This topic is extremely important. Counting out or turning your back on Americans is un-American. We do not need to import talent. We can source it locally and have proved how with a battle-tested roadmap from the Naval Nuclear Power Training pipeline.

Read the full article by @Hunter_morey on our website: The Naval Nuclear Pipeline firstbreakfast.com/p/the-nav…

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.

Critical Materials Group Co-Founder & CEO Kevin Capozzoli recently joined @Madeline_Zimm on @FirstBreakfast to talk about the moment he realized the depth of the vulnerability in U.S. energetics production and why he couldn't walk away from it. He shares how he went from seeing the problem from the commercial side to connecting with co-founder Travis Swanson and ultimately building CMG to address this gap with an unmet need across defense, commercial, and space applications. Listen to the full episode here. firstbreakfast.com/p/bringin…

Read the full thing—including never-before-posted provocations by our anonymous contributors—on our website: firstbreakfast.com/p/getting…

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.

A Nation of Builders | @ssankar @Madeline_Zimm @glittle2026 @BlakeSeitz firstbreakfast.com/p/a-natio…