America forgot how to build things, and a 35 year old from Melbourne named Chris Power is betting billions that he can teach it again. In this Core Memory interview, Ashlee Vance sits down with the founder of Hadrian inside one of its Los Angeles factories, where rows of CNC machines and robots crank out the precision metal parts that go into rockets, satellites, missiles and fighter jets. Power spotted the problem years ago. The mom and pop machine shops that quietly supply American aerospace and defense are run by people in their 60s, their kids never wanted the job, and when those craftsmen retire, decades of skill retire with them. His fix is a full stack software company that captures that expertise, pours it into automated factories, and trains people from Home Depot, the Marines and desk jobs to run advanced manufacturing in about 30 days.
The conversation goes straight at the scariest question in tech right now, which is whether the United States can rebuild its industrial base before it actually needs it. Power breaks down how the country offshored more than 90 percent of its manufacturing to China since the 1980s, why it now takes years to replace missiles like the Stinger and Javelin, and how Hadrian is jumping from making individual components to producing entire missiles. He and Ashlee dig into the humanoid robot supply chain that still runs through China, the reason nobody except SpaceX and Tesla seems able to master production, and what a real American Shenzhen would take to build. It gets blunt about how far behind we are and how fast things could unravel if a fight over Taiwan ever started.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ashlee Vance is a best selling author, filmmaker, and journalist who has spent more than twenty years chronicling science and technology for The Economist, The New York Times, and Bloomberg Businessweek. He wrote the best selling biography of Elon Musk and created the Emmy nominated series Hello World. On Core Memory he travels the world to drop into labs, garages, factories, and hangars and spend time with the scientists, inventors, oddballs, and startups pushing the future forward.
SPONSORS
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IN THIS EPISODE
Hadrian: https://www.hadrian.co/
Chris Power on X: https://x.com/2112Power
Atomic Industries: https://atomic.industries/
Machina Labs: https://www.machinalabs.ai/
California Forever: https://californiaforever.com/
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Check out our podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@CoreMemoryPodcast
https://www.corememory.com/podcast
Find Ashlee Vance at
www.corememory.com
https://www.instagram.com/ashlee.vance/
https://x.com/ashleevance
Find Kylie Robison at
https://x.com/kyliebytes
https://www.instagram.com/kylie.robison
CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
04:07 From Melbourne to a California Factory Floor
07:37 The Thesis He'd Work On for the Rest of His Life
10:00 How America Gave the Whole Farm Away
14:46 Why We Can't Rebuild Our Own Missiles
19:08 Can You Really Put a Master Machinist Into Software?
24:38 From Missile Parts to the Entire Missile
29:19 The China Problem Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud
33:40 How Far Behind Is America Really?
41:45 "You Can't Automate This." Answering the Critics
45:22 Why Can't Anyone Else Copy Tesla and SpaceX?
53:03 Can America Actually Build Its Own Shenzhen?
