Washington’s latest defence industrial policy embraces the aggressive commitment of the ancient Greeks but completely ignores the requisite capability. On July 20, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Securing America’s Defense Supply Chains and Ensuring Domestic Acquisition of Critical Materials.” A Government Accountability Office reviewpreviously warned that the Defense Department cannot reliably track where Chinese-sourced inputs enter its weapons programs. The executive order ignores the physical reality of how these materials are actually made. The inevitable result will be a heavily consolidated, vertically integrated, and vastly more expensive defence industrial base.