7 ms·

2020 Industrial Capabilities Report to Congress [pdf]

47 points by apsec112 6y ago

Sephr 6y ago
The "Quantum Technologies, their readiness, and expected military impact" chart from page 127 reads like nonsense. How can liter-scale atomic clocks have higher "military impact" and only be in "lab demonstration" phase, while chip-scale atomic clocks are in the "fielded phase"? Additionally, how can "Chip-Scale Atomic Clock (ns error)" have less military readiness & higher military impact than "Chip-Scale Atomic Clock (ps error)"?
pacman2 6y ago
"But unless the industrial and manufacturing base that develops and builds those goods modernizes and adjusts to the world’s new geopolitical and economic realities, America will face a growing and likely permanent national security deficit. " True. But this will be hard to fix, especially in a broad sense and not only with focus on specific military technology. I did my STEM PhD in the US that proved to be worthless. Things like SBIR are just too corrupt (I have a pretty good insight and trust me on that one). In China there are much better opportunities, at least for me, even as a non-Asian.
- apsec112 6y ago
  Curious what opportunities you're thinking of? China is hostile to foreigners in a lot of ways, and basically has no naturalization process, so you can't immigrate in the same way you'd immigrate to the US or Canada or Australia. EDIT: How China may arrest foreigners with no cause or due process, or "exit ban" them to prevent them from leaving: https://harrisbricken.com/chinalawblog/how-to-avoid-china-prisons-know-your-china-risks/ https://harrisbricken.com/chinalawblog/how-to-avoid-china-pr... China can also just nationalize foreign companies arbitrarily: https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/china-coronavirus-nationalize-america-owned-car-company https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/china-coronavirus-nation...
  - greesil 6y ago
    Success in business as a foreigner requires making friends in high places, plus some IP transfer.
    - pacman2 6y ago
      I am happy to deliver IP, if the price is right. In fact, I just submitted another patent that I plan to sell in China. You don't need friends in high places, at least I did not require this. But do you think US SBIRs and government contracts are really open?
      - greesil 6y ago
        As far as I understand it SBIRs are a way to get seed rounds, maybe a series A, in silicon valley parlance. I'm sure there's an ecosystem of people in the know who get them regularly, and it's not a meritocracy. It's just kind of small change vs private equity investing that I'm just amazed to have found somebody who seems to have a grievance against it. But I haven't lived your experiences so who am I to kibitz. If you're successful over there more power to you.
    - aspaceman 6y ago
      What is this total bullshit? Like hello? This isn’t true at all?
      - greesil 6y ago
        https://www.bu.edu/jostl/files/2020/08/3-Lee.pdf https://www.bu.edu/jostl/files/2020/08/3-Lee.pdf I don't do business in China, so I'm not speaking from personal experience. It seems forced technology transfer is a thing.
  - pacman2 6y ago
    In my experience you can find a job in China within days or weeks. They ask you "Can you start tomorrow?" and this is not a rhetorical question. You can not get naturalized, true. At least not in Mainland China. But they also have a Green Card now. While I also have a US passport, how do you "immigrate" to the US? It is very difficult, a work visa in China is much easier to get. And believe it or not, I started as an illegal immigrant in China with a tourist visa (While I was not illegal, I was working full time on a tourist visa). Hostile to foreigners? I don't know. But I speak okay Chinese by now. And doors I tried to kick in in the US that never opened, opened easily in China.
- greesil 6y ago
  Could you provide some context to what you just wrote? I know it seems like spitting in the wind commenting here, but it sounds pretty random unless you talk about details. By opportunity do you mean academic, business, or something else? Why was you PhD worthless? Is it applicable in China? How?
  - pacman2 6y ago
    In China I have job opportunities, business opportunities and even academic opportunities. During my 2 year post doc in the US, after my PhD (due to lack of a job) I may have written 1-3 job applications per day. You do the math. My PhD proved worthless because after my post-doc finally run out, I had no money for food and shelter. To make things worse, I became super sick and had no health insurance anymore. In the end the fix of my super rare disease was easy but hard to figure out. But I never forget the pain and desperation. I came to China as a very broken person with no hope left. But it all worked out well.
    - baybal2 6y ago
      It's the best not to star in Chinese newspapers, or at least I would've not done so, and then gone to an internet forum.
teryyy 6y ago
> China’s lower costs may mean that its defense spending has purchasing parity with ours. This was shocking to me.
- pacman2 6y ago
  If I may quote two sources (controversial, so please take it with a grain of salt but keep an open mind) http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/07/war-profiteers-and-demise-of-us.html http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/07/war-profiteers-and-dem... https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Military-Supremacy-American-Strategic/dp/B07KWBFJ11 https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Military-Supremacy-American-St... I am not Russian by the way, the links could give you this impression.
  - astrea 6y ago
    Your prevalence in the comments speaks louder than the words you type
    - stickyricky 6y ago
      It seems he has relevant experience in the subject matter and is relating that experience to an audience eager to interrogate him. How could that be interpreted negatively?
  - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
    Great article! I have been thinking a lot about the feeling I have that “US manufacturing jobs” has become a political myth, and that real decay is setting in. I have been ordering CNC machined parts from a machine shop in China. The only US organization I priced from is Plethora which probably isn’t the cheapest but their prices were much, much higher than China. Of course Chinas prices have been lower for a long time, but in the past my simplified understanding is that there was a large volume of cheap labor that suffered a poor standard of living. But China has grown leaps and bounds in the past three decades. I suspect that now for many machine shops in China the standard of living for their workers is probably on par with that of workers in the US. It could even be better, I wouldn’t be surprised. So now it’s cheaper in China just because they took manufacturing seriously. In the US we let MBA’s sell off all our manufacturing capability to foreign nations. Which seemed to work great for increasing profits. But the lack of higher level planning has left us with a vulnerability. Selling your business to China works great in peace time. But China has power over us now. I am hopeful that the article is correct, and our horrendous military spending is coming to a close. But I worry about what will happen in the US to make us finally understand the need to change our ways. I think the best outcome would be for the US to end its posturing against China and learn to benefit from collaboration.
vmception 6y ago
If anyone is ready to learn about the Chinese market deeper than obsessing over whats happening on the other side of the Gobi desert, now is the time. The coastal cities have a lot going on in them. I recommend getting on to Wechat, thats actually pretty difficult. You need to find a mainland Chinese person. The key concept is that they keep the user experience rated “PG” and it isnt deemed controversial that the government moderates it as opposed to management at Disneyworld.
afpx 6y ago
As an ignorant American, I feel like I pay enormous taxes to defend international trade that mostly seems to benefit non-Americans. For 30 years, I was told “trade causes democracy” and “democracies don’t fight each other”. But, that doesn’t seem to be working very well. Why should the US continue to spend on defense so heavily? Why should we care?
- thewarrior 6y ago
  Because you need to defend the exorbitant privilege of having the worlds reserve currency. This means Americans can generally live easier lives by borrowing from the rest of the world. It’s also why wages in the US are so high. America can’t really be an export manufacturer as long as it’s currency is artificially inflated by massive inflows from global trading imbalances. It could after WW2 for a short while. That was because all others were bombed out and China etc weren’t developed.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    And now the price is here. I was always telling all smarty business degree holder that you can't make money out of thin air no matter what trick you use. One way, or another, you can't escape the invisible hand finding ways to smack you good in the end.
    - thewarrior 6y ago
      It’s not easy to go back to working hard in an era of global competition. Chinese workers work far longer hours and make more product for each hour worked. Plus they are integrated into a massive supply chain and ecosystem. The wages that need to be paid to an American worker to assemble phones all day would be really really high. They’d rather just work at McDonald’s or play video games. Those high wages would give them enormous leverage (unions etc) upsetting the entire American economic system. The American system is a cyber punk reality where a country is just a container for the aspirations of a bunch of short term thinking warring AIs called corporations. The people being one of its inputs. Elections don’t change much. Anything that disrupts the AIs too much is taken care of one way or the other. Doesn’t matter if it’s Bernie or Trump. So I would say that China is safe because the last thing america will do give up any notions that their system is the best or needs to change. The west needs to realize that the momentum of a head start on industrialization and ill gotten gains from historical loot is running out. As everyone joins the industrial game the world inherently becomes multi polar. There’s no reason why only the west can have high living standards or that only the western system can sustain it. in a situation of having to manage Russia, China and Iran at once while greatly weakened , Multi lateralism is inevitable. Democracy cannot be delivered at the barrel of a gun. That only creates more messes. This week witnessed the amusing spectacle of Boris Johnson calling himself a Sinophile (give us a trade deal please). All this after running down the Chinese for months. The west can’t even decide what to do.
mikewarot 6y ago
"Preserving U.S. overmatch in and through cyberspace is an explicit objective of the 2018 National Cyber Strategy." U.S. overmatch? Nope... not even close. We're so far behind the curve it's doubtful we can ever catch up. We learned a ton of things getting our ass handed to us in Viet Nam, and then promptly forget all of it when the PC showed up and the internet took off. Look at the breach of the Form 86 records from the OPM a few years ago... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management... "The attack originated in China".... why was it even possible to access this incredibly sensitive database from the internet? The theory that the NSA and CIA can retain hacking tools for themselves, and keep the rest of the world in check was falsified a few years ago as well. All knowledge of multilevel secure systems seems to have been wiped out of the collective memory of those in charge of the NSA, DOD, etc. The only way I see back from this lagging position is to fund open source efforts to drive the development and adoption of multilevel secure systems. If we make computers everywhere more secure, the baseline security of the entire free world will rise. --- Tangent time --- It also wouldn't hurt to fund a few low cost projects aimed at being able to "restart civilization from scratch", with a particular emphasis on building educational, non-profit, well documented supply chains that start with rocks and branches, and work all the way up to modern technology as far as they can go. These should considered a part of the education and national defense efforts. If the end result is a gear... the sources of the metal, cutting tools, etc... should all trace back to non-market sources. You should be able to name every single person who helped along the way, and how. All of that knowledge should be shared and preserved.
- xxpor 6y ago
  >The theory that the NSA and CIA can retain hacking tools for themselves, and keep the rest of the world in check was falsified a few years ago as well. They're used to operating in the physical world. For example, that approach (until very recently) worked quite well for nukes. You can control physical things that cost money. Obviously this doesn't work for digital information with the internet. You see the same attitude every time they lement that cryptographic doesn't have backdoors. "Oh just make one for us, no one else will know how to use it"
qchris 6y ago
> The estimated cost of this report or study for the Department of Defense is approximately $159,000 in Fiscal Years 2020–2021. This includes $24,000 in expenses and $134,000 in DoD labor. I don't know, for some reason this cost feels incredibly low for the view of this document. This is a 184-page document basically summarizing the entirety of US domestic production. Even if you're not paying market rate, I'd have guessed you're talking at least a 5-6 people working full-time on keeping this data up-to-date throughout the year, which can't possibly be true with that number. $159k buys you, including org-level expenses, maybe 3-4 people's last four months? If that? For the world's largest domestic economy spanning sectors from biotech to machine tools to "cyber"? Hopefully there's been some significant investment in automation of data production for each of these channels in past years, and even then, I'm a little dubious about how accurate this assessment could possibly be at the claimed cost.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hguant 6y ago
  This is DoD truthiness at the core - it only cost 159k to assemble the report, which was probably based on 7-8 multiple studies and analysis that cost a couple of hundred thousand to a million dollars each. This isn't greenfield research, this is a report compiled from a bunch of other reports
kart23 6y ago
A few things that I found interesting: the amount of quantum stuff on the DoD's roadmap besides computing, Page 127 sounds crazy. The Black Hornet 3, a tiny drone by FLIR. The new B-21 is also in there, hasn't been officially revealed yet. Also curious to see no specifics about satellites or any mention of the X-37. Guess its all classified.

47 points by apsec112 6y ago

The "Quantum Technologies, their readiness, and expected military impact" chart from page 127 reads like nonsense. How can liter-scale atomic clocks have higher "military impact" and only be in "lab demonstration" phase, while chip-scale atomic clocks are in the "fielded phase"? Additionally, how can "Chip-Scale Atomic Clock (ns error)" have less military readiness & higher military impact than "Chip-Scale Atomic Clock (ps error)"?

pacman2 6y ago

"But unless the industrial and manufacturing base that develops and builds those goods modernizes and adjusts to the world’s new geopolitical and economic realities, America will face a growing and likely permanent national security deficit. " True. But this will be hard to fix, especially in a broad sense and not only with focus on specific military technology. I did my STEM PhD in the US that proved to be worthless. Things like SBIR are just too corrupt (I have a pretty good insight and trust me on that one). In China there are much better opportunities, at least for me, even as a non-Asian.

apsec112 6y ago
Curious what opportunities you're thinking of? China is hostile to foreigners in a lot of ways, and basically has no naturalization process, so you can't immigrate in the same way you'd immigrate to the US or Canada or Australia. EDIT: How China may arrest foreigners with no cause or due process, or "exit ban" them to prevent them from leaving: https://harrisbricken.com/chinalawblog/how-to-avoid-china-prisons-know-your-china-risks/ https://harrisbricken.com/chinalawblog/how-to-avoid-china-pr... China can also just nationalize foreign companies arbitrarily: https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/china-coronavirus-nationalize-america-owned-car-company https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/china-coronavirus-nation...
- greesil 6y ago
  Success in business as a foreigner requires making friends in high places, plus some IP transfer.
  - pacman2 6y ago
    I am happy to deliver IP, if the price is right. In fact, I just submitted another patent that I plan to sell in China. You don't need friends in high places, at least I did not require this. But do you think US SBIRs and government contracts are really open?
    - greesil 6y ago
      As far as I understand it SBIRs are a way to get seed rounds, maybe a series A, in silicon valley parlance. I'm sure there's an ecosystem of people in the know who get them regularly, and it's not a meritocracy. It's just kind of small change vs private equity investing that I'm just amazed to have found somebody who seems to have a grievance against it. But I haven't lived your experiences so who am I to kibitz. If you're successful over there more power to you.
  - aspaceman 6y ago
    What is this total bullshit? Like hello? This isn’t true at all?
    - greesil 6y ago
      https://www.bu.edu/jostl/files/2020/08/3-Lee.pdf https://www.bu.edu/jostl/files/2020/08/3-Lee.pdf I don't do business in China, so I'm not speaking from personal experience. It seems forced technology transfer is a thing.
- pacman2 6y ago
  In my experience you can find a job in China within days or weeks. They ask you "Can you start tomorrow?" and this is not a rhetorical question. You can not get naturalized, true. At least not in Mainland China. But they also have a Green Card now. While I also have a US passport, how do you "immigrate" to the US? It is very difficult, a work visa in China is much easier to get. And believe it or not, I started as an illegal immigrant in China with a tourist visa (While I was not illegal, I was working full time on a tourist visa). Hostile to foreigners? I don't know. But I speak okay Chinese by now. And doors I tried to kick in in the US that never opened, opened easily in China.
greesil 6y ago
Could you provide some context to what you just wrote? I know it seems like spitting in the wind commenting here, but it sounds pretty random unless you talk about details. By opportunity do you mean academic, business, or something else? Why was you PhD worthless? Is it applicable in China? How?
- pacman2 6y ago
  In China I have job opportunities, business opportunities and even academic opportunities. During my 2 year post doc in the US, after my PhD (due to lack of a job) I may have written 1-3 job applications per day. You do the math. My PhD proved worthless because after my post-doc finally run out, I had no money for food and shelter. To make things worse, I became super sick and had no health insurance anymore. In the end the fix of my super rare disease was easy but hard to figure out. But I never forget the pain and desperation. I came to China as a very broken person with no hope left. But it all worked out well.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    It's the best not to star in Chinese newspapers, or at least I would've not done so, and then gone to an internet forum.

teryyy 6y ago

> China’s lower costs may mean that its defense spending has purchasing parity with ours. This was shocking to me.

pacman2 6y ago
If I may quote two sources (controversial, so please take it with a grain of salt but keep an open mind) http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/07/war-profiteers-and-demise-of-us.html http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/07/war-profiteers-and-dem... https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Military-Supremacy-American-Strategic/dp/B07KWBFJ11 https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Military-Supremacy-American-St... I am not Russian by the way, the links could give you this impression.
- astrea 6y ago
  Your prevalence in the comments speaks louder than the words you type
  - stickyricky 6y ago
    It seems he has relevant experience in the subject matter and is relating that experience to an audience eager to interrogate him. How could that be interpreted negatively?
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  Great article! I have been thinking a lot about the feeling I have that “US manufacturing jobs” has become a political myth, and that real decay is setting in. I have been ordering CNC machined parts from a machine shop in China. The only US organization I priced from is Plethora which probably isn’t the cheapest but their prices were much, much higher than China. Of course Chinas prices have been lower for a long time, but in the past my simplified understanding is that there was a large volume of cheap labor that suffered a poor standard of living. But China has grown leaps and bounds in the past three decades. I suspect that now for many machine shops in China the standard of living for their workers is probably on par with that of workers in the US. It could even be better, I wouldn’t be surprised. So now it’s cheaper in China just because they took manufacturing seriously. In the US we let MBA’s sell off all our manufacturing capability to foreign nations. Which seemed to work great for increasing profits. But the lack of higher level planning has left us with a vulnerability. Selling your business to China works great in peace time. But China has power over us now. I am hopeful that the article is correct, and our horrendous military spending is coming to a close. But I worry about what will happen in the US to make us finally understand the need to change our ways. I think the best outcome would be for the US to end its posturing against China and learn to benefit from collaboration.

vmception 6y ago

If anyone is ready to learn about the Chinese market deeper than obsessing over whats happening on the other side of the Gobi desert, now is the time. The coastal cities have a lot going on in them. I recommend getting on to Wechat, thats actually pretty difficult. You need to find a mainland Chinese person. The key concept is that they keep the user experience rated “PG” and it isnt deemed controversial that the government moderates it as opposed to management at Disneyworld.

afpx 6y ago

As an ignorant American, I feel like I pay enormous taxes to defend international trade that mostly seems to benefit non-Americans. For 30 years, I was told “trade causes democracy” and “democracies don’t fight each other”. But, that doesn’t seem to be working very well. Why should the US continue to spend on defense so heavily? Why should we care?

thewarrior 6y ago
Because you need to defend the exorbitant privilege of having the worlds reserve currency. This means Americans can generally live easier lives by borrowing from the rest of the world. It’s also why wages in the US are so high. America can’t really be an export manufacturer as long as it’s currency is artificially inflated by massive inflows from global trading imbalances. It could after WW2 for a short while. That was because all others were bombed out and China etc weren’t developed.
- baybal2 6y ago
  And now the price is here. I was always telling all smarty business degree holder that you can't make money out of thin air no matter what trick you use. One way, or another, you can't escape the invisible hand finding ways to smack you good in the end.
  - thewarrior 6y ago
    It’s not easy to go back to working hard in an era of global competition. Chinese workers work far longer hours and make more product for each hour worked. Plus they are integrated into a massive supply chain and ecosystem. The wages that need to be paid to an American worker to assemble phones all day would be really really high. They’d rather just work at McDonald’s or play video games. Those high wages would give them enormous leverage (unions etc) upsetting the entire American economic system. The American system is a cyber punk reality where a country is just a container for the aspirations of a bunch of short term thinking warring AIs called corporations. The people being one of its inputs. Elections don’t change much. Anything that disrupts the AIs too much is taken care of one way or the other. Doesn’t matter if it’s Bernie or Trump. So I would say that China is safe because the last thing america will do give up any notions that their system is the best or needs to change. The west needs to realize that the momentum of a head start on industrialization and ill gotten gains from historical loot is running out. As everyone joins the industrial game the world inherently becomes multi polar. There’s no reason why only the west can have high living standards or that only the western system can sustain it. in a situation of having to manage Russia, China and Iran at once while greatly weakened , Multi lateralism is inevitable. Democracy cannot be delivered at the barrel of a gun. That only creates more messes. This week witnessed the amusing spectacle of Boris Johnson calling himself a Sinophile (give us a trade deal please). All this after running down the Chinese for months. The west can’t even decide what to do.

mikewarot 6y ago

"Preserving U.S. overmatch in and through cyberspace is an explicit objective of the 2018 National Cyber Strategy." U.S. overmatch? Nope... not even close. We're so far behind the curve it's doubtful we can ever catch up. We learned a ton of things getting our ass handed to us in Viet Nam, and then promptly forget all of it when the PC showed up and the internet took off. Look at the breach of the Form 86 records from the OPM a few years ago... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management... "The attack originated in China".... why was it even possible to access this incredibly sensitive database from the internet? The theory that the NSA and CIA can retain hacking tools for themselves, and keep the rest of the world in check was falsified a few years ago as well. All knowledge of multilevel secure systems seems to have been wiped out of the collective memory of those in charge of the NSA, DOD, etc. The only way I see back from this lagging position is to fund open source efforts to drive the development and adoption of multilevel secure systems. If we make computers everywhere more secure, the baseline security of the entire free world will rise. --- Tangent time --- It also wouldn't hurt to fund a few low cost projects aimed at being able to "restart civilization from scratch", with a particular emphasis on building educational, non-profit, well documented supply chains that start with rocks and branches, and work all the way up to modern technology as far as they can go. These should considered a part of the education and national defense efforts. If the end result is a gear... the sources of the metal, cutting tools, etc... should all trace back to non-market sources. You should be able to name every single person who helped along the way, and how. All of that knowledge should be shared and preserved.

xxpor 6y ago
>The theory that the NSA and CIA can retain hacking tools for themselves, and keep the rest of the world in check was falsified a few years ago as well. They're used to operating in the physical world. For example, that approach (until very recently) worked quite well for nukes. You can control physical things that cost money. Obviously this doesn't work for digital information with the internet. You see the same attitude every time they lement that cryptographic doesn't have backdoors. "Oh just make one for us, no one else will know how to use it"

qchris 6y ago

> The estimated cost of this report or study for the Department of Defense is approximately $159,000 in Fiscal Years 2020–2021. This includes $24,000 in expenses and $134,000 in DoD labor. I don't know, for some reason this cost feels incredibly low for the view of this document. This is a 184-page document basically summarizing the entirety of US domestic production. Even if you're not paying market rate, I'd have guessed you're talking at least a 5-6 people working full-time on keeping this data up-to-date throughout the year, which can't possibly be true with that number. $159k buys you, including org-level expenses, maybe 3-4 people's last four months? If that? For the world's largest domestic economy spanning sectors from biotech to machine tools to "cyber"? Hopefully there's been some significant investment in automation of data production for each of these channels in past years, and even then, I'm a little dubious about how accurate this assessment could possibly be at the claimed cost.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hguant 6y ago
This is DoD truthiness at the core - it only cost 159k to assemble the report, which was probably based on 7-8 multiple studies and analysis that cost a couple of hundred thousand to a million dollars each. This isn't greenfield research, this is a report compiled from a bunch of other reports

kart23 6y ago

A few things that I found interesting: the amount of quantum stuff on the DoD's roadmap besides computing, Page 127 sounds crazy. The Black Hornet 3, a tiny drone by FLIR. The new B-21 is also in there, hasn't been officially revealed yet. Also curious to see no specifics about satellites or any mention of the X-37. Guess its all classified.