Great post - very eye opening stuff. One nuance is that the power electronics requirements needed for EVs and electric trucks are a couple of orders of magnitude bigger than those used for drones. The biggest drones need a few kw of power delivery from the battery while performance EVs can need up to a MW of instantaneous power. Voltages go from 12-50 volts on most drones to 800 volts or more for basic EVs. That level of scaling changes the problem so much that it's really a different skill set. So it's essential the US has knowhow and manufacturing capability to make high power electronics and this likely means a strong domestic EV industry.
Also, Noah touched on this, but imo energy production is another critical industry for both economic and military power where the tech is changing fast and where we've fallen behind in industrial capability. Obviously batteries and renewable tech will be essential to maintaining a competitive electro-stack, but the ability to manufacture high voltage transformers and boring power grid tech can't be ignored. I was glad to see Tesla is planning to start manufacturing its own high voltage transformers (I think for EV chargers). With the current 2-4 year lead times on some of this stuff, we're reminded that this boring industrial tech is essential and can be a limiting factor in electro-stack dominance.
Finally, and this one is a little out there, another electro-stack tech with break out potential is nuclear tech, especially SMRs and micro-reactors that can also be used for military purposes. This stuff isn't nearly as far along as drones and EVs, but it could be disruptive if it can be made to work and I think breakthroughs in small and mobile nuclear tech would have big military implications.
Really good points.... Power Electronics has not been the "sexy" part of the semiconductor industry, but it appears most of the interesting system solutions require sophisticated power management.
There's a big difference though between the SMRs under construction and micro-reactors. 300MW SMRs are still factory-sized installations.
The main difference between SMRs and previous reactors is that the industry recognizes that it must leverage the regulatory, engineering and construction gains from using a replicable design. There's also some cost savings from being able to share some facility components on site with other SMRs.
Those principles would apply even better to micro-reactors, given production of a larger scale of units. But micro-reactors have additional benefits that SMRs don't, such as portability and supporting micro-grids.
The need for high power, as used in EVs and for high frequency, high efficiency lower power for small drones, means we need both SiC which is good for high power, and GaN for high frequency. Silicon Carbide is made by Wolfspeed and Coherent in the US but China is ramping up and already has almost 50% of the market.
Gallium Nitride is dominated by China, since unlike Silicon, Gallium is not mined or refined much in the US.
Not clear that either SiC or GaN are essential for warfare based drones though. The benefit of high frequency is smaller components (caps/inductors). This makes a big difference in an iPhone or a charger but in a drone carrying a 100g-1kg payload, a few extra grams of inductor doesn't matter much. Similarly, SiC matters when you are trying to get efficiency from 98% to 99% because that is 1/2 as much heat to get out of your cellphone or charger. In terms of battery life though, it is 1%. (Power IC designer here..)
Interesting post.... the electric "stack" is certainly pretty important. I would add to this.... an accompanying software/AI "stack." These two actually interplay with each other. The US has naturally drifted up to the SW/AI "stack" because the business margins are much better. China has drifted into and is now dominating the HW electric stack...although most of the companies in the China circle are struggling with business profitability. The world wants a pseudo standard cheap/scalable HW platform on which one can differentiate with SW/AI.
Overall, the key challenge for the US is .... how does one build incentives to invest in a naturally lower margin HW business ? How does one do so when another country is further subsidizing an already lower margin business ? One can do one offs in the name of national security, but that is not too sustainable. The likely solution is effective robotization where the cost-of-labor is a more minimal factor.... we need some more innovation to get there.
Well, one thing that is simple to do is to not arrest Korean workers and deporting them while they were installing manufacturing lines at factories we are trying to build.
This. But try explaining that to a GOP administration busy virtue signaling its' loyalty to the Fossil Fuel industry, and willing to use its power to destroy the competition.
You'd think the NatSec hawks in the GOP would push back on this sort of idiocy.
One more comment, even BYD, the darling in this sector is struggling with margins. I just heard the Berkshire, which was an important investor, just pulled out.
Agreed, and we need abundant, affordable, and secure energy to generate the electricity 24/7/365. Without that, the Electro-Tech stack cannot function.
I’m sorry, Noah, but you’re very wrong here. Electric tech is going to be very important for a lot of things, but its value in warfare isn’t nearly as great as you think. The Shahed 136 drones Russia is blanketing Ukraine with aren’t electric quadcopters. They’ve got very old-fashioned gasoline-fed piston engines. Logistics is everything in warfare, and the logistics of batteries suck hard because their energy density is so low. Aircraft carrying anything but microelectronics as a payload will never be electric. Tanks will never be electric; they struggle with weight already. Support vehicles will never be electric. Did you see how Russia struggled to get fuel to the front early on? Imagine multiplying that fuel mass by a factor of 100 to get the same energy to the front in the form of batteries. Even if you use mobile charging stations, you now have to carry enormous generators, lots of them because charging takes so long, and even more fuel than before because of conversion losses. This is a complete no-go.
I agree wholeheartedly with your emphasis on the strategic threat from China, but electric vehicles are civilian technology that won’t make the jump to the battlefield.
The vast majority of the drones used there are electric, including those carrying small explosive payloads.
>Imagine multiplying that fuel mass by a factor of 100 to get the same energy to the front in the form of batteries.
The ratio isn't 100, given the poor efficiency of small engines, and their cooling requirements, it's closer 7. Ranges of several hundred km for a drone with 1/3 of its mass payload are possible with current lithium batteries.
>Even if you use mobile charging stations, you now have to carry enormous generators, lots of them because charging takes so long,
Charging doesn't take very long now. The batteries can easily accept 30 minute charges in almost all cases, if the power is available.
> and even more fuel than before because of conversion losses.
Also not true. Large diesel generators at a steady load are much more efficient than smaller engines, especially vs gasoline engines, and electric powertrains are on the order of 4x as efficient per km. Conversion losses are minor in comparison. For example in the boogyman meme about an electric car charging off a diesel powered fast charge stop, the car is still using only half as much fuel per km, vs a gasoline car. Using electric-battery equipment could drastically shrink fuel requirements.
The logistics burden of battlefield energy needs isn’t driven by small unmanned aircraft. It’s the vehicles that bring food, ammunition, and more energy, to the front. It’s the vehicles that carry and power radar systems, and artillery. It’s digging and grading and bridging equipment. It’s ginormous warships and transports. It’s transport aircraft and trains.
Batteries don’t and never will power these things. Little battery-powered drones have played a big part in Ukraine where the front lines haven’t moved more than a few km in years, but conflict with China will involve vast distances that batteries cannot traverse. We should worry about the commercial impact of China’s electric tech. We should worry about the military impact of their diesel-powered shipbuilding industry.
Aircraft, even transport aircraft and I suspect even fighters with intelligent enough software, can be taken out by drones.
What they appear to do is replace a lot of the function of artillery and infantry, and blunt armour. Overall it doesn't seem minor, especially for any smaller country that expects to be on defense.
What!?! Dude: real live practicing autonomous aircraft engineer here. My group specializes in autonomous fighter aircraft. We’re on the DARPA ACE program making autonomous F-16s. Don’t confuse battery-powered quad copters with turbofan-powered autonomous combat jets. The former are no more a threat to cargo planes than are birds. Yeah, you can hit parked planes deep in enemy territory with small-ish drones: powered by gasoline engines. You just can’t carry meaningful explosive power meaningful distances with electricity. Not only is gasoline far more energy dense, but guess what happens when you start burning it? It goes away! And you no longer have to carry the weight! How much lighter is a dead battery than a fully charged one? None!
Again, again, again: Sure, small drones like you can buy on Amazon are making a big difference in Ukraine. That doesn’t mean that electric tech will decide future wars. It’s not even deciding the war in Ukraine! Who’s winning? Nobody! You need to make large quantities of chemically-fueled vehicles, ships, airplanes, and rockets to win a modern war. If either Russia or Ukraine had China’s PLARF, they’d have won long ago. Electric tech is not the key to modern military power. Nice addition, very useful. But not the cornerstone.
Little battery drones go a few hundred kts now. That's plenty enough, and carrying enough charge, to take down a full size aircraft. It doesn't need to catch up to it, it just has to lay in wait and be guided accurately enough.
The talk about losing mass over the flight just reveals you're ideologically tinted here. It doesn't make enough difference for the mission to be worth talking about.
Really? That is quite confusing though - it's clear that electric drones are vitally important in the war in Ukraine right now. Perhaps the Shahed drones are not electric - but all the others are...
Including ground-based drones - so there are already electric support vehicles in use.
I have heard arguments that drones are only useful due to a lack of artillery - is that what you mean?
Oh, I’m not saying electric drones aren’t important, even vital. But that doesn’t mean that all of warfare is going electric. Warfare takes energy, in huge amounts, delivered to ver awkward places while your adversary is actively trying to destroy your logistics infrastructure. Power density is vital to making your whole supply system work.
I think there will obviously always be a significant need for high density fuels in warfare - but there has also clearly been a massive shift towards the "electric stack".
In terms of focus and direction - it seems clear that that we should be building out this capability at scale. We should still make sure we have the traditional capacity as well - but seems to me that this needs much more focus now.
And the politics of this needs to shift urgently. This is not a "green" or climate change issue - its abundance and national security.
Jay, you might consider reading Phillips P. OBrien's Substack about the legacy weaponry you're concerned about...the Russian invasion of Ukraine has changed everything. Good luck.
I haven’t read it. However, I’m an aeronautical engineer specializing in autonomous military aircraft, and we keep very up to date on events and technology in Ukraine.
Well, OBrien has well regarded standing in strategic studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_O'Brien In his opinion, off the shelf drones/parts have utterly and irreversibly changed the order of battle along the engaged front lines in Eastern Ukraine (and for wars yet to be fought). Given your profession, I'm pretty sure you'll find his analyses well worth reading - best.
A quibble. Xiaomi partnered with BAIC to make cars. The Chinese auto industry is largely made up of joint ventures between state-owned entities (such as BAIC) and private companies.
This helps a company such as Xiaomi start making cars, the car production knowledge is handled by people who already make cars. No similar structure is available to an aspiring carmaker in the US.
That said making a car is not like making a cell phone. The factories, the processes, the production lines are very different.
The reason Xiomi is succeeding (BTW I have spent hours as a passenger in a Xiaomi car) is that Xiamomi understands attractive human software interfaces, and as the cars bits have become commoditized the human interface dominates product differentiation. The Xiaomi driver interface is wonderful, unlike anything I have seen in any other car.
I think Xiaomi's success in cars derives from a) their experience designing complex personal computerized devices and b) the unique structure of the Chinese auto industry, which allows a newcomer to make state of the art vehicles on spec without mastering the the underlying production processes.
I applaud your courage to suggest that you have the answer to win a war of attrition. I just want to point out a note of caution. The drone war is changing rapidly.
To defeat drones, there is jamming; to defeat jamming, there are hardwired fiber optic cables; to defeat the hardwired cables, there are drone cutters. They fly across the wires and cut them. To defeat the cutters, higher-quality chips will be needed that will enable autonomous search and destroyers. Seeking targets that meet a specific aesthetic, excluding humans from the equation.
To follow on, whole fleets of more intelligent, bigger autonomous killing machines. And do you want to know what will defeat those machines, Noah? An EMP, a battlefield of electronic machines that will be fried by a gigantic electronic pulse. That will require hardening the electronics, which will raise the costs for drones.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have a supply chain, lords know I have been hammering people for years on our pathetic military industrial base, which is moribund. I would suggest more military capacity integration between our European allies and Asian allies. Is the place to start, and not trying to recreate everything here.
First and foremost, our ability to produce Patriot missiles is a failure. Currently at $ 500 a year, going to $ 550, and hopefully $ 600 is so inadequate to the need that it is laughable. A recent US war game in the Pacific suggests we’ll be out of missiles in a week.
This is a hair on fire moment, we do not have the time to fiddle f*^k around with Congressional or Presidential action. Check out the Free Press story on our useless Congress trying to force inferior boots on our soldiers.
Public policy cannot avoid placing its thumb on the scales, even inadvertently if not malignantly. For example, by choosing to support the current medical-insurance complex in the United States, Congress reduces the amount of money consumers could be spending on other sectors of the economy. One would think Main Street might object.
It’s been obvious for some time that combustion engines would be far less efficient and more environmentally harmful than electric motors. And it’s now economically obvious that combustion based power grids are far less efficient than ones powered by a range of alternatives: solar, wind, hydro.
Questions:
Why is Trump attempting to shut down these emerging technologies? What’s in it for him?
Why are those in Congress who control the national checkbook allowing this?
What role are petroleum interests playing in squelching electric stack development?
For example, Russia and Saudi Arabia are petroleum interests; what role are they playing in delaying investments in the electric stack?
What role are traditional players in the defense industrial complex playing? The expense of missiles is enormous; is this justified given their battlefield ineffectiveness compared to drones?
What role has Citizens United played in tying Congress’ hands. Have flows of campaign funds limited our investments in modern technologies and impacted our security infrastructure?
In this Sputnik moment, when our technological shortcomings are becoming obvious and our course correction should be clear, why is our political class so sclerotic?
It is not true that constructing new solar and wind is cheaper than continuing to use existing fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydro.
We need abundant, affordable, and secure energy to generate the electricity 24/7/365. Without that, the Electro-Tech stack cannot function. Solar and wind can be a supplement in certain geographies, but the drive to replace existing energy sources makes it much more expensive to shift to the Electro-Tech stack.
This obviously isn't really correct. If already installed solar and wind is cheaper than fossil, then over a long enough time window, the cost of installation amortizes out. This is true even if the time window is longer than the operating life of the solar or wind plant since the life of the fossil fuel plant is not infinite either.
1) already-installed solar and wind were NEVER cheaper than fossil fuels because of the significant system costs imposed on the rest of the electrical grid. This is not covered in the typical LCOE numbers that make their way across the internet.
Here is a good analysis of the cost while factoring in system costs. The numbers are from Texas, which is one of the few places in the world with abundant solar and wind. Virtually all other regions are significantly worse.
Even just 50% solar plus battery is almost three times the cost of new CCGT gas plants. And keeping existing fossil fuel plants going is even cheaper as the construction costs have largely been paid off.
2) Because of above, even when the construction cost is amortized, it still is not cost-effective.
3) The life of fossil fuels plants, nuclear plants and hydro plants are far longer than solar and wind.
Not to mention the enormous cost of fossil fuels’ on our environment, which MM conveniently omits. And I do agree that supplementing with renewables is the starting point. However as they are scaled up I would expect increased efficiencies along with better batteries will go a long way towards replacing fossil fuels.
The arguments in favor of wind/solar have never been about cost.
The actual argument is based on the perception that we need to avert an impending climate catastrophe by virtually eliminating fossil fuels so we can get to Netzero by 2050.
The "renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels" was always about trying to maintain public support for government subsidies and mandates for solar and wind (and will likely be for the foreseeable future). That is why they ignore evidence that renewables are actually far more expensive than fossil fuels when you include system costs and far less flexible when you include geography.
That is why Techno-Greens have dishonesty built into their assumptions:
Without the Green focus on climate change, the government subsidies and mandates would go away, and then the entire business model of Techno-Greens who say "renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels" would become far smaller in scale and profitability.
The Green energy industry is very similar to defense contracting. It relies on the government for most of its business.
Thank you, Noah. Innovation moves slowly with old folks clinging to tradition and power. Adapting to change is hard for old folk like myself. I see it in my own behavior and welcome younger smarter and more energized innovators to the party.
"the technologies that enable machines to behave like software" is also an attribute of future nanotech, perhaps to guide assemblies of protein-size motors and valves, with assembly instructions encoded in DNA-like 'blueprints'. We already specify DNA for cells using software.
To mfg drone components at scale means massive investment in automated equipment which leads to concentrated factory locations. The Russian Ukraine war shows the vulnerability of concentrated point factories like oil refinery's. The supply chain has to be configured to reduce the effect of the loss of a point in the supply chain. There is a Yin and Yang to dispersal vs concentration. Defense can be concentrated near large factory. The dispersed chain requires a lot of defense spread thin. The original concepts for what we call the internet was developed so that communication networks would be stable with even with destruction of individual nodes. I hope I am long gone before the systems are tested by peer to peer contests.
Wholeheartedly agree - and I think at least some of the companies should be trying to push the boundaries - even as others just get proficient at generating cost effective drones at scale. Thanks for throwing me into several rabbit holes lol
Finally a post about the electric stack I can wholeheartedly agree on, because Noah for once left off the usual “nothing can save the world except solar power” tripe, and restrained himself by only mentioning solar once (but claiming that AI and thus software depends on solar almost sent it off the edge)
Great post - very eye opening stuff. One nuance is that the power electronics requirements needed for EVs and electric trucks are a couple of orders of magnitude bigger than those used for drones. The biggest drones need a few kw of power delivery from the battery while performance EVs can need up to a MW of instantaneous power. Voltages go from 12-50 volts on most drones to 800 volts or more for basic EVs. That level of scaling changes the problem so much that it's really a different skill set. So it's essential the US has knowhow and manufacturing capability to make high power electronics and this likely means a strong domestic EV industry.
Also, Noah touched on this, but imo energy production is another critical industry for both economic and military power where the tech is changing fast and where we've fallen behind in industrial capability. Obviously batteries and renewable tech will be essential to maintaining a competitive electro-stack, but the ability to manufacture high voltage transformers and boring power grid tech can't be ignored. I was glad to see Tesla is planning to start manufacturing its own high voltage transformers (I think for EV chargers). With the current 2-4 year lead times on some of this stuff, we're reminded that this boring industrial tech is essential and can be a limiting factor in electro-stack dominance.
Finally, and this one is a little out there, another electro-stack tech with break out potential is nuclear tech, especially SMRs and micro-reactors that can also be used for military purposes. This stuff isn't nearly as far along as drones and EVs, but it could be disruptive if it can be made to work and I think breakthroughs in small and mobile nuclear tech would have big military implications.
Really good points.... Power Electronics has not been the "sexy" part of the semiconductor industry, but it appears most of the interesting system solutions require sophisticated power management.
There's a big difference though between the SMRs under construction and micro-reactors. 300MW SMRs are still factory-sized installations.
The main difference between SMRs and previous reactors is that the industry recognizes that it must leverage the regulatory, engineering and construction gains from using a replicable design. There's also some cost savings from being able to share some facility components on site with other SMRs.
Those principles would apply even better to micro-reactors, given production of a larger scale of units. But micro-reactors have additional benefits that SMRs don't, such as portability and supporting micro-grids.
The need for high power, as used in EVs and for high frequency, high efficiency lower power for small drones, means we need both SiC which is good for high power, and GaN for high frequency. Silicon Carbide is made by Wolfspeed and Coherent in the US but China is ramping up and already has almost 50% of the market.
Gallium Nitride is dominated by China, since unlike Silicon, Gallium is not mined or refined much in the US.
Not clear that either SiC or GaN are essential for warfare based drones though. The benefit of high frequency is smaller components (caps/inductors). This makes a big difference in an iPhone or a charger but in a drone carrying a 100g-1kg payload, a few extra grams of inductor doesn't matter much. Similarly, SiC matters when you are trying to get efficiency from 98% to 99% because that is 1/2 as much heat to get out of your cellphone or charger. In terms of battery life though, it is 1%. (Power IC designer here..)
See also today’s Doomberg piece about how sanctions are forcing China to rapidly catch up in GOU class semiconductor manufacturing.
https://open.substack.com/pub/doomberg/p/trump-card
Interesting post.... the electric "stack" is certainly pretty important. I would add to this.... an accompanying software/AI "stack." These two actually interplay with each other. The US has naturally drifted up to the SW/AI "stack" because the business margins are much better. China has drifted into and is now dominating the HW electric stack...although most of the companies in the China circle are struggling with business profitability. The world wants a pseudo standard cheap/scalable HW platform on which one can differentiate with SW/AI.
Overall, the key challenge for the US is .... how does one build incentives to invest in a naturally lower margin HW business ? How does one do so when another country is further subsidizing an already lower margin business ? One can do one offs in the name of national security, but that is not too sustainable. The likely solution is effective robotization where the cost-of-labor is a more minimal factor.... we need some more innovation to get there.
Well, one thing that is simple to do is to not arrest Korean workers and deporting them while they were installing manufacturing lines at factories we are trying to build.
This. But try explaining that to a GOP administration busy virtue signaling its' loyalty to the Fossil Fuel industry, and willing to use its power to destroy the competition.
You'd think the NatSec hawks in the GOP would push back on this sort of idiocy.
One more comment, even BYD, the darling in this sector is struggling with margins. I just heard the Berkshire, which was an important investor, just pulled out.
Agreed, and we need abundant, affordable, and secure energy to generate the electricity 24/7/365. Without that, the Electro-Tech stack cannot function.
I’m sorry, Noah, but you’re very wrong here. Electric tech is going to be very important for a lot of things, but its value in warfare isn’t nearly as great as you think. The Shahed 136 drones Russia is blanketing Ukraine with aren’t electric quadcopters. They’ve got very old-fashioned gasoline-fed piston engines. Logistics is everything in warfare, and the logistics of batteries suck hard because their energy density is so low. Aircraft carrying anything but microelectronics as a payload will never be electric. Tanks will never be electric; they struggle with weight already. Support vehicles will never be electric. Did you see how Russia struggled to get fuel to the front early on? Imagine multiplying that fuel mass by a factor of 100 to get the same energy to the front in the form of batteries. Even if you use mobile charging stations, you now have to carry enormous generators, lots of them because charging takes so long, and even more fuel than before because of conversion losses. This is a complete no-go.
I agree wholeheartedly with your emphasis on the strategic threat from China, but electric vehicles are civilian technology that won’t make the jump to the battlefield.
The vast majority of the drones used there are electric, including those carrying small explosive payloads.
>Imagine multiplying that fuel mass by a factor of 100 to get the same energy to the front in the form of batteries.
The ratio isn't 100, given the poor efficiency of small engines, and their cooling requirements, it's closer 7. Ranges of several hundred km for a drone with 1/3 of its mass payload are possible with current lithium batteries.
>Even if you use mobile charging stations, you now have to carry enormous generators, lots of them because charging takes so long,
Charging doesn't take very long now. The batteries can easily accept 30 minute charges in almost all cases, if the power is available.
> and even more fuel than before because of conversion losses.
Also not true. Large diesel generators at a steady load are much more efficient than smaller engines, especially vs gasoline engines, and electric powertrains are on the order of 4x as efficient per km. Conversion losses are minor in comparison. For example in the boogyman meme about an electric car charging off a diesel powered fast charge stop, the car is still using only half as much fuel per km, vs a gasoline car. Using electric-battery equipment could drastically shrink fuel requirements.
The logistics burden of battlefield energy needs isn’t driven by small unmanned aircraft. It’s the vehicles that bring food, ammunition, and more energy, to the front. It’s the vehicles that carry and power radar systems, and artillery. It’s digging and grading and bridging equipment. It’s ginormous warships and transports. It’s transport aircraft and trains.
Batteries don’t and never will power these things. Little battery-powered drones have played a big part in Ukraine where the front lines haven’t moved more than a few km in years, but conflict with China will involve vast distances that batteries cannot traverse. We should worry about the commercial impact of China’s electric tech. We should worry about the military impact of their diesel-powered shipbuilding industry.
Aircraft, even transport aircraft and I suspect even fighters with intelligent enough software, can be taken out by drones.
What they appear to do is replace a lot of the function of artillery and infantry, and blunt armour. Overall it doesn't seem minor, especially for any smaller country that expects to be on defense.
What!?! Dude: real live practicing autonomous aircraft engineer here. My group specializes in autonomous fighter aircraft. We’re on the DARPA ACE program making autonomous F-16s. Don’t confuse battery-powered quad copters with turbofan-powered autonomous combat jets. The former are no more a threat to cargo planes than are birds. Yeah, you can hit parked planes deep in enemy territory with small-ish drones: powered by gasoline engines. You just can’t carry meaningful explosive power meaningful distances with electricity. Not only is gasoline far more energy dense, but guess what happens when you start burning it? It goes away! And you no longer have to carry the weight! How much lighter is a dead battery than a fully charged one? None!
Again, again, again: Sure, small drones like you can buy on Amazon are making a big difference in Ukraine. That doesn’t mean that electric tech will decide future wars. It’s not even deciding the war in Ukraine! Who’s winning? Nobody! You need to make large quantities of chemically-fueled vehicles, ships, airplanes, and rockets to win a modern war. If either Russia or Ukraine had China’s PLARF, they’d have won long ago. Electric tech is not the key to modern military power. Nice addition, very useful. But not the cornerstone.
Little battery drones go a few hundred kts now. That's plenty enough, and carrying enough charge, to take down a full size aircraft. It doesn't need to catch up to it, it just has to lay in wait and be guided accurately enough.
The talk about losing mass over the flight just reveals you're ideologically tinted here. It doesn't make enough difference for the mission to be worth talking about.
Both of your statements are false. This isn’t ideology. It’s physics. Believe or don’t; physics doesn’t care.
Really? That is quite confusing though - it's clear that electric drones are vitally important in the war in Ukraine right now. Perhaps the Shahed drones are not electric - but all the others are...
Including ground-based drones - so there are already electric support vehicles in use.
I have heard arguments that drones are only useful due to a lack of artillery - is that what you mean?
Oh, I’m not saying electric drones aren’t important, even vital. But that doesn’t mean that all of warfare is going electric. Warfare takes energy, in huge amounts, delivered to ver awkward places while your adversary is actively trying to destroy your logistics infrastructure. Power density is vital to making your whole supply system work.
Makes sense - thanks!
I think there will obviously always be a significant need for high density fuels in warfare - but there has also clearly been a massive shift towards the "electric stack".
In terms of focus and direction - it seems clear that that we should be building out this capability at scale. We should still make sure we have the traditional capacity as well - but seems to me that this needs much more focus now.
And the politics of this needs to shift urgently. This is not a "green" or climate change issue - its abundance and national security.
Jay, you might consider reading Phillips P. OBrien's Substack about the legacy weaponry you're concerned about...the Russian invasion of Ukraine has changed everything. Good luck.
I haven’t read it. However, I’m an aeronautical engineer specializing in autonomous military aircraft, and we keep very up to date on events and technology in Ukraine.
Well, OBrien has well regarded standing in strategic studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_O'Brien In his opinion, off the shelf drones/parts have utterly and irreversibly changed the order of battle along the engaged front lines in Eastern Ukraine (and for wars yet to be fought). Given your profession, I'm pretty sure you'll find his analyses well worth reading - best.
A quibble. Xiaomi partnered with BAIC to make cars. The Chinese auto industry is largely made up of joint ventures between state-owned entities (such as BAIC) and private companies.
This helps a company such as Xiaomi start making cars, the car production knowledge is handled by people who already make cars. No similar structure is available to an aspiring carmaker in the US.
That said making a car is not like making a cell phone. The factories, the processes, the production lines are very different.
The reason Xiomi is succeeding (BTW I have spent hours as a passenger in a Xiaomi car) is that Xiamomi understands attractive human software interfaces, and as the cars bits have become commoditized the human interface dominates product differentiation. The Xiaomi driver interface is wonderful, unlike anything I have seen in any other car.
I think Xiaomi's success in cars derives from a) their experience designing complex personal computerized devices and b) the unique structure of the Chinese auto industry, which allows a newcomer to make state of the art vehicles on spec without mastering the the underlying production processes.
I applaud your courage to suggest that you have the answer to win a war of attrition. I just want to point out a note of caution. The drone war is changing rapidly.
To defeat drones, there is jamming; to defeat jamming, there are hardwired fiber optic cables; to defeat the hardwired cables, there are drone cutters. They fly across the wires and cut them. To defeat the cutters, higher-quality chips will be needed that will enable autonomous search and destroyers. Seeking targets that meet a specific aesthetic, excluding humans from the equation.
To follow on, whole fleets of more intelligent, bigger autonomous killing machines. And do you want to know what will defeat those machines, Noah? An EMP, a battlefield of electronic machines that will be fried by a gigantic electronic pulse. That will require hardening the electronics, which will raise the costs for drones.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have a supply chain, lords know I have been hammering people for years on our pathetic military industrial base, which is moribund. I would suggest more military capacity integration between our European allies and Asian allies. Is the place to start, and not trying to recreate everything here.
First and foremost, our ability to produce Patriot missiles is a failure. Currently at $ 500 a year, going to $ 550, and hopefully $ 600 is so inadequate to the need that it is laughable. A recent US war game in the Pacific suggests we’ll be out of missiles in a week.
This is a hair on fire moment, we do not have the time to fiddle f*^k around with Congressional or Presidential action. Check out the Free Press story on our useless Congress trying to force inferior boots on our soldiers.
https://www.thefp.com/p/american-soldiers-dont-wear-american-combat-boots?r=2k10z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Send this essay to each member of congress...
Public policy cannot avoid placing its thumb on the scales, even inadvertently if not malignantly. For example, by choosing to support the current medical-insurance complex in the United States, Congress reduces the amount of money consumers could be spending on other sectors of the economy. One would think Main Street might object.
It’s been obvious for some time that combustion engines would be far less efficient and more environmentally harmful than electric motors. And it’s now economically obvious that combustion based power grids are far less efficient than ones powered by a range of alternatives: solar, wind, hydro.
Questions:
Why is Trump attempting to shut down these emerging technologies? What’s in it for him?
Why are those in Congress who control the national checkbook allowing this?
What role are petroleum interests playing in squelching electric stack development?
For example, Russia and Saudi Arabia are petroleum interests; what role are they playing in delaying investments in the electric stack?
What role are traditional players in the defense industrial complex playing? The expense of missiles is enormous; is this justified given their battlefield ineffectiveness compared to drones?
What role has Citizens United played in tying Congress’ hands. Have flows of campaign funds limited our investments in modern technologies and impacted our security infrastructure?
In this Sputnik moment, when our technological shortcomings are becoming obvious and our course correction should be clear, why is our political class so sclerotic?
The reason is simple:
It is not true that constructing new solar and wind is cheaper than continuing to use existing fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydro.
We need abundant, affordable, and secure energy to generate the electricity 24/7/365. Without that, the Electro-Tech stack cannot function. Solar and wind can be a supplement in certain geographies, but the drive to replace existing energy sources makes it much more expensive to shift to the Electro-Tech stack.
This obviously isn't really correct. If already installed solar and wind is cheaper than fossil, then over a long enough time window, the cost of installation amortizes out. This is true even if the time window is longer than the operating life of the solar or wind plant since the life of the fossil fuel plant is not infinite either.
1) already-installed solar and wind were NEVER cheaper than fossil fuels because of the significant system costs imposed on the rest of the electrical grid. This is not covered in the typical LCOE numbers that make their way across the internet.
Here is a good analysis of the cost while factoring in system costs. The numbers are from Texas, which is one of the few places in the world with abundant solar and wind. Virtually all other regions are significantly worse.
https://energybadboys.substack.com/p/the-baseload-solar-beatdown
Even just 50% solar plus battery is almost three times the cost of new CCGT gas plants. And keeping existing fossil fuel plants going is even cheaper as the construction costs have largely been paid off.
2) Because of above, even when the construction cost is amortized, it still is not cost-effective.
3) The life of fossil fuels plants, nuclear plants and hydro plants are far longer than solar and wind.
Not to mention the enormous cost of fossil fuels’ on our environment, which MM conveniently omits. And I do agree that supplementing with renewables is the starting point. However as they are scaled up I would expect increased efficiencies along with better batteries will go a long way towards replacing fossil fuels.
If you expect increasing efficiencies in the future, then that is a really good reason to wait. Late adoption is a powerful strategy.
Let other nations waste their money on inefficient and expensive renewables today so that 20 years in the future, we get a much better deal.
Why buy inefficient and expensive today, when you can just wait?
Yes, this has always been the point.
The arguments in favor of wind/solar have never been about cost.
The actual argument is based on the perception that we need to avert an impending climate catastrophe by virtually eliminating fossil fuels so we can get to Netzero by 2050.
The "renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels" was always about trying to maintain public support for government subsidies and mandates for solar and wind (and will likely be for the foreseeable future). That is why they ignore evidence that renewables are actually far more expensive than fossil fuels when you include system costs and far less flexible when you include geography.
That is why Techno-Greens have dishonesty built into their assumptions:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/two-wings-of-the-green-movement
Without the Green focus on climate change, the government subsidies and mandates would go away, and then the entire business model of Techno-Greens who say "renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels" would become far smaller in scale and profitability.
The Green energy industry is very similar to defense contracting. It relies on the government for most of its business.
Thank you, Noah. Innovation moves slowly with old folks clinging to tradition and power. Adapting to change is hard for old folk like myself. I see it in my own behavior and welcome younger smarter and more energized innovators to the party.
"the technologies that enable machines to behave like software" is also an attribute of future nanotech, perhaps to guide assemblies of protein-size motors and valves, with assembly instructions encoded in DNA-like 'blueprints'. We already specify DNA for cells using software.
Question: what is the role of universities in making a national electro-stack happen?
I can imagine several roles, actually:
1) R&D in the sciences and technology
2) Research into other dimensions of the stack across other disciplines: economics, poli sci
3) Teaching students to become workers in these fields
4) Campus-community ("town-gown") collaborations
To mfg drone components at scale means massive investment in automated equipment which leads to concentrated factory locations. The Russian Ukraine war shows the vulnerability of concentrated point factories like oil refinery's. The supply chain has to be configured to reduce the effect of the loss of a point in the supply chain. There is a Yin and Yang to dispersal vs concentration. Defense can be concentrated near large factory. The dispersed chain requires a lot of defense spread thin. The original concepts for what we call the internet was developed so that communication networks would be stable with even with destruction of individual nodes. I hope I am long gone before the systems are tested by peer to peer contests.
Wholeheartedly agree - and I think at least some of the companies should be trying to push the boundaries - even as others just get proficient at generating cost effective drones at scale. Thanks for throwing me into several rabbit holes lol
Finally a post about the electric stack I can wholeheartedly agree on, because Noah for once left off the usual “nothing can save the world except solar power” tripe, and restrained himself by only mentioning solar once (but claiming that AI and thus software depends on solar almost sent it off the edge)
Come on Buz, it's "solar AND batteries".
This was one of the best things I read recently. Subscribed immediately. And the comment section is also full of great insights. Awesome thank you.