On America's Inescapable Industrial Future: It's increasingly clear to me that regardless of who is in office over the next few decades, America will become a true Industrial powerhouse again. I do see several folks (eg @zanehengsperger, etc) advocating for public subsidies to 'spark' reindustrialization. While I can understand the impulse, we need to be careful. All regulation is prohibitive to competition at some level, but especially in manufacturing, where entry costs are inherently quite high. Too much govt involvement -- especially too concentrated subsidy or too protective of regulation -- and our new startups won't face the necessary competition to become productive. Instead, they will become de facto public-private corps., currying favor with bureaucrats rather than customers and in the process birthing a kind of socialism akin to today's Russia or 1930s Germany, etc. And again regardless of USG policy or who the head of state is, the US will reindustrialize. In my opinion, a few related reasons make this inevitable. 1. Labor costs: Robotic leaps mean China et al. are facing the death of their decades long comparative advantage (drawn from slave labor, public investment, dense supplier clusters, etc). This advantage will quickly dwindle with robots entering the workforce in the USA. Yes, China will have robots, but it stands to reason when both countries have really cheap robotic labor, export and global trade will become less important. Said again, when labor stops being the decider, proximity to our own massive (and aligned) consumer market, abundant capital, and our cheap energy will dominate location decisions, driving eventual scale and density. 2. Political tailwinds: Recent events in France, Ukraine, and Israel are making the ideological differences with Eastern (meaning primarily Islamic) nations much clearer. Needless to say, wars, sanctions, and export controls make long supply chains riskier. But today's events make globalism increasingly a political nonstarter IMO. 3. Security: New national security concerns are forming around domestic manufacturing; these will only grow as Robots become an increasing part of the labor market. If X% of labor force is robots & X is even just 1% (1.7M robot units), controlling what goes into those robots is massively important. Obviously, 1% is a low number (IMO it will be much much higher). 4. Speed/Processing Power: There are well-known colocation benefits to manufacturing. It all gets better -- e.g., iteration speed, safety, processing power, etc. Just like globalism targeted pretty much all hard industries, we won't just reshore a few things. I'd wager by the time I have grandkids (Lord willing) most hard things will be made in America. 5. Other Costs: Shipping costs become relatively material for companies due to both delays and the profit motive. This is especially true for 4. above but also due to the tight margins hard companies naturally face. 6. AI: frontier AI is still made in the US (and likely will be IMO). AI needs massive amounts of power. With more cheap power we will naturally have an incentive to make more and more things in the US. The new group of nuclear cos (Valar, Aalo, Antares, etc) have obviously had stellar timing, riding the first wave of pro-energy lobbying (thanks AI!) in the US since the 1970s. Notably, this change came from deregulation, not more regulation or subsidies! While the job is not done by any means, growing US energy now has real market and hence political power. That won't end anytime soon. My view: Again, some protection can make sense (any American should be in favor of the US promoting national interests (e.g., energy, precious metals, etc)). But it's a fine line to walk IMO. We have federalism and state lines for variation and to induce competition. We should continue to seek and advocate for open markets in all levels of industry as much as possible. Finally, to my opening point stating that our new Industrial Age will happen regardless of who is in office -- a more true thing to say is given the races we are in and state of the world, it is inevitable. But, yes, it can be delayed and harmed. Prior to Trump 2.0, Nuclear had been essentially throttled by the NRC, the group meant to steward it! Bad regulation (including in the form of subsidies) can (and often does) stifle American competition. But in a country of innovators, frontiersmen, and entrepreneurs, bad policy can only last so long and set us back so far. We should seek to be both leaders in the frontier of industry (especially industry related to our national interests) as well as continue to grow and foster the world’s No. 1 consumer market. If we do (we will!) our dawn is very bright, regardless of who is in office the next term or after that.