The West Forgot How to Make Things. Now It's Forgetting How to Code
4 hours ago
- #deindustrialization
- #knowledge-loss
- #AI-impact
- Raytheon struggled to restart Stinger missile production after decades, relying on retired engineers and outdated paper schematics, highlighting a loss of manufacturing knowledge.
- The EU failed to deliver one million artillery shells to Ukraine on time due to deindustrialization, single points of failure in supply chains, and lack of surge capacity in defense production.
- The Pentagon's 'consolidate or die' directive in the 1990s led to a 65% reduction in the defense workforce, creating fragile, optimized systems vulnerable to collapse during crises.
- The Fogbank incident demonstrated how classified nuclear material production knowledge was lost when experts retired, requiring costly reverse engineering and revealing critical undocumented impurities.
- Software engineering faces a similar talent pipeline collapse, with AI tools potentially reducing junior hiring and slowing skill development, risking a future shortage of senior engineers with deep system expertise.
- Studies show AI coding tools can increase task completion time for experienced developers, while industry trends indicate declining enrollments in computing programs and reduced hiring of junior engineers.
- Rebuilding industrial or technical capacity takes years, as seen in defense (e.g., Stinger, Javelin, artillery shells), and cannot be accelerated by money or AI alone due to the time needed for experiential learning.