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Greg Costigan's avatar

Hey Noah. Skilled immigration, industrial policy, and DARPA like programs seem to be the only way the US can compete.

But China wins with sheer scale and low cost manufacturing.

I know you mention this in the post. But any appetite to write more about the policy decisions the US has to make to catch up?

Essentially - what do we do about it?

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Robert Merkel's avatar

I would push back a little on the relevance of China's supposed lead in advanced batteries.

China is able to manufacture commodity lithium-ion batteries in vast quantities more cheaply than anywhere else in the world. But you don't need vast quantities of batteries to build a lot of small drones, and big drones are going to be powered by combustion engines or possibly fuel cells because of the order of magnitude improvement in capability a combustion engine offers compared to electric power.

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