D'Amico on why the US can't simply restart making things like printed circuit boards: plating and metal chemistry are now largely off-limits under environmental rules. He argues for "legalizing green jobs" near the engineers who invent the technology.
…And if they were, they were building exquisite systems for the military or for medical or whatever. It's like they weren't sold at enough scale to ensure that the pricing was competitive and all this other stuff. And so I think you're asking me like, what is the 80-20 of like U.S. manufacturing?
…the ground? Do we need to be doing initial processing of the minerals into materials that go into these pieces of the electric stack? Like how much of the China has like so comprehensively grabbed a hold of all this. What bits of it do we need or how much of it do we need? Like what is the reverse
engineering I've been doing is like, how is Elon the only guy who seems to be able to do this? And if you kind of look at like, what's crazy about this is like, there's all these technologies that were invented in California, for instance. And if I was like, hey, I just want to make a factory and make this, it wouldn't be more expensive. It would actually just be illegal for me to do it. And so the examples are like, if you wanted to make printed circuit boards in California, I believe you have to deal with California Air Resource Board and your local water agencies and stuff like that, because like, you know, you're plating like gold on doing electroplating and doing all this other stuff. And like basically doing chemistry of metals has become largely illegal. And so kind of…
China also has central planning that decides on the overall industrial direction of the country. Then they have furious competition at the local level or within sectors, you know, and between provinces. But they also get the benefit of just deciding we're moving in this direction. Let's all row…
Yeah. And I would argue that there is the most interesting thing about the current moment we're in is I was joking with this on a panel at a conference like a year or two ago, but basically it's like, you know, the tanks are going to go woke even because basically, you know, the electric stack is…
Yes. I mean, what they're doing now on EVs is the opposite of what you would do if you took the imperative to develop your own electric stack, et cetera, seriously. Do you not agree? Like, it is the opposite of what you would want to do. They're protecting combustion long after its shelf life.
