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links 3/10/26: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/srcpublic/page/03-10-2026
- https://manufacturing-operations.vercel.app/index.html Ben Reinhardt's matrix of manufacturing operations, ranked by how valuable closed-loop self-improving automation would be
- bottlenecks in defense production:
- https://www.businessdefense.gov/ibr/mceip/dpai/dpat3/ DPA Article III is a department involved in procuring supplies from the private sector
- https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-18-45.pdf solid rocket motors, used in missiles, are in shortage; carbon fiber motor casings are one of the bottlenecks
- https://www.csis.org/analysis/first-battle-next-war-wargaming-chinese-invasion-taiwan wargames of an invasion of Taiwan
- https://www.insensitivemunitions.org/history/the-introduction-of-castable-plastic-bonded-explosives-pbxs-in-navy-munitions/ plastic bonded explosives are also a key bottleneck
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Tennessee_manufacturing_plant_explosion explosives manufacturing is quite dangerous
- https://www.navalsteminterns.us/nreip/labs/nswc_indianhead.html missile warheads are made and tested at a single naval facility
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holston_Army_Ammunition_Plant this is the only place where the explosive material for missiles is made
- https://www.heritage.org/tidalwave/chapters/chapter-6-assessing-the-us-indo-pacific-munitions-system we are short of missiles by about an order of magnitude, Heritage estimates
- https://www.defensenews.com/space/2017/06/21/us-industrial-base-at-risk-for-key-rocket-motor-ingredient/ there is only one supplier of a key ingredient for rocket oxidizer, ammonium perchlorate
- https://nuclearcompanion.com/data/mark-48-torpedo/ parts of a torpedo
- https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/lrasm.htm the LRASM, a key missile
- https://news.usni.org/2026/01/24/2026-u-s-national-defense-strategy the US's official current strategy in the Pacific: "denial defense along the Pacific Island Chain", i.e. preventing an invasion of Taiwan by being ready to sink any Chinese fleet attempting to attack
- https://dynomight.net/pattern/ Dynomight, food for thought
- https://catboost.ai/docs/en/ library for gradient boosting
- https://paulgraham.com/brandage.html Paul Graham on watches as an extended metaphor for what happens when technical competence is commoditized. he never mentions AI but it's interesting to consider what the analogies would be.
- https://thezvi.substack.com/p/anthropic-officially-arbitrarily Zvi Mowshowitz, like all reasonable people, decries what's going on here
- https://timhwang.github.io/because-china/ China is an excellent excuse for whatever you wanted to do anyway
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillation#History the Babylonians had distillation, but for perfume, not booze
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gunpowder it is entirely a myth that the Chinese used gunpowder only for fireworks and were unaware of its military applications. they used gunpowder weapons for centuries before Europeans did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_variates method used in Monte Carlo estimation
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