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Andrew Berglund

Things Andrew Says on Podcasts

“Businesses are not going to increase manufacturing capacity based on a kind of promise. Industry might hear a demand signal from the warfighter community, but it may be so divorced from the budget process and the acquisition process that the actual demand is years down the road. It's one thing for the government to say we want to buy more of your stuff, but a lot of that risk is front-loaded on industry to make those commitments today.” — Andrew Berglund, The Space Policy Show “There's the silver tsunami idea: a lot of the mom-and-pop machine shops are heading into a retirement wave, they don't have an obvious successor, and they might just close shop. It can literally be a handful of those shops supplying a small but critical part of the space supply chain. Everybody wants to be a founder. Can we bring some people to be sustainers, to step into those businesses and carry that critical work forward?” — Andrew Berglund, The Space Policy Show “Space has a hard time competing within these input markets, because smartphones are a billion-dollar-plus annual business and satellites are not growing to that level, at least not yet. So space has to compete for these underlying technologies and then needs them to be more specialized. You go to that sensor manufacturer and say, we love this technology, but we also need it to be rad-hardened. It's pretty much always going to be less than the number of smartphones that are sold.” — Andrew Berglund, The Space Policy Show “When I was a kid, NVIDIA chips were for my friends building their computers to play games. The same graphics processing units are powering AI frontier model development now. That's how quickly that's changed. You see recent stories about data centers pulling aircraft turbines off of decommissioned aircraft to power data centers. The demand and that competition can change so quickly. It's a strong argument for really high-quality data to drive decision-making.” — Andrew Berglund, The Space Policy Show

Where to Find Them

Andrew Berglund hosts The Space Policy Show .

Recently: “Ep. 179: Space Economy Under the Microscope” on The Space Policy Show (November 2026); “Ep. 164: Slipping Supply Chain” on The Space Policy Show (March 2026); “Ep. 158: Rapid Acquisition for Defense” on The Space Policy Show (July 2025); “Ep. 148: Deep Dive: Securing the Supply Chain” on The Space Policy Show (December 2024).

What They Said

“Businesses are not going to increase manufacturing capacity based on a kind of promise. Industry might hear a demand signal from the warfighter community, but it may be so divorced from the budget process and the acquisition process that the actual demand is years down the road. It's one thing for the government to say we want to buy more of your stuff, but a lot of that risk is front-loaded on industry to make those commitments today.” — Andrew Berglund, The Space Policy Show

Andrew Berglund splits government interventions in the space supply chain into supply-side money and demand-side signals. On demand, he says industry needs a credible, budgeted order before it will build capacity.

The Space Policy Show · 2026-11-12 Permalink → Listen →
The Space Policy Show Around 27:46 into the episode
Andrew Berglund

…that moves you further and further from where the commercial market is going, you have to be willing to pay for that. And you have to be willing to find a supplier, work closely with that supplier to ensure that you can sustain that technology, that you can sustain access to it over the long term.

Colleen Stover

…things, but also hitting on the idea of trusted, right? How can you trust the supplier, especially for national security things, missions and parts? So what other, Andrew, what other kinds of things is government doing to kind of try to help shore up the space industry in terms of supply chain?

Andrew Berglund

Yeah, so I think the simplest way to sort of bucket it is to think about what the policy interventions are on the supply side and what they are on the demand side. So on the supply side, we're trying to help firms either establish a production line, improve the quality of their product, maybe expand their product offerings. So that can be things like loan guarantees, purchase commitments, sort of the Defense Production Act type funding, the type of funding that comes through legislation with the CHIPS Act several years ago. What we're trying to do is, in part, buy down the cost of research and development and scaling production for companies so that they can supply more of what we want, right? So that's kind of the supply side case. On the demand side, it's pretty, you know, this is, I think, the one that gets industry really excited because they're like, just buy more of. Our stuff and we'll make more, right? Like the market can solve this problem. That is, you know, a big part of the story for what the Department of War is trying to do with acquisition transformation, with the creation of portfolio acquisition executives. You're trying to shorten the cycle between decision-making and funding, right? And put more of…

Colleen Stover

Interesting. Yeah, I like how you divided those to the supply and the demand side. Jackie, you want to add to some of that?

Jacklyn Buhrmann

Yeah, I think it's such an interesting problem because, you know, the space industry, government is such a huge consumer in that industry still. I mean, I know that commercial space is growing rapidly, but I think we're still in a place where a lot of applications and a lot of development is…

Colleen Stover

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about that? I mean, because I'm thinking they obviously have to navigate their own investors too, if they're going to be a true commercial company. Talk, do you have some more to say about maybe that kind of government as an anchor customer versus the kind of a…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
“There's the silver tsunami idea: a lot of the mom-and-pop machine shops are heading into a retirement wave, they don't have an obvious successor, and they might just close shop. It can literally be a handful of those shops supplying a small but critical part of the space supply chain. Everybody wants to be a founder. Can we bring some people to be sustainers, to step into those businesses and carry that critical work forward?” — Andrew Berglund, The Space Policy Show

Asked for policy fixes to space supply-chain risk, Andrew Berglund says the government lacks good data on the lowest tiers of suppliers. His example is small machine shops with no successor lined up.

The Space Policy Show · 2026-11-12 Permalink → Listen →
The Space Policy Show Around 41:39 into the episode
Andrew Berglund

…should be really busy helping inform policymaking right now because things are changing so quickly. And I think space, by virtue of being relatively small in sort of this competitive landscape, really needs to be on its front foot in being responsive and thinking through these challenges.

Colleen Stover

…So, you mentioned some how numbers can inform decision making and measurements. What are some other kind of potential policy solutions to some of the risks that we've talked about? I mean, we've talked about workforce, of course, we've talked about upstream things, we've talked about imports.

Andrew Berglund

I think the first is partly a data issue. I think we need better data on the lower tiers of the space supply chain and where those weaknesses are and how that's changing in a very dynamic time. I think one thing I'm interested in is how can government sort of bring that supply-side investment into the lower tiers of the supply chain? So, we hear a lot about the sort of silver tsunami idea of a lot of the mom and pop machine shops and folks like that that are going to be in this retirement wave, they don't have an obvious successor for those companies, and they might just close shop, right? Like, that might just be the end. And it can literally be a handful of those things that are supplying, maybe it's again small in quantities, but sort of a critical part of the space supply chain. I don't think we're doing it nearly enough to identify where those weaknesses are and target investments there, right? Like, can we bring everybody wants to be a founder? Can we bring some people to be sustainers to step into those businesses and carry that sort of really critical work forward that's spread all over the country, right? Like, these are state-level programs and national-level programs can both be really directed…

Colleen Stover

Interesting. I'm picturing, if anybody does this, you heard it here first. I'm picturing an apprenticeship program where we're training up new workforce, but at the state level to take over these mom and pop garage garage places and keep the supply chain resilient. Yeah, Jackie, what do you think…

Jacklyn Buhrmann

So, I think one thing that comes to mind for me when we're thinking about policy tools is using the policies that you already have access to carefully. There are things like the DPAS, the defense priorities and allocation system, is that right? Where suppliers can get ratings through DPAS to get…

Colleen Stover

Andrew, any last words? We're almost at time here, so I wanted to offer you something.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
“Space has a hard time competing within these input markets, because smartphones are a billion-dollar-plus annual business and satellites are not growing to that level, at least not yet. So space has to compete for these underlying technologies and then needs them to be more specialized. You go to that sensor manufacturer and say, we love this technology, but we also need it to be rad-hardened. It's pretty much always going to be less than the number of smartphones that are sold.” — Andrew Berglund, The Space Policy Show

Every satellite needs a star tracker, which uses the same kind of sensor as a smartphone camera. Andrew Berglund explains why that leaves space competing with consumer electronics for components it then needs customised.

The Space Policy Show · 2026-11-12 Permalink → Listen →
The Space Policy Show Around 17:09 into the episode
Colleen Stover

no that's a that's a good point what are some what are some other examples um i know that space has some very kind of distinct technologies um that that only space has so what are those and why are they important to watch or just examples obviously not the full list

Jacklyn Buhrmann

…you know lens guidance instruments or something like that um and a small small part of that is star trackers so uh a lot of these really niche applications that are required by you know satellite manufacturers and things like that are so hard to disentangle from the larger industries that make them

Andrew Berglund

yeah and i'll add there i think uh star trackers is a great example and relates to some ongoing research we're doing part of the story there is it's not a fully distinct technology it's a it's a distinct application of a technology that's used in a lot of other areas so if you follow the development of star trackers it really coincides with the development of digital camera technology over the last 25 30 years very similar sensor in space you're taking that light the light is hitting the sensor and you're using that information to figure out where your satellite's pointed and your satellite payload is pointed uh but you have the same sensor in your in your digital camera uh or your smartphone so that that is another kind of layer to the complexity here and why frankly space has a hard time sort of uh competing within these input markets because smartphones are a you know one billion dollar plus annual uh uh business right and satellites are growing they're not growing they're not growing to that level at least not yet so it's so space has to compete for these underlying technologies and then it needs them to be more specialized in some cases so you might have to go to that that sensor manufacturer and say we love this technology but we also need it to be rad…

Colleen Stover

yeah yeah that's um that's so the star trackers is one example andrew do you have any others that you want to share

Andrew Berglund

yeah another one that comes up pretty frequently is optical communications terminals so as we're trying to move from uh communicating by radio frequency and communicating by uh laser uh to to kind of enable these big proliferated constellations in space uh optical communication terminals are sort…

Colleen Stover

Yeah. And there might even be for optical communications, that's kind of an area of potential growth as well, since the kind of spectrum is the radio frequency spectrum is getting crowded and is regulated quite heavily. We're not only competing, though, for technology with other industries, is that…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
“When I was a kid, NVIDIA chips were for my friends building their computers to play games. The same graphics processing units are powering AI frontier model development now. That's how quickly that's changed. You see recent stories about data centers pulling aircraft turbines off of decommissioned aircraft to power data centers. The demand and that competition can change so quickly. It's a strong argument for really high-quality data to drive decision-making.” — Andrew Berglund, The Space Policy Show

Asked about workforce and supply risk in the space industry, Andrew Berglund points to how fast AI data-center build-outs created new demand. Space suppliers now compete with that demand for the same inputs.

The Space Policy Show · 2026-11-12 Permalink → Listen →
The Space Policy Show Around 40:01 into the episode
Andrew Berglund

That's best for Jackie. I know when I'm overmatched influentially.

Jacklyn Buhrmann

…people who repair specialized machinery, because a lot of those sort of skilled technician jobs, I think, are at a high risk as well. And so that's one of the analyses that EMAC is actually currently working on is looking to identify some areas where there may be risk on the workforce side as well.

Andrew Berglund

Yeah, it's a good example too of how quickly things can change. And so I think flexibility and having really useful current data on what is happening is really important. Obviously, the labor market is never static. But if you look at what has happened with data center build outs, inputs for labor and inputs for all kinds of things, that's a demand that didn't exist just. Few years ago, right? Like, I think all the time about NVIDIA chips, because when I was a kid, NVIDIA chips were for my friends building their computers to play games, right? Like, that's what they were for. The same graphic processing units are powering AI frontier model development now, right? Like, that's how quickly that's changed. You see recent stories about data centers using aircraft turbines, even pulling some aircraft turbines off of decommissioned aircraft to use for powering data centers. So, the demand and that sort of competition can change so quickly. I think it really is a strong argument in favor of the need for really high-quality data to drive decision-making. And so, I guess that's another side of the need for a strong workforce, right? Like, the economists should be really busy helping inform policymaking right now because things are changing so quickly.…

Colleen Stover

Yeah, the space, the space sector, small but mighty. So, you mentioned some how numbers can inform decision making and measurements. What are some other kind of potential policy solutions to some of the risks that we've talked about? I mean, we've talked about workforce, of course, we've talked…

Andrew Berglund

I think the first is partly a data issue. I think we need better data on the lower tiers of the space supply chain and where those weaknesses are and how that's changing in a very dynamic time. I think one thing I'm interested in is how can government sort of bring that supply-side investment into…

Colleen Stover

Interesting. I'm picturing, if anybody does this, you heard it here first. I'm picturing an apprenticeship program where we're training up new workforce, but at the state level to take over these mom and pop garage garage places and keep the supply chain resilient. Yeah, Jackie, what do you think…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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