Western Manufacturing and Coding Skills Face Critical Decline
Original: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code
Why This Matters
Highlights critical skills gap threatening Western industrial and technological capabilities
Analysis reveals how Western nations lost manufacturing capabilities, as seen in defense industry struggles to restart production lines. Similar patterns emerge in software development as institutional knowledge disappears with retiring workers.
Raytheon's president revealed at Paris Air Show how the company brought back 70-year-old engineers to restart Stinger missile production from Carter-era paper schematics. Pentagon hadn't bought new Stingers in 20 years, with orders placed in May 2022 not delivering until 2026. EU promised Ukraine one million artillery shells by March 2024 but delivered only half by deadline, finally hitting target nine months late in December 2024. European production capacity was 230,000 shells annually while Ukraine consumed 5,000-7,000 daily. Defense consolidation from 1993 reduced contractors from 51 to 5, cutting workforce from 3.2 million to 1.1 million. Critical single points of failure emerged, including one 155mm shell casing manufacturer in California. The classified nuclear material Fogbank required $69 million and years of reverse engineering after production knowledge was lost when workers retired.