President & CEO @GlennNye recently returned from Ukraine, where he examined a defense production ecosystem built around rapid adaptation between soldiers and manufacturers. In his latest piece for @FirstBreakfast, Nye explores what the U.S. can learn from Ukraine’s approach to building a more adaptive defense industrial base:

This topic is extremely important. Counting out or turning your back on Americans is un-American. We do not need to import talent. We can source it locally and have proved how with a battle-tested roadmap from the Naval Nuclear Power Training pipeline.

As America reindustrializes, industries that are starved for technical talent should study the U.S. Navy’s nuclear training pipeline. Under Admiral Hyman Rickover, the Navy proved that ordinary recruits can transform into elite technical operators through rigorous academics, hands-on qualification, relentless standards, and real responsibility. The Navy nuclear model is simple yet demanding. Students first master fundamentals: math, physics, reactor theory, thermodynamics, electrical and mechanical systems, chemistry, and radiological controls. They must explain, calculate, defend, and prove understanding. Then they move to real nuclear plants, where theory becomes action through oral checkouts, evaluated watches, drills, and qualification under pressure. This rigorous training works because of the culture of excellence instilled by Rickover himself. “Good enough” is not good enough. Competence is built through repetition, ownership, hard study, and instructors who know both the equipment and how to develop people. Qualification is only the beginning. Continuous training, audits, daily drills, critiques, and root-cause analysis keep standards from decaying. Civilian industry can’t simply copy the Navy. Companies can’t compel their employees the way the military can. But they can adapt the principles: paid intensive training, labs, simulations, mentored on-the-job qualification, clear standards, frequent evaluation, strong instructors, career ladders, and retention incentives tied to real advancement. Manufacturing, energy, semiconductors, defense production, data centers, and advanced nuclear all need this mindset. If these industries want workers, they will have to grow their own. Rickover’s legacy is about more than nuclear submarines. It is proof that excellence can be engineered. If America wants to rebuild its industrial strength, it must stop waiting for talent to appear and start replicating the pipelines that can produce it.

Critical Materials Group Co-Founder & CEO Kevin Capozzoli recently joined @Madeline_Zimm on @FirstBreakfast to talk about the moment he realized the depth of the vulnerability in U.S. energetics production and why he couldn't walk away from it. He shares how he went from seeing the problem from the commercial side to connecting with co-founder Travis Swanson and ultimately building CMG to address this gap with an unmet need across defense, commercial, and space applications. Listen to the full episode here.

America's munitions are bottlenecked by a single factory built in 1942. One fire at Holston Army Ammunition Plant—or worse, sabotage—and the U.S. would lose domestic capacity to produce RDX and HMX, two of the military’s workhorse explosives. Now venture-backed startups are trying to do for explosives what SpaceX did for launch: break the government monopoly with a commercially viable alternative. First Breakfast’s @Madeline_Zimm sat down with the founder of one of these startups, Kevin Capozzoli of the Critical Materials Group. Watch their conversation and read Madeline’s profile to learn why private energetics manufacturing might be America's most underrated national security bet.

“Secularists in Silicon Valley are filling the God-shaped hole in their heart with AGI.” - @ssankar “There’s not an empirical basis to believe that such a thing….The models get better. Why do you think that this cliff is gonna happen, or they somehow turn us into house cats?” “The people who have religion are the most skeptical of this. The people who are kind of transhumanists…..it becomes what they wish were true.” “The doomerism of Silicon Valley, it’s both a fundraising shtick where the frontier labs can say, ‘My technology’s so powerful, it’s going to lead to mass unemployment, so you better invest in me or you’re gonna be poor.’” “And also it’s divorced from any sort of reality. They are sitting in Silicon Valley building these models, spending no time on the front lines of how are people using this.” This was filmed 10 months ago……

There is an unseen hand pushing AI safety as a political ideology. Effective Altruists believe a tiny group of technocrats should decide how much technological progress the rest of us are allowed to have…. and how many shrimp your life is worth. You are witnessing their attempted coup.

In the last decade, the Pentagon has lost more than $125 billion because of an outdated budgeting process that requires any unspent, congressionally appropriated dollars to be returned to the Treasury. Billions of budgeted dollars simply vanish instead of being used to replenish munitions stockpiles, procure new technology, or invest in America's defense industrial base. A special fund should be created that the Secretary of War can use to fund enduring priorities at the speed of relevance, @ChairmanG argues. Read in @FirstBreakfast:

On August 5, Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg lit a fire under industry to solve America's munitions production problem. He sent a memo to industry leaders giving them 21 days to submit plans to “drive significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities. . . " We put the question to some of our favorite doers in the industry: If you had free reign to fix America’s munitions bottleneck, what would you propose? It's been three weeks, so we’re sharing the best—and hottest—takes we received. 👇

Analysts and appropriators in the Beltway measure military strength by counting platforms: fighter jets, submarines, aircraft carriers. But a fighter jet without a steady supply of munitions is a liability more than a capability. A submarine stuck in dry dock waiting on spare parts isn’t deterring anyone. As appropriators in Congress consider a historic defense budget, a fundamental mindset shift is needed: Start thinking about manufacturing capacity itself as the strategic asset. Today on First Breakfast, @HudsonInstitute’s Nadia Schadlow and @MarlinspikeVC’s Mislav Tolusic argue that Congress and the Pentagon should adopt a "Capacity-as-a-Service" (CaaS) model to prioritize dynamic production capability over static hardware buys. Borrowing the logic of SaaS, DoW could pay manufacturers ongoing retainers or subscriptions to keep flexible, scalable production capacity on standby—much the same way it already pays commercial shipping companies to guarantee capacity during emergencies. As Congress debates next year's defense budget, the question isn't just what weapons to buy, but what manufacturing capacity to own, fund, or incentivize so industry can produce at whatever scale a future conflict demands. Defense acquisition needs an update to reflect that reality. Read the full argument on our website below 🔗👇