Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, posted that his company would immediately convert to defense manufacturing if a major war breaks out, pointing to World War II factory shifts at Ford and elsewhere as proof that commercial lines can outpace dedicated military plants.
2/The US won World War 2 industrially because it had the world’s best commercial manufacturing. Ford and others converted their factories, leveraged their know how, and out produced the Axis.
In the event of a major war, Boom will pivot immediately and make defense products.
Wartime defense production should come primarily out of a commercial industrial base 1/n🧵
Scholl argues the current U.S. defense base has turned into corporate welfare without real battlefield pressure, so agile civilian manufacturers would need to handle rapid scaling instead.
No specific defense products, production volumes, or existing contracts are named, leaving open how Boom’s supersonic and turbine work would translate under wartime conditions.
Positive users praise Boom's CEO for emphasizing manufacturing's importance to national defense, while negative users dismiss the defense pivot as inauthentic since the company has not shipped products yet.
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In the event of a major war, Boom will pivot immediately and make defense products.
Wartime defense production should come primarily out of a commercial industrial base 1/n🧵
In defense, the enemy is the real customer and the Pentagon is just the middleman:
The enemy defines what we need—and ultimately takes delivery of the product.
In the event of a major war, Boom will pivot immediately and make defense products.
Wartime defense production should come primarily out of a commercial industrial base 1/n🧵
This is a deep insight from Blake: "the enemy is the real customer of defense products."
It's easy to think that the US govt is the customer of defense tech products, but ultimately they're effectively a middle-man. The enemy drives what we need.
In the event of a major war, Boom will pivot immediately and make defense products.
Wartime defense production should come primarily out of a commercial industrial base 1/n🧵
4/ Letting defense become corporate welfare—while shipping commercial manufacturing to China—is one of the worst decisions in American history.
15/ This is why the US must rebuild manufacturing—and that rebuild must be primarily advanced commercial. Boom stands ready should the worst come to pass.
@_deus_caritas I worked at Groupon before starting Boom, and in a way Groupon provided the seed capital for the company.
14/ Put differently, in peacetime it makes no sense to build weapons at scale. But it is critically important to have agile commercial manufacturing that can pivot on a moment’s notice.
11/ In a healthy USA, this is when we would turn to our commercial industrial base. We’d temporarily backburner production of the nice-to-haves and make the defense products the country needs to win.
@styrethewire Says the guy posting random useless negative stuff.
12/ This is how the hollowing out of the commercial industrial base in the name of globalization becomes an existential national security problem:
When there is no commercial industrial base, there is nothing to step up in time of war!
3/ After the war—and in a bigger way after the Cold War—we kept the defense industrial base alive because “what if.”
But there was no war, there was no enemy, and so defense programs became job programs.
7/ But without an enemy constantly testing, the defense ecosystem loses its way. Eg it builds exquisite missile interceptors that cost more than the missiles they intercept—and can’t be produced as quickly as the enemy could build missiles.
8/ During peacetime this is “okay”—but the lack of any real customer pressure makes the defense companies fat, dumb, and slow. They design things that could never be built at scale. They dribble products into stockpiles that are supposed to keep us safe.
5/ In commercial industry, having customers is what keeps builders honest. If you don’t produce a useful product at a reasonable price you go out of business. Adam Smith’s invisible hand keeps producers smart, efficient, and agile.
10/ None of the supply chain or even the products were built to scale or to iterate. It was all built to create jobs not to win a war. If the stockpiles are obsolete or depleted new weapons cannot be created a rate necessary to win a war.
6/ In wartime, the enemy is the real customer of defense products—the enemy defines what is useful and war economics drive what costs are viable.
Defense products iterate on the battlefield with the enemy.
9/ But what happens if the enemy outsmarts or outlasts the stockpile?
@bscholl It's Father's Day and this is what your up to? Unplug dude
@snowmaker The enemy sets the product roadmap.
Every feature request comes from what they're building, not what procurement thinks we need.
Defense R&D is just really expensive user research with missiles.
@bscholl Strength = stock assets + durable economic output + readiness