There is an outdated an adage in the halls of the Pentagon that goes “Defense is often battling the very last war”. In other words and phrases, right after a military engagement is completed DoD makes an attempt to restructure by itself so that its capabilities are much more successful for the final engagement. This is an adage that is quite real in the history of DoD and nowadays numerous in DoD work extremely diligently to make certain that it is no lengthier accurate.

In a lot of approaches when it arrives to rebuilding America’s economic competitiveness, many have fallen prey to this time outdated adage. And as DoD has identified on repeated situations, battling the previous war can be quite lethal for the armed forces and the nation.

The US has divested itself, equally by style and by default, of its manufacturing foundation producing a weak spot that China and others have exploited for a aggressive benefit. This weak point has now been exploited to the stage that its adverse influence on the financial health of the US is so pronounced, that it can no lengthier be denied by any individual except the most nave or out of touch pundits.

In response, there is a growing phone-to-arms across the US personal and general public sector to rebuild the US manufacturing base to its earlier glory. The strongly inferred, but not always mentioned premise is that rebuilding the US manufacturing base is certain to rebuild America’s economic health– in other terms the producing foundation of a country is the foundation of a country’s economic competitiveness.

It is the scenario that the Chinese saw and exploited the weak point offered by America’s declining manufacturing foundation but by just eliminating this US weakness does not equate to a US toughness–it just eradicates a US weak spot that could be exploited by China and other people for a aggressive advantage. In effect, getting rid of the US weak point by rebuilding the US manufacturing foundation is just fighting the previous war.

With this US weak spot removed, China and others will just change the struggle to one more battlefield.

To rebuild the economic wellness of the US we have to purchase and sustain a competitive benefit, not just get rid of a US weak point that supplies China with the chance to obtain a aggressive advantage relative to the US. Rebuilding the US producing base can eradicate the US weaknesses so that it can no lengthier be exploited by China or other folks to the detriment of the economic overall health of the US, and it is the scenario that the US producing base could be rebuilt in a method that supplies the US with a competitive gain and therefore improve the financial overall health of the US. But, opposite to what is getting taken care of in the push and by a expanding number of professionals, the US production base is not the basis of America’s financial competitiveness–the exploitation of engineering is the foundation of America’s economic competitiveness as properly as the basis of all of our competitors’ financial competitiveness.

To rebuild America’s financial competitiveness, and therefore the country’s economic wellness, and not just get rid of a weakness or build a constrained fleeting competitive edge in one spot, we should out maneuver our opponents in the exploitation of the worldwide technologies which is the foundation of all competitive gain.

The problem is that at the stop of Entire world War II, choice-generating in the US for the most element, deserted technologies-dependent preparing and adopted financial-dependent preparing. In financial-based arranging the basis of all selection-generating is the successful utilization of the cash to complete a perform exactly where, inside a company in most situations, the purpose is to optimize revenue. In other terms, the cash are what are currently being manipulated and the evaluate of good results is how effectively the resources have been manipulated. Adoption of financial-dependent preparing is the root lead to of America’s reduction of its producing base.

In distinction, in engineering-dependent planning the foundation of all selection-producing is the effective acquisition and utilization of the technology to create a competitive edge. It is the technological innovation not the cash that are getting manipulated as the basis of choices. Trying to keep in head that technological innovation is correctly outlined as any application of science to complete a operate.

The problem is that following the US adopted financial-based arranging soon after WWII, the rest of the entire world continued employing and refining technological innovation-primarily based preparing. China and India have been employing hugely refined, extremely intense technology-based organizing to quickly remodel their viewpoint nations around the world into economic superpowers.

Within the US intelligence local community underneath the Reagan administration, I directed a program the Socrates Venture, that established that the fundamental trigger of America’s declining financial competitiveness was the country’s swap from technological innovation-dependent planning to financial-primarily based planning. Lost Profit produced a hugely sophisticated form of tech-based mostly arranging–automatic innovation–that would permit the US and all its non-public and general public corporations to consistently out maneuver all rivals globally in the acquisition and utilization of technological innovation to get and sustain the highest competitive gain.

So alternatively of the US just getting rid of the present weak spot induced by the country’s waning manufacturing base, the US and its organizations would be in a place to be the dominant competitor in all present and foreseeable future industries—to incorporate producing.