One of the greatest things about being an American, is that we welcome the great unknown and even embrace it. We eat risk for breakfast; we are comfortable with failure and new frontiers because they help us grow and expand the breadth of our consciousness. We build, explore, fight, and innovate our way out of anything, and often in a pinch or until we must. The American millennium will be no different, except now we have technological tools that can help accelerate our dreams farther and faster than ever before.

Having a clear vision of this future is imperative, and it is my belief that we are closer now to realizing a shared vision that serves all Americans, than we have ever had before.

We are an industrial society, and we will never shed this truth. We’ve been in a retreat for nearly six decades, falling back on the orthodoxy of globalization, in hopes that shifting to a service-based economy would force trade, rationality, and compassion to deliver us unto a harmonious new world order. Instead, what we are living through and realizing, is a truth as old as time, that making things (and knowing how) is the most powerful and straightforward way to sustain a people.

I say all of this because it is important to not shy away from how hard the next century will be for Americans. This is the time to rise to the occasion once more, to build something of great importance, because the work we do now will lay the foundation for generations to come. Of course our focus at REINDUSTRIALIZE is on America, but this is just as important for our allies around the world.

The vision that is in reach rebuilds the fabric of community through production, it prioritizes the family, it uplifts every worker and makes owning a share of the future more accessible. To do this, we must innovate and build a new industrial base. One that spans far beyond defense applications.

The work ahead is hard, and that is precisely the point. Hard things are how Americans have always announced themselves to history. We did it with railroads, with steel, with silicon. Now we do it again, together, on purpose. The American millennium is not waiting for us. We are building it.

Aaron Slodov is a techno-industrialist, entrepreneur, and a leading voice for rebuilding American manufacturing. He is the CEO and founder of Atomic Industries, a Detroit-based manufacturing technology company, supplying major OEMs to high growth hardware startups.

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