EP 15: Building the Next American Century

Advanced manufacturing is about more than technology—it's about the policies, workforce, and investments that determine whether innovation succeeds.

In this episode, Congressman Dusty Johnson joins us to discuss what it will take for America to remain globally competitive. From protecting intellectual property and strengthening the defense industrial base to embracing AI, developing the manufacturing workforce, and fostering entrepreneurship, this conversation explores how policy and innovation intersect to shape the future of American manufacturing.

You'll hear why China is driving a renewed focus on domestic manufacturing, why AI should be viewed as an opportunity rather than a threat, how startups and small manufacturers fuel long-term innovation, and what South Dakota can teach the rest of the country about building the next generation of manufacturing companies.

Whether you're leading a manufacturing business, developing new technology, or simply interested in the future of American industry, this episode offers a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities ahead.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How manufacturing has become a critical component of national competitiveness.
• Why AI is more likely to create opportunity than eliminate it.
• The importance of protecting intellectual property and strengthening cybersecurity.
• How workforce development must evolve for the next generation of manufacturing.
• Why entrepreneurship and small manufacturers play a vital role in innovation.
• What policymakers, manufacturers, and technology leaders can do to help build America's industrial future.

Subscribe for more conversations with the leaders shaping the future of advanced manufacturing.

About the Show
The Additive Advantage Podcast explores what it really takes to turn additive manufacturing into a scalable, performance-driven business capability. Hosted by Dani Mason and Shon Anderson, the show features real conversations with leaders accountable for outcomes — not hype.

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About the Hosts
Hosted by Dani Mason and Shon Anderson, industry leaders with deep experience in technology and additive manufacturing.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

There's always a silver lining tech to technology. I get I find myself pretty frustrated about the doomsayers who uh believe that the AI revolution will destroy the modern workforce. There will clearly be disruptions, and I don't want to minimize, Sean, the impact of those disruptions to everyday American families. But the uh the Industrial Revolution destroyed millions of jobs. The computer revolution destroyed millions of jobs. Not a single American, regardless of their educational attainment, regardless of their political affiliation, would want to return us to the pre-industrial age.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Welcome to the Additive Advantage Podcast, where we go beyond the machines to explore the people, ideas, and decisions driving the future of advanced manufacturing. From emerging technologies to workforce, policy, and production at scale, we bring together the voices shaping what's next.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Today we're joined by Congressman Dusty Johnson, South Dakota's representative in the U.S. House of Representatives. While we typically spend our time with engineers, entrepreneurs, and manufacturing leaders, today we're taking a step back to explore policy decisions shaping the future of American manufacturing. This conversation covers everything from protecting IP and strengthening the defense industrial base to workforce development, AI, entrepreneurship, and what it'll take for America and South Dakota to remain strong and competitive as it relates to advanced manufacturing. So whether you're building products, leading a manufacturing company, or simply interested in where innovation is headed, this conversation offers a unique perspective from somebody helping shape policies behind America's industrial future at the highest level. Let's get into it. Representative Johnson, great to see you. Yeah, of course. So great to have you on the podcast today, Representative Johnson. For those of you who don't know him, South Dakota's U.S. Representative Dusty Johnson is coming to us live from Washington, D.C., here to talk about advanced manufacturing and national security and of course the impacts of those things back home here in South Dakota. Good morning and welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

So I know we're we're always tight on time. Let me jump right in, Dusty. Um, my first question, and I I know this is near and dear to your heart, but as you think about as a top-level policymaker in DC, where we are from a national security standpoint today, as it relates to, you know, we hear it in the news hey, we're low on missiles, we're low on bombs. And traditionally, we've had this defense industrial base that was made up of a handful of large companies. How are we doing as a country? And what do you see as the opportunities for us to leverage things like advanced manufacturing as we think about competition with China and other adversaries around the world?

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Yeah, we were just talking about so much of that in the Select Committee on China. I'm a member of that. Uh, we were talking about that this morning. And and first off, I would say clearly we're gonna be in an environment where there's gonna be a strong demand signal from Washington about amping up domestic production of so many of these national security things. And I I we know that China, uh, they're the world's foremost experts in economic and commercial espionage. Uh, that's been our whole hearing this morning on the select committee. They are, unfortunately, China, uh, wickedly good at it. And they are positioning themselves to be able to leapfrog America and uh the rest of the developed world in so much of these advanced manufacturing areas. We do need to do a better job, I think, of protecting our IP. Many American businesses are still asleep at the switch. There are probably, I mean, we clearly have more robust export controls than we have had in a long time. But there are probably some other things that the federal government needs to do working with the private sector to try to protect that IP. If we don't, uh, we are, in essence, as Vice President Bance says, committing corporate economic suicide by just giving away all of our best stuff uh to our fiercest economic competitor.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Do you think there's a degree of naivety in America? You talk about many businesses kind of being asleep at the switch. Uh at least for us, you know, that's certainly not a desire to be lax, but I think some people, would you say that we're economically and technologically, you know, in a state of combat most of the time with that adversary in particular?

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Yes. Uh with regard to China, we are absolutely in an economic and commercial war. Uh you are right, in that most American companies don't fully comprehend it. Uh, many American companies have, listen, they've had their IP stolen and they don't even realize it. And if we don't, as a country, I mean, so much of what we can do to make the next century another American century is really about investing in ourselves, right? And and and by the way, the Working Families Tax Cut Act did so much of that in that we uh, again, allowed preferable treatment of RD. I mean, you're not going to have the kind of advanced manufacturing this country needs without preferable tax treatment of RD, but also preference, you know, expensing of large equipment purchases. That's hugely important to American business. But uh, it's not just about investing in the United States. It is also about making sure that we don't let China reap the benefits of all of our labors for free. And I think particularly on the IT and cyber defense arena, most American companies are not doing anywhere near enough. They probably are falling short of the investments they need to harden their own infrastructure by a factor of five or ten.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Well, as a company who's currently in the process of upgrading our CMMC compliance level, I can I can tell you that it is a large undertaking. It's also of vital importance. Is there a workforce opportunity in all this, Representative Johnson, where, you know, on one hand, you listen to the news and say, oh my gosh, AI's here, you know, jobs are disappearing. On the other hand, we have this, these significant needs in terms of, you know, national defense investment. You talk about cybersecurity, IT, et cetera. Is there a silver lining to that cloud?

SPEAKER_02 6:00

There's always a silver lining tech to technology. I I get, I find myself pretty frustrated about the doomsayers who uh believe that the AI revolution will destroy the modern workforce. There will clearly be disruptions, and I don't want to minimize, Sean, the impact of those disruptions to everyday American families. But the Industrial Revolution destroyed millions of jobs. The computer revolution destroyed millions of jobs. Not a single American, regardless of their educational attainment, regardless of their political affiliation, would want to return us to the pre-industrial age. We know that the quality of life is many fold higher because of the industrial and computer revolutions, despite the disruption that they cause. And in fact, over the long hall, that disruption is a good thing. It makes it make sure that our human resources, our capital, our opportunities are better aligned with efficiency, right? We don't have there are just certain things that computers are better at doing than we are. And you can unlock uh untold prosperity if you align, if you make sure our country, your company, uh, you know, the the job opportunities for individuals are aligned with those opportunities. We cannot stop AI. We cannot stop AI. The only question that this country and American companies have is will we be positioned to reap the benefits of that AI revolution, or will we only be forced to pay the costs of it? And I think I I would tell you our state government, uh, I know there are a lot of non-South Dakotaans who are listening to uh, you know, who who love your content here, but I and I can't speak to their states, but I would tell you in South Dakota state government, we are woefully behind in how we're integrating technology, particularly IA, I AI-based platforms, into doing the work of state government. And I think there are tremendous opportunities there if we have the leadership to seize them.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Totally agree. And you know what I share with people, even at my very young and tender age of 53, I've seen, you know, the internet right after Al Gore invented it, of course, while I was in college. But people are, oh, I don't know how I feel about the internet. Well, the only way you lost is if you chose not to participate. Same thing with the, you know, personal computer. Oh my gosh, everybody needs a computer. Well, the only way that turned out to be a downside for you is if you chose not to participate and learn how to use one, I have to believe AI is gonna be the same way. It will only be the few that try to stick their head in the sand and and hope it goes away that ultimately don't benefit, as you described. And, you know, it's a difficult balance, I think, pushing technology and pushing advancement and also maintaining security and protection. Because we're both South Dakota, I've I gotta give you a South Dakota-specific question here. With everything we see happening from a national security, you know, technology innovation standpoint, what do you see as the greatest opportunities for South Dakota to play an ever-increasing role there and create opportunities in South Dakota for the next generation of our workforce?

SPEAKER_02 9:08

I'm a little concerned right now that culturally, South Dakota and so many other states uh are growing more populist and more skeptical of technology uh investments, uh, you know, projects that can move us in the right direction. I mean, it's getting harder and harder in this country to build almost anything. And the same road project that you can get cited, that you're required to cite within six months in Germany, we struggle to get done in six years in America. And the reality is that if we uh are if if we end up making it almost impossible to build data centers, almost impossible to build new energy generation, almost impossible to build transmission to get that energy to market, we are not going to have a prosperous future. You you simply the history of America is uh in no small part the history of big ideas, of rural electrification, of universal service, of the Eisenhower interstate system, of the TVA, the Missouri River Dams. And I just I I I don't know how many of those you could get done today. So you're right, there is tremendous opportunity for South Dakota. But if we're going to seize it, we need a new generation of leaders who rather than play to there's tremendous power in no, and it's safe for the politicians to pander to that voice of no. But I'm hopeful we get uh more uh Reagan conservatives in uh our state to step up and talk instead about the power of yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

I couldn't agree with you more. You know, in my in my big company days, uh, worked for a large publicly traded company. We had a phrase for that. We referred to those people as the corporate boobirds that sat on the Highline wire and crapped on every idea that came underneath. You know, ironically, or maybe not ironically, but there are a lot of folks who've never built anything that seem to be hell bent for leather to keep anyone else from building anything either. And um, you can't move forward without change. I agree. I share your concerns when I hear people say, you know, we're anti-growth, we're anti-this, we're anti-that. Well, that doesn't create opportunity for anyone.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

And I'm a capitalist, Sean, right? I understand as you do that in any given year you're gonna have jobs be be disrupted, you're gonna have businesses, you have whole industries at times disappear because that's what happens in a capitalist system. And that's okay provided that you're bold enough to have new jobs, new businesses, new industries enter the front door where uh some are leaving out the back door. But I just, I mean, this is not about just growth. This is not about having South Dakota be five million people rather than one million people. This is about making sure we have vibrant economic opportunities in really rewarding industries like advanced manufacturing, jobs that did not exist 10 and 20 years ago. I I mean, if the only thing that South Dakota aspires to is having the same jobs available to my kids as were available to me 20 years ago, what a small vision.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Well, and it's it's doomed to fail because inevitably those jobs won't exist. Right. Uh to your point, if you study history just a little bit and you look at the jobs that existed, you know, 20, 30 years ago, they're a lot fewer and they pay a lot less today. And that that's the future that that mindset will will unfortunately doom our our next generation to. You know, I'm curious. I know that you, between the Select Committee on China and focus on some other things around national defense and technology, this whole concept of you know advanced manufacturing and things like that tend to be, I hear it on the tip of your tongue fairly regularly, but help me understand and help our listeners understand what are the conversations like amongst you know the group of other top policymakers in DC? Is there a broader understanding of the need to drive innovation, take some risk, and leverage some of these technologies? I mean, what we're seeing in even in Iran was a great example. We're we're shooting a $5 million missile and they're sending back a $100 drone. You know, how well does do the policymakers there understand the need for change?

SPEAKER_02 13:17

So two levels. First off, uh particularly in the defense space, you're right. I mean, the the Pentagon is acutely aware uh of the importance of mass and that uh these fantastically expensive, exquisite systems, billion-dollar platforms, that they uh their survivability will be a real problem in contested airspace, in the contested airspace of the future. So they realize that the power of mass, the power of numbers, and I think are doing a better job than we probably are used to giving uh the Department of Defense or the Department of War credit for with innovative thinking. And indeed, there are South Dakota companies, friends of mine, who are working pretty closely with the department on bringing, you know, munitions for drones and other relatively small platforms to market. And I think, I think from the national defense perspective, we're headed in the right direction. From the broader American economic perspective, I think the policymakers get it at like a conceptual level. And I think we've got tax policy that's pretty well attuned to that. But I don't think we understand how driven China is. And I don't think we understand how big the workforce gap is gonna be. People think all these jobs are gonna be destroyed by AI, but really when it comes to advanced manufacturing, to additive manufacturing, there are still a lot of jobs to be created. I don't know that we have the people to fill them. And I don't know that we have a legal immigration system that does a good enough job of making it, you know, I don't want to say easy, but appropriately hard for the world's smartest people to get here. And um if we're only relying on Native born Americans to design great systems and great manufacturing processes, we're gonna lose to China. I just, I, I, I, I don't want to live in a world where China is the dominant economic and uh innovative force.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

I agree. And and I share your aversion to that that picture of the future. I want to, you know, perhaps we could take encouragement from all the uh social media reels of World Cup uh fans traveling to the U.S. and discovering what an amazing place it is and beyond even ranch dressing, all the amazing things we have to offer here. You know, when you think about, again, I'll go back to workforce, you know, the number of jobs that are needed, and you know, what I hear in the manufacturing space, I mean, we're millions of headcount short in terms of the workforce that's needed. We're coming out of a time period where, you know, we decided everybody needed to go to a four-year school, but I think we have a lot of folks who may have ended up with degrees that don't fit the workforce of the future we need. Is there a conversation at the DC level about how we reposition and realign that workforce on a macro scale?

SPEAKER_02 16:05

I mean, I I don't want to say that that revolution is done, but we're pretty far down that transition. I mean, it's been I mean, I think for 10 years we've been hearing South Dakota governors and American presidents talk about the value of skilled trades. And I mean, it maybe it was just Micro 15 years ago, but I think like everybody gets it. I don't, I don't, I don't, you can't find a policymaker that uh will talk about a four-year degree as the be all end all. Uh, clearly we need those two, and we need to do a better job of investing in both our four-year and and two-year uh colleges and universities in this country. Used to be that all of the very best universities, your top 10 lists, your top 20 list, were in England and the United States. That's not true anymore. China uh has the top spot in an increasingly large number of the top 10 best universities uh in the world. So we've got some investment to do there. But no, clearly, I mean, I think everybody gets it. And I I think increasingly where we're spending money, uh, you just look at South Dakota. I mean, this the amount of scholarship dollars that have flowed to our two-year colleges in the last 10 years are uh pretty substantially outstripping the kind of new money put into the regental system, the four-year system.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

If you were a high school student today, which I know at at you know, even your age, much less mine, is probably hard to imagine. But if you were a high school student today, what would be appealing to you about, you know, these opportunities and the workforce of the future?

SPEAKER_02 17:35

Yeah, I mean, I've got a 21-year-old at uh South Dakota State University, an 18-year-old who just graduated and will be headed to the University of South Dakota, and then a 14-year-old. So, although you're right, I mean, as I'm in my 50th decade on the planet, sometimes the high school days seem a long time ago, but I kind of live vicariously through my sons. And I I am pretty bullish, pretty optimistic about uh our the ability of our kids to seek out great opportunities in the technology space. Uh my sons are all very comfortable with technology. Uh it's not like they're going to Dakota State or School of Minds and studying IT, but they understand that almost any uh field that they study, that IT, that technology is gonna be the tool that they'll need to be successful in that industry. And I know not all American students view it that way. Uh, and we need to do a better job of investing in technology education for people in all fields. But I see how comfortable my kids are. I mean, these are these are native technology citizens. And uh, while we need a lot more smart people in this country, I mean, that's really the workforce problem we face. I do think I'm pretty optimistic. Um and if you ask about what fields I would be interested in, I wouldn't, as a high school kid, I wouldn't be interested in one field so much as trying to figure out how to be excellent in any field that would have opportunities available to me, because the jobs that are existing 10 years from now are going to be very different than those that exist today.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Agreed. When you think about, and again, I'm coming back to a little bit of a South Dakota lens here, but the opportunities afforded by things like the new B-21 bomber coming to Ellsworth, some of the investment that we're seeing in cybersecurity and drone manufacturing companies on the eastern side of the state. How do we make the most of those opportunities as from a state economy standpoint, and frankly, you know, other technology companies in the state, you know, we're not Silicon Valley, but how do we make the most of the opportunities we have coming our way?

SPEAKER_02 19:38

We need a transformation in how our state government views entrepreneurship. I think Rabbid City, uh, your town is doing a much better job than our state generally. But when we get, like you look at the B-21, I mean, they're gonna be huge vendors that will be bedded down, maybe some for three years, some for five, some for 10, some for 15. The workers will kind of cycle through there, right? But um, a certain number of those people are gonna fall in love with the Black Hills of South Dakota. A certain number of those people are gonna want to start businesses. And right now, I don't think we have, I think we still have kind of we have an antiquated economic development system in how we go about investing in and supporting and encouraging job growth. I'll give you one example, although I could give you 10. I mean, I rolled out uh during my failed gubernatorial campaign, I rolled out the my launch South Dakota plan, which was uh going to take millions of dollars away from traditional economic development functions and instead stick them in entrepreneurship, founder-based businesses, startups generally. And we have these proof of concept awards in South Dakota where state government can give out $25,000 grants so that people can try to move that science experiment in the garage into something that is a little bit better fit for some early stage capital, right? And they work, they work. No, a lot of them fail, right? As you know better than I do, Sean, because you've got more of a history of entrepreneurship than I do. You're gonna have a lot of failure when you're in that very, very earliest stage. But if people can't pay for their health insurance, if they can't buy groceries, they're never really, they're not able to buy those few months to really accelerate their ideas. We only have $25,000 awards. We're giving out fewer than a dozen of them every year in the state, and tech-based businesses are not eligible. Do you know how insane that is? And so for me, it is about when you've got the smart 32-year-old who decides, actually, I think when I leave this big company, my wife and I, or my husband and I, we we want to live here and we want to build up business, we want to make our idea reality here. We need to have an ecosystem that is supportive of that founder mentality. And right now, although Elevate does a pretty good job, they don't have anywhere near as good enough a partner in state government. And if we just have those tools, then the B 21 will not be about bombers, it will not be about. About a platform, it will be about dozens of businesses that spin off from that, even outside of the national security space and the creation of hundreds or thousands of jobs over time.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

I love that vision. And, you know, I'm sitting here in a company that was founded by an XB-1 pilot who, when, you know, just as you said, he and his wife fell in love with the Black Hills during their time at Ellsworth, thought when we get out of the Air Force, this is where we want to raise our kids. And that was the beginning of B-9 creations, um, you know, 15 years ago. Having lived a lot of other places over the course of my career, I agree with you. When you look at a military installation, especially think about an Air Force base that is a bed-down location for aircraft, you know, you can look at all those bases and say, well, here's, you know, within 10 miles of the base, there's these 20 or 30 companies that all exist. Let's start some of those in Rapid City rather than just having, you know, somebody who's already doing this in another state open an office here. And, you know, your point about an existing tech-based business not being eligible for some of the things that some of the tools that we have in our economic development toolbox, my experience both at B9 Creations, as well as being involved with Elevate and the School of Minds, you know, helping other entrepreneurs, when you think about the risks to starting a business, there's the do you know how to do the business? And then there's the will the idea work. Well, you know, if you already know how to do business, a huge amount of the risk is taken out of it. So if you had an existing company that had an idea to expand, launch a new division, whatever the case may be, those are much safer bets. Interestingly, they're bets that traditionally we haven't really been directly enthusiastic about funding, it didn't seem. So I would echo your sentiments there. We have just a couple of minutes left. I'd love to hear from you, you know, your encouragement for the small technology companies in South Dakota and across the nation, especially as it might relate to advanced manufacturing, based on the seat you sit in in DC. What's your advice to all of us?

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Well, good business people should almost never take business advice from politicians.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Well, that's probably the best advice you could have given us, right there.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

Don't listen to us. I would there is a lot of, I'm gonna go in a very different direction than you probably thought I would, Sean, but there's a lot of dysfunction in DC. And honestly, the political marketplace rewards that dysfunction. That's what the political marketplace is asking for, right? And so media outlets, politicians, they respond to incentives in the system. And what we're getting is a government, a government that is so dysfunctional that it actually can stand in the way of job creation in the private sector. So I know a lot of founders, a lot of managers, CEOs, owners kind of think politics is gross and it doesn't have anything to do with them. Politics is a clear and present danger to the economic success of your country. And if you are not at the table, you will be on the menu. And so you have to get politically engaged. You have to demand that elected officials bring a functional, common ground finding approach to bear. If this is only about political celebrity, if this is about hot takes, if this is about owning the libs, we will not be able to have the next century be another American century. And I just I wish we had more business people who are willing to invest in in functional politics.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Well, amen to that. I was having this exact conversation with another CEO recently who said, you know, I just I try to I try to be apolitical. And you the phrase you used just a second ago, Dusty, about, you know, if you're not at the table, you're gonna be on the menu. I said, so here's what that says to me is when you say you're gonna be apolitical, is you're just gonna blindly trust these people to do what is good for your company and your employees and your ability to serve your customer. And I said, when you look at their track record of just just running the government, it's not good. And, you know, we've gotta we've gotta maintain some type of accountability between the folks in DC and the people and not just the business leaders, but certainly business leaders as a as a an element of their constituents back home that need things to function. So I always appreciate your willingness to shoot straight and uh you know, tell it like it is. I think we're uh we have way more opportunities than we have challenges, as much as it's easy to point out the challenges and want to say thank you so much for taking time out of your day uh to come spend a little time with us and talk about, you know, what businesses can be doing and how we can be thinking about growing here in South Dakota. Representative Johnson, thank you so much and we appreciate your time invested with us. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

It's kind of fun to have a totally different guest on here, you know, shake us up a little bit. And I think it it's super critical to understand the policies and the overall political environment, in addition to what all these companies are trying to do today. And what was fascinating to me is this framing of manufacturing as a national security capability, not just an economic one. When you think five or 10 years from now, what would success look like if America gets it right? And what would that look like day to day for the manufacturers that are listening to this podcast?

SPEAKER_01 27:05

You know, I think big picture takeaway from that conversation with Dusty is, you know, we have to understand not just from a national defense standpoint, what do we have to be able to make, but also from a, you know, food supply standpoint, medicine supply standpoint, all of these other things. And even when you you take something like whether it's magnets or batteries, you say, oh, well, we have manufacturers of those. Yeah, we don't have any of the inputs. And when he talks about, you know, the competition, really this competition that's this isn't new between kind of the East and the West, you know, he talked a lot about China because they are the lead actor when it comes to the East. But, you know, they were very intentional in uh helping us to ship all that manufacturing capability overseas. I think COVID was a good wake-up call, but we've got to get, you know, beyond simply thinking about medical products and uh and things, you know, when you saw uh again, I'll go back to COVID, but when you saw, hey, Ford can't make F-150s because they don't have computer chips, you know what else takes computer chips? Fighter jets and a whole lot of other things. So, you know, I think getting it right means, and this is where, you know, this is why we talk to people like Dusty, because, you know, as we're running a business day to day or our customers are running their business, you're probably not mapping the entire supply chain from raw material to end product for multiple industries. And that's really to win in the long run. The capability we've got to have is we don't have to make everything here. There's all kinds of plastic tchotchkis that if they get made somewhere else probably doesn't matter. There are a whole lot of critical things that if we don't make here and somebody ever decided they wanted to shut the spigot off, or heaven forbid there's another pandemic, we could have a problem.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Yeah, I I want to tease a little bit more into that rise of the East, we'll call it. And uh, you guys spent quite a bit of time talking about, you know, to what extent do American companies realize we're already competing maybe in this economic war with China or call it of strategic significance when you think about the supply chain. What mindset do you believe that manufacturers need to start to make if they're going to remain globally competitive? To your point, the Trotskys maybe not, but there are a lot of critical areas and industries where we would want to remain globally competitive over the next decade.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

You know, I think obviously I'm gonna assume most companies, and certainly B9, you know, roughly half our revenue comes from outside the United States. So you really have to have a global component to your strategy and think about, you know, are we gonna produce where the customers are? Are we gonna produce in one location and ship globally? You know, how do we want to handle those things? And and rather than just kind of letting it happen, make those choices intentionally and think about, you know, what does this do for your capabilities as a manufacturer? What does this do for, you know, frankly, our our national ability to produce the things we need to produce? And again, sometimes you you land a big customer somewhere and all of a sudden now, hey, we're doing a bunch of business in whatever country. And you it's easy to not take the time to go back and say, hmm, how should that shape our supplier strategy, manufacturing strategy, workforce strategy to ensure that you aren't allowing, you know, whether it's IP or other institutional knowledge to walk out the door and you're retaining those critical capabilities?

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Mm-hmm. I think that's great. Another theme I thought was really interesting is this idea that America doesn't have an innovation problem. We have an execution one. If you could remove a barrier that would help manufacturers innovate and then build faster, execute faster, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Practically, or you mean like magic wand came for a day stuff?

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Well, as we know, this is all about the magic wand show.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Well, if you know, if if it was magic wand stuff, I would remove the barrier between technical people and financial people and magically make that communication happen seamlessly. And if we did that, I have a hunch execution would go up a ton from a practical standpoint. Not that we shouldn't work on that, but you know, I think it would be this essentially the overhead associated with thinking about IP protection on a more global scale. Certainly if you do any business with the federal government and you're thinking about cybersecurity, or frankly, even if you don't do any business with the federal government, you know, I'm guessing almost anybody who's listening to this probably has a cybersecurity component to their company insurance. You know, that means you have to take certain actions. There's just a certain amount of overhead associated with protecting your business, protecting your customers' information. And, you know, I do see that as a barrier to expanding because your previous question about, you know, globally, how should we think about our manufacturing strategy, et cetera? I can tell you for us frequently, you know, everything from shipping to IP protection, workforce, like, oh, yeah, we probably should produce low more locally. A lot of overhead associated with that. Let's just make it here and ship it. And if we could get some of that overhead out of the way and make what I'll call the best decision for the customer, probably some things would get done differently.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

I like that you brought up another topic that I want to touch on, which is workforce. And we spend a lot of time about developing workforce. You know, in this conversation and others, there's optimism around AI that it'll create more opportunity than it necessarily eliminates. But I want to talk directly to young people out there. I also, we had a tour come through here of high school students. We had tours come of college students. Speaking to them, what skills would you encourage them to develop so they will be successful in this new manufacturing economy of the future?

SPEAKER_01 32:34

A couple of thoughts on that. And then, you know, because this is such a hot topic, we're actually going to do a whole series around workforce, both current state as well as long-term strategy. So keep an eye out for that. I think it's the willingness to dig deeper. And when your instructor or parent or somebody says, you know, have you thought about a career in manufacturing? And now I'm going to struggle to remember them, but it's what was it, the four Ds, dirty, dangerous, you know, dark, and something else anyway. That's not manufacturing today. And even if you say, Well, I don't think I want to be an engineer. And I always tell people this when I'm talking about B9 creations, they said, So, you know, you have a company full of STEM people. Sort of, but you know, we also have finance and HR and all those other things. I mean, we have an English major that runs part of our finance team and shipping. So there you go. But I think it's when you are, you know, 16, 17, 18, even 21, 22, we know so very little about most career fields, unless we had a parent or or a family friend who worked in a given career field. We know so little about them when we're trying to make these choices of what to study in college, if we're gonna go to college. So do some digging. You are gonna spend a lot of years, unless you're you know, have a rich uncle, you're gonna spend a lot of years working. Figure out something that you can do that is interesting to you. And it might be that the field you want to be in, you may be fired up about space, but you might have a marketing degree. I know a lady who fits that description and got a job with a scientific, technology-related company, even though she had a marketing background, because you know what, those companies need marketing too. So look for those places to apply your gifts and talents in a context that you find is interesting.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

Yeah, that's great. I I think this other backbone of manufacturing are entrepreneurs, founder-led companies. And I mean, they're hugely, hugely instrumental in this. What role do you see startups and small manufacturers playing in ensuring that the US can remain this leader in innovation and advanced manufacturing?

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Well, I'll tackle that in two parts. So, one as it relates to kind of the defense industrial base, which of course is a hot topic in DC as well as in advanced manufacturing today. And then just in general, when you think about in the defense world, you know, the federal government realized traditional defense industrial base companies, and there's a handful of very large ones, there are shortages of key munitions and other technologies that the traditional processes can't move fast enough to address. So they've created other contracting vehicles, other purchasing vehicles to try to work with the non-traditional defense primes and enable those smaller companies, not always smaller, but oftentimes smaller than the handful of typical large defense primes, to move more quickly and address some of these, I'll call them technology gaps based on, I mean, the whole world is studying what's going on in Ukraine. How did things unfold in Iran? How did things unfold in the the war with Israel? And realizing, hmm, when I have to use a five million dollar missile to take out a $250 drone, that's bad. Because I can't, no matter what country I am, I can't keep that up forever. So I see that angle of it. And then the other side of it is we we have to be thinking about, you know, what capabilities does our economy need for the future. And so even if you're not in the defense world, just being cognizant of, okay, to your point, uh, in a previous conversation, we talked about falling in love with a problem and whether that is, you know, what you lived in an apartment and the way that the, you know, the maintenance staff addressed this issue with what went wrong with your apartment was super frustrating. To, hey, we're running out of ways to have more traffic at surface level. So you're going to go invent a company, you know, uh named the Boring Company to dig tunnels. And, you know, one of those examples I just mentioned is Elon Musk, another one of those, a guy that started a company and lives right here in Rapid City, South Dakota. So finding the problems that you can get fired up about, falling in love with that problem and then finding a way to bring solutions will always be needed. The other element I think that gets overlooked with innovation is large companies, for the most part, innovate through acquisition.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 36:43

Not entirely. Obviously, almost any large company has their own RD to an extent. But in America, when you look at whether it's med device companies, pharmaceutical companies, you know, electrical infrastructure companies, industry almost does not matter. A lot of the quote unquote new things those companies are doing came from acquiring a smaller company. So the importance of entrepreneurship, starting new businesses, building new companies to address whatever those problems are isn't just so you can have a, you know, a maybe a company that's successful in three states with custom something or other for farmers. It's that's the company that's going to get bought by some large global agriculture company and take those solutions more broadly to market. So again, I just encouraging people to think beyond the direct innovation impact to, you know, how did Medtronic end up with a whole portfolio of med device? How many of those came through acquisition? Same thing on the pharmaceutical side. If you do a little research, I think you'd be surprised how much of what goes on at a big company started at a small company.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Love that. What a fascinating conversation.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

Congressman Johnson, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your perspective on where American manufacturing is and needs to be headed. One thing that really stood out to me through this conversation is that technology alone is not enough. Remaining globally competitive requires innovation and skilled people, supportive policy, and leaders willing to build rather than simply preserve the status quo. Perhaps the most important thing you could learn from that conversation was Dusty Johnson saying, Whatever you do, don't take advice from politicians. Until next time, keep building what's next.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

And you can follow the Additive Advantage podcast on Apple and Spotify and watch full episodes on YouTube. If this episode was helpful, including Sean's parting gift to you all with that nugget, leave us a five star review on Apple or on Spotify. It helps the show grow. Follow us on LinkedIn for new episodes and updates. Thanks for listening.