Q believe Palmer has said in an interview that, um, as we think about competition with China, it's going to be hard to match the, the scale from the get-go, but where we can continue to, to, to win is in innovation and R&D, and that can make up for it. How would you edit that characterization, or why don't you want to flesh out more of that, what that means?
A Well, I, I think the, um, like, so the US has taken this strategy, uh, over the last 20 or 30 years based on this, like, probably very anomalous and incorrect Gulf War experience, where the US, having prepared to fight on, like, the most aggressive ally with the Soviet Union, had invested in all this technology, believed that somehow punching down on a third world nation and winning was indication that the strategy was, was vindicated. And so it went down this, like, like this conclusion of technical superiority is the only strategy and that every marginal improvement we can make to these things being exquisite, these weapons, these aircraft, all these things was, was going to be the dominant strategy. Um, and then Ukraine happens and, you know, the reality ended up being much more historically common that these wars are protracted, that they are industrial in scale. And that the, uh, probably if you were to bring it down to one variable, the amount of kilograms that the, you know, you can throw at each other turns out to probably be the, the single most important factor. Things have to be technically superior, all this stuff, but like just mass really does matter. And so I think the, you know, the technical superiority is a huge advantage, right? Like we're not gonna just out produce China on like, you know, dumb ammunition, right? Like that, That clearly we, we have to have a…
AI assessment note: “industrial production has a deterrence factor all itself, and that it is critical”