Why American reindustrialization feels like "jazz and rock and roll"

Driving the news: The ReIndustrialize conference is in its third year, and it's bustling as ever. The sustained buzz is a sign of traction, earned by acolytes as they rally around three causes:

1. Improving American production scale and speed
2. Fostering the stateside "build, baby, build" culture
3. And reestablishing supply chain sovereignty

The big picture: Axios asked 10 defense-tech and manufacturing executives about this moment, as funding fills weapon-maker and autonomy wallets and every other person posts about their new factory.

• None mentioned making a quick buck.
• Some mentioned unrealistic promises and the novices who buy into them.
• Most mentioned a need to educate, grow and evolve a workforce gutted by offshoring and the dismissal of blue-collar work.
• Almost all mentioned supply-chain reform and a distancing from China, which maintains a stranglehold on critical minerals.

What they're saying: "This first phase of reindustrialization in the U.S. has looked a lot like: 'Oh, let's make end-products, because that's the way we've normally done this.' It's an extension of what we had done before, and that very quickly evolved into: 'Wait a minute, I can't get the things I need to make that product here,'" Miles Arnone, the chief executive at Re:Build Manufacturing, told Axios.

• "We're going to have to go deeper," he said.
• "Reindustrialization is, right now, very focused on defense and other things, because of current events. But I think that it's much more fundamentally about building — rebuilding — the culture of industry and industrial practice."

Threat level: Production and delivery, whether of shells, interceptors or their prerequisite parts, are chock with chokepoints — as evidenced by President Trump invoking the Defense Production Act for munitions.

• Multimillion-dollar air defenses expended in the Middle East, while combating Iran, will take years to replenish. Some of the Navy's most important vessels are over budget and years behind schedule.
• "Right now, the supply chain for some of our most critical defense systems is a black box, and we find out it's broken when it's already a crisis, not when we could have done something about it," Alisyn Malek, the chief executive at Averra, told Axios.

• "The countries that control their manufacturing infrastructure get to shape what comes next."

Reality check: Grand improvements take time. Small improvements rarely survive first contact. For reindustrialization to manifest, it must withstand elections, wars, middlemen and economic shock.

• "There's going to be this period where there's going to be a lot of capacity being brought up, as part of this hype, which I think long-term can pay off," Machina Labs CEO Edward Mehr told Axios.
• "If you say, 'Hey, everything manufactured in the United States?' I don't know, maybe 30 years. Maybe never."

The bottom line: Reindustrialization is bred by a motley crew. Financiers. Hawks and doves. Officials from all sorts of White Houses. Palmer-maxxers.

• "Some of the companies that got started during year one — at a bar, literally, founder meets a venture capitalist — are raising hundreds of millions of dollars," Austin Bishop, co-founder of the New Industrial Corporation, told Axios, referring to the conference.
• "It's the most American thing ever," he said. "It's like jazz and rock and roll. You put a bunch of people together and they start jamming, and out pops something magical."

Go deeper: A "desire to build"