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No industrial rebuild without automation
The Labor Math
The arithmetic starts with wanting to produce a lot more goods and have a more resilient supply chain. If people aren't imported, American workers are expensive and lack some of the skills, so the question is who produces all of it.
The Backlash Risk
Competitiveness is not inevitable, and it has to be chosen actively. One plausible path to losing it runs through backlash: people are rationally afraid of AI's effect on jobs, or dislike a small number of technology firms capturing rent, and they reject the idea of being a permanent underclass. When that hardens into an anti-capitalist orientation, it can slow the building of energy, infrastructure, and industrial capacity.
Compute Independence
Compute is among the most important inputs. A country without it is naturally uncompetitive, or at least not independent, and compute independence is likely to become a much bigger topic of conversation.
Has automation actually shrunk manufacturing output?
US manufacturing output has grown over the long run even as factory employment fell. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows manufacturing jobs peaking near 19.6 million in 1979 and falling to about 12.8 million by 2019. Over the same stretch, the Federal Reserve's index of manufacturing output roughly doubled.
Which country uses the most factory robots?
The International Federation of Robotics, which tracks industrial robot installations, ranks South Korea first in robot density, with more than 1,000 robots per 10,000 manufacturing employees in its recent reports. Singapore and China rank near the top of that list, while the United States sits well below. South Korea also has a large manufacturing sector, so automation and factory work have grown together.
Why do automation waves trigger backlash?
Between 1811 and 1816, English textile workers known as Luddites smashed weaving machines they blamed for falling wages. The British government responded by making machine-breaking a crime punishable by death and sent thousands of troops to the affected counties. The unrest centered on Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire. The word Luddite is now used for people wary of new technology.
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