476: Michael Cadenazzi—The Department of War is Hiring

Synopsis

Michael Cadenazzi, Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy, sounds the alarm on a defense workforce crisis that dwarfs anything in recent memory: 400,000 skilled trade jobs sit vacant today in the Defense Industrial Base, with a projected four-million-job gap over the next decade — threatening the country's ability to build ships, planes, tanks, and munitions at wartime speed. Decades of post-Cold War complacency gutted American manufacturing while empowering China, which now controls 95% of the world's rare earth production, and the Pentagon is racing to reverse that dependency through long-term procurement contracts, deep-sea mineral extraction, and targeted workforce training programs most Americans have never heard of. For any professional tracking national security, manufacturing, or the future of American labor, this conversation puts a sharp, specific face on the gap between the weapons the country needs and the workers who don't yet exist to build them.

Speakers

Episode Breakdown