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Authored by Peter H. Diamandis via Metatrends,

I just spent the afternoon at Figure headquarters in San Jose with Brett Adcock and David Blundin, and I’m still processing what I saw.

We’re not talking about concept robots. We’re talking about fully autonomous humanoid robots running neural networks end-to-end, doing kitchen work, unloading dishwashers, organizing packages – for hours at a time, with no human intervention.

Today? Figure’s robots are doing 67 consecutive hours of autonomous work. One error in 67 hours. That’s not a demo. That’s a product.

And here’s what most people don’t understand: the gap between “doing one task really well” and “doing every task a human can do” is collapsing at exponential speeds.

Let me explain why…

NOTE: Brett has been a past Faculty Member at my Abundance Summit, where leaders like him share insights years before the mainstream catches on. In-person seats for the 2026 Summit next month are nearly sold out. Learn more and apply.

The Death of C++ and the Rise of the Neural Net

When I first visited Figure, they had several hundred thousand lines of C++ code controlling the robots. Handwritten. Expensive. Brittle.

Every new behavior required engineers to anticipate edge cases, write more code, test it, debug it. It was the software equivalent of teaching a toddler to walk by writing an instruction manual.

In the last year, Figure deleted 109,000 lines of C++ code.

All of it. Gone.

What replaced it? A single neural network that controls the entire robot: hands, arms, torso, legs, feet. Full-body coordination. Real-time planning. Dynamic response to unexpected situations.

This is Helix 2, their latest AI model, and it’s a fundamentally different approach to robotics.

Here’s why this matters: neural nets learn from experience, not instructions.

You don’t code a robot to “grab a cup.” You show it thousands of examples of grasping objects—different shapes, weights, materials—and the neural net extracts the underlying patterns. It learns what “grasping” is at a representational level.

And once it understands grasping? It can generalize to objects it’s never seen before.

Brett put it simply: “If you can teleoperate the robot to do a task, you can train the neural net to learn it.”

That’s the unlock. If the hardware is capable—if the motors, sensors, and joints can physically perform the movement—then the AI can learn it from data.

Compare that to traditional robotics, where you’d need to write thousands of lines of code for every single new task. That approach doesn’t scale. Neural nets do.

The implication: Every robot in the fleet learns from every other robot’s experience. When one Figure robot masters folding laundry, every Figure robot on the planet instantly knows how to fold laundry.

Humans don’t work like this. Robots do.

Hardware Built Around the Brain

Most people think you design the robot first, then figure out the AI.

Figure did the opposite.

Brett’s team looked at the neural network architecture they wanted to run and asked: “What hardware do we need to make this work?”

That’s why Figure 3 exists. It’s not an incremental upgrade. It’s a complete redesign built around Helix.

Here’s what changed from Figure 2 to Figure 3:

• 90% cost reduction in manufacturing

• ~20 pounds lighter (135 lbs total)

• Palm cameras for occluded grasping

• Tactile sensors in every fingertip

• Passive toe joint for better range of motion

• Soft-wrapped body to eliminate pinch points

• Onboard inference compute (no cloud dependency)

And critically: designed for data collection at scale.

Because here’s the thing — if you’re betting on neural nets, you’re betting on data. The more diverse, high-quality data you collect, the better the robot generalizes.

Figure built their robot to be a data-gathering machine. Every sensor, every camera, every interaction feeds back into the training loop.

And they’re not using off-the-shelf parts. They manufacture their own actuators, hands, battery systems, embedded compute—everything.

Why? Because the technology readiness of existing robotics components is too low. If a vendor’s motor fails in the field, you’re stuck waiting for them to fix it. If you built it yourself, you iterate overnight.

This is vertical integration at its finest. And it’s the only way to move fast enough to win.

The Manufacturing Ramp: From Thousands to Millions

Walking through Figure’s Baku (manufacturing facility) was surreal.

Four production lines. Capacity for 50,000 robots per year when fully ramped.

But Brett’s not stopping there. He’s already planning the next facility. Tens of thousands. Then hundreds of thousands. Then millions.

And here’s the kicker: Figure will use its own robots to build more robots.

They’re putting humanoids on the production lines this year. Robots assembling robots. Robots testing robots. Robots packaging robots.

Why? Because if you’re trying to scale to a billion units, you can’t rely on human labor. You need an exponential manufacturing curve, and the only way to get there is recursive self-improvement.

Think about it: every improvement Figure makes to the robot’s dexterity, speed, and reliability makes it better at building the next generation of robots.

It’s a flywheel. And once it starts spinning, it’s nearly impossible to stop.

Brett estimates they could ship a billion robots today if the AI were fully general-purpose. The demand is there. The capital markets (via leasing models) can finance it. The constraint is solving general robotics.

And that’s exactly what they’re working on.

General Robotics: The Only Milestone That Matters

 

Here’s the thing about humanoid robots that most people—and most companies—don’t get:

Teleoperation is not impressive. Open-loop behaviors are not impressive. One-minute demos are not impressive.

What’s impressive is closed-loop, autonomous work in unseen environments over long time horizons.

Let me break that down.

Closed-loop means the robot is continuously sensing its environment and adjusting in real-time. It’s not replaying a pre-programmed sequence. It’s thinking.

Autonomous means no human in the loop. No remote operator in Tennessee. The robot is making decisions on its own.

Unseen environments means you can drop the robot into a random Airbnb or factory floor it’s never visited, and it figures out how to navigate and work there.

Long time horizons means hours, days, weeks of continuous operation. Not 30-second clips stitched together in post-production.

This is what Brett calls “general robotics,” and it’s the only milestone that matters.

If you can’t do this, you don’t have a product. You have a very expensive remote-controlled toy.

Figure’s current benchmark: four to five hours of continuous neural network operation in logistics, kitchen work, and manufacturing tasks.

Their 2026 goal: Drop a robot into an unseen home and have it do useful work for days with minimal human intervention.

Once they hit that, the game is over. Because if the robot can generalize to any home, it can generalize to any environment. Factories. Warehouses. Hospitals. Senior care facilities. Mining operations. Space stations.

The hard part isn’t building a robot that can do one thing well. The hard part is building a robot that can do everything a human can do.

And Figure is closer than anyone else on the planet.

The Timeline: When Will You Have One?

Everyone wants to know: when can I buy a Figure robot for my home?

Brett’s answer: Not yet. And I’m not going to ship slop.

Here’s his roadmap:

2026: Alpha testing in homes. A small number of robots doing long-horizon work (cleaning, organizing, laundry, dishes) in real households. The goal is to measure human interventions – how often does someone need to step in and help?

Right now, industrial deployments see occasional errors. The target for home deployment is orders of magnitude better.

2027-2028: Scaled home pilots. Tens, then hundreds, then thousands of units. Iterative design based on real-world feedback. Safety validation. Privacy validation. Reliability validation.

2028-2029: Mass production and broad availability.

Why so cautious?

Because Brett learned this lesson at Archer (his eVTOL company): you don’t ship safety-critical systems until they’re ready.

A humanoid robot in your home is around your kids, your pets, your elderly parents. If it drops a pot of boiling water, that’s catastrophic. If it steps on your cat, that’s catastrophic. If it gets hacked and streams your private conversations to the internet, that’s catastrophic.

So Figure is taking the time to get it right.

And honestly? I respect the hell out of that.

Because when Figure does ship, they’ll have a decade head start on everyone else in terms of safety track record, reliability data, and customer trust.

That’s a brand moat you can’t buy.

The Business Model: Leasing Humanoids Like Humans

Here’s the beautiful part of Figure’s go-to-market strategy:

They’re leasing robots the same way you lease humans — by the hour.

Think about it. You don’t “buy” an employee. You pay them a salary. You lease their time and capability.

Figure is doing the same thing. You don’t buy a $20,000 robot. You pay ~$300/month to lease one. That’s $10/day. Forty cents an hour.

Compare that to minimum wage ($15-20/hour in most US states). A Figure robot is 50x cheaper and works 24/7 with no breaks, no benefits, no turnover.

And because it’s a lease, Figure retains ownership. They can remotely update the software. They can recall and upgrade units. They can monitor performance and safety in real-time.

It’s the Apple model applied to robotics. And it’s going to print money.

Brett estimates the market for humanoid robots is half of global GDP: roughly $50 trillion annually. Because half of all economic activity is human labor.

And here’s the thing: the demand is already there.

Figure has signed multiple commercial clients. They’re deploying robots into factories, warehouses, and logistics operations this year. These aren’t pilots. These are revenue-generating contracts.

The bottleneck isn’t demand. It’s supply. It’s solving general robotics and scaling manufacturing fast enough to meet the orders.

When that happens? This becomes the largest economy in the world.

What Comes Next: The Age of Abundance

Let me paint the picture of where this is going.

2030: Every household in the developed world has access to a humanoid robot. You lease it for $300/month. It does your laundry, cleans your house, organizes your kitchen, runs errands.

You come home from work and your robot has already meal-prepped dinner based on your biometric data from your wearable. It knows you’re low on magnesium, so it adjusted the recipe.

2035: There are 10 billion humanoid robots on the planet. Five billion in homes. Five billion in commercial and industrial settings.

The cost of goods and services collapses. Why? Because labor is no longer a constraint. Robots mine the materials, manufacture the products, transport them, and deliver them to your door.

You want a custom piece of furniture? A robot designs it, fabricates it, and assembles it in your garage overnight. Cost: materials + energy. Labor: free.

2040: Robots are building robots. Robots are designing robots. Robots are optimizing supply chains, managing logistics, exploring asteroids, constructing orbital habitats.

Humans are freed from drudgery. We do what we’re best at: creating, exploring, connecting, imagining.

This is the age of Abundance.

And it starts in 2026.

Brett Adcock and his team at Figure are building it. Right now. In San Jose.

I’ve seen it. I’ve walked the floors. I’ve watched the robots work.

And I’m telling you: this is real.

The future doesn’t care if you believe in it. It’s coming anyway.

The only question is: are you ready?

To an Abundant future,

Peter

With the world's attention hyper-focused on fast-paced events in Iran and the effectively shuttered vital oil transit hub, the Hormuz Strait, some significant things were also happening around Taiwan this past week.

The US military confirmed that a P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine patrol aircraft transited the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, a move that predictably drew Beijing's attention.

China said it monitored the US Navy aircraft as it passed through the narrow waterway separating Taiwan from mainland China.

"By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations," the US 7th Fleet said in a statement, adding the transit "demonstrates the United States' commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific."

The latest fly-through comes just weeks before President Donald Trump is scheduled to travel to Beijing for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at hammering out a new trade agreement.

But the diplomatic backdrop is already showing strain, with regional media including The Japan Times saying that Beijing has grown irritated with Washington for failing to engage in serious advance planning ahead of the summit.

China is also without doubt angered as its Iranian oil imports are in extreme jeopardy due to Trump's Iran war, and recent bombing of Kharg Island export depot.

Against that backdrop, the Taiwan Strait patrol looks like a familiar piece of strategic signaling - a reminder to East Asian allies that even as Washington pours military resources into the Middle East, it still intends to project power in the Indo-Pacific.

Iranian oil shipments to China continue for a reason. With a Xi-Trump summit approaching, Washington has incentives to avoid steps that would directly pressure Chinese energy imports. Strategic stability with Beijing is clearly a priority right now. https://t.co/703UEnOmIR

— Craig Singleton (@CraigMSingleton) March 14, 2026

And yet if China were to invade Taiwan tomorrow, there's likely not much Washington could do about it at a moment it is concentrating its firepower and resources on regime change in Iran, alongside its Israeli ally.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

It’s the magic number, the line that’s not supposed to be crossed; when a nation’s public debt finally exceeds its GDP. Historically speaking, it’s not a sign of doom like many economists suggest. Numerous countries have sustained for decades with a ratio of well over 100% and many other factors have to be considered before it’s officially time to panic. Of course, there are some cautionary tales.

Greece and Argentina are two examples. A number of developing countries shave been hit with precipitous decline after they hit the 100% mark. In the case of the US, having access to the world reserve currency changes the dynamic dramatically. Debt does not act like debt in an environment where global trade and investment is mostly is priced in dollars and you control the ability to print those dollars at will.

That said, the recent historic milestone has many people suddenly worried about the state of the US system and the precarious nature of the geopolitical landscape going into the future.

Gross national debt for the US crossed the 100% mark back in 2012. The official public debt touched 101% last month. This factor combined with the inflation of the Biden era and the geopolitical uncertainty of the Trump era has the media talking out loud about the kind of crisis we alternative economists have been warning about for quite some time.

It’s certainly an startling change; alternative economists are no longer the voice in the wilderness. But let’s consider for a moment WHY the mainstream has decided to adopt a crisis posture after so many years of ignoring the obvious.

It’s Okay To Talk About A Crash If It Can Be Blamed On Trump

The corporate media has a clear economic bias; optics must be good for establishment endorsed leaders and optics must remain bad for any political leaders on the naughty list. Regardless of what a person might think of Trump’s presidency so far, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the media spins his every move into a negative, even when he succeeds beyond expectations.

The tariffs are a perfect example – After Trump announced his aggressive strategy to counter outsourcing, the media and Democrats asserted that an unprecedented inflationary disaster was inevitable. This never happened.

They claimed consumers would have to eat the cost of the trade taxes on international corporations. This didn’t happen either. In reality, the CPI barely budged in response to tariffs. Why? Because companies are absorbing the higher costs (as I and some other economists predicted).

The retail markups on goods made overseas are substantial. International conglomerates have plenty of room to take the hit while avoiding raising prices on the shelf. Trump knows this, and anyone who has studied export markets knows this. Yet, the demonization campaign against tariffs was absolutely frantic.

This is just one example of a false threat; an imagined crisis fabricated for the sake of political interests rather than the for sake of protecting the American people. It’s important to be able to discern between very real economic dangers and false narratives designed to target and scapegoat.

Suddenly The Mainstream Is Noticing US Debt

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a Washington-based fiscal watchdog, released a sweeping new report this week warning that policymakers are “woefully underprepared” to handle the next recession or financial shock.

They assert that the national debt crossing the 100% benchmark is one signal among many that the US cannot handle a surprise destabilization event, though they note that interest payments on that debt are the greater concern. By 2036, according to Congressional Budget Office projections, debt is on track to reach 120% of GDP with interest swallowing $0.26 of every dollar the government takes in.

The report also warned about rising inflation dangers associated with monetary policy. This falls in line with reports of tensions between Trump and the Federal Reserve, but corporate news sources are painting the Fed as a kind of “wayward institution” stuck in the middle of a bad situation they have nothing to do with. In reality, the Fed is the cause of most of our nation’s debt and inflation problems; they enable the money printing bonanza and they are unaccountable to the American public.

Fortune Magazine has tied threats of inflation and debt accumulation to the Iran war, and Bloomberg has published articles lamenting an inevitable “wave of global inflation” due to the conflict. I find this fascinating given the media’s refusal to accept that inflation existed after the 2020 election. Bloomberg even asserted that rising inflation was a “mirage” and Fortune reprinted those claims.

The question is not what Trump will do in the face of a crisis event; rather, we must ask what the Fed will do? Will they raise rates again to mitigate inflationary pressure, or will they turn the money printers back on to stave off any potential deflationary consequences. Given their track record, it is likely the Fed will inflate, but high interest rates at this time could also be devastating.

With the GOP ostensibly in control of the government the bankers might be able to divert all blame onto conservatives policies, and to me this is the real concern. Will the Fed pull the plug on the economy simply because they have a convenient scapegoat?

Geopolitical Black Swan Or Minor Blip On The Radar?

Over the past couple years I have warned extensively about war with Iran, specifically in relation to the Strait of Hormuz and the 20% of global oil shipments that travel through it every year. The war itself is superfluous; I have little doubt that the US can and will destroy the majority of Iranian military infrastructure within a couple months. The greater danger is how easy it will be for insurgent elements to keep the strait closed using simple guerrilla tactics.

It doesn’t take much to block up the narrow strait and threaten global oil prices. Securing it would have to be a top priority of the Trump Administration, which seems to be the case given Trump’s latest statements. Troops on the ground are unavoidable to ensure the Hormuz remains clear, and this is going to ruffle a lot of feathers.

The strait is the only legitimate geopolitical leverage Iran has against the US, but not in the way many people assume. It is true that IF the Hormuz remains contested for more than a couple months, the economic effects could cascade into the markets and cause serious instability. However, this instability will initially affect the East, not the West.

Only 7% of US oil imports and 6% of European oil imports pass through the Hormuz. In comparison around 50% of China’s oil imports and 40% of India’s imports rely on the strait. The hardest hit, however, will be Japan, with over 70% of their oil imports relying on ships passing through the Hormuz. And, as most economists know, Japan’s markets are deeply intertwined with US markets through the Yen carry trade.

In Japan, ongoing oil-driven inflation could pressure the Bank of Japan to tighten policy through rate hikes or reduced bond buying. This narrows the carry trade differential, eroding carry profits and potentially triggering an unwind. In other words, it will no longer be cheap for investors to borrow Yen at near zero rates and then buy assets in the US.

Prices would have to rise considerably in order to trigger such a cascade, though. It’s important to note that the panic over an impending energy crisis is currently based on speculation and not legitimate shortages.

When an actual crisis occurs, we’ll know it. When shale oil drillers in the US ramp up production because they KNOW the high prices can sustain them, then it’s time to worry. When we see sustained weekly gas price spikes of 10%-20%, then it’s time to worry. If foreign countries initiate a large scale dump of the dollar as the petro currency, then it’s time to worry.

The war itself would have to carry on for many months to create these conditions and I’m not convinced yet that this will be the case. The expectation among many on the political left (and among libertarians) is that the war in Iran will carry on for years because that’s what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I have to ask this question, though: Has anyone considered the possibility that those wars lasted for decades because they were DESIGNED to go on for decades? Who decided the objectives? Who decided the parameters for success? Who decided that occupation was necessary? It was establishment Neo-cons and Democrats that created the necessity of occupation out of thin air. “Defeating the enemy” became a secondary concern.

The length of the Iran war will not be decided by the current Iranian regime, it will be decided by Trump. If the only objective is to destroy Iran’s ability to project military power and to secure the Hormuz (and avoid occupation of the greater territory), then the war will be short and there will be no energy crisis.

This is not my endorsement of the war in general, just the facts. There are much bigger threats to the US economy and the global economy than Iran right now.

The Real Danger

Iran has the potential to become a “linchpin” disaster, but the conditions are not right for one yet.  For now, I continue to believe that the most significant danger to the global economy and the US economy is still the European oligarchy and their push for war with Russia over Ukraine. Any move by the Europeans to deploy troops to the region could result in a large scale war that would dwarf the events in Iran and completely derail already fragile economic structures.

If you’re worried about global Armageddon, look to Ukraine, not Iran.

The largest secondary hazard is domestic. NGO funded leftist riots, terror attacks and movements to burn the country to the ground in the name of Marxist “deconstruction” are more perilous to the US than most of the populace understands. Add to this the increasing number of Islamic terror attacks and we’ve got a recipe for civil breakdown. Internal insurgencies would have to be handled by the armed citizenry rather than sitting around and relying on the government to do everything.

Then you have the Federal Reserve and the Catch-22 policy conundrum. The central bankers could, theoretically, collapse the US economy at any given moment using the sudden whiplash of a large rate hike or a large stimulus program. The financial system would not be able to adapt this time. With Trump in office I would argue that the bank is MORE likely to do this.

There is a fine line between vigilance and hysteria. We have to be careful not to blackpill ourselves into oblivion over events like tariffs or the war in Iran. That said, there are indeed very real catalysts brewing within geopolitics and on the home front. At bottom, there are people out there that desperately WANT the US to collapse.

For them, every crisis is an opportunity to push their agenda forward whether those crises are engineered or not. By extension, some threats are fabricated and exaggerated to conjure up a public frenzy, manipulate popular opinion and destroy the US from within. Knowing what is real and what is illusion is essential to our nation’s survival.

More than 3 million Iranians have been displaced by the ongoing US-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic, according to the main UN refugee agency. Ayaki Ito, director of the Division of Emergency and Program Support at the UN refugee agency, has described that the US-Israeli attack has already triggered mass internal displacement across Iran.

"Between 600,000 and 1 million Iranian households are now temporarily displaced inside Iran as a result of the ongoing conflict, according to preliminary assessments, representing up to 3.2 million people," Ito said.

The dark and twisted irony in all of this is that Washington and Tel Aviv have claimed they want to "help" the Iranian people go "free"... by bombing them and destroying their civic infrastructure, apparently.

Most of those fleeing are leaving Tehran and other major cities as the air war intensifies and the crisis accelerates.

Though there were Friday scenes of large crowds of Iranian in Tehran streets and city squares defiantly protesting the US attacks - even as bombs fell around them - most Iranians are likely trying a way to flee to the countryside, or stay away from big cities in the homes of relatives.

The number of forcibly displaced people "is likely to continue rising as hostilities persist, marking a worrying escalation in humanitarian needs," the UN official added.

Iran also currently plays host to the largest population of refugees from Afghanistan (with Pakistan also hosting a huge number), in the millions of people. The war in Iran is said to be hitting Afghans hard, as resources must be rushed elsewhere as the bombs fall.

Meanwhile, the death toll from the US-Israeli bombing campaign continues to climb. The official death count is approaching 1500 people, including 165 children killed in a reportedly US double-tap strike on a girls' school.

The conflict is also fueling a parallel refugee crisis across the region, which could also potentially impact some Gulf regions. For example, Bahrain is experiencing some degree of destabilization as its huge Shia population rises up against the Sunni monarchy, and clashes with police have ensued.

In Lebanon, relentless Israeli strikes have displaced almost 15% of the country’s population, more than 800,000 people, monitors have said.

Mass evacuation orders issued by Israel now cover all of southern Lebanon and large sections of the capital, Beirut, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee as the war spreads across the Middle East.

It's obvious that 'wars of choice' never get launched against nuclear-armed powers, and countries like North Korea want to keep it that way, given it is already treated like a 'rogue' state by the West.

Saturday saw Pyongyang engage in more muscle-flexing, as its military fired about 10 ballistic missiles toward the eastern sea, according to South Korea's military said, staging its own show of force as the rival South conducts a joint military exercise with the United States.

Japan's Defense Ministry indicated the warheads landed in waters outside the country's exclusive economic zone, which is somewhat typical anytime the north conducts missile tests.

Regional media further says "The Japanese government has convened an emergency response team consisting of officials from relevant ministries and agencies at the crisis management center in the prime minister's office. The team is collecting information and confirming if there is any damage."

South Korea is meanwhile on high alert and says it has stepped up surveillance and military readiness in light of the new drills.

Pyongyang's actions aren't completely unprovoked, as the muscle-flexing comes as there's the same south of the border, per NBC:

The launches came as the U.S. and South Korean militaries conduct their annual springtime exercises involving thousands of troops while the Trump administration also wages an escalating war in the Middle East.

The war has raised concerns about potential security lapses in South Korea, as local media — citing security camera footage and other images — have speculated that the U.S. is relocating some missile defense assets stationed in the country to support operations against Iran.

To be sure, while the Kim regime traditionally rages over the drills on its border, claiming they are rehearsals for invasion, although it may well be right: US forces have been flooding into the Pacific over recent years with warships, warplanes, missiles and the army all on standby.

However, some of these regional assets - especially anti-air defense systems - are now being transferred over to the Middle East region amid the now over two-week-long Iran war.

Authored by David Dayen via The American Prospect,

One of the more fascinating sidelights of our war of choice in Iran is how it has reinforced the devastating consequences of our hollowed-out industrial base, consolidated commercial sector, and overreliance on long intermediated supply chains.

For example, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz carries implications for not only oil but also fertilizer, right at the height of the spring planting season. About one-third of the world’s fertilizer ships through the strait, and without access, prices have jumped and farmers are anxious. Yet there are enough natural resources in the United States—nitrogen, phosphate, potash—to serve all our fertilizer needs; in fact, in the 1930s and ’40s one of the largest fertilizer producers in the world was the Tennessee Valley Authority. This production was wound down in the 1970s; today the industry is dominated by two to four firms, and that may end up having existential implications for hungry people the world over.

A more comically shortsighted example concerns our depleted stock of munitions, one of the few industrial capacities America has retained but which still is imperiled by concentration and outsourcing. These are of course the basic materials necessary to prosecute a war, and you’d think it would be the one item countries would retain the ability to produce themselves. But our trillion-dollar military operates more like a welfare program to help underprivileged Northern Virginia contractors buy second homes and luxury yachts, not as a force that has what it needs when it needs it. Pacifists should rejoice; stupidity in military supply chains puts a binding limit on how many brown-skinned people we can kill.

In the 1990s, dozens of military contractors were reduced to five prime integrators, something demanded by Clinton Defense Secretary Les Aspin and his deputy (and future defense secretary) William Perry at a meeting known as the “Last Supper.” Nearly all weapons and delivery systems now flow through Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics. Executives at these companies were called into the White House last Friday—less than a week after the war began—to discuss how to accelerate offensive and especially defensive weapons production amid a shortage that already was weighing on the military. This was after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the war was saved by shifting to smaller bombs rather than “exquisite” munitions for the campaign. If that was the case, why have the meeting?

Specifically, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile systems are so complex that only 96 get built per year; about one-quarter of the U.S. stockpile was used last year in Israel’s brief war with Iran, with many more flying every day as this war continues. Patriot interceptor systems are cheaper and easier to build, but inventories were a quarter full before the war started. Offensive Tomahawk missiles can be produced with greater frequency as well, but as of October last year the stockpile of that weapon was far short of its target. Something like $5.6 billion in weaponry was burned off in just the first two days of the Iran campaign. Trump’s lying aside, analysts who know something are clear on this point: The nation has a few weeks of bombing left before running out of the precision munitions typically used in modern warfare.

To be sure, the shortage has much to do with the U.S. selling off weapons to Ukraine and Israel to prosecute their wars. (Ukraine is trying to pull off a trade of Patriot missiles for instruction in intercepting drones.) But it seems impossible that a military that spends more than the next nine militaries combined would reach a point of shortage so rapidly. But that’s what happens when military contractors are really financial market optimization machines.

As The Lever has reported, leading military contractors have spent $110 billion on stock buybacks over the last five years, something so repugnant that even Trump has issued an executive order trying to ban it. Meanwhile, contractual overrun-by-design has become the industry standard. As I wrote last year, Lockheed has an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that has cost $2 trillion over its lifespan and can’t travel long distances or be used in close-range combat, with hundreds of continuing defects that have not derailed its production. All this cash eventually ends up in the pockets of executives and shareholders.

This is why we have to race to take out opposing defenses quickly before we run out of the products that can do that. If we have a trillion-dollar military, but a week after you start to use it everyone screams that they’ve run out of everything and that more money is needed, then you don’t have a trillion-dollar military; you just have a contractor enrichment factory.

The White House has been rumbling about a $50 billion supplemental funding request, something they obviously find so critical that Republicans might burn up their last reconciliation bill of the year on approving it. Lockheed came out of the White House meeting saying they would “quadruple” Tomahawk production, though they didn’t give a timeline. It’s important to note that current production lines are generally too small for an extreme ramp-up, a fact magnified by the lack of competition. This isn’t about “underperforming” contractors, it’s simply about too few of them.

But there’s a far bigger problem here, as Mark Bowden has written about: America lacks the components for these weapons as much as it lacks the capacity to build them. And the biggest missing components are the rare earth minerals used in missile guidance and other essential systems.

According to the South China Morning Post, the U.S. has just two months of rare earth supply left for its military needs. Now, a Chinese-owned paper may be intentionally saying that, because China has a near-monopoly on the processing of rare earths, the raw materials of which are not that rare. But it certainly wouldn’t be surprising, since rare earths have been used as a tool for leverage in the endless U.S.-China trade wars. China has been turning export controls off and on over the past year, though they were up in January and February by about 20 percent relative to 2025. A high-level meeting will be held on rare earth exports next month.

The Trump administration has been buying stakes in domestic rare earth companies and mining operations, and they are generally aware of the need for resiliency and self-reliance, as the Biden administration was. But destroying the electric-vehicle sector in America, as the Trump administration did, eliminated an additional market for rare earths that might have sustained domestic producers. And the cronyism at work in these financing deals—the recent stake in USA Rare Earth is marred by the fact that Howard Lutnick’s former bank Cantor Fitzgerald is the company’s chief placement agent—suggests that the main goal is less restoring domestic supply chains and more nest-feathering.

Even if they were legitimate deals, rare earth mining and processing can take years to set up, with bombs dropping every day. This means the duration and intensity of our war effort is in some very real way at the discretion of China. That will almost certainly become a subject in upcoming trade negotiations, as the SCMP report indicates.

The U.S. invented rare earth magnets used in all these technologies. We gave away the industry and closed the last processing plant over 20 years ago. The business mantra of moving production to where it is cheapest has bitten us in the ass in countless industries over the years. Bombs are probably the least sympathetic one, but since they’ve become Trump’s go-to means of geopolitics—he’s bombed enough countries in his second term to fill more than two World Cup brackets—it’s worth noting how monopolization, financialization, globalization, and weakened industrial capacity are ruining that imperative, just as they have destroyed our self-sufficiency and pillars of our economy. And if we ever have a national-security threat to the country, it’s been made far more perilous by these forces, which have created unacceptable dependencies on foreign nations.

This was a choice, and like any other choice it can be reversed. But that would require dislodging our lords of capital.