Hi, I'm Jeff Sickinga, executive director of the Ashbrook Center, and this is the American

idea, where we discuss the ideas, people, and events that have made America what it is today.

We believe that by understanding our history and our principles, we can better

live up to the promise of the American founding and preserve our ongoing experiment in self-government.

Welcome to the American Idea. Well, I want to welcome everyone to this episode of the American idea. Today we're

going to be talking about a contemporary problem, but a problem that has some historic roots

in America, perhaps dating back a number of years, and certainly important in the news today.

We're going to talk about America's defense industrial capacity and America's ability to defend itself given contemporary challenges that we face in the world.

It's a very timely topic with a very timely book called Mobilize, How to Reboot the American Industrial Base and Stop World

War III. And we are here with one of the co-authors of that book, Madeline Hart.

Madeline is a deployment strategist at Palantir Technologies. She has co-authored the book with the

CTO of Palantir. It's a terrific book. Let me recommend it strongly to our

listeners. It's a sobering book, but it's also, I think, ultimately a hopeful book. I want to talk

about that today with Madeline Hart, our guest. Madeline has a BA from Harvard University and

economics, and this is a book that you're going to want to pick up and take a look if you care about

American national security and American national defense.

Madeline, thanks for being with us on The American Idea.

Excellent, Jeff.

Thank you for having me.

For our listeners, I think what they see on the news today, what happens to be in the news on our TV screens

in our social media is the military engagement with Iran right now. It looks like the American

defense industrial base is robust, sustaining a military action. Your book, though, raises a question about the capacity of that base to sustain

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