This month's headlines open with manufacturing in the US falling short of expectations. Jon and Alex unpack a Bloomberg investigation into a $1 billion federal push to build medical gloves domestically that has, five years on, produced zero gloves. Reshoring continues to be easier said than done. From there they turn to Fairlife, the Coca-Cola-owned dairy brand that grew sales from $10 million to $4 billion in a decade and just had its US production halted by a ransomware attack, the latest in a run of hacks targeting food and auto manufacturers.

Jon and Alex dig into two recent columns on China's fast-closing AI gap, then cover Bloomberg's reporting on OpenAI's first hardware product, a screen-free AI companion built to move around the house, and the $230 Codex Micro keypad it shipped first. From there, they look at why transformers, largely unchanged since the 19th century, have become the surprise bottleneck constraining AI data center buildouts, and debate whether GPU energy use is actually the problem critics say it is. They close with a deep dive into Brightline, the private Florida railroad dubbed a “Killer Train” for its poor safety record.

Links:

Almost $1 Billion Later, the US Still Can't Make a Medical Glove (Bloomberg): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-07-07/why-it-s-so-difficult-to-produce-100-american-made-medical-gloves

Hackers Just Pulled Off Every Food Manufacturer's Worst Nightmare. Now Coca-Cola's $4 Billion Dairy Brand Is Shut Down (Inc., Amaya Nichole): https://www.inc.com/amaya-nichole/hackers-pulled-off-food-manufacturers-worst-nightmare-coca-cola-fairlife-shut-down/91375955

AI's Wider Availability Is Good for China, Not Great for OpenAI and Anthropic (WSJ, Christopher Mims): https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/cheaper-ai-commodity-openai-anthropic-0111da73

Why Silicon Valley Can't Stop Looking Over Its Shoulder at China (NYT, Cade Metz): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/technology/china-us-ai-race.html

OpenAI's First Device Will Be Movable, Screenless Speaker Built as AI Companion (Bloomberg, Mark Gurman): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-14/openai-s-first-device-will-be-moveable-screenless-speaker-built-as-ai-companion

The Century-Old Device Choking the World's AI Push (Financial Times): https://ig.ft.com/transformers/

Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad GPU? (The Verge, Justine Calma): https://www.theverge.com/cs/features/937356/ai-data-center-gpu-environmental-impact/

A ‘Death Train’ is Haunting South Florida (The Atlantic, Kaitlyn Tiffany): https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/10/brightline-train-florida/684624/

Stephen Winn is Chief Operating Officer of StockX, the online marketplace where every single product sold passes through a verification process before reaching the buyer. He was employee number six, wrote much of the original platform code, and now oversees an operation spanning 170 countries, 5,000 trade lanes, and 71 million lifetime sales. We recorded this episode inside the company's Detroit verification center, where specialists scrutinize everything from shoes to electronics day in and day out.

Stephen walks Jon through the full defense-in-depth verification stack: machine learning risk scoring that runs before a package even arrives, RFID checks against chips embedded by brands like Nike and Adidas, trained verification experts who inspect stitching and packaging and even the smell of products, and a Lumafield CT scanner used on every product over $3,000. Since 2016 that process has stopped $750 million in products that failed to meet StockX's standards, including over $100 million in suspected counterfeit footwear. Winn explains why counterfeiters focus on what buyers can see and why internal structure remains the hardest thing to fake, recounts the CT scan that revealed Nike had hidden a numbered edition marking under the tongue of the Wizard of Oz Dunks, and closes with the go/no-go decision behind the patented all-in ask that keeps StockX a single global marketplace.

Links from the discussion:

StockX: https://www.stockx.com

StockX verification process: https://stockx.com/about/our-process/

StockX Big Facts reports: https://stockx.com/about/sx-market-insights/big-facts-breakout-products/

Lumafield CT scans of counterfeit AirPods: https://www.lumafield.com/first-article/posts/real-vs-fake-apple-products-through-industrial-ct-airpods-pro-macbook-magsafe-charger

This month, manufacturing headlines ran the gamut. Midjourney, the AI image generator, has entered the scanner business. Jon and Alex unpack the Midjourney Scanner, a full-body ultrasound device the company is positioning as a wellness habit rather than a diagnostic tool, and why the medical community is wary of preemptive scanning. Dexcom traces a sensor theft back to an unauthorized distributor, and the Wall Street Journal explains why a Patriot missile takes two years and 400 suppliers to build.

They also cover stalled subsea cable projects across the Gulf, Snap's $2,195 Specs glasses, a New York Times guide to buying used electronics, and China's bet on humanoid robots to offset a shrinking workforce. The episode closes on Ford, which just hit number one in JD Power's quality rankings after rehiring 350 engineers it had automated away.

Links from the discussion:

Midjourney Enters Medical Imaging: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/952011/midjourney-medical-ai-ultrasound-scan

Dexcom Uncovers Theft of Scrapped Product, Notifies Potentially Impacted Users: https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/dexcom-uncovers-theft-scrapped-product-notifies-potentially-impacted-users

Why Does It Take Years to Get a Patriot Missile From Factory to Front Line: https://www.wsj.com/world/why-does-it-take-years-to-get-a-patriot-missile-from-factory-to-front-line-3e5874c5

Stalled subsea cable projects threaten Middle East digital ambitions: https://www.ft.com/content/5e6ce736-3a48-406a-933a-ed215370bd16

Snap unveils $2,195 Specs AR glasses, Spiegel bets on post smartphone: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/16/snap-unveils-2195-specs-ar-glasses-spiegel-bets-on-post-smartphone.html

The Do's and Don'ts of Buying Used Tech Gadgets: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/04/technology/personaltech/used-tech-refurbished.html

Robot nation: China's bid to beat its demographic decline: https://www.ft.com/content/c8731833-10ca-4a12-bfe4-8ebb2584ec68

Ford had to hire back former engineers to fix mistakes made by its automated systems: https://www.theverge.com/transportation/956316/ford-quality-jd-power-ranking-ai-automated-mistakes

Federico Faggin designed the first microprocessor. The Intel 4004 was the chip that first made it possible to put an entire programmable computer on a single piece of silicon. The process technology he developed at Fairchild Semiconductor became the foundation for every microprocessor, memory chip, and logic device built in the half-century since. The touchscreen on your phone exists because of work he went on to do at Synaptics in the 1990s, when his team replaced the trackball with capacitive touch. In between, he spent years in the 1980s building hardware for neural networks at a moment when the AI research establishment considered the whole idea a dead end. History has proven him right.

Faggin joined Jon to recount the physical reality of early chip design, from drawing transistors by hand at 500 times scale to sizing circuits with a slide rule and building the Z80 with 11 people and $400,000. Decades of working at the vanguard of silicon technology led him to confront the ultimate capabilities of computers. That question has consumed the second half of his career. He has written a book, Irreducible (2024), arguing that consciousness is not something a classical computer can produce, no matter what it seems able to accomplish, and he cautions against allowing AI enthusiasm to make us forget what makes us human in the first place.

Links from the discussion:

Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers and Human Nature (Essentia Books): https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/essentia-books/our-books/irreducible-consciousness-life-computers-human-nature

Irreducible on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1803415096

Silicon: From the Invention of the Microprocessor to the New Science of Consciousness on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Invention-Microprocessor-Science-Consciousness/dp/1949003418

Federico’s profile at the Computer History Museum: https://computerhistory.org/profile/federico-faggin/

Tom Wolfe, "The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce" (Esquire, 1983): https://classic.esquire.com/article/1983/12/1/the-tinkerings-of-robert-noyce

The war with Iran keeps reshaping manufacturing in unexpected places. A bitumen shortage tied to the oil disruption is stalling road construction from India to Italy, and ships stuck in the Gulf are accumulating barnacles and jellyfish that foul their hulls and raise fuel costs. We trace that thread through a packed automotive segment: Ford's secret skunk works racing to build a $30,000 electric truck, the Tesla Semi finally shipping at $290,000 with 300 miles of charge in 30 minutes, and BYD's fleet of eight company-owned car carriers that ferry 300,000 vehicles a year through waters other ships avoid. Amazon is opening its logistics network as a third-party service, and the Trump Mobile phone shipped nine months late looking a lot like an HTC handset from Taiwan. Then we sit down with Alex's new Cost of Quality report, built on a survey of 210 quality decision makers, on what quality actually costs and why most manufacturers can't measure it.

Links from the discussion:

Ticking Time Bomb (John Keller's Takata documentary):__ https://www.tickingtimebombfilm.com/__

Alarm spreads among road-builders as Iran war bitumen shortage bites:__ https://www.ft.com/content/5933b845-96cc-4f11-add2-e1af789946c4__

The secret team blowing up Ford's assembly line to make a $30,000 electric truck:__ https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ford-ev-electric-truck-7fdb0e0a__

Tesla's Semi truck could jolt the trucking industry:__ https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/energy-environment/teslas-semi-truck.html__

How BYD gets an edge from ships that brave war, outrun storms:__ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-19/china-s-byd-builds-up-shipping-fleet-to-export-cars-amid-war-weather-threats__

Amazon built a massive supply chain for itself, now it's for hire:__ https://www.wsj.com/logistics-report/amazon-built-a-massive-supply-chain-for-itself-now-its-for-hire-c7d128b0__

Barnacles and jellyfish infest ships trapped in the Gulf:__ https://www.ft.com/content/e2344964-03bc-40e1-a8ce-5d62ad9a4e63__

Trump Mobile finally ships, experts say it looks like an HTC phone made in Taiwan:__ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d8EojYVtCs__

Cost of Quality Report (Lumafield):__ https://www.lumafield.com__

Scan of the Month: BYD car parts:__ https://www.scanofthemonth.com__

Go/No-Go Episode 12: Takata airbag Reconstruction:__ https://www.lumafield.com/podcast__

Matt Angle is the CEO of Paradromics, a neurotechnology company building high data rate implantable brain-computer interfaces for people who have lost the ability to speak and move. The company's Connexus system, currently entering clinical trials, clocks an information transfer rate of over 200 bits per second (more than 20x the reported performance of comparable systems) and is designed to last more than a decade in the body.

The conversation covers the basic physics of what separates an implanted electrode array from a surface EEG, the design of the Connexus itself, and the engineering choices that distinguish Paradromics from Neuralink: hermetic sealing, modular battery placement, and a deliberate bet on durability over planned obsolescence. We also get into what it takes to manufacture a device at the micro scale, where CT scanning fits into quality control once you've welded a titanium case shut, and the formative go/no-go moment when the team bet their company on a DARPA contract against consortium bids from Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, and UCSF.

Links from the discussion:

Paradromics: https://www.paradromics.com

Connexus BCI for people unable to communicate: https://www.paradromics.com/product

SONIC benchmarking standard: https://www.paradromics.com/blog/bci-benchmarking

SONIC preprint (bioRxiv): https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.30.679683v1

Tempo BCI for mental health brain-state monitoring: https://www.paradromics.com/tempo

Allbirds sold its name and assets for $39 million after a $4 billion IPO in 2021, and the shell listing is now being used to raise $50 million for a GPU-as-a-Service company called NewBird AI. We use it as a window into the D2C brand era and what it takes to build a consumer brand that lasts.

SpaceX filed confidentially for a June IPO targeting $50 to $75 billion at a self-assessed valuation over $1 trillion, with Starlink generating $11.4 billion of that revenue in 2025. Iran acquired a Chinese spy satellite with half-meter resolution for $36.6 million through an in-orbit delivery model designed to sidestep export restrictions. A Citrini Research analyst rode a speedboat through the Strait of Hormuz to find out whether the blockade is real.

On the automotive side: the Sony Honda AFEELA is canceled before release, Honda expects a $15 billion loss and its first unprofitable year since 1957, Slate raised $650 million for a bare-bones $25,000 EV pickup, and Stellantis is recalling 700,000 vehicles over a fire risk. We also cover lab-grown chocolate and why cocoa went from $3,000 to $12,000 a ton.

Links from the discussion:

Allbirds pivots to AI hyperscale as NewBird AI: https://www.theverge.com/news/912484/allbirds-ai-hyperscale

SpaceX files to go public, setting stage for huge IPO: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/technology/spacex-ipo-elon-musk.html

Iran used Chinese spy satellite to target US bases: https://www.ft.com/content/1fddd2cd-1294-4e9c-a17d-5ea06b399355

Citrini Research: Strait of Hormuz field trip: https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/strait-of-hormuz-a-citrini-field

Sony Honda Mobility cancels AFEELA 1 before release: https://www.shm-afeela.com/en/news/2026-03-25/

Slate Auto raises $650 million Series C: https://www.wardsauto.com/news/slate-auto-says-650m-boost-will-get-it-to-next-stages-of-production/817388/

A new kind of hybrid car is about to hit America's streets (EREV explainer): https://apple.news/AMS9PudLNTgedX0f8eo1MkQ

Stellantis to recall up to 700,000 cars worldwide over fire risk: https://www.reuters.com/business/stellantis-recall-up-700000-cars-worldwide-over-fire-risk-2026-04-01/

Israeli startup makes world's first lab-grown chocolate bar: https://www.ft.com/content/ea3610be-2a9d-45ac-b4c9-5e18225fed6b

CT scan: cacao pod: https://voyager.lumafield.com/project/3af46887-0dea-447a-8629-a0d16cb4073a

We open with a Takata airbag sitting on the desk in front of us: a unit manufactured at the Monclova, Mexico plant at the center of the recall disaster, purchased on eBay and arrived by UPS ground. We couldn't determine whether it's one of the recalled units.

The Takata airbag recall is the largest and costliest in automotive history, spanning just about every major automaker and now approaching 30 US deaths. We reconstruct the engineering story: how ammonium nitrate became the propellant of choice over cheaper and less stable alternatives, how its crystalline structure degrades through heat cycles and humidity over time, and how that degradation turns a supplementary restraint system into shrapnel. We also CT scanned the airbag, and we walk through what the scan reveals about how these assemblies are constructed.

The organizational story runs alongside the engineering one: falsified test data, a 50-year Honda-Takata supplier relationship that led to complacency instead of accountability, a regulatory revolving door, and a whistleblower who spent years trying to prove that recalled airbags were being shipped as non-hazardous freight. The recall completion rate is now at 98%, a remarkable figure. The remaining 2% represents over a million vehicles still on the road, and the units that haven't been replaced are the oldest and most degraded.

Links from the discussion:

NHTSA Takata Recall Spotlight: https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle-safety/takata-recall-spotlight

Check for Recalls using your vehicle identification number (VIN): https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls

Ticking Time Bomb: The Truth Behind Takata Airbag (documentary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFL0pnV4hx8

NHTSA Takata recall history and key terms (fact sheet): https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/documents/120916-fact_sheet-takata_recall_history_and_key_terms-tagged.pdf

Lumafield CT scan of the Takata airbag: https://voyager.lumafield.com/project/5af653fa-13c1-4287-b3df-db4efebd992b

Nick Terzulli is Vice President of Research and Development at Fellow, the San Francisco coffee equipment company whose products can be found everywhere from Target shelves to your favorite third-wave coffee shop. Before Fellow, Nick worked on military robotics and designed medical devices at Stryker and Dextera, before spending several years scrubbing toilets at a coffee shop for $10 an hour just to learn how to make coffee using the best equipment available.

The central problem Terzulli came to Fellow to solve has constrained home espresso since the beginning: 120V household power limits thermal and pressure stability in ways that commercial machines, running on much higher amperage, simply don't face. The best home machines either take 40 minutes to heat up or sacrifice performance to achieve fast heat-up times. Terzulli's answer, which became Fellow’s Espresso Series One, uses three separate heating elements staged in sequence to achieve commercial-level stability with a two-minute heat-up time, a novel approach he holds the sole utility patent on.

The conversation covers how that architecture came together, what it takes to design for both the beginner and the specialist, how Fellow uses firmware and over-the-air updates to build community around its machines, and why designing coffee burrs from scratch was, in his view, the hardest technical challenge of his career.

Links from the discussion:

Fellow: https://www.fellow.com

Espresso Series One: https://fellowproducts.com/products/espresso-series-1

Ode Brew Grinder: https://fellowproducts.com/products/ode-brew-grinder-gen-2

Fellow Drops (coffee subscription): https://fellowproducts.com/pages/fellow-drops

Aiden Pourover Coffee Maker: https://fellowproducts.com/products/aiden-precision-coffee-maker

Coffee Bean Roast Level CT Analysis: https://www.lumafield.com/first-article/posts/the-industrial-ct-guide-to-coffee-roast-levels

Coffee Scan of the Month: https://www.lumafield.com/scan-of-the-month/coffee

The conflict with Iran has reached U.S. supply chains: an Iranian-linked cyberattack wiped devices across Stryker's global operations overnight, cutting the medical device company off from the hospitals it serves. We also cover the Pentagon's 3,000-drone Skydio order completed in 72 hours, California gas at $5.89 per gallon, a Fraunhofer Institute study finding that plug-in hybrid owners mostly don't plug in, criminal charges against a former ExThera Medical executive for concealing patient deaths from the FDA, Cargill's computer vision system that found $200 million in beef without adding a single cow, the OmniPod 5 recall, and iFixit's MacBook Neo teardown.

Links from the discussion:

How Cargill uses AI to get more meat from the bone as beef prices soar: https://www.ft.com/content/9089e369-92f4-48dc-ac09-46b6a62035a6?syn-25a6b1a6=1

Iran-linked hackers wipe Stryker devices in cyberattack: https://www.wsj.com/articles/stryker-hit-with-suspected-iran-linked-cyberattack-52f6615c

Suspending the gas tax, reducing refinery regulations pushed by two Democrats running for governor: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-03-17/suspending-gas-tax-reducing-refinery-regulations-pushed-by-two-democrats-running-for-governor

The uncomfortable truth about hybrid vehicles: https://www.theverge.com/column/890135/truth-hybrid-vehicles

U.S. Army places largest single-vendor drone order in American military history with Skydio: https://www.skydio.com/blog/u-s-army-usd52-million-order-skydio-x10d

ExThera cancer filter federal charges: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/business/exthera-cancer-filter-federal-charges.html

Uber’s $1.25bn deal with Rivian for robotaxis: https://www.ft.com/content/9e09df32-cfc7-4a9e-9acd-fab25653a25c?syn-25a6b1a6=1

MacBook Neo is the most repairable MacBook in 14 years: https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-repairable-macbook-in-14-years

Insulet OmniPod 5 recall (FDA): https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/insulet-initiates-voluntary-medical-device-correction-certain-omnipodr-5-pods-us

Scan of the Month: Drug delivery devices: https://www.lumafield.com/scan-of-the-month/health-wearables