to the troops: "The leadership at the top of our military understands that much of the doctrine we still teach at the bottom is obsolete. Yet battalion-level and below units continue running decades-old drills and consulting outdated field manuals... Doctrine takes far too long to travel from those who write it to the soldiers on the ground who must live and die by it. That lag will cost us dearly in dollars and in lives if we don’t reform and accelerate the way we train." Read the full article below 👇

In 1942, Japanese dive bombers were shredding U.S. ships. The fix—the proximity fuze—wasn't ready until 1944. So the Navy did two things at once: it maxed out production of existing ammo and funded the new tech. That's why the fleet survived. The United States is in a similar bind as it tries to combat drones and cheap missiles—and our defense is bleeding us dry. When the USS Gerald R. Ford strike group hit Iran this year, nine destroyers fired 207 Tomahawks. That's just 1 offensive weapon for every 4 launch cells. The other three-quarters of their cells were devoted to shooting down incoming drones and missiles. That tradeoff would be unsurvivable in a fight against China. The dream fix—the “proximity fuze” of our day—is directed energy: lasers that kill drones for single-digit dollars per shot. But lasers still have serious technical issues to overcome, and the ships that can power it don't yet exist. So the United States is traveling through the death valley of tech adoption: the lab demos work, but the tech isn’t ready while the threat exists today. Washington’s default setting is to treat the problem as an either/or. Cut missiles to fund lasers, or starve lasers because "they've been 10 years away for 30 years." Both instincts get people killed. The answer: FILL THE MAGAZINE AND FUND THE BEAM. Do both. The missile threat is too serious for current or future capabilities to fall victim to a funding fight or bureaucratic warfare. That means ramping production of the interceptors that protect our sailors and allies today: fixing the solid rocket motor bottleneck with multi-year contracts, giving industry the demand signal to build new lines. It means real-time visibility into expenditure of munitions and global inventory. But it also means walling off laser R&D from the budget fights that always cannibalize future tech to pay for today. The private sector deftly balances priorities every quarter. Apple ships iPhones while building Vision Pro. Ford runs the F-150 line while building its future EV platform. That portfolio discipline is exactly what defense acquisition needs. 1942 didn't wait for the fuze. 2027 can't wait for the beam.

On August 19, 1812, USS Constitution met HMS Guerrière off Nova Scotia. The Royal Navy hadn't lost a single-ship frigate duel to an equal in over a decade. Guerrière's captain was itching for a fight. He got one. Constitution closed to half a pistol shot and fired. Fifteen minutes later, Guerrière's mizzenmast was gone. British cannonballs struck Constitution's hull and bounced into the sea. "Huzzah, her sides are made of iron!" a sailor shouted. "Old Ironsides" was born. Constitution simply wasn't the ship Guerrière thought she was fighting. She carried more men and a broadside about 50% heavier than a standard frigate. An 18-year-old navy had beaten the greatest fleet on earth, ship for ship. The shock was so total that Britain soon forbade its frigates from engaging Americans without a 2-to-1 advantage. Why could only the American frigates carry that much firepower? The answer was buried deep in the hull. Six pairs of heavy timbers ran diagonally along Constitution's sides. They get no press. No painting of the battle depicts them. But without them, the ship couldn't fight. Shipwrights operated according to a hard limit: build a hull long enough to carry more guns and it would sag under its own weight, bending the keel until the ship destroyed itself. The designer of the Six Frigates, Joshua Humphreys, beat that constraint with "diagonal riders," thick planks bracing the frame at steep angles. These timbers let him fit a ship-of-the-line's firepower onto a frigate. Of the six original frigates, five got the diagonal riders. One did not. Humphreys' rival Josiah Fox took over USS Chesapeake, scaled her down, and left the riders out. Without them, she couldn't carry the heavy armament. She fought as an ordinary frigate—every duel a fair fight. In 1813, HMS Shannontook her in minutes—the only single-ship loss among the six. Chesapeake was written off as an unlucky ship. Her hull told the full story. History is full of “diagonal riders”: technologies that are both constraint-breaking and invisible to most, even the people who rely on them. Invisible in battle, invisible in history—but if removed, the difference in capability can’t be ignored. The lesson for builders: everyone competes on the visible end item, so everyone converges toward parity. The real edge is often below the waterline, away from the fray. Find it, break it, and you decide the fight before it starts.

America's Founders were restless, with a strong heretical streak. Always expanding, always hustling, always building. They caused massive headaches for the British government even in peace. They were nonconformists, in religion and habit. They settled where they weren’t supposed to. Traded with parties they weren’t supposed to. They were proud of their liberty and chafed at laws made by distant, unfeeling masters. Then they dumped East India Company tea into Boston Harbor, fired on the Redcoats at Lexington and Concord, and rebelled against a superpower. That, in a nutshell, is the spirit of America. If you look at the broad sweep of American history you can see that spirit at work as our nation has expanded: Manifest Destiny. The Transcontinental Railroad. The telegraph. The Panama Canal. The Wright Flyer. The Model T. The Arsenal of Democracy. The microchip. The Moon. The Internet. Reusable rockets. Artificial Intelligence. The Founders were builders. Build like them.

He was the richest man in the American colonies in 1775. He bankrolled the Continental Army—at times using personal credit to hold it together. He ended up in debtor's prison. This is the story of Robert Morris, a lesser-known Founding Father and the Funder of the Revolution. Born in Liverpool in 1734, Morris crossed the Atlantic at 13, learned the tobacco trade, and by 21 co-founded one of the most powerful trading houses in the colonies. An outsider who clawed his way to the top when bloodlines were everything. He was a latecomer to the Patriot cause, preferring reconciliation with Britain (it was better for business). But when Parliament overreached, Morris went all in: "better to die bravely than be starved by pickpockets." When the Revolution began, the Patriots had no navy, no bank, no currency, and no diplomats. So Morris became all of them. He ran the Secret Committee of Trade, smuggling gunpowder past the Royal Navy with fake cargo logs and spy networks. Washington was literally mixing sawdust into gunpowder. Morris fixed that. Then he built a Navy from scratch. The nation's first warship was his own merchant vessel, refitted with 24 guns. He also built out America's first diplomatic channels, opening the critical arms pipeline with France alongside Ben Franklin. But Morris's biggest weapon was his wallet. The Continental currency was worthless—"not worth a continental" was an insult. So Morris financed the war. He funded the blankets that helped Washington's men survive their first winter. Before Yorktown, he printed "Morris notes" backed by his personal credit. When soldiers threatened mutiny over unpaid wages, Morris signed 6,000 notes by hand and floated another $1 million. If Congress defaulted, he was on the hook. In 1781 Congress made him Superintendent of Finance — effectively CEO of the country. Only Washington outranked him. Morris pioneered modern defense contracting, too. The old system paid agents commissions on spending. Fraud was everywhere, food rotted for lack of transport. Morris scrapped the system for competitive sealed bids to the lowest bidder. Sound business principles, applied to revolution. Morris provided the sinews of war—but his aggressive style made enemies, even on his side. He kept running his private business while in office. His firm sometimes grabbed half the contracts flowing through his own committees. A 1779 investigation branded him a war profiteer. He was never convicted, but the whispers continued. Never mind that his network delivered the goods when few else could. Morris won the war, but lost the peace. After his return to civilian life, he made a big bet on land. Prices cratered, credit tightened, and $12 million in debt later Morris lost it all. He spent three and a half years in debtor's prison and died penniless in 1806. A reluctant patriot, Robert Morris put his own fortune and sacred honor on the line for the cause. Unrewarded in his time, we should honor his contributions to liberty today.

HEROES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION The Patriots who gathered outside Boston to fight the British in 1775 had no standard flag, uniforms, equipment, or arms. They had little artillery. They had barely enough powder to fire their weapons, much less to dislodge the Redcoats. When George Washington first heard of the shortage of powder, he was so stunned he did not speak for half an hour. The British called the Patriots "the rabble in arms." A peasant revolt that wouldn't survive its first winter. It took leadership and incredible feats of logistics to arm the Patriot force and turn it into an army. In particular, it took a 26-year-old Boston bookseller turned artillery commander named Henry Knox. Call him the Cannon of the Revolution. Henry Knox was abandoned by his father at nine. He left school and went to work in a Boston bookshop where he devoured everything on politics and military science. He married theory with action, joining a local artillery company and learning how ordinary citizens could become competent soldiers. Then he entered the arena of politics, befriending the Sons of Liberty, witnessing the Boston Massacre, boycotting British goods, and stoking the flame of rebellion. When war came, Knox fled Boston in disguise, abandoning his bookstore and his chances for a normal life. Washington spotted his talent immediately and gave him command of the army's artillery. The catch? There was no artillery. Knox would have to bring the bang himself. His chance: 300 miles away at Fort Ticonderoga, dozens of captured cannons sat ready for use. Everyone said moving 60 tons of artillery through mountains and frozen rivers in winter was impossible. Knox did it anyway. It took struggle and sweat. Eight days hard rowing down a half-frozen lake. 42 sleds. 80 yoke of oxen. A cannon lost through the ice (recovered after a full day). A brutal blizzard. But the convoy creeped along. Three months later, Knox’s "noble train of artillery" arrived in Boston. Washington used those guns to seize and arm the heights surrounding Boston in an overnight coup. The British woke to a fortress aimed at their fleet and evacuated the city. The Siege of Boston ended in a near-bloodless victory that saved a crumbling army. Knox’s “noble train” had turned into a strategic advantage for the Patriots. But Knox's real genius was building. He understood a hard truth: if America couldn't make its own weapons, the Glorious Cause was at the mercy of others. "Let us for a moment suppose a misfortune happen to the field Artillery we have," he warned John Adams. "Where shall we get immediately supplied—not in America." So he designed America's defense industrial base from scratch. He chose the site and oversaw the construction of the Springfield Armory, which armed Americans into the Vietnam era and seeded the nation's first manufacturing cluster in the Connecticut River Valley. He also knew you can't win without leaders. In 1778, while the army wintered at Pluckemin, New Jersey, he founded America's first military academy. He wrote the curriculum and taught it himself. That academy was the direct predecessor of West Point (another Knox idea). Knox served with distinction at Washington’s side throughout the Revolutionary War. He orchestrated the Continental Army’s mythic crossing of the Delaware River in 1776. Years later, his guns hammered Cornwallis into surrender at Yorktown. When the war ended, Knox wanted nothing more than to return to civilian life—but like Washington he was called back to public service. Briefly floated as Washington’s running mate, Knox ultimately accepted the more familiar job as America’s first Secretary of War. His Knox’s vision for a free republic's army came down to one thing: people. Arm and train the citizenry. Build institutions that create great leaders. Make the profession of arms honorable to attract the good and the talented. Knox is largely forgotten today. He shouldn’t be—especially this year. 250 years later, our military, our defense industry, and our freedom are all downstream of one Boston bookseller: the Cannon of the Revolution. America's first defense technologist.

Modern factories produce more than physical things. They produce intelligence. Materials, robotics, AI, oceans of operational data—all fused into one system. Whoever controls that system controls the next era of military and economic power. Now China wants in to America's manufacturing base. Here's why we should keep it out: 💻 Modern factories are data systems. In the wrong hands, that data is industrial targeting information. 🕵 China has a documented track record of turning commercial access into technology theft (Sinovel, Huawei, Micron, GE...). 💰 State-backed capital that tolerates losses for strategic gain crowds out the American private investment we're fighting to attract. Rebuilding American manufacturing is urgent. But inviting our chief adversary into our industrial base would be a move as short-sighted as the policies that shipped our industrial base overseas in the first place. Read the full argument in @FirstBreakfast and let us know what you think. What does the United States need to do to rebuild its manufacturing base—without handing China the schematics? 👇

Everyone gave Ukraine 72 hours. It didn't fold—in part because of defense partnerships built slowly and sometimes painfully over the previous eight years, far from the spotlight. Trust is an operational capability: built in small, invisible deposits, spent in large withdrawals. Discover the formula for effective partnerships, which is as applicable in the boardroom as the war room. Full piece below. 👇 @PowerofthePen1

Sun Tzu said know the enemy and know yourself. The Pentagon only focuses on the first half of the equation. The U.S. military has spent a decade improving the kill chain, making targeting cells 100x more effective. Meanwhile, back-end systems that track munitions, personnel, and readiness are disconnected and decrepit. The Pentagon doesn't really know itself—and it shows in a crisis. The false dichotomy between "business systems" and "warfighting systems" has failed our military. Click through to learn the key to victory 👇🔗

The Last Mile of Reindustrialization Is Real Estate. Building a gigafactory requires a fully entitled site with rail access, 300-plus megawatts of dedicated power, a water supply commitment, and a permitting timeline that won’t slip three years into the project because of a challenged environmental review. Building an advanced semiconductor fab needs a workforce pipeline, a supply chain ecosystem in the same region, and a state government sophisticated enough to coordinate across a dozen agencies without dropping the ball. @kenbiberaj has criss-crossed the country helping industrial companies select factory sites. Today in First Breakfast he talks about what it takes to rebuild American manufacturing—and why some of the most important fights are happening at the state and local level, not in Washington. 🔗👇

We in the West face a stark reality: our weapons are expensive and scarce. Our adversaries' are cheap and plentiful. The race is on to correct this imbalance and build the arsenal of the future. The question is, who will build it? In today's article, @BlakeSeitz assesses the ongoing cold war between legacy defense firms and new entrants—including startups born under existential conditions on the battlefields of Ukraine. This conflict, more than any other, shows the qualities that will determine whether companies sink or swim in the coming years: ⏩ "The firms that win will have to earn it through speed, the ability to iterate, and the ability to ship product in the quantities and at the price point that Western governments demand." So far, the defense-tech cold war is mostly a war of words and propaganda, as companies try to position themselves as the wave of the future—and do down their competitors. But a reckoning is fast approaching. Dollars are being allocated, contracts are being signed, and trials are being held. Who is winning the defense tech cold war? Read the piece and us know what you think. 👇 firstbreakfast.com/p/cleanin…

The U.S. military knew that cheap drones were a threat well over a decade ago. Today's guest authors, Jarrett Lane and Dominic Ventimiglia, simulated adversary attacks on U.S. bases for CENTCOM from 2015-17. Drones quickly became one of their go-to tactics. But too many were slow to appreciate the threat: "In our experience, the idea of using cheap drones to degrade or dismantle critical capabilities was typically met with one of three responses. The first was incredulity. To some, drone attacks posed a nominal force protection problem because they were crude and usually unsuccessful. There was little appreciation that new forms of warfare usually begin crudely. The second response was dismissal. Drones could be easily dealt with by shooting them down or taking out the operators. The third response was acknowledgement that drones were a problem—but that they were somebody else’s problem to solve." How can the Department avoid getting caught flat-footed again? Better red teaming, better feedback loops—and a shift in mindset that treats threats seriously even when they're small and speculative. Read, share, and let us know what you think in the replies. 👇 firstbreakfast.com/p/avoidab…

The key lesson of modern war from the Second World War to Epic Fury? Industrial power is combat power. America can close kill chains at devastating speed—but this advantage is squandered without the metal and munitions to back it up. The Department of War needs to leverage American tech to connect itself, primes, and sub-tier suppliers into a single system—so it can see, coordinate, and drive production in real time. It needs to build the WAR MACHINE. @ssankar @BigShow2026 @Madeline_Zimm @BlakeSeitz firstbreakfast.com/p/buildin…

When Napoleon smashed the Prussians at Jena and Auerstedt, it was the culmination of decades of stagnation by a Prussian army that was stuck in the past. Gerhard von Scharnhorst had labored in obscurity for years, training young officers to think about and fight modern wars. When the moment of crisis arrived, he—and a young disciple named Carl von Clausewitz—was ready to meet the moment. Today on First Breakfast, @peternmitchell profiles the heretical officers who built an alternate infrastructure in a hidebound system—and revived it from ruin to greatness. Better to reform your army before Napoleon wipes it out. But if by whatever misfortune you don't—pray you have a Scharnhorst waiting in reserve. firstbreakfast.com/p/a-voice…

What can Eisenhower's go / no-go decision on the eve of D-Day teach us about command in the face of uncertainty and information overload? What can it teach us about the age of AI, which abounds in both? Palantir's Daryl Wieland discusses the indispensable role of informed human judgement—and wisdom. Technology is properly a force multiplier for human minds, not a replacement for them. "We have become a civilization intoxicated with quantification, mistaking precision for accuracy and correlation for causation. When a model produces an output, particularly one rendered in clean graphics with confidence intervals, it carries an aura of objectivity that human judgment lacks. 'According to the data' has become the model equivalent of 'thus saith the Lord,' an incantation that supposedly settles arguments and justifies decisions. But data, like scripture, requires interpretation. And interpretation requires context."

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention—and the Merkava ("Chariot") tank is no exception. In the 1960s and 1970s, Israel was surrounded by enemies and in desperate need of modern armor. Deal after deal fell through. The head of the IDF's armored corps, Israel Tal, proposed a different solution: Israel would build its own tank. 150 engineers embarked on a crash effort. They cast aside rules and regulations. Compressed development timelines. Tal had full control, reporting directly to the defense minister. And he made unusual choices guided by his experience as a tank commander. While other nations obsessed over mobility, weight, and firepower, Tal prioritized crew protection. He knew that safe crews would act more boldly under fire, an advantage that outweighed spec-sheet disadvantages. The result was Merkava, an indigenous tank that silenced critics from the moment of its battlefield debut in the First Lebanon War. Israel's "Chariots" are still in service today—a testament to ingenuity, strong leadership, and design vision forged on the battlefield.

Countless invisible bottlenecks are strangling U.S. munitions production. @EliotPence, Michael Brown, and Jason Nichols of Supply Energetics break down the problem: "Ammunition production has been treated primarily as a procurement problem rather than as an industrial systems problem. Funding has flowed, but the underlying structure through which that funding is converted into output has changed little." Read the full thing at First Breakfast. 🔗👇

You've heard the story of America's industrial mobilization for WW2. What about the "Forgotten War," Korea? Today on @FirstBreakfast, author of Freedom's Forge @ArthurLHerman examines the mobilization office behind America's ill-fated attempt to rearm for the Korean War. The Office of Defense Mobilization ignored the bottom-up, private-sector-driven lessons of WW2. It tried to centrally plan a weapons boom. It delivered a bust that shook Truman's presidency to its core.

Technological innovation in the commercial world moves faster than government acquisition processes. To catch up and ride the wave, the Department of War must make acquisition work for startups and non-traditional contractors. Today at First Breakfast, @HunterScott, a Founding Engineer at Reach Power, lists practical steps the Pentagon can take to rebuild the on-ramp for new entrants: ⏩ Enable units to directly procure and test prototypes without complex contracting. ⏩ Make contracts more accessible for new entrants, leveraging consortia and streamlined OTA mechanisms. ⏩ Allow Portfolio Acquisition Executives and commanders to issue non-binding Letters of Intent, signaling demand and supporting startup fundraising. ⏩ Expand and coordinate opportunities for warfighter feedback through rolling, continuous technology assessments. 🌉 "If the DoW wants to encourage defense innovation at the scale and speed of Silicon Valley, it must allow startups to run the same successful playbooks that they use for commercial customers. The on-ramp for startups doing business with the DoW needs to be rebuilt."

🦄 Stop Hunting Unicorns. 🦄 The Department of War chases exquisite hardware while ignoring questions that are critical to victory or defeat in war: Can you build enough of it? Can you build it fast enough? Can you replace it? Today, @PalantirTech's Greg Little and Aaron Jaffe explain why manufacturability matters in procurement—and how software is the key to orchestrating an effective industrial war machine. "In a contested industrial war, elegance is not resilience. A system that cannot tolerate supplier substitution, component swaps, or rapid redesign is not 'high-end.' It is pre-failed the moment production is disrupted or losses exceed peacetime assumptions." 🔗👇

The Department of War is at an inflection point as successive reforms challenge the status quo. Today, @ssankar discusses the Pentagon's new AI strategy and how it will unleash innovation for our Armed Forces. The Last Supper is over. A new era at the Pentagon is about to begin...

.@ssankar on the high stakes of US-China technology competition and what we can learn from the heretical heroes of the Cold War: "[Edward] Teller and most of the old Cold Warriors are gone. Their example can inspire us, but it can’t save us. We have to put in the herculean labor so that technology continues to serve America and our way of life." Links below.

Today on First Breakfast, Daryl Wieland explains how government can use decision science and economic analysis to pay for outcomes instead of activity: ⏳ "Many vendors are terrified of being paid for results. They’ve built business models on activity, not outcomes, preferring the certainty of activity-based billing to the accountability of performance-based pay.... Outcome-based contracting highlights companies that create value. Instead of paying for hours, the government shares the value created with contractors who deliver it. This aligns contractor success with taxpayer benefit." 🔗👇

Best-selling author and historian @ArthurLHerman raises a provocative question: ⚓ "With the Department of Defense renamed as the War Department, its illustrious predecessor before 1947, is it time to turn the calendar further back, and restore an independent Navy Department?" A shakeup might be worth it if it leads to greater competition in the shipbuilding industrial base and a greater focus on renewing America's maritime strength. Read the full argument at First Breakfast. Links below.

Today on First Breakfast: Retired U.S. Army Colonel Thomas A. Balish discusses the importance of doctrine to effective defense reform and acquisition. The Army must have a clear concept of how it will fight and why—and it needs leaders with confident, creative answers to those existential questions: 🪖 "The Army does not need a faster paperwork drill; it needs a system that continuously links how it fights to what it builds. Reforming JCIDS was necessary, but reform without doctrinal purpose, operational focus, and cultural courage will yield the same results—just sooner." 🔗 below.

Today at First Breakfast: Shyam Sankar reacts to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth's "Arsenal of Freedom" speech at National Defense University: 📢 "Reformers need to treat the secretary’s speech as a rallying cry for the tough road ahead. Heretical public servants in the Department of War need to link up with like-minded builders, scholars, and policy experts on the outside. We need to share what we’re seeing, coordinate our actions, and fight to keep the initiative. This needs to stay as a war of maneuver, not a war of attrition." 🔗 below.

It took a disgraced inventor, a politically adept financier, and a bureaucrat willing to risk his career to build the Union's first ironclad and avert catastrophe at the Battle of Hampton Roads. Today's installment of Heretics and Heroes tells the story of the unlikely team that pulled off an acquisition miracle. 🔗 below.

Out today: @matt_f_mcknight makes the case for CDC reform: 🦟 "The CDC was born out of conflict . . . Its early leaders were field operators armed with trucks, insecticide, and data—not bureaucrats debating word choice. The CDC’s success in eradicating malaria cemented its role as the nation’s front line against infectious disease, a mission defined by speed, logistical, and operational excellence. It was built as an on-the-ground disease-fighting force, but over time, layers of excessive caution have diluted the core mission, effectively leaving CDC as an advisory and financing body." 🔗 below.

Today on First Breakfast, a special post in conjunction with our friends at @DefenseAnalyses. @AidenBuzzetti discusses the legal infrastructure that is needed to revive privateering—which could be useful in domains as diverse as the high seas, cyberspace, and outer space. 🏴‍☠️ "[T]o expand letters of marque to [new domains] would require a functional prize system. Many cybersecurity threat-hunting operations, counter-piracy efforts, and satellite servicing missions already operate on commercial models. A modernized prize system could enhance these incentive structures, directing private-sector capabilities toward national security priorities without requiring direct government funding or control." 🔗 below.

This week's Heretic and Hero is Hugh Dowding, the contrarian RAF leader whose cutting-edge air-defense system won the Battle of Britain—at the cost of his career and reputation. Dowding's example teaches the importance of rejecting dogma—including the dogma that technology alone can save us: "The Battle of Britain was not won because the British possessed radar. It was won because they had the Dowding System—a masterfully designed internal infrastructure that successfully merged the human components of the RAF with the deployment of radar and other innovations." 🔗 below.

"Much of the public conversation has focused on drones as flying weapons. But the quiet revolution is happening in logistics." Anatra's Kevin King argues that cargo drones will change how armies are supplied, enabling dispersal and flexible operations. 🔗 below.

Today on First Breakfast: @Gundo_OG and @trefgarne break down the new, decisive domain of warfare: 📡 "Control of the spectrum will decide who sees, who acts, and who wins."