Podbit · The Shawn Ryan Show
Blueforge Alliance needs 400,000 skilled workers over 8 years to build America's nuclear submarine fleet. China built 1,000 ships last year. The U.S. built 3. This isn't just an economic problem — it's a national security emergency.
Where this was said
At 1:04:40 · chapter starts 1:01:30
The stakes of the skills gap escalate dramatically in this chapter. Blueforge Alliance needs 400,000 skilled workers in 8 years for submarine production. Larry Fink says BlackRock portfolio companies alone need 300,000 electricians. A projected $9–10 trillion infrastructure build-out is upon us. China built 1,000 ships last year; the U.S. built 3. Rowe is now embedded with the Department of War on a campaign called Build Freedom and just announced Meta's America's Workplace Academy alongside the company's president — a $150 million, 4-state pilot that pays students to train for 5 weeks and guarantees jobs. Lowe's has $250 million in HVAC training. Home Depot's Pathway to Pro is $100 million. The first time an administration has actually responded to Rowe's message, he says, was when they said: 'You tell us what to do.'
There are 7.5 million open jobs in America right now — most requiring no degree — while 6.9 million able-bodied men aren't working or looking. We have a supply problem, not a jobs problem.
There are currently 7.5 million open jobs in the U.S., most of which don't require a 4-year degree but do require training and willingness to work.
$1.7 trillion in student debt. 7.5 million open jobs. 6.9 million men not working. America keeps lending money it doesn't have to train kids for jobs that don't exist while the jobs that do exist go begging.
Outstanding U.S. student debt stands at $1.7 trillion, much of it held by people who attended university but did not graduate.
Approximately 6.9 million able-bodied men are neither working nor looking for work in the U.S. — a historically unprecedented peacetime figure.
Eliminating shop class didn't just redirect kids away from trades — it made skilled work invisible. A generation grew up walking past where shop class used to be, never once seeing what real work looked like. You can't pursue what you can't see.
Fei-Fei Li went back to Stanford from Google in 2018 specifically to build a multi-stakeholder governance framework for AI. Her argument: market forces are not societal norms. Just as biology uses IRBs and cars have safety laws, AI needs layered oversight from educators, governments, and the public — not just a few industry titans.
Andrew Santino's personal MCU of political villains is collapsing. He and Bobby speculated that a circulating photo of Mitch McConnell with a Chinese official was AI-generated compositing two separate images.
Mass surveillance is here to stay. The real battle isn't stopping cameras — it's ensuring judges and laws keep that data out of family court and civil disputes, admitting it only for violent crimes and national security. The surveillance economy currently yields more upside than downside, but only if we build the legal guardrails now.
When people cite Scandinavia as proof socialism works, Galloway says they've got it backwards. Northern Europe runs highly competitive free-market economies with more competition in many sectors than the US — they just make sure taxes are actually paid and redistributed. Billionaires and universal healthcare can coexist.
Two percent adjustments to income tax and stamp duty tweaks are deck-chair rearrangements. The UK's competitiveness hinges on four structural levers: currency valuation, energy costs, regulatory burden, and tax rates. Devalue the pound, build 56 nuclear plants, slash red tape, introduce a flat tax — and the country transforms.
Lisbon had one of Europe's worst heroin crises. Then Portugal legalised drugs and redirected all enforcement money into rehabilitation and housing. Crime collapsed. Addiction fell. Then politics moved the money elsewhere, and the problem started creeping back. Chesterton's Fence: you forget why you were spending that money.
Congress passed the Boland Amendment 411 to 0, explicitly banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras. Reagan signed it — then immediately moved the operation deeper underground, essentially responding to a bipartisan prohibition by going more illegal.
The CIA planted mines in Nicaraguan commercial harbors, wrote the Contras' press releases taking credit, and promptly blew up ships from four allied nations. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, Congress erupted, and the Boland Amendments multiplied.
Oliver North was a decorated Marine and devout Catholic with zero covert operations experience. He ran the entire shadow war against Congress — planes, airstrips, arms shipments, shell companies — learning on the job. And by every operational measure, he crushed it.
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