Key Findings
- The report argues that outsourcing production capacity weakened domestic know-how, labor pipelines, and innovation feedback loops, making renewed manufacturing capacity central to U.S. competitiveness and security.
- It identifies advanced manufacturing as a convergence area where artificial intelligence, sensors, robotics, digital twins, additive techniques, and process innovation can make production more agile and software-like.
- The report portrays China’s manufacturing strategy and overcapacity as a direct competitive challenge that can deepen asymmetric dependencies and undermine firms in democratic market economies.
- It argues that U.S. strengths in artificial intelligence and software-enabled innovation can offset competitor advantages only if paired with major investments in domestic production capacity.
- The report finds that small and medium-sized manufacturers face adoption barriers including capital constraints, limited system integration support, and difficulty moving beyond pilots.
Overview
The action plan frames advanced manufacturing as a technology battleground shaped by the convergence of artificial intelligence, robotics, additive manufacturing, digital twins, sensing, networking, and process innovation. It argues that diminished domestic production capacity has weakened U.S. competitiveness, innovation feedback loops, workforce readiness, and security, while China has used industrial policy and market-distorting practices to build advanced industrial strength. The report presents desired endstates and a central policy focused on increasing the capacity and productivity of the U.S. industrial base by accelerating deployment of advanced manufacturing technologies at scale. Its recommendations are organized around launching moonshots, closing institutional gaps, increasing manufacturing research and development, accelerating adoption by small and medium-sized manufacturers, countering China-related overcapacity, cyber-hardening industrial systems, and cultivating talent. Specific proposals include factories of the future, an industrial digital twin, a stronger Manufacturing USA network, data foundries for industrial artificial intelligence, a White House manufacturing office, manufacturing process research, financing mechanisms, trade alliances, automated cyber defenses, supply chain provenance tools, and workforce initiatives. The policy relevance is national and allied economic security: the report links manufacturing leadership to resilient supply chains, industrial mobilization, innovation, and the ability of democratic market economies to compete in strategic technologies.
Prudence requires that the United States rebuild its advanced manufacturing ecosystem — including both the know-how and capacity to build things that the country needs.
Eric Schmidt and Ylli Bajraktari
Recommendations
- Build 1,000 Factories of the Future. Increase the capacity, productivity, and agility of the U.S. industrial base by providing incentives for leading-edge, digitalized production…
- Create a Manufacturing ARPANet. Network defense-relevant supply chains, leveraging AI to dynamically model production capacity and potentially allocate and optimize resources in…
- Scale and Reimagine the Manufacturing USA Program. Sufficiently scale the Manufacturing USA program to accelerate innovation and commercialization of ADVM technologies.
- Create a Data Foundry Network for Industrial AI. Establish a distributed, open-source network to collate and distribute datasets, promote standards for industrial AI.
From the report
The Advanced Manufacturing Action Plan – the fifth in the series of National Action Plans to ensure U.S. leadership in key technology areas – addresses advanced manufacturing, a technology battleground defined by the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies to the industrial sector.
Documents
Publication
Published by the Special Competitive Studies Project. Co-publishers and external authors, where they exist, are credited in the byline above.