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Defense & Industrial Base

Defense

Budget-line archaeology over press-release coverage. Who actually gets paid, what actually gets built, and how the industrial base is being rewired.

Defense & Industrial BaseRCR–2026–021

The New Industrial Base

Castings, energetics, shipbuilding suppliers, and allied co-production: a tour of the hidden supply chains that decide whether the West can actually arm itself.

28 JUL 2026 · 5 min
Defense & Industrial BaseRCR–2026–020

Software Is Becoming a Weapon

Targeting, electronic warfare, and command-and-control are turning into software problems. Here's why the Pentagon historically bought software badly, and how Palantir and Anduril became the template for what's next.

28 JUL 2026 · 5 min
Defense & Industrial BaseRCR–2026–019

Defense Manufacturing Returns

Shipyards, munitions plants, and a workforce that barely exists anymore: inside the physical rebuild of American defense manufacturing, and why it keeps running behind schedule.

28 JUL 2026 · 5 min
Defense & Industrial BaseRCR–2026–018

Why Drone Warfare Changed Forever

Ukraine proved that cheap mass can beat exquisite machines. The cost-exchange math behind that lesson is rewriting how every military on Earth spends money.

28 JUL 2026 · 5 min
Defense & Industrial BaseRCR–2026–017

The Autonomous Defense Stack

The military is quietly building its own version of the computing stack — sensors, networks, autonomy software, and cheap platforms — and the companies that own each layer are not the ones you'd expect.

28 JUL 2026 · 5 min
Defense & Industrial BaseRCR–2026–003

The Arsenal Gap: Rebuilding the Defense Industrial Base

America spent two decades making its weapons factories efficient for peacetime. Now it's learning that rebuilding real capacity takes a lot longer than writing a check.

24 JUL 2026 · 5 min
The Morning Signal

The briefing, before it's obvious.

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