The livestream today broke down the re-industrialization of the United States with John Lott and Brando Brandolini d’Adda of New Vista Capital, mapping WHERE the defense and manufacturing buildout is happening, WHY it is already visible in rates and the economic data, and HOW investors can position across the entire stack. I would encourage you to reach out to Brando or John on Twitter if you want to learn more about the defense space or New Vista Capital.
Main takeaways from the macro playbook section:
Re-industrialization is WHY interest rates are not lower right now: the US is retooling hardware (manufacturing, defense, energy) at the same time AI retools software, and the convergence of the two is the defining investment backdrop.
The 1990s post-Cold War consolidation left the defense primes structurally slow and wrongly incentivized; Anduril, Palantir and SpaceX broke the model, and hundreds of startups are now being funded across the stack using first-principles vertical integration, WHERE the best part is no part and cost is driven to the commodity floor.
Ukraine and Iran proved kinetic munitions are exhaustible and magazine depth wins: two to three interceptors per cheap Shahed drone is economic suicide, so the near-term trade is rebuilding the magazine while directed energy and electronic warfare take over the defensive layer over time.
China is the supplier to both sides of the Ukraine battle line (bearings, batteries, small electronics), controls over 90 percent of critical minerals processing and out-produces US shipbuilding by more than 200 times; the industrial base, not any single weapon, is America’s most important economic asset.
The US wins factories through automation, not labor: New Vista portfolio company Deterrence is using physics-based AI to lift General Dynamics’ 155mm shell throughput toward Chinese and Russian rates, because the skilled-trade base has collapsed to the point WHERE only a few dozen welders in the country can work on nuclear submarines.
Space is an active theater, no longer a science experiment: Starship-scale launch, orbital data centers and contested satellite activity mean a single nuclear detonation in low earth orbit would erase GPS and commercial connectivity, making space infrastructure one of the largest unpriced opportunities of the next decade.
You can find the free recording on the US Re-Industrialization Playbook here in the YouTube video:
Tomorrow’s Livestream: The Global Impulse To Devalue: US Interest Rates and The Dollar:
Tomorrow’s livestream focuses on the current drivers of US interest rates and the dollar. We will map WHY the geopolitical tension with China is creating a global impulse to devalue currencies relative to the Yuan.
Paid subscribers can join the livestream with this link (the first half will be free and streamed to Twitter and YouTube, where the second half will only be available on Substack for paid subscribers):
Here is the transcript that you can feed into AI to ask questions to synthesize ideas:
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The 'already visible in rates and the data' point is the part most equity investors underweight. From where I sit selling premium, a structural re-industrialization bid under rates changes the whole vol regime, not just equity leadership. It keeps the front end sticky, which keeps the term structure in contango and quietly caps how cheap downside protection ever gets. Positioning across the stack is the right frame, I'd just add that the vol stack tends to reprice too, and usually before the equity one does.
Capital Flows nails the mechanism the rate-cut crowd keeps refusing to price: you don't get cheap money while the real economy is bidding for steel, silicon and turbines all at once. Capex that has to happen doesn't ask the dot plot for permission.
Here's the part that should reframe it for anyone still betting on a 2019 redux. Construction of computer and electronics factories ran around 3% of all US manufacturing construction back in 2016. By mid-2024 it was nearly 60%. One category ate the entire re-industrialization wave. That's not a cycle you cut into, it's a decade-long draw on capital sitting under the front end, and it isn't moving.
I don't fade structural demand for a slogan. The money's going into concrete, not parked at zero. Trade the regime you're actually in.