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I agree the situation is dire, but do not underestimate the US government’s ability to spend its way to gain a desired result. The first time a bullet hits US soil there will be 50 million people falling over themselves to manufacture shoes by hand if it helps “kill the bad guys”
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Does this somehow not apply for cartel violence that spills over the border, the same cartels that have been declared as terrorist organizations ?

I am finding it difficult to imagine it'll be any different for terrorists of a different ethnicity.

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One thing that struck me is seeing his months long struggle, where the only injection mold designer he could find was near retirement age and wouldn't be doing it for too much longer, the tool & die expert he talked to died between when he interviewed him and when he made the video, he had to deal with suppliers lying about where their parts came from, and some American suppliers could only provide low quantities without him paying to upgrade their tooling. Then there's a comment from someone in China saying that over there, he'd be able to bring his product to mass production in about 5 days in whatever quantity he wanted, and at a higher quality (more corrosion resistant metal, more durable silicone, etc).
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TL;DW: skip to 17m55s for the important bit

[1] https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY?t=1075

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I saw hints of this ~20 years ago. I was working on software for a consumer device. For manufacturing it, we chose Foxconn. One non-negotiable point from their end was that they had to write some of the software on the device. They didn't care which part or how small.

The device had a physical keyboard with a micocontroller that managed it and they ended up writing the code that ran on that micro as it was largely independent of the code we were writing, and easy for us to test. The first versions were not great, but they got better quickly.

As we talked amongst ourselves about why they were so emphatic about this, it became clear to us that they were taking a long term view of the importance of moving into the intellectual property side of things. Dustin points out that, in some areas, they are there.

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There are multiple interesting bits, worth watching the whole thing at some point.

Something that stuck with me was that dude had an uncle that worked at a bolt factory down the road, and now there is literally no way to source domestically made bolts. And that they could find one retired guy after scouring multiple states who could help make an injection mold. I'm sure some of the larger defense contractors have a few guys who can do this, but that makes for a pretty low bus factor.

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> Something that stuck with me was that dude had an uncle that worked at a bolt factory down the road, and now there is literally no way to source domestically made bolts.

US manufactured fasteners are available*, the Build America, Buy America Act created a market for them. You’re not going to find them at Home Depot or your local hardware store, professional supply houses will sell them to you.

Waivers are available if no US supplier is available, but there usually is a US supplier.

I assume bolt manufacturing is automated to the point where you load up a CNC machine with steel hex stock and get boxes of bolts on the other end, there’s not a ton of labor involved. The machine cuts the hex stock to length, then removes material to create a cylindrical shaft and then threads are cut.

* By US manufactured, I mean ‘compliant with BABAA requirements’, which is something like 55% of the materials and manufactured here.

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Only extremely specialized fasteners are CnC-milled or machined. Here is a video of how one American company makes screws: https://youtu.be/Z8siZfGmnjQ?si=24aAFhk87RRKdPt4
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> I assume bolt manufacturing is automated to the point where you load up a CNC machine

I'd be shocked if bolts worth a damn weren't forged

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That talks about how they couldn't find someone US side to make the injection moulding moulds. We used to have a manufacturing business in the UK and got quotes for some moulds in the 1980s. You could get it done in the UK but the cost to get it from China was 1/5 as much. I guess people just went with the cheaper option.
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You can still get molds made in the USA, but they are indeed much more expensive than an equivalent one made in PRoC, and options/expertise are often more limited or specialized (depending on how you look at it). It is very difficult, but not impossible to make consumer products in the USA.
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As an exercise, please try to do this at some point and report back!
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No thanks. Watched the whole thing since its a great channel with great content.
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