austinvernon.substack.com/p/speed-can-reindustrialize-america

The comparison in the article appears to be false on the most natural tonnage measure.

• UNCTAD’s maritime profile for the Republic of Korea reports ship building: 21,192 thousands DWT (about 21.2 million deadweight tons).
• A U.S. National Defense University Press article summarizing U.S. Maritime Commission output states that between 1939 and 1945, U.S. merchant shipyards produced 5,777 vessels of over 56 million deadweight tons.

So South Korea’s recent annual shipbuilding output is well below total U.S. World War II shipbuilding output, not above it. Even by vessel count, the claim is off: a recent Stimson Center summary says South Korean shipyards delivered over 230 commercial vessels in 2024, versus 5,777 U.S. wartime vessels in the NDU/MARAD figure.

Because both tonnage and vessel-count comparisons go the other way, the statement that South Korea produces more shipping in one year than the U.S. did in all of World War II is incorrect.

This sentence overstates current U.S. steel production.

• The American Iron and Steel Institute reported that U.S. raw steel production was 88 million net tons in 2024.
• The U.S. Geological Survey’s 2026 Mineral Commodity Summaries estimates raw steel production at 82 million tons in 2025, compared with 79.5 million tons in 2024.
• World Steel Association data likewise puts U.S. 2024 crude steel production at 79.5 million tonnes.

Those figures are all materially below 100 million tons per year, so the article’s claim is incorrect as written.