by Isaac Cubillos | Apr 16, 2025 | Journal
You know your empire is in trouble when your former warzone is offering to build your warships. At the 2025 Sea Air Space conference, South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries offered to help the U.S. Navy catch up to China—by building Aegis-equipped destroyers for us....
by Isaac Cubillos | Apr 15, 2025 | Journal
I remember school lunches the way you remember your first heartbreak—with equal parts nostalgia and indigestion. Back in the day, our cafeteria cooks had access to five-pound blocks of government cheese that came in plain brown cartons—USDA surplus with a side of...
by Isaac Cubillos | Apr 15, 2025 | Journal
You can’t build a military without minerals.You can’t win a tech war without magnets.And you can’t bluff your way through a crisis when your opponent controls the raw materials and the map. Welcome to the rare earth trap.And as of April 4, the trap has been sprung. In...
by Isaac Cubillos | Apr 13, 2025 | Journal
President Trump’s latest order to hand the Pentagon control of federal land along the southern border reads like the fever dream of a late-night cable host. He’s calling it a “Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling...
by Isaac Cubillos | Apr 13, 2025 | Journal
You can write all the executive orders you want. You can form task forces, launch action plans, and declare a new era of American shipbuilding. But before we start pouring steel and painting hulls red, white, and blue—we’ve got to ask a basic question: Where the hell...
by Isaac Cubillos | Apr 13, 2025 | Journal
On April 9, the Trump administration signed an executive order promising to “restore America’s maritime dominance.” A grand idea—if your definition of dominance includes spreadsheets, interagency working groups, and rebuilding shipyards that have long since been paved...
