I am calling my approach to these tasks to make them rot away. If CEO/customer wants something, I will ignore it until he will start demanding it repeatedly then I will start thinking like working on it. Because it can also happen that CEO/customer will want shiny thing you will deliver the shiny thing and he will have no clue why did you do that, because he forgot that he wanted that - the task has rot away.

Not really, China has 232 times the shipbuilding capacity of US. See: https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/chinas-shipbuildi...

The problem with Iron curtain has been that you were not allowed to import stuff from the West unless you were specifically permitted to (i.e. military purposes). The ideology of Eastern block was to employ everyone, that caused low automation demand which caused high prices for goods. Furthermore lack of quality processes caused that products were expensive and also garbage. So after iron curtain fell you can buy cheap garbage from the east or expensive quality goods from the west.

That compounded with USSR imploding (losing market) and management of communist companies not being able to innovate because there was no demand for it and you got industries falling apart like Hindenburg.

Jones act has created exactly same trap. US shipbuilders are not being forced into innovation nor automation (so they can reduce labor costs) because they don't need to. And now with China eclipsing them 200 times, Jones act can't be repelled

Jones act also guarantee lack of competition between shipyards. When companies MUST buy from you, there is no pressure to improve and you can set prices as you like.

Now US shipbuilding has been shielded from competition for so long, that any kind of permanent repeal of Jones act will mean instant bankruptcy of US ship builders. Similar to what happened in Eastern Europe after 1989. That shock of not being shielded by iron curtain from competition has caused implosion of whole industries.

It is similar to way how Russia / Ukraine war is fought. Both sides will show you when civilian area is hit and both sides will try to conceal actual hits on sensitive military targets.

So in the news you will see that Iranians are bombing hotels, but what you won't see is that Iranians were able to knock out for example THAAD and now USA needs to move one in Korea into the Middle East.

It was supposed to be Venezuela style operation, but USA got Afghanistan on Sea.