Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Sunday, October 12th.

Today on Forbes, a gonzo plan to beat China with giant robot boats.

On a muggy August morning at a shipyard set among the sugarcane fields of Franklin, Louisiana,

a group of executives from Seronics' Austin headquarters stood sweating in blazers.

Alongside them were local politicians and shipyard workers in teal shirts and steel-toed boots,

employees whose jobs had been saved from closure when the yard was bought by the well-funded

builder of robotic speedboats.

As they watched, CEO Dino Mavrucas, donned a fireproof coat and gloves,

pulled on a welder's mask, and in a shower of sparks,

carefully spot-welded the company emblem onto the aluminum keel of the largest vessel the three-year-old startup has attempted to build, the 150-foot-long

moroder. Serronic designed the unmanned vessel to carry two 40-foot cargo containers

up to 3,500 miles at 30% less cost than a crude ship. It's perfect, conceptually, for shuttling commercial cargo to smaller ports

in the U.S., varying supplies during wartime to U.S. troops spread out across the Pacific,

or delivering a boatload of hurt from missile launchers. The way the genial Mavruca sees it,

Marauder is a major step toward reclaiming maritime dominance

for the United States.

By removing crews and all the systems needed to support human life on board, he argues

that Serronic can make ships simpler, faster, and cheaper to build, potentially jump-starting

America's withered shipbuilding industry.

He told Forbes, quote, we don't just want to compete with the Chinese, we want to outbuild

the Chinese. The 44-year-old former Navy SEAL is facing long odds. Over the past two decades,

China, through low labor costs and heavy state investments,

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