I like Chris's concept. It has merit. As he says, it depends on there being a substantial and dependable amount of money for companies and their investors to pursue. What he doesn't say is that the concept also critically depends on a dramatic change in the way DoD buys stuff. This change has so far proven hard to make on the small scale offered by DIU programs. Program managers and contracts people (as well as logistics folks) have a hard time writing commercial contracts rather than procurement contracts. They have a hard time setting aside the DoD doctrine of "What's yours is mine" when it comes to suppliers' intellectual capital rights. Until DoD and Congress change these things, Chris's concept won't work.

Great talk. Fun little tidbit --> the USAF adopted PPBE faster than the navy. That system completely failed to produce a new fighter to replace the Century Series. The Navy, meanwhile, was a bit leery about this central planning stuff, and they got the F4 Phantom. For the next three decades. The other services wound up adopting it, and it became pretty much the most succesful combat aircraft program in US history.

Haven't even listened to the whole video yet but that's a brilliant headline. Moneyball is a film every somewhat smart person should watch.

Dr. Kotkin is always good to hear. History is interesting and useful to a point. But it isn't linear. In 1939, I don't think anyone openly predicted (or even understood) that atomic bombs would end WW2, 6 years later. In 2018, no one predicted Covid 19, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or high interest rates causing chaos. In my old workplace, we had "flavour of the month", where a middle manager like Brose made their name by coming up with some fantastic new business plan, that ultimately failed.

I’m deeply sympathetic to the goals presented. However, I want to quibble with the speaker’s characterization of the problem. The problem isn’t ideological (centralized planning vs. free market). US DoD acquisition processes (PPBE) in many ways reflects standard tech development processes of companies like Ford, GM, GE, and IBM from the late 1950s through the 1990s. That is, top DoD executive decision-making processes mimic standard commercial industrial processes and structures from a prior generation. That means DoD structures do not deeply incorporate concepts like lean manufacturing, quality assurance, user friendly interfaces, and agile development, but instead bolt them on as additional requirements. By the way, those are the areas where companies like Ford, GM, GE, and IBM have been slaughtered in the global marketplace from the 1990s on. Imagine working at IBM and saying, “I’d like to be more like Google or Apple. If only we were more free market and less centralized planning.” Umm, that’s not really the problem. DoD believes that everything has to be planned up front and any errors are a failure of THE process and not merely part of the learning process. So DoD sets up studies that analyze and refine options to be evaluated by multiple boards which will inform further studies … so that no plan has to be wrong (or finished quickly). The area where this is most painful is software and electronics hardware procurement. DoD buys customized lines of code and motherboards the same way it buys aircraft carriers … because that is THE process. THE process does, in fact, work because US Military technologies continue to outperform competitors’ rival gear. However, the process is outdated by commercial standards and not capable of responding rapidly to emerging battlefield environments.

It sounds like more hot air and nice ideas and more jargon, but no concrete ideas. It sounds like his way of making the military procurement better and more efficient is by throwing more, easy money at it.

Let's go Anduril! Awesome to see them really push the US MIC

2022 Defense Spending US: 877 Billion(14% of US govt budget) China: 228 Billion(7% of Chinese govt budget) Russia: 81 Billion(25% of Russian govt budget) The biggest threat to the US is continued overspending on defense. Defense contractors are greasing the wheels on the Democrat and Republican sides.

I beg to differ about one thing. It was not socialist planning in defense what killed the industrial base, but the unbounded capitalism with mergers and acquisitions with concentration of power in a few corporate players. The sercret is to enfore antitrust laws. plus. there is no market without the state because there is no trade without property rights and rules either.

imagine having Joe Pesci teaching you history.

You lost me at "It's very difficult for our political system to spend that much money on people from the lower rungs of our society or the middle rungs of our society"... No, it's not. It spends trillions a year on those groups. But if your argument is that most of the money it spends gets eaten up by the bureaucracy and never makes it to the intended target or, if you're making the better point that the programs that exist seem to be doing more harm than good, then I'm with you. But it's not a lack of money, it's a lack of understanding and treating the problem and using government programs to subsidize the very behaviors that keep those groups from developing human capital.

450000 cars a week from that Tesla factory eh? Hope your book has better fact checking 20:47

Preparing for forever wars forever.

Analysis that is incisive and easy to understand - this man has gained a fan. Hopefully he is heeded by western capitals.

Fascinating presentation. The Navy had a high / low combination of ships in the 1970s/80s.

I do not see the DoD procurement system "rewarding people who have the ability to get things done". I see a system in which the guys with the best lobbyists get the contract. I see a system where Space X had to sue the DoD in order to BE ALLOWED TO BID on launch service contracts. While Chris makes many good points, the fact is that the corruption in the current US Defense Procurement System approaches Russian levels. We could easily lose a major war because of this.

I am upset that for all the money that has been spent we cannot even clear out a mine field!

Very interesting. I’m glad this came up in my feed.

After nearly 25m, I still have no idea what the moneyball concept is as he applies it to his topic.

Genius. Let's compete with China on who can make the most small electronic devices. Why didn't I think of that?

You beat it by issuing a bond, building out your supply chain, and then offering turn key solutions, while opening up your supply chain to other defense contractors to improve their efficiency. There is no other way. We cannot expect the red tape to change to save itself, it can't. Thus, we need to walk around the red tape, support it, and get it back on its feet. We can not rely on the system to save itself. This is a reoccurring problem that happens ever ~100years, the existing power is yet to get it right, but it doesn't mean that it is impossible.

Absolutely not. CBO projected trillion dollar+ deficits (forever) and that was before covid. Even with absolutely zero defense budget we still have an annual deficit that exceeds projected growth. This is not sustainable, and it doesn't matter if you can outspend Russia or China if it means you have to collapse your economy doing it. We're at 33 trillion in debt with people actually starting to feel the effects of inflation now, how many more decades can this go on? "Please innovate and have startups, we'll guarantee money" is not necessary, we can produce what we need with less money with procurement reform (cost plus contracting a scalpel not a sledgehammer, eliminate requirement creep, stockpile vs just in time production, having competing companies build the winning design, eliminate the jones act, eliminate revolutionary development and focus on evolutionary, etc)

Is he arguing for high tech terrorism vs coordinated warfare? Its ironic that he is blaming the command control for addapting too much from their rival - Soviet Union, and at the same time arguing for basically jahadi methods of warfare.

46:50 you are name checking McNamara without simultaneously being ashamed

28:00 Where the good stuff starts.

this goes hard

Talking about deterring a country of 1.4 billions

Great discussion, thanks

GREAT upload

Every military discussion = more money. Is there no way to reduce the costs w/ this type of alternative force?

Sorry but how can you claim that China's state-led system is more capable of producing ships while also arguing that "capitalism" is the solution to the US lack of production capabilities? The whole deindustrialization process was caused by "free market" forces, which don't care about national security or ethics. Capital moved to China because of cheap labour and the Communist government's incentives for local production. The issue with the US is that it abandoned its mixed market economy and demonized the idea of creating a framework that rewards local production as a means to strengthen the US. Cheap electronics and cheap clothes made by cheap labour have become the mantra to distract people from inflation in housing and education, Wall Street's casino economy and the fact that we have been transferring wealth and expertise to the largest one party dictatorship the world has ever seen.

Recommended term for a drinking game while listening to this: "monopsonistic"

20:54 that’s Tesla production per year instead of per week - still great comparison. Thanks for your work

👍 hadn't heard the word "monopsony" since college economics class.

Here is an idea; make friends and preach peace

Strange to refer to these problems as resembling soviet central planning, when it's corporations and their lobbyists that have driven these problems he's citing.. more like crony capitalism and corporatisation, than soviet central planning...

The thesis is: "Instead of investing in small numbers of large, expensive, heavily manned military platforms, the United States must rapidly field large numbers of smaller, lower-cost, autonomous systems." Was the case made that ... Many Small is better than a Few Big? It probably is correct however I would like to have that demonstrated. i.e. it is suggested by the presenters that a few big aircraft carriers are worse than many small new autonomous systems. Alternatively, are 100 expensive generation 5 fighters Not as good as 500 AI operated generation 4 fighters? (I would bet the Gen 5 fighters would win). There is strong merit in unleashing American innovation and ingenuity. However, is this generally understood in the Pentagon, by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, current or past Secretaries of State? The presenter did say a "new consensus is emerging". Not clear that "consensus" has the same meaning or intention as the presenter.

@1:11:46 Prof Kotkin is a bit incorrect about the military being comprised of a significant portion of those from deprived socio-economic backgrounds - this is a Hollywood and pop music trope due to Vietnam and McNamara's reckless induction programme. Since the '80s the volunteer army is middle-class. Today, the lowest socio-economic quintile is 13% of the military. The top quintile is 18%. The second, third, and fourth quintiles are over represented. Why? Mostly due to tertiary educational expense. The wealthy can pay and the very poor are provided all kinds of financial assistance. The middle-class doesn't have the wealth and has less access to leg-up programmes. Further, the military is selective. Didn't graduate high school? Tough time to get in. Gang membership? Same. Conviction? Nope. Poor Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test (heavily g-loaded) result? One won't be inducted. Are all people from the lowest quintile this? No. But it skews more so.

39:55 When Stephen Kokin begins to summarize the actions of the Chinese, I am hearing portions of Sun Tzu's book, "The Art of War".

Essentially he is correct..

15:45 "the technological changes advantaging the defender." Since America is always the attacker, that's a problem...

Government should work to ensure profitable, full employment and the economy to support it. That will boost the economy and reduce wealth transfer needs. Schooling should be changed to a voucher system. Education department is $80B annually. Universities should start spending their endowments - after all it was tax deductible.

232 times the ship building? We're gonna be dead soon if you guys don't do something. Seriously.

Tesla sold 1.3 million cars last year,they arent making 50k per week at a single factory

Our disconnect between combat effectiveness and civilizational habits is creating an unintentional market of 'not my fault'. This is the essence of corruption. If we would like to fortify ourselves against corruption, we must find the right mixture of synthesis between existing markets and procurers, as well as new markets and speculators. TBH this looks like it requires a tournament structure. If college teams were better integrated into defense procurement, then we would have a more ready available market of enthusiastic suppliers.

Can somebody tell me why we can't have people like Steven Kotkin as Secretary of State? VDH as Secretary of War? Dr. Thomas Sowell in charge of race relations?

20:45 no way Tesla is producing 500k cars per week homie

Is he running for the Presendancy? He should.

20:45 Tesla produces 5k cars per week not 50k homie, maybe 7k on the high end

Bingo! Lean & Mean no paper pushers makers and designers

Funny that this has "Moneyball" in the title the day that everyone is talking about Michael Lewis beclowning himself re: FTX & SBF

Very enlightening but not in a comfortable way lol😢

While Elon has not done well with Twitter/X, he is good at manufacturing, and it’s because he get bored not doing enough. Maybe you should ask Elon to help with some of this manufacturing ? He would probably suggest mass manufacturing 20+ different types of drones, which have proved so useful in Ukraine.

Could the services also produce?

Chris’s commenting that US has 300 ships like it’s not enough. Or 69 subs aren’t enough. When they can all carry nuclear warheads. Einsteins rolling in his grave.

⭐

You’ll need an overwhelmingly different mindset that gets away from supercarrier thinking, ridiculously expensive aircraft, and focused planning that doesn’t result in LCS crap. Stop tossing out technology buzzwords and come up with philosophical directions that provide real solutions to confronting and overcoming adversaries. We also need to screen the flag officers more carefully. We can identify flag officers by the politicians who nominated them. “Obama’s admirals.” “Biden’s generals.” Etc Flags are America’s resources

People have choices on line. Target Best Buy?

25 minutes in. This guy needs to be real. The real issue is why doesn't our youth want to sign up for military services? I think we know why

The Zumwalt destroyer is a great ship, but it should be designed like a Swiss Army knife -proof of concept exercise. Try the components separately and make arms systems interchangeable. Design fixed ship plans, then build one or two and try out the hull and size, then modify succeeding ships. There are numerous versions of the Arleigh Burke destroyers over decades. Zumwalts were essentially rejected due to problems with their 155mm autoloading cannon with new tech with minor rocket assist and aim-ability. Currently, the 155mm round is used widely in Ukraine and in various US Army weapons, in various degrees of sophistication. Make the ship use modular construction. Weapons, electronics, engines, should be easily changed or changed in future versions. Musk is using that "Design, test, fix/upgrade, test" development model in his rockets. When possible, develop, perfect, and use widely. Zumwalts are around 50% greater displacement allowing far greater fuel and ammunition capacity with only 100 extra feet of length. He who runs out of ammo, range, and speed first loses the battle. See online war games.

No substitute for barrels and bodies.

It would be interesting to here a discussion about the impact of screening out the dedicated officers and enlisted through demanding WOKENESS and tossing out people who recognized that there were problems with the mRNA vaccine. Has this weakened our armed forces? WWII was won by junior officers and enlisted men who could think for themselves and take over when needed. Can our current forces still do this?

could the U.S. be facing a doomsday gap...?

There is nothing inherently wrong with the PPBE System except for the fact that everyone involved tries to do everyone else's jobs while ignoring their own responsibiities. What's required is discipline. In order to have discipline within the system, definitions are necessary. Sadly, this whole discussion lacked any clear definitions of what is wrong and what is being proposed. Frankly, this whole production was Kamala-esque. Nothing but a word salad, leading nowhere.

The things produced in 1944-1945, were much simpler than todays technologies, and could be much more easily produced by general manufacturers. Today for example, you need lots of specialised microchips just as one example.

I signed out about the 25 minutes mark when Brose claimed that Ukraine has fought Russia to a standstill. In your dreams, Brose!

If it were not for Hoover's and FDR's Great Depression, the US and Europe may have been too strong to be attacked.

This talk is disturbing in several ways. I wish I could think of what they are.

Competition is a sin…

22:00 Ukraine didnt hit 50% of Russias combat power

Bring on the mech suits and kamikaze drones!!!!

The problem cant be money lol..US defense budget is close to 900bil$$$!! a year now..China not even half of that..US should be able to crush China,Russia and few more together lol..with all that cash throw in the game for year after year

Something I wrote upset KZfaq. They have deleted it; Yet everything I wrote is still here, I think? Writing this as a bookmark. This article is about the 1957 novel. For the 1966 film, see They're a Weird Mob (film). First edition (publ. Ure Smith) They're a Weird Mob is a popular 1957 Australian comic novel written by John O'Grady under the pseudonym "Nino Culotta" I wonder if it was the above bit? Using this to test it out.

Set up a rumble account.

kind of, kind of, kind of appropriately inept to be at home with his political/industrial/academic coward peers

Kokin talking listen !

Typical US warmongering rant

I listened to Mr. Kotkin’s introduction. I was reminded of a 2006 encounter I had in Boston with Arthur Schlesinger Jr.. If we were to go by the official records of the day, he was absolutely right in his assessment of the situation, except for one thing, to which he stipulated by one of his characteristic omissions, by denying one fact and not denying the other. If one goes by both the public record and documentation not public at the time or since, Dr. Schlesinger was a fool. I went back to the homeless shelter (public documentation) as nothing but a crazy bum in a filled up city (“crazy bum” was a fact to which Dr. Schlesinger did not stipulate). My point is that if one headhunts the most important information from lists of information, one ends up with whatever is left. Someone asked me last week to describe what I do. I replied, “take the lists of important information of ten topics I am involved with. Then take out the two most important items on each list. What remains is your list. I get that and the top twenty items.” I could continue, but I won’t. Except to say that John McCain made the same mistake that Dr. Schlesinger made, from 2000 to 2017. I had some hope in late summer 2000, when Senator McCain, riding in a Duck Boat, grabbed the microphone from the tour guide, looked over at me, sitting on a Copley Square bench, and said, “Get a job, ya bum!”. I listened to a short part of Mr. Brose’s argument, one which I basically know, and would say that he has a chance at doing better than his old boss did over a 17 year period, in regard to the headhunted-from-public-discussions 3-5 most important issues of the 21st Century to date. What once amazed me was the inability of an allegedly competing press and allegedly competing nations, to discuss any of these 3-5 things. I might also add that the geniuses have played similar games with Tom Sowell’s work on economic/political history. Tom’s body of work is what I call a “truth sink” which almost never discharges any truth, except among a small circle of people.

Jesus I don’t have time for this blather. Need chat gpt to summarize in 3 minutes

Sadly, this discussion comes twenty years too late. Our MIC has entrenched corruption, ossified procurement systems. Game over.

How about instead of pissing of and making war with rivals, you stop pushing conflict and war and take a peaceful approach? Then everybody can keep their weapons in the museums.

Nope not that.

Are these American think-tanks still claiming that Ukraine has reduced Russia's military capability by 50%? At most, they've managed to reduce Russia's initial incursion force by 50%... but Russia has more than restored that force, indeed increasing it by 90% in *each* of 3 mobilizations, whilst Ukraine is now reduced to drafting women into their military, with only a couple of thousand of its original military personnel still able to fight. Perhaps these Americans actually believe that the troops Ukraine has in their imagination will be effective on the real world battlefield. To my mind, the instant someone engages in that sort of wishful thinking borne of willful ignorance, *all* of their credibility evaporates.