Tech shocks to industry have only just begun
United States
. I was in a shipbuilding factory in Marinette, Wisconsin, owned by the Italian company Fincantieri. Among other things they build giant frigates for the US navy, vessels that are more than 400ft long and many stories high.
It used to take hundreds of men years to do the kind of metal bending this takes. But in this massive building, a little more than the size of a football field, I counted fewer than two dozen workers.
They were directing robotic welding arms to carve massive pieces of steel in a fraction of the time that hand blasting takes. Virtual reality helmets helped them to exactly match construction on new builds to parts yet to be fitted, something that used to involve guesswork and paper blueprints.
Even painters were wearing sci-fi type 'exosuits' (think Matt Damon in Elysium) to make their jobs exponentially easier and more comfortable.
If this is what's happening in shipbuilding, one of the more antiquated industries around, think about the potential of technology to change the industrial workplace over the next few years.
We already know that it has had a greater impact on manufacturing jobs than even outsourcing to
China
did. The two factors have together radically transformed the employment map of the US.
[
Boeing and Intel symbolise America's manufacturing decline
Opens in new window
]
In 1990, manufacturing was the biggest employer in most states. Today, it's top only in Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Alabama, Kentucky and my own home state of Indiana.
The latest jobs figures from June show manufacturing employment as flat, despite all the president's talk about reshoring. While some of this might be about tariffs, I think it's more about the changing nature of industrial employment.
Factory jobs are fewer, but much better than they used to be when I was hanging out in the crowded, relatively low-tech electronic component facilities my father ran decades ago for companies such as United Technologies.
David McWilliams on how 'big incentives' to build could save Dublin city
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36:51
The employees I met in Marinette were working more at the level of engineers than machinists. They were involved in product innovation, research and the training of new workers, something that is transformed by technology – it now takes days rather than months to get a new welder up to speed using robotic equipment.
But it also takes investment, and that's something not every company has been willing or able to make. Fincantieri poured almost a billion dollars in capex into its Wisconsin facilities over 15 years, and the long-term security of defence contracts (which extend over years or even decades) have made that a good bet.
The company now employs 2,500 people in a town of roughly 11,000, with a large multiplier effect. For every Fincantieri job in the region, eight others are supported in areas such as the company's supply chain, housing and construction, services and the public sector.
This kind of technology deployment is not present in every shipbuilding business, or indeed in most industrial companies. There is a superstar effect in terms of technology investment in manufacturing, which tends to be concentrated among standout businesses, and in particular industries – the automotive sector is highly automated, for example, while areas such as food production, mining and textiles are less so.
Greater dissemination of technology across industries and companies of all sizes is crucial because tech-based productivity increases are the only way for the manufacturing sector in a country such as the US to compete with China or other nations that have cheaper labour costs.
While building ships or chips or even cars in the US isn't going to replace the jobs of the 1990s, it's important to keep a healthy level of industrial production in large regionalised economies (the Americas, Europe and China would all fit that description) for national security and resiliency. Supply chain disruptions happen for all kinds of reasons, and the world shouldn't put all its eggs in one basket.
That said, the changing nature and number of manufacturing jobs raises important questions about where labour market growth will come from. In the US, healthcare has replaced manufacturing over the last three decades as the top employer in most states. Some of this is down to the fact that Americans are getting older and richer and spending more on medical treatment.
Some of it is because they are fatter and less healthy than they should be and have a highly inefficient and fragmented healthcare industry that incentivises expensive procedures and medications rather than prevention. And some of it is down to the fact that healthcare can't, in most cases, be outsourced.
But an increasing number of healthcare jobs can be improved or even replaced by technology. And here, changes in the manufacturing sector provide a window into what is coming down the pike for America's fastest-growing industry.
Healthcare costs in the US are high and growing faster than overall inflation. Service quality is quite mixed, and workers are both in short supply and less well trained than they should be. Technology penetration is low.
My guess is that this will present an opportunity for
artificial intelligence
. Doctors may be the shipbuilders of the future, in a labour market that will be defined – as it always has been – by technology disruption. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
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But Sanders stopped short of agreeing that the word 'genocide' is applicable to the failure to deliver the emergency food and aid to Gazans. Instead, it was Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the Maga Republicans' most strident, conservative voices, who used that phrase. She was responding to Randy Fine, the recently elected Florida Republican congressman who last year labelled Ireland as an 'anti-Semitic country' over its support of the Palestinian people. Samah Matar holds her six-year-old son Yousef, who is suffering from severe malnutrition due to Israel's blockade of food into Gaza. Photograph: Saher Alghorra/The New York Times 'I can only imagine how Florida's 6th district feels now that their Representative, that they were told to vote for, openly calls for starving innocent people and children,' Taylor-Greene wrote. 'It's the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza. But a Jewish US Representative calling for the continued starvation of innocent people and children is disgraceful. His awful statement will actually cause more antisemitism.' Taylor-Greene's sharp criticism has been echoed elsewhere within the Maga movement, not least through the podcast megaphones of Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon. Their perspective has not gone unnoticed in Israel, with an opinion piece written in June by Dr Judah Isseroff in the Israeli daily publication, Haaretz, noting that 'while Carlson's stances on immigration, vaccines and Russia are core elements of an emergent right-wing coalition, the criticism of Israel that he amplifies on his podcast has a level of cross-over potential that far outstrips the appeal of mass deportations or Covid revisionism. 'That is because Carlson's views coincide with those of increasingly large numbers of American Jews. According to two surveys last year, nearly a third of American Jews – and more than 40 per cent of American Jewish teens – agreed that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. In light of Israel's escalating activity in the Strip, those numbers are likely higher today than they were in 2024. It is clear that Binyamin Netanyahu takes the support of Donald Trump and the US completely for granted. Photograph:'As I see it, Carlson's real significance is actually more theological than political. I don't think we're likely to soon find Carlson marching arm-in-arm with Gaza campus activists at Columbia University. Instead, Carlson's platforming of Israel-critical Jews actually augurs a serious scrambling of relations between Jews and Christians in the United States.' Perhaps, but at congressional level, there is little to suggest that Netanyahu has any immediate cause for alarm about a suspension of arms and support or a sea-change in baseline support. A significant minority may be experiencing nausea at the sudden proliferation of images of starving Gazans. Still, the vote on Sanders's resolution- the third such motion he has brought – failed in the Senate by 27-70. It was significant increase on support among Democratic senators without ever threatening the status quo. Over a year has passed since Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senate minority leader and highest ranking Jewish political leader in US history, gave a speech warning that Israel was at the risk of becoming a 'pariah' under Netanyahu's leadership, and he called for an election of new officials there. But this week, Schumer voted to continue to supply artillery to Israel: the protection of the state cannot, for Schumer, be compromised by objections to Netanyahu. Nor can the atrocities inflicted by Hamas militants on innocent Israelis on October 7th, 2023, be forgotten. When Netanyahu gave his address after a bipartisan invitation from Congress last week, at least 38 elected Democratic representatives announced they would boycott it. A few empty seats, then, but Netanyahu, basking in the afterglow of the successful joint Israel-US strikes on Iran nuclear facilities, still enjoyed a prolonged standing ovation before House speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged the 'distinct honour' of introducing the guest. 'For the forces of civilisation to triumph,' Netanyahu told them, 'America and Israel must stand together', provoking another standing ovation. He knew he was among friends – from both sides of the House – and had every reason to believe, in that moment, that the historical alliance will withstand whatever moral queasiness US politicians may feel about the images of dying Palestinian children. And while president Trump has voiced his unease at the images of malnourished and starving children, on Thursday morning he posted on Truth Social his stated position that the 'fastest way to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is for Hamas to surrender and release the hostages'. A man carries the body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike, ahead of a funeral procession in Gaza City. Photograph: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images Asked during his meeting with Britain's prime minister, Keir Starmer, if he supported Britain's pledge to recognise Palestinian statehood unless a ceasefire is in place by September, Trump said that he saw the plan as 'rewarding Hamas'. On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described Witkoff's meeting with Netanyahu as 'very productive' and she confirmed that he would spend Friday inspecting the food distribution sites and speaking with Gazans living through what has become a ceaseless nightmare. He will then brief president Trump on advised next steps. 'President Trump is a humanitarian with a big heart and that's why he sent special envoy Witkoff to the region, in an effort to save lives and end this crisis,' Leavitt said. With Hamas refusing to negotiate a path towards a ceasefire until the unfolding food shortage stand-off is resolved, and Israel's leader remaining unrepentant, many lives may hinge of the persuasive power of Witkoff's report to Trump. It remains to be seen whether the sudden prominence of the Gaza plight in US news coverage is just a temporary conscience salver which will, in a week or a fortnight, become obscured by domestic and economic issues again. Or whether the White House, and Trump, is at last ready to demand an end to Binyamin Netanyahu's clear-eyed campaign of death by one means or another.
