“The Factory Is the Product”
A Defense Budget as Driver of US Manufacturing Revival
Driving the US economy forward has been the Trump’s administration’s number one focus. It is a multifaceted, “America-First” strategy utilizing a federally promoted, advanced baseload power build out, McKinley-style protective tariffs, deregulation, and tax breaks for investments in new factories, equipment, and lower taxes and career opportunities for working families. Now comes the Administration’s proposed FY 2027 $1.5 trillion defense budget.
An historical parallel should be made to the Freedom’s Forge of the WWII industrial mobilization: using defense demand as an industrial policy lever when private incentives alone fall short for strategic sectors. Looking under the hood, it is clear that the Trump administration is wielding the defense budget to likewise further the making of the United States as a Manufacturing Superpower.
The Trump budget is also a considered political calculation. How can the Congressional neocons and RINO’s of the Republican party afford to oppose robust American military spending?
“Demand Signals”
There has been a decades-long, induced schizophrenia that separated the commercial and defense sectors of the US economy. For much of the 20th century however, that separation of commercial from defense manufacturing was practically non-existent. There were separate products of course, but not separate sets of companies. A more recent, decades-long series of policies decoupled civilian innovation from defense, and vice-versa; both suffered.
Responding to an obvious lack of US physical productive capacity and workforce, geopolitical realities, and supply chain bottlenecks, the Trump Administration is driving a new “civil-military convergence”. It is dismantling the barriers that were erected, separating domestic commercial technology, venture capital, and national defense.
A factor now in play is that existing and immediately foreseen defense capabilities rely heavily on digital technologies, including software & “edge” computing, and autonomous systems. All of these require advanced manufacturing capability at scale – as does the timely production of defense munitions. Private sector investments into these areas are being supported by federal commitments, and are to be driven forward by the FY 2027 proposed Defense bill.
Convergence is already supported by the fact the “startups” building physical AI, autonomous navigation systems, and “edge” computing for military drones are deploying the same core technologies into commercial sectors. These include autonomous agricultural equipment, civilian cargo logistics, and a growing range of robotics.
Already at work — directly supporting investment into the baseline infrastructure of the entire industrial base — is the popular national security push to sever supply chain dependencies on foreign adversaries—particularly for critical minerals and electronics. Sweeping provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the BIOSECURE Act, and targeted Presidential Executive Orders impose strict bans on adversary-sourced technology, critical minerals, and pharmaceuticals.
Driven by Trump initiatives in trade & tariffs, energy, and many other areas, US manufacturing investment and new construction of factories are now at record levels, and 7,000 new manufacturing jobs were just added in May, 2026. At the same time critical parts of US manufacturing are still limping and 21st century productive sophistication and buildout is still in the making.
Stepping back, it is to be recognized that the FY 2027 budget proposal is a deeper initiative by the Trump Presidency to drive private capital investment into shared civilian-military areas. This is a strong “demand signal”, in the parlance of supply chain management and demand planning.
“Crowding In” Private Capital
The USA is building itself out of a deep hole, and even steady growth is not sufficient. US manufacturing was hollowed out, and is now a fraction of what it was. Less than 20% of the entire US workforce is engaged in any form of industrial production. The rest is employed in “overhead,” perhaps in necessary work, but relying on that shrinking 20 percentile of industrial employment for their energy, health, and physical goods. The US industrial base must be massively recapitalized, including an expansion of a well-paid workforce, as the USA must now create entirely new, advanced “manufacturing ecosystems.”
While money-center banks have been elsewhere, private investors (through VC, PE, and family offices) have poured hundreds of billions of dollars, attracted by the “deal making” approach of the Trump administration and Department of War in particular. This is significant.
“Crowding in private capital” describes how government spending or policy interventions can attract additional private investment into an economy or specific projects. “De-risking”, “blended finance”, targeted federal and state infrastructure investment — or the creation of entirely new structured markets — are means used to this end. The Trump Administration has been intent on mobilizing American private capital. (This sits in stark contrast to the “crowding out” effect, where heavy government & Federal Reserve are rightfully accused of borrowings that drive up interest rates, stifle lending and therefore stifle real private sector growth.)
On May 12th, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth appeared together with General John “Razin” Caine on Capital Hill to support the Administrations’ proposed FY 2027 Defense Budget Proposal.1 He offered the example of the investments the private defense industrial base is now making, using its own resources.
“The department has helped stimulate more than 250 private investment deals in 39 states, in 180 cities, in 150 different companies, worth more than $50 billion. This has resulted in 280 new and expanded facilities, more than 18 million new square feet of American manufacturing and more than 70,000 new American jobs.
“That $50 billion is not money the War Department had to pay. It’s money those companies have invested from their own coffers because they are now confident that they can expect to earn profits in the long term if they invest in their own ability to be better providers to the department.
“By completely transforming our department’s business model, American companies are investing in America with their own capital — a historic demonstration of American manufacturing and defense revitalization; all with their money, not Uncle Sam’s.”
Now, “thanks to deals being made” by the War Department, manufacturing in the United States is returning, Secretary Hegseth reported.
“President Trump’s War Department has begun to turn the lights back on in manufacturing towns across this country to forge a lethal Arsenal of Freedom…Where our critical supply chains are threatened, the Department of War has acted decisively to inject capital, stimulate production and prevent adversarial exploitation. We are firing up the American economic engine at every level of the defense industrial base.”
There are other features of this Administration-driven revival as well, which include the revival of Strategic Stockpiling: The U.S. is resurrecting Cold War-era stockpile strategies under the Defense Production Act. By doing so, the Pentagon aims to secure physical reserves of critical minerals that are essential for both defense systems (like missiles and sensors) and energy supply chains. The Administration has also launched a new “Critical Materials Stockpile” with-and-for major US manufacturing firms, backed by a loan from the US Export-Import Bank.
NASA’s Artemis program, as well, is committed to building at increased cadence, under Director Jared Isaacman. The Moon colonization plan is quickly becoming a science driver, with NASA partnering with numbers of commercial space companies with aggressive deadlines. NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative has contracted for robotic missions to the Moon’s south pole beginning in 2026. Game on.
Some History: Recovering From Monetarism and McNamara
Wall Street and therefore Wall Street Republicans have been very reticent to invest into the physical economy of the USA. At best they want to “clip coupons”; thinking & production makes their brains hurt.
Financialization took over, but to say that is just to skim the surface of the problem. At the core, many are absolute Malthusians and globalists, bred at Harvard, Ox-bridge, and such. They HATE the American System of political economy.
The City of London and Wall Street definitely believe that it is verboten that government interfere with capital markets, though it was the City of London and Wall Street that under-capitalized — and instead plundered — the US defense sector. Leaders & citizens must realize how Wall Street’s promoted defense policies have incentivized capital markets to reward “consolidation” and predatory price-fixing; definite interference, but not by the government.
An event with major negative repercussions on modern (and so-called post-modern) national security structures was the management revolution of Robert S. McNamara, as Secretary of Defense, beginning 65 years ago in 1961 and carrying on-down to the Obama/Biden hive.
Robert Strange McNamara was an obsessed statistical analyst.2 He was the graduate of Harvard Business School, long noted as integrating systems analysis thinking into its curriculum & decision-making frameworks. From his analytics post in the Strategic bombing survey during WWII, McNamara and his “Whiz Kids’ were hired to turn around Ford Motor Company. McNamara had just been made president of Ford Motor when President Kennedy named McNamara Secretary of Defense in 1961.
Before McNamara, the Department of Defense procurement was highly decentralized, meaning that a “multi-buyer” environment existed in defense acquisition. This may come as a surprise to many readers.
The military services and their respective technical bureaus operated with a degree of autonomy, and could initiate and fund projects rapidly, based on qualitative, often field-based judgment. (Indeed until 1949, the Secretaries of War, Navy, and Air Force military services all held Cabinet-level positions.) This decentralization and multiple buyers meant that entrepreneurial innovations were shopped around to these potential buyers, as was the case during WWII, to good effect.
That (apparently) messy acquisition process was in fact what produced such engineered, life-saving advances as the “Higgins” landing craft of the Normandy invasion and Pacific theater. Even more profound are the many scientifically advanced breakthroughs, including jet aircraft, nuclear submarines & aircraft carriers, satellites, powerful rockets, and laser technologies.
Going Off the Rails
After the Soviet Union’s Sputnik successes, “rationalization” gained the upper hand, and the US Congress reacted by giving the Secretary of Defense firm legal control over defense budgets and programs, and the armed service Secretaries were downgraded from cabinet-level positions. McNamara and his personally recruited “Whiz Kids” moved to quickly take over. (His original Whiz Kids had moved with him from wartime strategic bombing studies to Ford Motor Company.)
McNamara and his “Whiz Kids” fully imposed top-down decision-making — including Pentagon five year plans — utilizing systems analysis and detailed program budgeting. This was McNamara’s “Planning, Programming and budgeting system” (PPBS).
If the reader wonders how massive, decade-long, cost-plus contracts such as the F-35 fighter Bomber evolved, one must look back to McNamara and his top-down imposition of systems analysis methods, and what he called “commonality”, to cut program budgets and streamline logistics.
Commonality turned multiple defense buyers into a single defense buyer — a buyer’s monopoly (monopsony) which bred a defense industry oligopoly.
McNamara and his Whiz kids aimed to eliminate redundant research and development costs across the military branches. However, as has been often pointed out, pushing everything into one airframe, for example, is widely known by knowledgeable production management specialists to be nearly impossible. An infamous example was the McNamara Defense Department’s proposed multi-service aircraft, the TFX (later the F-111), to be built for land, sea, and air.
The reason is that the physical demands of very distinct physical environments directly contradict one another! Often referred to as “McNamara’s Folly,” the F-111 is a textbook case. Robert McNamara’s push for a “common” aircraft -- which his bean counters said would save costs -- suffered due to vastly different Air Force and Navy requirements,. The budget ballooned with an array of “technological” issues. While the F-111A evolved over decades into use during Operation Desert Storm (30+ years later!), the Navy’s F-111B, too heavy for use on an aircraft carrier, was canceled in 1968. Consider this report of the changed “Whiz Kid” environment:
During the Republicans’ time in office in the 1950s, the atmosphere had been generally one of cooperation. This became a condescending attitude, on the part of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), in which systems analysts believed that their approach of numbers and probabilities trumped the knowledge that the generals, colonels, and admirals – and subordinate officers & servicemen -- had acquired during decades of service.3
Many narratives mistakenly attribute the trashing of defense procurement to the “Last Supper” held in 1993, following the fall of the Berlin Wall. In an often cited dinner at the Pentagon, hosted by the then-Secretary of Defense Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and Deputy Secretary William Perry, the CEOs of major defense contractors were informed that the defense budget would be slashed. Defense contractors had the option of merging or going out of business.
However the “Last Supper”, and what followed from it, only accelerated Wall Street promoted trends in the defense industry long underway — applied in the form of short-sighted, cost-cutting management, that utilized applied system analysis & cost benefit analysis. With increasing disregard for the actual human creative and physical processes of production, decision making was reified, and Wall Street “financialization” prioritizing M&A, shareholder dividends, and stock buyback, grew to dominate. The decay of the American political process guaranteed a decayed, demoralized state-of-affairs in our military-industrial complex — until November 5, 2024.
Systems Analysis
More could be said about McNamara, his ill-fated FTX, and so on. Systems analysis is the black pill. Its core shortfalls is static modeling, which imposes linear prediction on dynamic, transforming environments. Initial parameters can rarely capture the full real, operational reality, and if they do they still do not ‘capture” the reality as it will be a year from now. Users often discover what they actually need only after actually interacting with a new system. Rigid statistical analysis and derived projections, other than in the very short frame, create a briar patch of new problems as a consequence.
Systems analysis and cost benefit analysis decided long ago that Elon Musk and SpaceX were impossible. Determining investments based only upon already pre-seen, predictable results, decapitates creative investments and locks down the economy. Coupled with monetarist thinking and “money, money, money,” it logically promotes such “winners” as the disasters of “outsourcing”, “deindustrialization”, and worship of the GDP god.
For the same reason, the General Accountability Office (GAO) of the US Congress today keeps predicting economic doom, as their bean-counters cannot fathom what President Trump’s Administration and private sector are unleashing as bold transformative growth! It literally — for the GAO — “does not compute.”
Nothing came out of decades of systems analysis and cost-benefit analysis (bean counting) other than the withering of the US scientific and technological base. Here, this writer emphasizes the entire industrial base, because that same thinking was simultaneously imposed by “the City” of London and Wall Street on the civilian (commercial) sectors of the US and other Western economies, and heralded as the “post-industrial society.”
With this for context, one can better recognize what is being developed by a self-selected circle of participants drawn from America venture capital; by outliers (and self-described misfits) that include the principals of the Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Palantir, Andruil and others.
Gotham and the Maven Smart System (MSS)
On a daily basis, over 400 million terrabytes of data are now generated across the globe. Global data creation and management now rely heavily on big data analytics: the processing of massive, unstructured datasets to extract actionable insights. Modern software platforms treat Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) as tools. By applying advanced algorithms, they automate data sorting, pattern recognition, and aid decision-making.
In the war fighting domain, live data feeds from land, sea, air, space, and cyber are pouring in. In the recent past, this data could only be integrated through painstaking human analysis, done over man hours; even then only a tiny fraction of all of the data could even be reviewed before decisions were made.
Despite this, Palantir Technologies eventually sued the Department of the Army to even consider commercially available software to address this and related real problems. The Department of Defense acquisition process and personnel — heeding the ghost of McNamara! — preferred to analytically define and order custom-built systems, on a “cost-plus” basis. These didn’t function, and the process axiomatically excluded solicitations of “off-the-shelf” platforms that existed in the commercial sector.
Palantir’s “Gotham”
Beginning in 2009, Palantir Technology succeeded, thanks to contrarians such as Marine Corps Lt. Col. Drew Cukor, in getting its “Gotham” software platform & staff deployed into Afghanistan, aboard a C-17 transport. Gotham quickly became the “connective tissue” – the bridge – that tied together a massive stream of incompatible optical, audio and text reports.
That software platform was adapted to place searchable, actionable intelligence in the hands of field commanders in real time. Gotham was tagged a “roadside-bomb buster”, analyzing insurgent networks and successfully predicting the locations of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
It is important for Americans to understand that Palantir did not do this sitting in an office (or day spa) in Silicon Valley! This was hands-on work on the ground.
Utilized on a limited basis with the U.S. Marine Corps, Special Forces and other units, Gotham and Palantir’s now-famous forward deployed engineers (FDE) went from brigade headquarters in Kandahar to Forward Operations Bases. They set up servers, they listened first hand to troops, problem-solved in real time to deliver software fixes & updates to Gotham, and taught operators. They placed themselves at risk on the battlefields, and the Gotham platform proved itself vital to American frontline commanders.
The Gotham’s software ingested and organized massive but disparate, disconnected data streams (drone feeds, intercepted communications, informant reports and more, biometric databases (fingerprints, iris patterns, facial geometry, palm prints, and voice data), surveillance footage, social media, and local cultural reports into searchable intelligence.
Even after this, the Pentagon pushed back against the Silicon Valley tool, citing budgetary regulations and defensively protecting its own heavily-funded, but ineffective intelligence platform version of DCGS-A.
Palantir sued the U.S. Army (that branch of the Department of Defense) in June of 2016. The company filed a “bid protest” in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, alleging the US Army illegally shut commercial tech out of Defense procurement for the Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A). Palantir won in court, on the basis of the already existing, 1994 Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (FASA). The legal victory was enough, with a broader sea change in thinking, to force the Pentagon to begin to change its procurement approach. Palantir subsequently won contracts to supply its intelligence analysis framework to the Army — while retaining Intellectual Property (IP) rights for their underlying (commercial) software platform. Numbers of other US commercial companies have now followed, in an array of fields and across the military services.
Project Maven
“Project Maven” (launched in 2017) was a small, secretive Pentagon initiative to integrate AI and machine learning into military operations. Under Colonel Drew Cukor, USMC, and Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan it has evolved from a narrow experiment to automate the processing of full-motion video drone footage, to an expansive, real-time battle command system, managing massive volumes of visual data. It is today the US Defense Department’s primary flagship AI and command-and-control platform.
The “Maven Smart System” (MSS) is Palantir Technology’s subsequent AI-enabled software platform deployed to process and integrate this wealth of battlefield data.4 MSS, utilizing a combination of AI and machine learning (ML), analyzes data and rapidly generates targeting recommendations. It connects multiple disparate – otherwise siloed -- intelligence and open-source data streams to fuse a single, synchronized operational picture.
It was publicly reported that in the first 24 hours of the war in Iran, the United States, using the Maven Smart System (MSS), struck more than 1,000 targets, an order of magnitude increase over prior capabilities.5
MSS is currently deployed under the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) with Palantir as its prime contractor. Another “start-up,” Anduril Industries, integrates its edge-based, sensor-fusion systems (such as Lattice) with MSS, while Amazon Web Services provides the cloud infrastructure that securely hosts the unclassified and classified deployments of Palantir’s software for the U.S. military and NATO allies.6
MSS operates under a “human-in-the-loop” decision framework. However, the Maven Smart System utilizing Palantir’s “Target Workbench” compresses the military’s “kill chain” from hours to seconds. Operators click through Maven’s Target Workbench, approve or disapprove targets, sequence them according to priorities, and send a message directly to weapons systems. Commanders are simultaneously using AI to characterize the environment and to determine priorities.
Project Maven became a DoD “program of record” and funded by Congress at the beginning of November of 2023.
MSS is enabling a revolution in military intelligence and targeting, across all six military services, and is now being utilized across the globe, including in the detection, classification, and ultimate interdiction of drug boats in the Caribbean Basin, in Africa beginning in 2017, the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, Special Operations Command, and Space Command. In 2025, NATO finalized a contract with Planitir for its own customizable version of MSS (MSS-NATO) as well.
This is now part of a global push that is advancing “algorithmic warfare”, as Russia, China, and other nations have their specific, parallel programs. The Ukraine-Russia conflict has been a testing ground on all sides.
Simultaneously, the barriers between US commercial and defense sectors of the economy are being dissolved. An important factor, as a form of dual-use is “military-grade,” advanced software. This is “enabling American companies and the U.S. military to share a unified technological backbone.”
American commercial businesses, including Boeing, Centrus Energy and McCarthy Building Companies are reported to now be utilizing advanced software platforms to integrate fragmented data to automate supply chains & optimize workflows, and improve decision-making. Airbus and many other firm have been doing likewise and reporting major boosts to productivity and output. These commercial software systems include - but in no way limited to — Palantir’s Foundry operating system and Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP).
Trump’s Proposed 2027 Defense budget --Driving Innovation
As Elon Musk has famously pointed out, “the factory is the product.” The actual creative design, incorporated technology, and engineered efficiency of a manufacturing facility is a more complex and critical engineering feat than the product being built there – it is the man-made machine, often breath taking in scope, that builds the machines produced there.
Now comes the Trump Administration $1.5 trillion dollar FY 2027 defense budget proposal, intended in drive the expansion of the entire US industrial base. In the proposed FY 2027 Defense Budget, up to half of the proposed defense budget directly targets innovation -- weapons systems based on new technologies, new production methods, and needed new supply chains. In short, new, cutting edge, founder-driven private sector companies that generate new “manufacturing ecological systems” that can generate and sell innovative products into the private commercial sector.
Organizations like the DOW Defense Innovation Unit are specifically tasked with bridging the gap between “Silicon Valley” and the Pentagon to rapidly prototype and adopt commercial technology for military needs. Likewise the DOW’s Office of Strategic Capital.
A Driver for the Entire Economy
Over $750 billion (more than half the budget in some breakdowns) target new capabilities, supply chains, and a focus on building up and tapping small/medium manufacturers.
It emphasizes multiyear procurement, stable demand signals, and direct interventions (e.g., via the Defense Production Act Title III, and Office of Strategic Capital) with an aim to “de-risk” capital investment and thereby attract private money. Longer contracts give both large defense firms, their small and medium-sized suppliers, and potential new bidders, the stability needed to expand needed factory capacity.
The Pentagon has also created a new category it is calling “Presidential Priorities,” as Pentagon officials explained to reporters in public briefings. That is $245 billion of the overall budget.
Here are key programs, with big implications for advanced manufacturing:
In the FY 2027 defense budget proposal, $20.2 billion is requested for the Defense Strategic Capital Credit Program, overseen by the Office of Strategic Capital (OSC). This is up from $1.2 billion in FY 2026. The OSC would utilize federal credit tools to attract private investors, empowering the office to access a collective $200 billion in total lending authority. The OSC is authorized to provide direct loans of up to $150 million per project to finance new supply chains, microelectronics, advanced manufacturing, and defense technologies.
Section III of the Defense Production Act: The Trump administration’s proposed Fiscal Year 2027 defense budget includes a massive $30.4 billion discretionary request for the Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III program. This record funding—nearly 100 times the amount appropriated in FY 2026—is directed at expanding domestic capacity for critical national security needs, specifically focusing on critical minerals mining and processing, munitions manufacturing, and supply chain resilience. The DPA also retains the statutory authority to issue direct loans and loan guarantees to suppliers.
The activation of the Defense Production Act has many additional applications. For example, the Department of Energy just announced a direct injection of 75 million dollars to support the West Gateway Terminal Project in Oakland, California. This action has been taken utilizing emergency powers invoked under the Defense Production Act. The terminal would be used to export over 10 million tons of bulk commodities annually to allied nations and is part of a larger nearly 700-million-dollar federal package to revive the American coal industry.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and joint command and control capabilities account for $58.5 billion, including $46 billion for a multi-year effort to build a sovereign AI arsenal. Investments also support systems such as the Maven Smart System and Joint Fires Network, advancing Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control.
An investment of $65.8 billion into shipbuilding, is intended to ensure America’s naval superiority, through aggressive shipyard modernization and the creation of the “Golden Fleet”. This includes the funding for 18 new Battle Force Ships, the largest request since 1962.
Hypersonics — The FY 2027 proposed Defense Budget outlines billions for hypersonics, specifically asking for $25.7 billion in Science and Technology (S&T) funding that targets hypersonic defense industrial bases and testing.
The Golden Dome and American space superiority — $75 billion is to be invested, prioritizing national and economic security interests in, from, and to space. The proposed budget makes an $18 billion investment to begin “operationalizing” America’s Golden Dome, the next-generation shield over the homeland. This is investment in cutting edge technologies.
Drone Dominance — Delivering over a $74B investment, President Trump’s request triples how much the US will spend on drone and counter-drone technologies from FY26.
The Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG), which previously received roughly $225 million, would see its funding grow to approximately $54 billion. DAWG is the institutional engine for unifying and rapidly scaling the development of unmanned systems, drones, and artificial intelligence-driven combat capabilities. Senior officials have been reported as saying that the vast bulk of this allocation is aimed at applying technology that exists today.
Conclusion:
American Manufacturing Ecosystems
Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer has made clear the Trump Administration’s intention of building a US “production economy” and rebuilding U.S. “manufacturing ecosystems” to restore domestic capabilities that were previously lost to globalization.
At Davos, Switzerland on January 20th of this year, Greer gave a remarkable presentation on behalf of the administration, “The Hamiltonian Economic System That Too Many Have Forgotten.”7 In opening that speech, Greer recalled Alexander Hamilton great manufacturing project, one he advanced after leaving his post as US Treasury Secretary. He and his partners in the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures mapped out and created the new manufacture-based city of Paterson, New Jersey. Ambassador Greer explained,
“The manufacturing ecosystem that emerged in Paterson made it a hub of activity far beyond textiles. New factories kept springing up in the city—making railcars, pipelines, and weather balloons. A prototype submarine was developed there in the 19th century. By the 20th century, Paterson had become an aerospace hub. The Curtiss-Wright Corporation turned out engines that powered aviation pioneers such as Amelia Earhart, as well as the iconic B-17s and B-25s that helped achieve victory against fascism in World War II...”
This example from American history goes to the heart of the American System. The factory is also the weapon when need be; and surge capacity is the ultimate deterrent. It is peace through strength. This is what the Trump Administration is driving for, now, with a unique, generational FY 2027 defense budget proposal.
https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4484583/war-department-multiyear-purchases-spur-industrial-base-investments/
Broadcaster Harry Reasoner and Senator Barry Goldwater described McNamara as “an IBM computer with legs”, identifying hyper-analytical, data-driven approach to decision making. Serving under Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination, McNamara notoriously applied his cold, quantitative techniques and management style to the Vietnam War, arguing that the US was winning the war, relying on his collected “body counts.” His data-centric view of the war had tragic consequences.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2013/march/thresher-and-cno
https://assets.ctfassets.net/xrfr7uokpv1b/25muZs93DY5XOUBtuh68yn/b40d9784f69917219f972890ceede986/Maven_One_Pager.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthropic-ai-iran-campaign/
Edge-based sensor-fusion systems process and combine data from multiple local sensors (like cameras, LiDAR, and IMUs) directly on the device. By bypassing the cloud, they provide real-time, low-latency decision-making, drastically reduce bandwidth requirements, and enhance data privacy for autonomous vehicles, robotics, and IIoT devices.
https://ustr.gov/about/policy-offices/press-office/speeches-and-remarks/2026/hamilton-today-trade-and-us-economic-strategy
Thanks! These developments and the move towards the American System feels like a beacon of light, in the midst of the decline and darkness which the West is going through now. It appears to me the best way forward to peace, prosperity, and sovereignty.