The Revival of American Industry—and Why I’m Rebooting The Burner Files

The ways we use tech, the ways we build industry, are transforming. I'll document how business and society are undergoing a drastic and unprecedented change.

Seventeen years ago, I left the U.S. with a notebook and a question: What drives reinvention?

At the time, America felt like it was falling apart. The 2008 financial crisis had just sent the economy into freefall. Factories across the Midwest were closing, jobs were vanishing, and the political class seemed more interested in managing decline than reversing it.

So I went abroad.

I walked factory floors in South Korea, where engineers built the machines that reshaped global trade. I spent years investigating Samsung’s rise, uncovering how a company that started as a vegetable shop became a global tech empire. More than technology or capital, South Korea thrived on a belief in a better future.

Then, I crossed into North Korea. I saw what happens when that belief is crushed.

The contrast couldn’t have been starker. The South had reinvented itself from war and poverty into a global powerhouse, while the North remained frozen in time. Its leaders hoarded power but provided no vision, energy, or future. This was a warning: democracy propels innovation and industry builds power, but the lack of both will destroy a nation.

I reported from China’s Xinjiang region, where I saw the dark side of technology—AI-powered surveillance systems, mass biometric tracking, and digital blacklists used to control an entire population. My book The Perfect Police State exposed how technological progress without moral direction leads to oppression rather than prosperity. In Washington DC, I advised Congress on tech policy, trying to make sense of how America could rebuild its leadership in an age of disruption.

Then, I went to Ukraine.

I sat across from President Volodymyr Zelensky, a man leading his country through the greatest test of resilience in modern history. Ukraine was fighting for survival. But it was also fighting for the right to build its own future. Wars aren’t won with weapons alone. Industry, logistics, production, and, as Ukraine has proven, drones have become decisive markers of victory. The innovations that were once the domain of superpowers were being reshaped by cheap, expendable, AI-guided weapons built at scale. A nation outgunned on paper held down with the ability to outthink its enemy.

I took the Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia, a country where reinvention had stalled. I passed through cities that had once fueled Soviet power but now stood in economic decay. The collapse of an empire had left a void, and into that void stepped Vladimir Putin, offering nostalgia instead of vision. Russia possessed technology but lacked belief in progress. It chose stagnation over dynamism.

Then, I came home.

And something had changed.

I traveled through the American heartland, where factories that once stood abandoned were roaring back to life. Everywhere from North Carolina to Wisconsin, I saw how manufacturing, biotech, and AI startups were working together, revealing that America’s next industrial age wouldn’t be confined to Silicon Valley. And in Silicon Valley itself, I studied the great tech thinkers, dissecting what made them different.

One leader fascinated me more than anyone: Steve Jobs. Not the visionary of Apple’s golden years, but the Steve Jobs who failed. The man who was forced out of his own company and spent a decade in the wilderness, reinventing himself.

Through interviews and archival research, I learned that those years were brutal—he made missteps, burned bridges, and almost disappeared into irrelevance. Yet they ultimately defined him. He built NeXT, learned how to work with teams, and developed the leadership skills he lacked in his early years.

When he finally returned to Apple, he had transformed into a master of reinvention.

His comeback was about more than business. People didn’t buy Apple products because of the technology alone. They connected with a philosophy of technology as an extension of human creativity. They were inspired by Steve’s vision.

One truth emerged from all of this: reinvention determines who thrives. Companies, industries, and nations that commit to building and creating will lead.

But technology alone won’t save us.

🚀 We’re going back to space. The NASA Artemis program might skip sending humans to the moon and join the private companies racing toward Mars. Our success will depend on cutting-edge engineering and on a renewed national commitment to exploration and discovery.

💡 Fusion energy is moving from theory to reality. If successful, it could power entire cities with nearly limitless clean energy. Whether it thrives will depend on whether we can balance the need for innovation with the need for regulation.

🤖 Artificial intelligence is transforming industries. It has the potential to amplify human ingenuity, but also to concentrate power. The direction it takes will depend on how we shape its development.

🏭 Factories across America are roaring back to life. Semiconductors, electric vehicles, and advanced materials are being made at home again. Will this industrial revival last, or will we fall back into the trap of devastating boom and bust cycles?

🔬 Quantum computing is making strides. The development of quantum computing chips promises breakthroughs in cryptography, materials science, and AI. National investment in this technology will determine whether America leads or falls behind in this new computational era.

The great technologies of our time won’t define the future alone. That responsibility falls to us. That’s why I created The Burner Files.

Today, I’m relaunching it for a new era, with a new focus.

Every week or two, I’ll send an issue of The Burner Files, where we’ll explore the biggest forces shaping our world—through the lens of one statistic, one image, and one story. The goal: to explore, unpack, and understand our moment of reinvention.