Anchors Aweigh—or Anchors Astray? America’s Maritime Crisis

China builds ships. The U.S. builds excuses.

Sometime within the past year I read an article about how China was actively building or upgrading ports on the Western coast of Africa. More recently I caught a story showing the significant superiority of China's shipbuilding over our American efforts. 

Both these stories came to mind as I read yesterday's story in The Bunker, an eNewsletter I receive from the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). Yesterday's article was titled Anchor's Astray, addressing the phenomenal waste that goes on at the Pentagon. The story outlined a scuttled project to build build up to 20 small warships after the first two came in at two billion dollars, far above budget. 

This led me to investigate how many ships China is building compared the U.S. Here's some eye-openng data peraining to military ad commercial ship production. Commercial ships include domestic/merchant vessels, such as cargo ships, tankers, and container ships.

 Ship Production Comparison: United States vs. China

WARSHIPS

U.S. Fleet Size (2024): 296 battle-force ships (e.g., destroyers, submarines, carriers). --- Annual Production (2024): ~1.13 Virginia-class submarines (goal: 2.0); 6 new ships requested for FY2025 (below 10-11 needed annually for 381-ship goal by 2042). 

--- Recent Trends: 82% of programs delayed (e.g., Constellation frigate: 3+ years behind; Columbia submarine: 1+ year delay). Net fleet decline projected: -9 ships in FY2025. 

--- Capacity: Limited to a few yards; overall output lags due to backlogs and costs ($40B/year planned but underfunded).

CHINA Fleet Size (2024): 370+ battle-force ships (largest globally). 

--- Annual Production (2024): 11+ major combatants launched (~130,000 tons); 23 destroyers added in past 10 years (vs. U.S. 11). 

--- Recent Trends: 8 cruisers since 2017 (vs. U.S. 0); submarine force to grow to 80 by 2035. Projections: 395 ships by 2025, 435 by 2030. 

--- Capacity: 230x U.S. total shipbuilding capacity; dual-use yards enable rapid scaling.

DOMESTIC/COMMERCIAL SHIPS

U.S. Global Market Share (2024): 0.1% (ranks 19th-22nd globally). 

--- Annual Output (2024): 3 large vessels ordered (out of 5,448 global); ~8 delivered. --- Recent Trends: Tonnage output <0.04% globally; total U.S. post-WWII commercial tonnage exceeded by one Chinese firm in 2024 alone. Focus shifting to revitalization via incentives (e.g., SHIPS for America Act targeting 250 U.S.-flagged vessels). 

--- Capacity: ~80 oceangoing yards, but minimal for large vessels; vulnerable to foreign supply chains.

CHINA Global Market Share (2024): 53% (leads world; 57% of completions by deadweight tons). 

--- Annual Output (2024): >1,000 vessels; 48.18 million dwt completed (up 13.8% YoY); 113 million dwt ordered (up 58.8% YoY). 

--- Recent Trends: 75% of global new orders in H2 2024; dominates bulk carriers, tankers, containers. Backlog: 208.72 million dwt (up 49.7% YoY). Slight dip in early 2025 orders (to ~52%) due to U.S. trade policies, but rebounding. 

--- Capacity: ~150 yards; state-owned CSSC alone outproduces entire U.S. historical commercial output.

Accordiing to The Atlantic, the U.S. shipbuilding industry, once a global powerhouse capable of producing over 5,500 vessels during World War II, has deteriorated into a shadow of its former self, capturing just 0.13% of the global commercial market in 2024 and facing chronic delays in naval production.  This handicap stems from a century-long interplay of policy neglect, economic shifts, and structural vulnerabilities, leaving the industry unable to compete with subsidized powerhouses like China (59% market share) or keep pace with national security needs.  

According to Contrary Research, China is now the leading powerhouse of the high seas. As of late 2025, the U.S. Navy's fleet hovers around 290 ships—projected to decline despite ambitions for 381—while shipyards grapple with backlogs that could take years to clear.  

The roots trace back to the post-Civil War era, when the U.S. opted against sustained public investment in maritime infrastructure, unlike European rivals who subsidized their fleets aggressively. This laissez-faire approach accelerated after World War I, as wartime booms faded and commercial demand for U.S.-built ships waned amid rising trucking competition for inland and coastal routes.  

By the 1980s, post-Cold War "peace dividend" cuts slashed budgets and fleet sizes, shrinking the number of capable shipyards by 80% and output by 90% from 1950s peaks.  Today, this historical atrophy manifests in a fragmented industrial base, where public yards suffer from obsolescence and private ones from overreliance on sporadic naval contracts. 

A core handicap is the acute workforce shortage, exacerbated by demographics and cultural shifts. Shipyards are hemorrhaging experienced workers through retirement—a "generation gap" leaving teams less productive and reliant on inexperienced hires who require heavy supervision—while struggling to recruit replacements.  Turnover exceeds 20% among younger employees, driven by low starting wages (despite competitive averages of $62,000–$83,000), demanding physical conditions, and a societal push toward college over trades.  

Entry-level jobs often demand 1+ years of experience, creating a catch-22 that stifles growth, and limited vocational training pipelines mean shipbuilding competes poorly with less hazardous fields.  This crisis compounds design and production flaws: U.S. vessels are notoriously complex, with "concurrency" (building before designs are finalized) leading to rework, delays (e.g., Constellation-class frigates years behind), and costs ballooning 30–50% over estimates.  Foreign subsidies enable rivals to iterate faster and cheaper, while U.S. monopsonistic procurement caps profits at 6–8%, deterring private investment in skills or tech. 

Supply chain fragility and infrastructural decay further immobilize the sector. Post-pandemic disruptions, inflation, and overreliance on foreign suppliers—even from China for critical components—have spiked costs for raw materials and parts, delaying projects by months. With fewer domestic suppliers than decades ago, bottlenecks ripple through yards, where outdated facilities (e.g., limited dry docks) and modular construction lags hinder scalability. High labor costs—coupled with stringent U.S. regulations like the Jones Act, which mandates domestic builds but stifles volume—make American ships 2–3 times pricier than Asian counterparts, eroding commercial viability. Meanwhile, global competitors like South Korea and Japan leverage dual-use yards for steady commercial-military output, investing in automation and modular techniques that U.S. facilities lack. 

Revival efforts, including the 2025 "Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance" executive order and $32.4 billion in FY2025 funding, aim to address these via workforce training, allied partnerships (e.g., with Japan), and supply chain fortification—but progress is glacial. Without bolder subsidies, immigration reforms for skilled trades, and a pivot to simpler designs, the U.S. risks ceding maritime supremacy, with dire implications for trade, deterrence, and surge capacity in conflicts. The industry's plight isn't inevitable; it's a policy choice, one that demands urgent, comprehensive reversal to rebuild what was lost.

Related Link

The Warship That Shows Why the U.S. Navy Is Falling Behind China

The Dire State of Our Shipbuilding Infastructure

The High Cost of Doing (Shipbuilding) Business

Sources: realcleardefense.com, americarenewing.com, The Atlantic, usni.org, freightnews.com

Film as a Philosophical Lens

Last week I uploaded all my blog posts from 2008 to an A.I. called NotebookLM. I requested an analysis and overview of the contents of my daily entries from that year and was both intrigued and surprised by the feedback. 

The six page report outlined six categories which most of my content fit into. One of these, which surprised me but should not have, had to do with reviews or references to movies. There's a sense in which it became clear how much our culture shapes up more than we realize.

Here's the section of that report assessing my 2008 writings about film. This is followed by links to five movie reviews, three from 2008 and two others from later.

* * *

Film as a Philosophical Lens

The author’s film analyses consistently transcend simple plot summary or critique, instead using cinematic narratives to probe intricate philosophical and ethical themes. This approach is evident in his treatment of a wide range of films from 2007 and 2008.

Morality and Chaos: A preoccupation with the nature of evil and the struggle for order emerges from the reviews of No Country for Old Men and The Dark Knight. The author is captivated by Javier Bardem's portrayal of Anton Chiguhr as a relentless, "pathological, human version of The Terminator," a force of pure chaos operating outside conventional morality. In The Dark Knight, he identifies a similar dynamic in The Joker, whose goal is to "destroy all notions of order and decency." The author is drawn to how these films explore the ethical compromises necessary to confront such chaos, noting that Batman must "violate his own code of ethics in order to reach an ethical conclusion." His assessment of No Country for Old Men is marked by a telling ambivalence. While he praises the film's execution as "flawless," he simultaneously identifies "a number of problems," including a performance by Tommy Lee Jones he found to be a "caricature of himself," the questionable "star power" of Woody Harrelson for such a brief role, and a "confusing" ending that undermined the film's intense buildup.

Reality and Illusion: The author uses the films Vanilla Sky and The Prestige to engage with classic philosophical questions about perception, reality, and self-deception. He praises Vanilla Sky as a "vision realized" that explores the "philosophical conundrum of the ‘brain in the vat’" and forces the protagonist—and the viewer—to choose between a perfect fantasy and the harder challenges of reality. He highlights the film's use of the two-faced Janus figure as a key symbol of this pivotal transition. Similarly, in his review of The Prestige, he quotes the film's central premise: "You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled," using it to discuss the human desire for illusion over truth.

Character and Storytelling: A strong preference for authentic, character-driven narratives over formulaic productions is a consistent thread. He praises a film like There Will Be Blood as a powerful "character study" and celebrates its director for employing the "preeminent rule of storytelling: show, don’t tell." Conversely, he criticizes films he views as shallow. Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, for example, is described as being trapped in a "bubble" without historical context. This contrast underscores his high valuation of deep character exploration and masterful storytelling craft over surface-level spectacle.

The Prestige

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2014/01/is-prestige-greatest-movie-about-magic.html

The Mission

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2010/10/missions-pointed-question.html

There Will Be Blood

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2008/04/there-will-be-blood.html

No Country for Old Men

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/04/throwback-thursday-no-country-for-old.html

Vanilla Sky

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2008/02/vanilla-sky.html

Rob Roy MacGregor Explains the Difference Between Highland Life and English Urban Society

Rob Roy MacGregor

It wasn’t until I moved to Minnesota that I came to a more vivid understanding of my ancestral history as a descendant of Rob Roy MacGregor, the legendary hero/outlaw--a hero to the people, but a thorn in the side of the corrupt British overlords.

Growing up in Central New Jersey, I saw little evidence of the native peoples who originally populated that land. The Raritan River rolled through our area, but I never realized at the time that the Raritan took its name from the Native tribe that once occupied this region 300 years earlier.

When I came to Minnesota in the 1970s, however, the past felt remarkably close. The Battle of the Little Big Horn—where Custer’s ambition met its end—had taken place barely a century earlier. Reservations and Native communities were (and are) still all around us here, carrying forward traditions, stories, and practices handed down through their ancestors.

Over time, I began to see unexpected parallels between these tribal cultures and the old Scottish clan system. Both were kin-based, place-rooted societies that organized life through relationships, obligations, and shared identity—quite unlike the world shaped by lawyers, title deeds, and bureaucratic red tape. Early Scotland, in many respects, resembled the American West before what we now call “civilization” arrived.

Statue of Rob Roy 

During the era of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and the Ghost Dancers, the two cultures collided with tragic consequences—misunderstandings, broken promises, and violence. (Of course this collision began centuries earlier in the East, but here in Minnesota the memories and effects felt more recent and tangible.) What struck me was how similar patterns had unfolded in Scotland during the time of the Highland MacGregors, who were so reviled by the authorities that, for nearly a century, it was legal to shoot a MacGregor on sight.

Sir Walter Scott captured this clash of worlds in his 1827 novel Rob Roy, contrasting the refined, urban English society with the wild, clan-governed Highlands. The tension between these two cultures—each with its own values, loyalties, and ways of life—shapes the novel’s characters and illuminates the broader historical struggles of both Scotland and the American frontier.

This past summer I decided to rent a time machine to go back in time to ask Rob Roy himself about the difference between English urban society and life amongst the Highland clans. Here was Rob Roy's reply.

"Ah'll tell ye, th' rugged Highland landscape is a stark shift awa' frae th' English urban scene. Th' Highlands are wild, untamed, an' marked wi' th' independent clan system. Th' Highland clans hae their ain complex social structures, an' loyalty tae yin's clan chief is o' utmost importance. We Highlanders cherish notions like honor, loyalty, an' rugged individualism. Oor way o' life is closely bound tae th' land, an' oor traditions are deeply rooted in a strong link tae oor environment."

"On th' ither haun, English urban society is bound tae commercial an' financial pursuits, social hierarchy, an' a mair centralized form o' governance. Th' English value stability, convention, an' a sense o' propriety. It's aw aboot a sense o' order, decorum, an' adherin' tae social norms." 

"As ye can ken, me heart bides in th' Highlands."