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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.