My Case for American Re-Industrialization

Countries decline when enough people stop building and begin off-shoring. We're told cheaper goods are worth the job losses; the lost art of domestic production of essential goods is a noble trade-off, right?

Over the last five years, I began putting my money where my mouth is. I started backing companies willing to re-industrialize and shore up necessary production in the United States.

COVID was a wake-up call. To that end, I began following hard-tech founders, VCs, intellectuals, and patriotic Americans who held similar beliefs. They're not necessarily political beliefs, but an economic worldview that held self-determination as the first principle of restoring American greatness.

I began to curate lists, websites, and podcasts to pay attention to the builders who are doing something more serious than chasing trends. The founders, engineers, operators, investors, and companies working on the things that make a country strong: energy, defense, manufacturing, logistics, AI, aerospace, robotics, infrastructure, chips, supply chains, and the industrial base underneath all of it.

For a long time, too much of our technology culture got pulled toward the weightless stuff. Apps. Ads. Arbitrage. Financial engineering. Status games. More efficient ways to sell people things they didn't need or distract them from things that mattered.

Some of that produced real value. A lot of it didn't.

Our country's next chapter feels different.

The serious people are moving back toward the physical world. Toward atoms, machines, energy, factories, drones, ships, sensors, materials, power, and production. Toward problems that don't get solved by a clever pitch deck or a better growth hack.

Some have called it a vibe shift.

America cannot remain free, prosperous, or sovereign if it forgets how to build.

That sounds dramatic until you look around. Supply chains are no longer boring. Energy is no longer a background issue. Manufacturing is not some nostalgic talking point. Defense technology is not optional. Chips are not just components. Software is not just software. AI is not just a productivity tool.

These are the foundations of power. And power still matters.

A country that cannot produce what it needs eventually depends on countries that may not wish it well. A country that cannot defend itself eventually has to accept terms set by others. A country that stops honoring builders eventually gets more commentators than craftsmen.

That is not the America I want for my children.

I want them to grow up in a country that still knows how to do hard things. A country that still admires courage, competence, sacrifice, and invention. A country where talented young people want to build companies, start factories, write code, serve, repair, design, manufacture, and take responsibility.

Building is not just economic activity. At its best, it is an act of loyalty.

Loyalty to the people who came before us and left us something extraordinary. Loyalty to the people who will come after us and deserve more than managed decline. Loyalty to the men and women who may one day be asked to defend this country and should never be sent into harm's way with second-rate tools because we were too unserious to build first-rate ones.

Patriotism is not just what you say about America. It is what you are willing to build for her.

I want to find the signal in the noise. The companies doing real work. The founders taking physical-world risk. The technologies that could harden our country. The ideas that make America more capable, less fragile, more independent, and more worthy of the inheritance we received.

Not every company I invest in will win. Not every idea will be right. Not every builder will be perfect. That's fine.

But if we honor builders, we may get more builders. If we admire hard problems, more ambitious people may choose them.

If we tell young Americans that the country is still worth building for, some of them may believe us.

And they should. America is worth building for. Not because she is perfect. She isn't. Not because decline is impossible. It isn't. Not because history guarantees our success. It doesn't.

America is worth building for because she remains one of the most remarkable experiments in human freedom, prosperity, responsibility, and invention the world has ever seen.

That does not defend itself. It has to be renewed by people who care enough to work. Finding the builders. Following the work. Pointing toward the future we still have the ability to create.

Not nostalgia. Not doom. Not empty optimism.

Just a simple conviction: America is still worth the effort.

As my friend @JoshuaSteinman reminds us every day, "Good morning. We are going to win."