At Georgetown’s 2026 Venture in the Capital Summit, Jorge Guajardo Sada (SFS’26) moderated a panel on bringing manufacturing back to the United States and its allies. Panelists were Christian Garrett of 137 Ventures, Pete Mathias of Reveille VC, Austin Bishop of the New American Industrial Alliance and Fil Aronshtein, co-founder and CEO of Dirac.
Aronshtein said his time at Northrop Grumman showed him how outdated factory infrastructure had become. Bishop described growing up in Cleveland as companies closed. Panelists argued that great products, not process alone, build industrial cities, and that factories are places where engineers learn real constraints and improve their designs. They compared attitudes toward risk in the United States, Germany and China, discussed nearshoring and energy policy, and noted that many skilled workers will retire in the next decade. As one panelist put it, “we don’t need cheap labor, we need smart labor,” which makes automation essential.