You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs.

My name's Ryan Evans, I'm the founder of War on the Rocks.

In this episode I spoke with Senator Mark Kelly and Congressman Mike Waltz about their efforts

to revitalize American shipbuilding.

Where did this idea of bipartisan cooperation on maritime issues start, at least between

you two?

I think we both had the idea and we're both working on something you know separately and you know for me this has been an issue I've been thinking about all the way back to

1982 when I showed up at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and over time learned sort of the sorry state of our,

you know, maritime shipbuilding capacity and being able to move cargo, just the state of the merchant marine but the

congressman and I you know realize that we both had this interest in trying to

revitalize you know the merchant marine and you know to have something that's

bipartisan and

bicameral is usually the best path to success yeah I was I sit on both

armed services and Intel and I haven't been thinking about it anywhere as an army guy a knuckle dragon

green beret I haven't been thinking about it nearly as long as the senator but

sitting on those committees I just kept kind kind of running headlong into this issue of the state of our naval readiness,

the fact that year over year across administrations were retiring more ships in the Navy than we're building. We have a strategic sea lift fleet. These are basically big

military cargo ships that would get, for example, a division of tanks over to Korea or the Middle East or what have you like we did in the

Gulf War and becoming aware of how much that is really atrophied and is in a terrible state.

And then looking at the explosive growth of the Chinese Navy and

the really the light bulb went off Ryan when I saw that the Chinese Navy is

building itself and probably the most rapid military

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