NOT GOOD: The U.S. Is Not Built for War or Peace: America’s Industrial Resilience Gap.
A minor power outage in San Francisco offered a quiet preview of a strategic vulnerability hiding in plain sight. As traffic signals went dark, dozens of autonomous Waymo vehicles stalled, unable to read the roadway. With hazard lights blinking, they gridlocked intersections and slowed large parts of the city to a crawl until tow trucks arrived.
That episode is a stark warning for military logistics. The same cascading failure that paralyzed civilian mobility could halt the movement of forces from fort to port. Friction emerges not from a single event, but from interdependent systems degrading in unison. Yet, American policymakers assume the industrial base is resilient, when it is actually brittle, optimized for just-in-time supply chains and just-enough capacity. When shocks hit (e.g., pandemics, wars, political instability, cyber incidents, or weaponized supply chains), Washington responds with emergency authorities and surge funding, confusing endurance with readiness. A system that merely limps through disruption is optimized for continuity, not crisis.
Over the past decade, resilience has meant restoring services after a shock. While this approach may prevent catastrophe, it does not prepare a country to compete, deter, or fight. The U.S. economy has been engineered for peacetime efficiency and consumption, not sustained production under pressure.
Redundancy might look like an inefficiency, but only until you really need it.
