Computer Chips Are the Most Magnificent Things Humanity Has Ever Made
They power our phones, cars, dishwashers—and the A.I. systems that prop up the economy. They’re also at the heart of fierce geopolitical rivalry. Gideon Lewis-Kraus reports.
supply-chain
A Crane Factory in Vietnam Taught Me There Is No “Next China” -- At least not yet
The author Zhang Weijie (张纬杰) is a Chinese manufacturing professional who has spent years working abroad—across the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia—witnessing firsthand what happens when Chinese industry goes global.
Specialty Steel Squeeze Drives EU Transformer Shortage
Grid transformers remain in short supply
Frontier | Winston (@frontiermap)
A damaged large transformer on the US grid can take five years or more to replace. The country has between 4,900 and 6,799 of them, and about 90% of the electricity it consumes passes through at least one. It imported 82% of the large transformers it bought in 2019. Bushings…
Mining
Colorado has the two US mines dedicated to molybdenum. Molybdenum is a metal used mainly as an alloying agent in cast iron, steel and superalloys. Henderson is an underground mine that opened in 1976. The ore travels to the mill on a conveyor 15 miles long, and ten of those…
Can the US build a DJI?
How DJI achieves its exceptional margins, from a teardown of two popular drones.
Frontier | Winston (@frontiermap)
One Army plant in Kingsport, Tennessee, is the only US manufacturer of the military explosives RDX and HMX. The plant, Holston, supplies most of the explosives used in US bombs, missiles and artillery shells. In 1980 five US plants could make about 119 million pounds of RDX a…
How microfactories are changing the manufacturing playbook
These small, modular facilities are leveraging robotics, additive manufacturing and advanced technologies to alleviate long lead times for parts and components.
This Screw Is Needed for Missiles and Planes. Buying One Can Take Years.
As the Trump administration scrambles to increase the production of munitions, these special screws are expensive and hard to source.
Box shipping reliability the worst since 2022 – 'a new normal', says DP World - The Loadstar
Global container shipping reliability is at its lowest level for four years, as the congestion in Asia continues to disrupt liner operations. According to Sea-Intelligence, schedule reliability fell by 5.9 percentage points month on month in August, to 49.9%, marking the second…
96% of Global Shipbuilding is inside the First Island Chain
This global shipbuilding industry’s concentration inside the First Island Chain is one of the most underdiscussed systematic risks to the global economy.
How a team learns to trust a quote it did not build - The Loadstar
Four in five air freight quotes on cargo.one now go out without human review. Here are the six patterns that build forwarder trust in AI quoting.
We have run enough of these deployments to see the same six patterns emerge.
Food Prices Today: US Produce Price Charts from USDA Data
Food prices today for onions, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, avocados and strawberries: USDA wholesale and shipping point quotes with price charts, change against a year earlier, grocery ad prices by region and daily updates. Latest report 18 Sep 2026.
Manufacturing stack S1-S8
Japan’s Quiet Monopoly Inside Every Robot Joint
Two Japanese companies control roughly half the market for the mechanism that lets robots move, and Chinese suppliers are closing in fast.
The Gas Turbine Supply Chain
Look into how gas turbines work, the challenges, the manufacturing process, and the supply chain involved.
Antimony
Three countries mine about 85% of the world's antimony: China, Russia and Tajikistan. The United States imports 91% of what it uses, more than half of it from China, which banned antimony exports to the US in December 2024. The metal goes into ammunition, lead-acid batteries and…
The Variety Trap
Why Margins Collapse Where Product Variety Explodes, And How Assembly Can Win Them Back
In much of the West, the importance of these close relationships was lost, with competitive bidding and more transactional relationships becoming the norm.
In this model, vertical integration is not about owning everything. It is about owning the layers of the stack where outsourcing would slow learning, limit final integration or affect product performance.
Barge capacity
One 15-barge tow on the lower Mississippi holds about 875,000 bushels of grain, the load of almost 216 rail cars or 1,000 trucks. Source: USDA Agricultural Marketing Service: https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/ReliableWaterwaySystem042025.pdf
The Side Door · Solstice No. 10
Nobody stops the barrels now.
The $850 Billion Returns Problem: Why Reverse Logistics Is Becoming a Margin Engine
Bits & Boxes: Where Intelligent Software Meets Physical Fulfillment: The Orchestration Gap
Possible Production Chokepoint In Large Titanium Castings Vital To U.S. Defense Industry In Oregon
The notion that the U.S.'s large titanium castings capability is concentrated in one 70-mile corridor in Oregon is a production risk scarier than the Bigfoot himself
You’re Not Hallucinating: The Amount of Recalled Food Is Skyrocketing
Here’s a list of every food item that faced a recall in August.
The Store Isn’t Dead—but the Merchant Model Is
Retailers need to stop owning so much inventory risk and start operating more like platforms.
The 30,000-mile fish finger
There’s a good chance the cod on your child’s plate has been around the world and back. Not that you’d learn any of that from the label...
The Egg That Cannot Be Priced
America's biggest egg company can't set the price of a single egg, which is the whole story, in both directions.
Eggs.org is the home of the Egg Clearinghouse,
It is a clearing mechanism for the slack in the system, and it is tiny.
General Dynamics Failed to Build Artillery Shells for the Army — ProPublica
General Dynamics opened a Texas factory to churn out artillery shells for Ukraine, but the machines kept breaking. Robot arms smashed into things. Hunks of metal crashed to the floor. There was even a real-life dumpster fire.
IKEA complexity index
Speaking of IKEA, the IKEA complexity index by Greg Technology is a catalog of 20,000 products ranked by how long they take to build. When you get a PAX corner wardrobe, prepare for a manual in 16 …
Beyond Balloons: The hidden helium crisis
How do we get helium? And what do we use it for?
Oil Refining, explained — Post factum
The Geopolitics of Black Sludge Processing
Inside the First U.S. Aluminum Smelter in 46 Years
The first new U.S. primary smelter since 1980. What it is, how it works, and where its inputs come from.
The Glass Famine
Spies, war, industrial subterfuge and secret recipes. And it all really happened. Honestly, what more could you ask for?
The Chemistry of Chips
The unseen infrastructure of chipmaking
Maersk launches dedicated lithium-ion battery freight service in North America
The new ground transportation offering expands the company’s hazardous materials network as battery production and demand continue to grow.
Home Depot's New Last Mile - Phenomenal World
Home Depot has been on a building and acquisitions spree, rapidly taking over a half-dozen logistics companies. Is it also creating an opportunity for organized labor?
Optical Scale Up Fabrics Are Limited By Manufacturing, Not Architecture
Earlier this spring, AMD, Broadcom, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI formed the Optical ...
The decision to use slow-and-wide is an energy-per-bit argument.
Photonic integration has evolved through three manufacturing eras
This Is Why America Can’t Have Robots And Other Nice Things
Every robot and drone runs on actuators — and China makes 90% of them. Inside the American startups racing to win back the motors the U.S. forgot how to build.
The American Missile Crisis | Contrary Research
A deep dive from Contrary Research.
Turbine Tuesday: Forging
The lost art and Turbine economics
A Bootstrapper's Guide to Re-Industrializing America
I’m a big fan of focusing on things that are within my control. This article is about real actions we can take while we’re waiting for lawmakers to get their shit together. @andrewmccalip, @zanehengsperger, and others have
The Last American Reed Switch Maker
GE killed their biggest competitor. Russia lost another. A Nebraska family kept making the component nobody thinks about, and now they basically own the market.
Can we please talk about WHY we are in a missile shortage?
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill who are being cajoled into spending billions more on the military budget need to read this first
Jones act waiver data reveals universe blocked american trade
China's Indium Phosphide Surge
A Coming Supply Chain Disruption for Global AI Infrastructure
The Protein Shortage Is Coming
Making all that whey is complicated.
4 ways Bazooka rethought its supplier strategy in face of tariffs
The candy maker scrapped its volume-for-price playbook and adopted a collaborative approach to sharing the pain.
The Invisible Landlord of Global Shipping
How Britain built a system where cargo-dependent nations pay rent forever. And why that system is finally cracking.
Why Costco pays $30/hr and Target doesn't
Costco is built different
How Fast Could Robot Production Scale Up?
We look at reference classes, factory buildout timelines, and upstream component supply to estimate plausible production rates for humanoids, quadrupeds, robotic arms, wheeled robots, and drones.