How America builds real things again
- Stephen McBride with Dan Steinhart
- Apr 27
- 8 min read
Updated: Apr 28
Tariffs are dominating the news. We all agree America must build more. A nation that builds is resilient, innovative, and prosperous.
But taxing foreign goods is, at best, a temporary kickstart because it is restrictive. It creates winners and losers and ultimately, shrinks the pie.
Instead, America should embrace its superpower: innovation. Innovation brings abundance, where everyone wins.
Imagine a handful of people overseeing thousands of robots running a factory. Now imagine if America were full of these factories. We could produce 1,000X more stuff for a fraction of today’s cost.
Thankfully, there’s a special place in California where this future is unfolding. Ambitious founders there work 14 hours a day and sleep in their offices as they lead America’s real reindustrialization charge. They're leveraging AI, robotics, 3D printing, and advanced software to remake “Made in USA.”
I recently went to El Segundo to meet with these founders. Let’s discuss 3 of them… including the one I would choose if I could invest in only one manufacturing startup.
"We win by being 100X better"
That’s what Rangeview co-founder Aeden Gasser-Brennan said when I asked: How, exactly, does America reindustrialize?
In Rangeview’s "cyber foundry,” robotic arms glide under an eerie orange glow, perfectly calibrated for the light-sensitive processes taking place. Hyper-advanced 3D printers whir, forming intricate parts like this.
What impressed me most about Rangeview was the rigorous thinking behind it. Aeden and his co-founder Cameron Schiller analyzed over 100 manufacturing processes. They zeroed in on the one most ripe for disruption: investment casting.
Investment casting is like high-precision metal sculpting. It’s a centuries old technique, essential for creating detailed parts too intricate for traditional machining.
Rangeview is pressing “fast forward” on this ancient industry. They’re 3D printing casts, directly from a digital file, that molten metal can be poured into. They’ve cut 8 steps out of the usual 18-step process for making some of the world's most complex parts. Forget weeks or months waiting for molds. Rangeview can go from digital design to castable pattern in days or even hours.
Aeden sees this breakthrough as key to making America a manufacturing powerhouse again. He pointed to Shenzhen, China, which churns out roughly 90% of the world's electronics. Shenzhen’s critical advantage is proximity. "The factories are right next to the designers, which are down the road from the port... which is only a mile away from the mine..."
Rangeview wants to help turn El Segundo into America's Shenzhen. It’s working! I felt this energy in Gundo. Startups are clustered together, fostering collaboration. It's a tight, walkable ecosystem buzzing with brilliant minds tackling hard problems.
Aeden lamented that too many bright minds have been focused on stuff like "getting groceries 20 minutes faster. There needs to be a resurgence of people building real things."
I agree! A generation of bright young kids went to work for Google and Facebook, figuring out how to get us to click more ads. Sad. But the tide has turned in Gundo.
The 10X Leap “Made in America” Needs
The digital revolution skipped over American factories. They’re still trapped in analog hell. Dirac founder Fil Aronshtein is bringing manufacturing into the 21st century by building “the anti-software, software company."
Imagine buying an IKEA bed. But instead of getting a step-by-step assembly guide, you got a digital file, from which you had to manually create the guide yourself. Believe it or not, this is how almost all factories still work today.
Fil told me: "Drafting work instruction involves a manufacturing engineer getting a CAD file over email from a mechanical engineer. They pull it apart and figure out what order to do all the assembly in. This means taking hundreds of screenshots and then throwing them together into a several hundred-page PowerPoint over the course of weeks or months."
Dirac is transforming factories with its BuildOS software. Now the folks who actually build stuff can simply “drop” a CAD file into BuildOS. It spits out clear, step-by-step assembly instructions in minutes.
A junior employee at one of Dirac’s customers, Southwest Antennas, used BuildOS to create a 65-page instruction set in 4 days. Before it would’ve taken the head engineer 4 weeks. Talk about a total game changer. It’s like ChatGPT for mechanical engineers… on steroids.
That's the kind of 10X+ leap “Made in USA” needs. One Italian client, using the software for the first time, said in his thick accent: "It's a magic!"
Dirac embodies a key lesson we learned in Gundo: to reindustrialize, we must fuse hardware and software. Dirac’s tools make American factories dramatically more effective by giving them digital superpowers.
This makes US workers competitive globally and gives us a real shot at revitalizing the Rust Belt.
Step inside this 100,000 sq. ft. factory in Torrance, CA…
And you’ll find rows of machines humming day and night, cutting and carving parts with precision finer than a human hair.
Autonomous carts ferry raw aluminum. Robots unload the carts. Laser scanners track the wear on tools to the nanometer. If a spindle vibrates out of spec, software stops the line before a single defective part is born.
Hadrian builds autonomous factories that churn out high-precision aerospace and defense parts. Think turbine blades for SpaceX rockets or components for Lockheed Martin jets.
Hadrian can deliver parts 10X faster and 50% cheaper than the industry standard. It’s slashed some lead times from 18 weeks to days.
One day we might look back at this little-known startup as the defining company of our generation. The one who helped America reinvent its military to stay dominant.
The US military has a manufacturing problem. Over half of its F-16s are grounded due to part shortages. The US sent Ukraine three years’ worth of Javelin and Stinger missiles. They were depleted within three weeks.
Hadrian founder Chris Power calls it a “lethality mirage.” You can design all the big, exquisite weapons you want. But if you can’t make enough of them, you’ll lose.
Chris knows great powers rise and fall based on their industrial capacity. America won WWII not because it had better weapons, but because it could produce more planes, tanks, and ships than its adversaries.
Chris embodies the American dream. He arrived in the US from Australia with $6,000 in his pocket a few years ago. His goal was to build the “anti-decline company,” using AI and robotics to reindustrialize America.
Hadrian’s genius is recognizing you can't fully automate manufacturing. Instead, it automates 70-80% of processes while building elegant human-in-the-loop systems for the last 20%.
It’s also making high-tech manufacturing jobs more accessible. Hadrian can turn someone with no manufacturing background into skilled a machinist in 30 days. It’s literally creating the new manufacturing workforce.
Hadrian hit over $20 million in revenue in their first year of operations. Now its preparing to "copy-paste" its automated model across America like Chick-fil-A franchises. Its next factory in Texas will stretch 300-400,000 sq. ft. In Hadrian’s business model, the factory is the product.
If I could invest in only one manufacturing startup, Hadrian would be it. Hadrian is writing the next chapter of the great American manufacturing comeback. What a story it will be.
We must reimagine manufacturing not as a relic of the past but as the foundation of our future. We’ll only achieve this with:
Relentless innovation
Hadrian's robo-factories. Rangeview's cyber foundries. Dirac's automated instructions. These companies (and many others) are applying innovative ferocity to the physical world. They’re turning "Made in USA" from a nostalgic bumper sticker into the mark of the most advanced manufacturing ecosystem in the world.
What’s our role? You’re a Rational Optimist, so you know a clear hopeful picture of the future can inspire real change.
Our mission starts at the dinner table. Tell your kids and grandkids about robot factories. Inspire them with stories. Turn this letter into bedtime reading.
I first visited New York City when I was 17. I’ve never been more inspired than when I first gazed up at the Empire State Building. “They built this in 400 days, how?”
That audacity defines America. It’s how we crack open our potential and unleash the builders.
Let’s frack manufacturing
By Dan Steinhart
America outsourced manufacturing for a reason: it isn’t very profitable. Writing software, providing services, or designing the iPhone in Cupertino but assembling it in China are much more lucrative.
We’re not going to solve our “build nothing” problem by going backwards. We’ll need to raise standards of living in the process. Luckily, we’ve solved a similarly “unsolvable” problem before.
You may be old enough to remember how hopelessly dependent the US was on Middle Eastern oil. “Peak oil” seemed to guarantee America was stuck as an energy beggar.
Today the US produces more oil than any country in the history of the planet:
We have frackers and their relentless innovation to thank for our energy independence. Given we now depend on Chinese factories as much as we once depended on Saudi oil, let’s look at how America did it.
1) We innovated.
We didn’t solve our oil problem by rationing gasoline or tariffing Saudi Arabia. We innovated.
American drillers once needed $70 oil to break even. Now, certain projects are profitable near $30. Not because they got lucky and struck more oil. But because roughnecks in West Texas reinvented every aspect oil extraction to become the world's most elite operators.
American frackers:
Discovered that horseshoe wells, which go sideways and take a U-turn underground, can cut costs in half.
Created robo drills that steer themselves, automatically adjusting to stay within an oil-rich sweet spot.
Revolutionized sand logistics, building infrastructure like the Dune Express. The world’s longest conveyor belt, it can move 13 million pounds of fracking sand a year. The Dune Express replaces 400 truckloads of sand a day, cutting traffic, emissions, and costs.
2) We went forward, not backwards.
We did not go back to burning dirty coal.
Instead, America’s total carbon emissions have dropped 20% since peaking in 2006. Not because of solar or wind, but because of natural gas. Fracking made natural gas so cheap, it replaced coal as America's No. 1 power source.
In manufacturing, going backwards would be making sneakers in American factories again.
Going forward looks like Hadrian’s state of the art factories where 3D printers whir and robots glide to make high-value-added products.
3) We grew a lot wealthier in the process
The “father of fracking” George Mitchell first lost millions trying to unlock the Barnett Shale formation in Texas. He finally succeeded after 16 years and sold Mitchell Energy for $3.5 billion in 2002.
Thanks to men like George Mitchell and countless anonymous innovators, America now generates $1.8 trillion per year from fracking. Fracking has also generated hundreds of thousands of good jobs.
Not to mention the incalculable benefits all Americans have enjoyed from cheap energy.
4) It started with a story
After meeting with futurist Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s, fracking father George Mitchell realized civilization faced catastrophe without new energy sources.
That vision kept him pushing forward for 16 years, even when bankruptcy loomed.
Here’s the story today:
America can't build stuff. We can't compete with China. Factories are never coming back.
Like peak oil, “peak manufacturing” is an illusion. By applying its innovation superpower, America can again be the world’s powerhouse of building stuff, while generating trillions in new wealth.
In 20 years, we could be producing more stuff than China. They’ve already gotten started in El Segundo.
From our mailbox
We always enjoy reading your feedback. Here’s a note from Rational Optimist member Chris:
I can’t describe how happy I am that I subscribed to you guys. Your newsletters are thrilling and inspiring; just the thing in a world which is – as you continuously point out – overloaded with stories of how the end is near in every possible way. Please keep up the good work!
Thanks for the kind words, Chris! And thank you for helping us spread the message of rational optimism. We’re glad to have you in our tribe.
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Stephen McBride and Dan Steinhart are co-founders of the Rational Optimist Society.
