Chaos & Opportunity

Great fortunes are lost and won amidst quicksand. When well-trodden paths turn to labyrinths, the concrete is sublimated into morass, sunshine turns to hail, and 20/20 vision becomes blindness; new worlds are formed. Tectonic plates collide, and energetic, precise action can secure generational wealth or doom. I hope that in times like these, you are not particularly unlucky. An arbitrary accident, the right move at the wrong time, or just the near-miss of colliding stars will be enough to derail your existence. If you think me overly dramatic, then you’ve missed the now. These days are the last sentences of chapters in history books.

With the suicide of democracy and the US’ surrender to Russia, we must accept that the days of the US as the unipolar power are over. The self-imposed end of the Pax Americana is confusing. Many millions of people across the world are angry at the US and Americans for abandoning democracy. For no reason at all, the US has surrendered its economic might and soft power as well as its role as a peacekeeper in the world. It is a dark day for American business, but more importantly, it’s a dark day for America.

Banana Republic

Europe feels naked and out in the cold, unable to rely on a 911 call for help when dealing with Russia. The realization that the US will deny intelligence support, weapons, and restrict some weapon access if certain opinions are not shared has made it scarier to be a European today than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Taiwan also know the US will not defend them. Any promises ring hollow after the US abandoned Ukraine and Europe. Only a fool would trust America as a guarantor of their security. Only a damned fool would trust its weapons to work in a time of need. A tax on US imports and a dismantling of institutions have left the US atrophied. Its institutions will be unable to regenerate, by design, and the global economy will surely falter. The US is turning into a Banana Republic and Americans seem totally OK with that.

Economically, will it just be a depression or a Greater Depression? We do not know, but with more uncertainty and higher tariffs than during the Smoot-Hawley Act disrupting a more complex just-in-time system where your iPhone has travelled more than you have, we are more likely to see a prolonged Depression than just a recession. At the very least, months of uncertainty will dampen growth. Without the US being able to send strong, sensible signals about rescuing or managing the world economy, it is unclear what event would lift us from any kind of recession. We are on a runaway economic train, and the driver has decided to jump off.

End of the American Century

And so the American Century ends and the Chinese century begins. Yes, there will be posturing and so many angry words, but the American century has passed. Defeat came not from the Yellow Peril, the Red Peril, but from within. The fear of the other has eaten America’s soul. Far from the End of History, a new beginning spells chaos for open democracies. It is clear now that the US did not win the Cold War; it propped up Russia only to have it rot away the very foundations of US democracy. Glory days for transnational criminal gangs and autocracy mean that the future looks hazy. The only thing I can be sure of is that our immediate future will contain a lot more torture than we have become used to in the past. Invest in batons and tear gas is my advice. The best financial advice I can give is to do yoga to at least focus some of your attention some of the time, and invest in better decisions.

If some school kid asked me decades from now what it felt like, I would be hard-pressed to explain it. It kind of feels like summer vacation as a child, there’s a lightness, an unfaltering, endless horizon, and then my breath catches in my throat. It feels like my brain is stuck in a pinball machine. It feels like that moment when you know you’ll fall from tripping. It feels like flying, weightless, into your seatbelt. It feels like that moment before the glass shatters around you and the airbag deploys into your face. Only there is no airbag or seatbelt, so we can not conceive what comes next. This, this is like being in zero gravity without a spacesuit. I’m weightless, but I’m about to burn, burst, or suffocate, and don’t know what I need to worry most about.

Opportunities for Additive in the Sands of a Shifting World

But, there are clear opportunities for the Additive Manufacturing industry to shape itself against the gathering clouds. These opportunities are incredibly lucrative and will deliver high growth and profits to some players.

• Rearming Europe is a huge opportunity, generally. Production capacity for end-use parts, exotic gradient parts, materials not often used, and military-compliant sourcing will be in demand as European nations try to secure their own critical weapons. There should be opportunities to source parts, prototypes, materials development, machines, and manufacturing.
• In Ukraine, 3D printed drones, now being printed in their millions, are the defining weapon of the war. More countries worldwide, amidst uncertainty, will look to 3D printed drones and want to create drone factories in a box. This will be good news for the likes of FireStorm, but the opportunity will be bigger than this. Ukraine is on target to make five million drones this year, as much as the rest of the world makes.
• There should be opportunities in bridge manufacturing, temporary production lines, and other exigent manufacturing. Mold tooling and other production tooling should eventually be in higher demand as tariffs bite and uncertainties become a new reality. Rather than making parts where they are cheapest at volume, there will be room for many inefficient but geopolitically expedient manufacturing lines worldwide.
• Temporarily, there will be increased needs for some bridge manufacturing using Additive as tariffs break some supply chains.

• Whereas the US has Sintavia, Addman, A3D, MIMO Technik, and many others, Europe and other nations often have no such equivalent. 3D printing services that know how to work with aerospace and defense firms and have the requisite trust are rare outside the US. In Europe, some firms and manufacturing companies also do not work with defense businesses at all out of ethical concerns. It is clear that Portugal would need its own Sintavia, as would Hungary, the Netherlands, and Indonesia. If we just look at the required materials, certifications, and machines for defense work, we can see that this is scarcely available outside the US. The opportunity here will be solely available for the persistent, but will be permanent.
• In the US RLP, DM3D, Optomec, and other companies have worked on developing large-format DED and cell-based manufacturing using DED with machine tools. Such expertise is sorely needed to rejuvenate high-end parts and make large military components. It is absent in much of the world.
• Niobium, tantalum, OD steels, and refractories are all super exotic materials with decidedly cutting-edge capabilities for defense. Turning them into parts is not something that many people do outside the US.

• Horn antenna, radar, and RF components can generally secure communications and battlefield awareness. Typically, it could be a good idea to develop these components with allies you trust.
• The main factors on the battlefield in Ukraine are Electronic Warfare and drones. Both are intertwined in the future of warfare. Making jamming equipment and secure communications and signaling capability, peer to peer and from satellites, is key to mastery in that domain. Additive will be used extensively in this arena. Pangea and Aenium are some of the people who can benefit from this. Safran, which has long been a bleeding edge user of Additive, could win big on this as well.
• Many companies do not produce powder or generally do not make AM materials. Securing those supplies and setting up facilities that use local powder production could be economically expedient, especially for some asian countries.
• Generally, many people will mistrust Additive machines from outside their immediate allies or their own countries. Who exactly the allies are is changing. This points to opportunities for companies such as Ermaksan, a Turkish LPBF manufacturer, and other similarly placed firms.
• One would expect indigenous programs such as the Gripen fighter to do better with closer allies than in the past. But, it is in manufacturing things such as the Saab AEW&C, a Swedish Airborne Warning and Control plane, that may see the biggest increase. For such functionality, European countries have heretofore relied on US capabilities and craft, but it is clear that they need an indigenous capability. Airborne refueling, satellite coms, satellite imagery, and submarine ICBM capabilities are at the top of my mind.

• The US Air Force has around 13,000 aircraft, of which around 5,000 can be classed as combat aircraft. The UK has 700, France 976, in total. Meanwhile, the US has around 900 sixth-generation or thereabouts aircraft. There will be huge pressure on planners in Europe and wealthier asian countries to develop a lower cost sixth-generation alternative using either the Gripen, the BAE Tempest, or a drone platform. To give you an idea of the capabilities and force gap, the total number of F-35s on order for the US, 1454, will be enough to make up the sixth largest air force in the world.
• Alternative new craft will have to be adapted to very specific roles, which could use additive manufacturing. Aerial refueling, long-distance transport, and things such as a specific Rivet Joint or other sensor information and radar harvesting craft are areas of concern.
• There are specific aircraft in the US inventory, such as the AC-130-J Ghostrider and other variants, which only the US has. These planes are C-310 transport aircraft turned into gunships with either howitzers/or miniguns protruding from them. Five successive generations of these planes have been developed, and the US has fielded them since 1968. At a unit cost of $165 million, these planes have proved invaluable in a close air support role for special forces and pinned down troops generally. It is difficult to see another country develop them. Even if you could make such a thing, fielding it safely and usefully would take years. Without a persistent, munitions-carrying, firepower-bringing platform, many special ops missions would seem ill-advised. A European or other country could field a Tier One unit, but they wouldn’t have the Tier One support that the US has given its units. Alternatives would have to be developed to substitute specific US capabilities and craft. 3D Printing of vehicles, craft, and capability for Tier One and special forces units in many countries would be a very specific opportunity. Adapting craft to work in a military role or making specific vehicles for specific tasks from off-the-shelf components will be much more palatable to many national budgets, and we can see a lot of Additive being used here.

• In Europe, helicopters seem rather weak as well, with their fleets aging and many capabilities lacking. There are a lot of opportunities in Additive components on helicopters, and one drone that would replace their medivac and resupply functions more cheaply.
• 3D Printing circuits and using Additive to recreate old and damaged electronics is one of the most considerable opportunities. Many aging military gear pieces will need new replacement electronics, and no one exists to provide this service. New gear will need robust electronics that would need to be local and low volume, few are placed to offer these services globally.
• In spy satellites and sensor data, the US is unsurpassed; other countries will be tempted to invest heavily in satellite design to improve the capabilities of their own spy satellites. On the whole, Swissto12 looks like it will do very well indeed.
• Specific military vehicles for new threats probably need much more investment. No country has a credible path to providing protection for subsea cables. New ROV (remotely operated vehicle), submersibles, and UUV (unmanned underwater vehicles) will have to be considered. For sensing and finding submarines, new sensor platforms and capabilities coupled with UUV craft could give countries global or regional sensor networks that can deter threats from surface ships. For these crafts, 3D Printing is the most logical technology.
• Ukraine did not really have a Navy, but managed to sink lots of Russian ships. Long-range missiles and sea-based drones that can take on much larger ships have turned out to be some of the most cost-effective weaponry ever designed. Additive again has been and will be the production method of choice for such unmanned surface craft.
• Anti-drone and anti-missile protection will see new investments, with many companies worrying about their ability to make enough missiles. 3D printing solid state rocket engines is a path forward to high-volume production of missiles. Barcelona-based Supernova could do super well from this,
• Tariffs worldwide and the fluctuation between these tariffs will present significant temporary opportunities. A lot of Chinese firms could decide against importing speakers to Malta or Italy at one point, leaving respite and opportunities for local companies. All of a sudden a shortage of in car speakers could lead to a company that quickly adapts other speakers to use in automobiles to mop up an opportunity. Meanwhile, someone could notice that previously expensive German speakers can now be used in cars. Just for a summer, the AM market could be spawned, which could be lucrative. Speed is of the essence here, and 3D Printing can help in some cases with tooling and end-use parts.
• We’re probably going to see a lot of tariff shenanigans. Tariffs could mean that second-hand cars of certain types could be very attractive in the US or other countries. It may be cheaper to make a speaker in China, export it to Italy, and then sell it to the US. In some cases, a fully assembled bike could be sold as steel parts to Seychelles and then exported to the US. That last case would mean someone would want some fixtures and the like for an impromptu bicycle factory in the Seychelles. Such games could create real opportunities for manufacturers and 3D Printing. Knock-down kit manufacturing worldwide may very well see a resurgence.

We can see that we are entering those last unruly pages of the chapters of history books. As one great power decides to make itself insignificant, another will enter the world stage. The same changing of the guard has taken place for millennia. A self-imposed exile from relevance will upset the balance of the world, and a new system is being formed as we speak. What will be your role in it? On whose side are you anyway?