Chris Power

"Manufacturing is the backbone of national security. If you can't make things, you can't defend yourself."

"America used to make things. We used to be proud of our factories. We can have that again, but we have to build it ourselves."

"Every precision part in an F-35 has a story of a small machine shop struggling to meet demand. That's a problem software can solve."

"We're not replacing workers; we're replacing the jobs that no one wants to do anymore and that no one is training for."

"The factory of the future won't have workers doing repetitive tasks. It will have engineers solving problems while machines do the work."

"Defense manufacturing has been stuck in the 1980s. We're bringing it to the 2020s, one CNC machine at a time."

"Silicon Valley optimized for software because software is easy to scale. But the real world runs on atoms, not bits."

"Every great country needs manufacturing capability. You can't have a strong economy or strong defense without the ability to produce."

"The best founders are the ones who see a problem so clearly that they can't not work on it."

"The U.S. has outsourced its manufacturing capability for 40 years. We're trying to bring it back, but with automation instead of cheap labor."

"The average machinist in America is 56 years old. In 10 years, there won't be anyone left who knows how to make things. Automation isn't a choice; it's a necessity."

"Building hardware companies is hard. Building manufacturing companies is harder. That's why no one does it."

"The supply chain isn't broken. It was never built to handle what we're asking of it. We need to rebuild it from scratch."

"You can't 3D print your way to industrial capacity. Real manufacturing requires real machines, real processes, and real expertise."

"Speed is a feature. If you can make parts in days instead of months, you change the entire dynamics of production."