This is the fundamental thing you get wrong. The whole industrial knowledge thing was build because we were building stuff internally. When you are outsourcing assembly you are actually sending quite a lot of the knowledge and know how that went into the high value act of designing a thing. For free.
We live at a physical world - so being able to produce physical stuff both better, more, and cheaper is extremely important for continuous dominance.
The only area china is really behind seems to be commercial airlines engines. That is the only thing we never really outsourced.
> When you are outsourcing assembly you are actually sending quite a lot of the knowledge and know how that went into the high value act of designing a thing.
I don't think so. Employees on the chain line are not going to become literate and engineers just because you are outsourcing the menial stuff.
> so being able to produce physical stuff both better, more, and cheaper
That is knowledge work.
> The only area china is really behind seems to be commercial airlines engines. That is the only thing we never really outsourced.
It didn't stop Brazil from creating a rather very good aerospace company.
I am afraid we cannot reconcile the difference in our thinking.
We live at a physical world - so being able to produce physical stuff both better, more, and cheaper is extremely important for continuous dominance.
The only area china is really behind seems to be commercial airlines engines. That is the only thing we never really outsourced.