The Ben & Marc Show: China Has Scale. Can America Catch Up?
The a16z Show2 Okt 2025

The Ben & Marc Show: China Has Scale. Can America Catch Up?

Ben, Marc, and Erik Torenberg are joined by Brian Schimpf, Co-Founder & CEO of Anduril, and Chris Power, Founder & CEO of Hadrian. Together, they dig into America’s defense production gap: why the U.S. can out-innovate but not out-produce—and what it will take to turn that around.

They discuss why U.S. war games show we run out of munitions in a week, the myth of “exquisite-only” systems, how to rebuild industrial capacity with software-led automation, financing factories like data centers, and what it takes to create real deterrence in a Taiwan scenario.

Timecodes:

0:00 Introduction

0:27 Technical Superiority vs. Industrial Scale

3:59 The Decline of US Manufacturing

7:23 Challenges in Onshoring & Skilled Labor

13:27 Supply Chains & Rare Earths

15:34 Automation, Software, and Catching Up

17:15 Complexity of Modern Production

23:34 Strategic Policy & Industrial Planning

26:37 Regulatory Barriers & State vs. Federal Roles

35:27 Talent, Data Centers, and Financial Engineering

38:33 China’s Industrial Policy & US Response

46:07 US Manufacturing, National Security, and the China Challenge

52:00 Demographics, Long-Term Outlook, and Closing Thoughts

Resources:

Find Chris on X: https://x.com/chris_power

Find Brian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bschimpf/

Marc on X: https://x.com/pmarca

Marc’s Substack: https://pmarca.substack.com/

Ben on X: https://x.com/bhorowitz

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Find us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z

The views expressed here are those of the individual personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any a16z funds. PLEASE SEE MORE HERE: https://a16z.com/disclosures/

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