America Can Fight for a Week with Jahara "Franky" Matisek (PhD)

Episode: Jahara “Franky” Matisek (USAF Lt Col) — Fixing America’s Broken Arsenal Guest: Lt Col Jahara “Franky” Matisek, U.S. Air Force | PhD Political Science | prolific writer on strategy, security assistance, and the defense industrial base What this episode is about America’s military can execute at breathtaking speed—but sustaining a long war is a different game. In this conversation, Lt Col Jahara “Franky” Matisek breaks down why the U.S. defense industrial base struggles to surge production, why supply chains are more opaque than most policymakers admit, and why “resilience” can’t be wished into existence with slogans and PowerPoint. Key topics Why the U.S. can be “tactically awesome” for a short fight—then hit limits in missiles, munitions, and sustainment The “black box” problem: the government often lacks visibility into tier-2 and tier-3 suppliers Why throwing money at production doesn’t automatically remove chokepoints (casings, propellant, and other bottlenecks) The mine-to-missile reality: minerals, refining, machining, certification, and how China shows up at multiple points in the chain The tradeoff between efficiency (markets) and resilience (surge capacity)—and why the market won’t fund resilience “as a charity” Continuing resolutions, short funding cycles, and how uncertainty drives small suppliers out of the defense ecosystem The workforce constraint: skilled trades, machinists, and why you “can’t Zoom-call the bolts into a submarine” Strategic infrastructure beyond the obvious: power grids, pipelines, and data centers as a bedrock of modern command-and-control Why “digital warfighting” runs into practical limits: electricity, cooling, transformers, copper, and long lead times Notable quotes “We can do great war stuff for about a week. Anything longer than that gets really hard.” “Resilience isn’t something the market provides out of charity.” “You can’t Zoom-call the nuts and bolts of making a submarine.” “The defense industrial base is a black box—and that’s terrifying in a crisis.” Referenced reading Foreign Policy: “How to Fix America’s Broken Arsenal” (Matisek and co-authors) Additional related work discussed: resilience and industrial base commentary (FPRI) Follow / connect Scott Kelly — Host, At the Water’s Edge Lt Col Jahara “Franky” Matisek — USAF, scholar-practitioner on strategy and the defense industrial base Call to action If this episode made you rethink “deterrence,” share it with one person in defense tech, infrastructure, or policy—and drop a comment with the single chokepoint you think would break first in a major-power conflict.