Tag: U.S. Navy

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Six Weeks That Decide the Fleet

Part 1 of 4 in our series, “Six Weeks That Decide the Fleet: September 24 to November 9 — what happens to a fee meant to protect American shipyards.”

What This Series Covers

– How a 2024 labor petition turned into a real trade penalty on Chinese shipping — and why it barely survived a week
– Who’s financially backing the fight to kill that penalty, and what’s separately been reported about that same company
– What to watch for when President Trump hosts Xi in Washington on September 24
– What the people actually building ships and running unions told Congress this month, in their own words
– What happens on November 9 — the day the fee’s one-year suspension runs out

Where Things Stand, Briefly

For readers who want the fuller picture: three years in, there’s real progress and real gaps. On the plus side — an executive order creating a national maritime strategy, a $65.8 billion Navy shipbuilding request for FY2027, and a new submarine-component factory in Alabama already producing parts. On the other side — the U.S.-flagged oceangoing fleet actually shrank to 178 ships last year, the Maritime Security Trust Fund still isn’t law, and the industrial base has lost up to 40% of its waterfront facilities over two decades. Read the full three-year accounting →

A fee designed to protect American shipbuilding jobs lasted six days before someone made it disappear. This is the story of who did it, and why it should bother you even if you’ve never thought about a shipyard in your life.

Three years ago, we started asking a simple question: who pays for American naval readiness? Congress. Taxpayers. Shipyard workers who show up at 5am to weld hulls in the summer heat. That question is the whole reason Americans for a Stronger Navy exists.

This year we learned there’s a second question hiding behind the first one: who pays to make sure we never have to.

Two facts below are worth reading side by side. We’ll let you draw your own conclusion.

Let’s walk through it.

The Fee Nobody Remembers Was Labor’s Idea

This didn’t start in Washington. It started with the people who actually weld the hulls.

In March 2024, five American labor unions — not a think tank, not a senator, not us — petitioned the U.S. Trade Representative to investigate China’s dominance of global shipbuilding.[1] They’d watched it happen up close for years: American shipyards closing, skilled jobs disappearing, an entire industrial base hollowing out while China built ships by the hundreds. Nobody in Congress had acted on it yet. The workers went first anyway.

USTR agreed there was a real problem, opening a Section 301 investigation — a legal process the government uses to investigate unfair foreign trade practices. By early 2025, nearly a year after the unions first raised the alarm, the investigation confirmed what they’d been saying all along: China’s practices were “unreasonable” and burdened U.S. commerce.[2] The remedy: a modest port fee on Chinese-built and Chinese-operated vessels calling at U.S. ports — money that would help fund the rebuilding of America’s own shipbuilding capacity.[3]

The fees took effect October 14, 2025. Six days later, at a summit in South Korea, they became a bargaining chip.[4] By November 10, they were suspended for a full year — paused at $0, with the scheduled 2026 rate increase simply never happening.[5]

Two senators, one from each party, have since asked the obvious question: what exactly did the United States get in exchange for giving that leverage away?[6] As of this writing, nobody in the administration has given them a straight answer.

Who Wanted the Pause

We already knew part of this story. Our 2025 Navy year-in-review documented over $3 million in lobbying spent fighting the SHIPS for America Act and the fees meant to fund it — six times what was spent supporting it.[7] The National Retail Federation alone spent $2.27 million. The American Apparel & Footwear Association, the Consumer Technology Association, the Travel Goods Association, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce rounded out the list.

What we didn’t know then was how organized that campaign actually was. In March 2025, NRF and the Retail Industry Leaders Association — joined by more than thirty other organizations — jointly commissioned an economic study designed to make the case to USTR that the fees would hurt American consumers.[8] Their own words: “U.S. businesses and consumers will take the brunt of these service charges… many, if not all, of the leading ocean carriers capable of meeting U.S. shipping needs use Chinese-built vessels in their fleets.”

Read that sentence again. Their argument for keeping shipping cheap is that America has become so dependent on Chinese-built ships that we can’t afford to stop being dependent on them.

The Part Nobody’s Said Out Loud

Here’s what we found that nobody else has connected: the same interests fighting these fees include the company the fees were written to counter.

Companies are legally required to disclose who pays them to lobby the government — public paperwork anyone can look up. Those U.S. Senate filings show COSCO — China Ocean Shipping Company — and China Shipping Group are named directly, by address and by percentage of ownership, as the entities behind the World Shipping Council’s American lobbying activity.[9] Not a shell. Not an inference. Their names are on the federal paperwork, filed through two U.S. law and government-relations firms: Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies, and Shamrock Maritime Consultants.

In April 2025, Maritime Executive ran a headline that should have gotten more attention than it did: “Shipping Industry Joins with China Calling for U.S. to Reconsider Port Fees.”[10] The World Shipping Council’s objections and Beijing’s official objections were, functionally, the same argument, published within days of each other.

What Kind of Company Is Paying for This

Separately: just over a week ago, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies reported that COSCO uses concealed equipment aboard its own ships to intercept U.S. military communications near American coastlines.[11] The Pentagon put COSCO on its list of companies linked to the Chinese military back in January 2025.[12] Chinese law requires companies like COSCO to support state intelligence work whether they want to or not.

We’re not going to tell you what to make of those two facts sitting next to each other. Americans can draw their own conclusions.

What Wasn’t Said at Hudson

On September 16, the Hudson Institute hosted senators, industry, and labor to talk through the SHIPS Act’s path forward. Heritage’s Brent Sadler raised Chinese state shipping as an espionage vector, in general terms.[13] Sen. Todd Young described, without naming anyone, an uncomfortable conversation with congressional colleagues who wouldn’t answer whether they were comfortable continuing to route cargo through Chinese-owned shipping companies given what’s now known about tracking and targeting systems aboard some of those vessels.[14]

Nobody drew the line all the way through. Nobody said: the resistance you’re describing has a name, an address, and a line item on a federal disclosure form.

We’re Not Anti-Business. We’re Pro-Paying-Your-Share.

We’ve said from the start that this isn’t about picking a fight with retailers or the shipping industry. Companies are allowed to lobby for their interests — that’s how the system works, and we’re not interested in relitigating that.

What we’re saying is simpler than that: here are the facts, here’s who’s named on the paperwork, and here’s what’s been separately reported about that same company. Judge for yourself what it means that they line up the way they do.

The Clock

The fee suspension expires November 9, 2026. That’s the next real decision point — not a hearing, not a letter, an actual expiration date with a binary outcome: reinstate, extend, or let it lapse further.[5]

There’s an earlier date worth watching first. On September 24 — 46 days before that expiration — President Trump hosts Xi Jinping in Washington for their second summit of the year. The first time these two men met at a summit, the port fees became a bargaining chip within six days.[4] The Heritage Foundation’s own pre-summit brief argues this meeting should be judged by whether China shows “measurable progress on its previous commitments,” not by how many new deliverables get announced.[16] We’d add the obvious corollary: that standard should apply to what the United States gives up, too.

If the port fee comes up again on or around September 24 — as a “goodwill gesture,” a “de-escalation step,” or anything else dressed up as diplomatic progress — that won’t be a new development. It will be the same pattern repeating, with the same question still unanswered: what did the first suspension buy us?

Sen. Mark Kelly put the underlying stakes plainly at Hudson: 400 U.S. oceangoing ships during Desert Storm. Eighty today.[15]

Three years in, we’ve learned who’s supposed to pay for rebuilding the fleet. This year we learned who’s paying, quietly, to make sure that never happens.

Next in “Six Weeks That Decide the Fleet”: what to watch for when Trump hosts Xi in Washington on September 24 — and whether the same trade happens twice.

References

[1] Petition to USTR, five national trade unions, March 12, 2024, cited in Clyde & Co, “USTR Section 301 Fee and Tariff Measures and Their Impact to Charterparties.”
[2] USTR, Section 301 investigation determination, January 16, 2025.
[3] Federal Register, “Notice of Action and Proposed Action in Section 301 Investigation,” April 23, 2025.
[4] White House Fact Sheet, November 1, 2025; Hellenic Shipping News, “US-China Port Fee Truce.”
[5] Federal Register, “Notice of Modification of Section 301 Action,” November 13, 2025.
[6] Sens. Mark Kelly and Elizabeth Warren, letter to USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer, June 2026.
[7] Americans for a Stronger Navy, “2025 U.S. Navy Year in Review — Follow the Money: Who’s Fighting Against American Shipyards.”
[8] Textile World / National Retail Federation, “Retailers Submit Comments In Opposition To USTR Shipping Remedies Proposal,” March 24, 2025.
[9] U.S. Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings, Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies and Shamrock Maritime Consultants, LLC, client World Shipping Council.
[10] Maritime Executive, “Shipping Industry Joins with China Calling for U.S. to Reconsider Port Fees,” April 18, 2025.
[11] Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “Yes, China’s State-Owned Shipping Giant Is Spying on the United States,” September 9, 2026.
[12] U.S. Department of Defense, list of companies linked to the Chinese military, January 2025.
[13] Hudson Institute, “Fixing Shipping and Shipbuilding: Plotting the Course Ahead,” September 16, 2026.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Andrew Harding, “Xi Comes to Washington: Expectations for the Trump-Xi Summit,” The Heritage Foundation, September 9, 2026.

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My 9/11 Story: Windows of the World & Let’s Roll

Two Weeks Before

In late August 2001, I was in Manhattan, kitty-corner from the Twin Towers, to deliver a web design course to community college instructors. I was there on behalf of the World Organization of Webmasters — WOW, for short an organization I founded in 1996. 

On the final day of the course overview to the program managers, around 5:30 in the evening, I walked into the World Trade Center and rode up to the Windows of the World, the restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower. I was still wearing my WOW blue denim. The staff took one look at the shirt, assumed I was a friend of the owner, and treated me like one — a glass of wine, an open table, no questions asked. I sat there taking in the whole of Manhattan below me, having no idea what that room, and that building, would mean to the country two weeks later.

The Week Everything Changed

That week, the course was taught to the Borough of Manhattan Community College web design instructors — BMCC, just blocks from the towers. It would become a command center within hours of the attack.

My two trainers that week were themselves community college instructors, my partners on a national train-the-trainers program run in collaboration with Apple Education and Cisco Systems, part of a $1.2 million U.S. Department of Education grant. Within an hour of the first plane hitting, my instinct took over: get them in a rental car and get them out of the city, to family in Pennsylvania. That drive — through a Manhattan that no longer had a skyline, past a country that didn’t yet know what was happening to it is a memory I still carry.

I think about that room at Windows of the World often. The wine, the view, the ordinary kindness of strangers who thought I belonged there — and then, seventeen days later, a building full of people who did belong there, gone.

Let’s Roll

Todd Beamer was a passenger on United Flight 93 that morning, a civilian with no training for what came next. When the hijackers took the cockpit, he got on an airphone with a GTE supervisor named Lisa Jefferson, learned what had already happened on the ground, and then turned to the passengers around him. His last recorded words were simple: “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.” [1] Minutes later, Flight 93 went down in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania — the only hijacked plane that day that didn’t reach its target. [2]

Beamer a devoted husband and father wasn’t Navy. He wasn’t a first responder. He was a father of two who saw what needed doing and organized the people around him to do it. That’s the whole of the “Let’s Roll” campaign at Americans for a Stronger Navy: not a slogan borrowed for effect, but a standard. When something needs doing — for a shipmate, a fleet, a country — you don’t wait to be asked twice.

Why I Still Tell This Story

I didn’t lose anyone I loved on 9/11. I lost a room I’d sat in two weeks earlier, and I spent that week getting two people I was responsible for out of a city that had just become a battlefield. That’s a small story next to the ones this country carries from that day. But it’s mine, and it’s why “Let’s Roll” isn’t an abstraction to me — it’s a debt.

Beamer saw the writing on the wall before anyone else on that plane did, and he acted. That’s the point of this story, and it’s the point of everything we do at Americans for a Stronger Navy: the world isn’t getting safer, and the Navy is going to carry more of the weight of that fact, not less. The 2026 National Defense Strategy says as much. We don’t have the luxury of waiting to see how it plays out. Every year on this day, I pay a little of that debt forward — it’s time to roll.

“Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.”
— Todd Beamer, United Flight 93, September 11, 2001

Non sibi sed patriae. Not self, but country. Let’s roll.

References

[1] “Let’s roll,” Wikipedia, accessed September 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_roll
[2] Daily Herald, “‘Let’s roll’: Todd Beamer’s father on the valiant fight for Flight 93,” accessed September 2026, https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20210910/lets-roll-todd-beamers-father-on-the-valiant-fight-for-flight-93

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THE CASE FOR A MARITIME SECURITY ADVISOR

WHAT IS THE SHIPS FOR AMERICA ACT?

For readers new to this: the SHIPS for America Act (S. 1541 / H.R. 3151) is a bipartisan, bicameral bill—introduced by Sen. Mark Kelly, Sen. Todd Young, Rep. Trent Kelly, and Rep. John Garamendi—aimed at reversing decades of decline in the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base and the American-flagged merchant fleet. Its core provisions include rebuilding domestic shipyard capacity, growing and training a maritime workforce, expanding cargo preference requirements that favor U.S.-flagged vessels, and establishing a Maritime Security Trust Fund to reinvest industry fees back into maritime infrastructure. Its core provisions are currently riding inside the FY27 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 8800), which passed the House in July but remains stalled in the Senate as of this writing. One of its most structurally important provisions is the subject of this piece: the creation of a Maritime Security Advisor and Maritime Security Board inside the White House.

BACKGROUNDER — FIRST IN A SERIES

This is the first in a series examining the Maritime Security Advisor role created by the SHIPS for America Act—a new White House post that could end up mattering more than almost anything else in the coming maritime revival. This piece lays the groundwork: what the role actually controls, why it was created, and why the decision about who leads it deserves public attention now, before it’s resolved one way or another. Later pieces in this series will look more closely at the landscape of who could fill it, how it fits into the broader package of maritime legislation moving through Congress this fall, and what coordination work is already happening inside the administration to prepare the ground for it.

Most of the public debate over the SHIPS for America Act has focused on ships—fleet targets, funding mechanisms, shipyard capacity. Getting far less attention, though it’s been argued for by the people actually working this issue for well over a year, is a provision in Title I of the bill that may end up mattering as much as any of that: the creation of a new Maritime Security Advisor, housed in the Executive Office of the President. If the bill becomes law, this single office could do more to fix America’s maritime coordination problem than any funding mechanism in the bill.

The Problem This Position Is Designed to Solve

Right now, no single person in the federal government is responsible for American maritime strategy as a whole. The Navy, the Coast Guard, the Maritime Administration, and Military Sealift Command all operate in their own lanes, reporting up through different departments, with different budgets and different priorities [1]. The National Security Council has directors for regions and for functional issues like counterterrorism—but nobody with a standing brief to ask “what is America’s maritime strategy?” and get everyone else in the building to answer to it [1].

The Heritage Foundation’s own analysis of the maritime legislative landscape makes a related structural point: with four separate bills moving through different committees—SHIPS for America, the Shipbuilding Investment and Workforce Act, the FLEETS Now Act, and the Ready Reserve Force Modernization Accountability Act—the risk isn’t a shortage of good ideas. It’s that good ideas arrive at conference as competing claims on the same floor time rather than as a coordinated package [2]. A standing coordinating office would help avoid that same fragmentation once bills become law and start needing joint implementation.

What the Job Actually Controls

The bill text gives the Maritime Security Advisor real authority, not just a podium. As a Special Advisor to the President, the position chairs a Maritime Security Board that spans every federal agency with a stake in the maritime domain [3]. Its responsibilities include:

— Developing, updating, and implementing the National Maritime Strategy [3]
— Setting fleet-size targets for the U.S.-flagged commercial fleet [3]
— Independent oversight of federal cargo preference programs [3]
— Coordinating the national maritime workforce buildout [3]
— Setting R&D priorities for next-generation shipbuilding technology [3]
— Aligning federal policy to favor U.S.-flagged vessels in international commerce [3]
— Protecting U.S. vessels from physical and cyber threats [3]

Put simply, this office doesn’t just advise on maritime policy from the sidelines—it runs point on it, across every department that touches a ship, from the Pentagon to the Department of Commerce to the Federal Maritime Commission.

A position with real cross-agency authority is only useful if the person in it can actually use that authority—which means the credentials and judgment of whoever fills this chair will matter as much as the statute that creates it.

Why This Is Bigger Than It Looks

It’s worth being precise about scale here. The Maritime Administrator at MARAD is a real and important job—but it’s a single-agency post inside the Department of Transportation, with authority bounded by MARAD’s own statutory mission. The Maritime Security Advisor sits above that, in the West Wing, with a mandate that spans defense, commerce, transportation, and diplomacy simultaneously. It’s the closest thing the American maritime enterprise has ever had to a single point of accountability.

This Office Doesn’t Need to Wait for Congress

Here’s what’s easy to miss: the President doesn’t need the SHIPS Act to sign this office into existence. In a July 2025 Heritage Foundation report, Senior Research Fellow Brent Sadler argued exactly that—the President “should not wait for the [SHIPS Act] to reach his desk” and could name a Maritime Security Advisor directly, tied to the interagency framework already called for in his April 2025 executive order “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance” [5]. On that reading, the SHIPS Act doesn’t create this idea so much as it would make permanent, by statute, something the executive branch already has the authority to stand up on its own.

Where the Legislation Actually Stands

The House passed its version of the FY27 NDAA (H.R. 8800) on July 22, 216–212. The Senate’s companion bill (S. 4784) has stalled: a cloture vote to begin floor debate failed 50–46 on July 14, and as of early September, the Senate had taken no further procedural steps to bring it up [4]. Recent NDAA cycles have often skipped a formal conference committee in favor of informal House-Senate negotiation, so even “conference” may understate how this ultimately gets resolved.

None of that changes the underlying stakes. If anything, a stalled bill is exactly the moment when it’s worth being public about what’s riding on it—and a reminder that the executive branch doesn’t have to wait on the Senate to act.

References
[1] Heritage Foundation research on maritime coordination gaps across Navy, Coast Guard, MSC, and MARAD.
[2] The Heritage Foundation, “Maritime Legislation: Explainer and Next Steps,” Factsheet No. 285, August 12, 2026.
[3] SHIPS for America Act of 2025 (S. 1541 / H.R. 3151), Sec. 101, Title I—Oversight and Accountability; Senate Commerce Committee, “SHIPS for America Act Section-by-Section,” Apr. 30, 2025.
[4] H.R. 8800 (FY27 NDAA), House passage 216-212, July 22, 2026; S. 4784 cloture failed 50-46, July 14, 2026; no further Senate floor action as of Sept. 2026.
[5] Brent D. Sadler, “Reviving America’s Maritime Strength: Comprehensive by Necessity,” The Heritage Foundation, July 24, 2025.

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One Committee, One Conference, One Chance: Why Congress Needs a Select Committee for Maritime Industrial Revival

By Bill Cullifer | Americans for a Stronger Navy

The Heritage Foundation published a factsheet this month that does something rare in this space: it lays out, in plain language, exactly where the nation’s maritime revival stands and exactly what Congress needs to decide next [1]. We want to highlight one recommendation in particular, because we think it’s the single most important structural fix available to Congress right now and because it’s the kind of nonpartisan, process-focused idea a nonpartisan organization like ours can endorse without reservation.

Heritage recommends that, whether or not the Senate consolidates the current maritime bills into one, congressional leadership should create a Select Committee for Maritime Industrial Revival to coordinate across the committees that currently have jurisdiction [1]. We think that recommendation deserves support from anyone who has watched this effort unfold over the past three years.

The Problem the Committee Would Solve

The maritime revival effort is not lacking for good bills. The April 2025 version of the SHIPS for America Act carries genuine bipartisan support — 29 Senate cosponsors (15 Republican, 14 Democrat) and 140 House cosponsors (75 Democrat, 65 Republican) as of its last recorded action [1]. Alongside it sit the Shipbuilding Investment and Workforce Act, the FLEETS Now Act, and the Ready Reserve Force Modernization Accountability Act — each addressing a different piece of the same problem, each sponsored by different members, and each currently routed through different committees [1].

That’s not a failure of ideas. It’s a failure of coordination. A House amendment to the FY27 NDAA passed with two of these maritime provisions attached, and the whole package is now headed to House-Senate conference in September [2]. Conference is exactly the moment when overlapping, uncoordinated bills either get reconciled into something workable or get quietly dropped in the scramble to close out a defense authorization. A Select Committee — standing up now, ahead of that conference — is the difference between these bills arriving as a coordinated package and arriving as competing claims on the same limited floor time.

Why This Matters Beyond the Bills Themselves

We’ve spent three years arguing that naval readiness is fundamentally a “who pays” problem — allied burden-sharing through the Gulf Act, and a debt-neutral corporate demand signal through the SEAS Act’s Strategic Technology Responsibility Contribution [3]. Neither of those mechanisms competes with what’s already in SHIPS for America. Heritage’s own factsheet shows SHIPS for America’s funding model leans on shipping-side fees — non-U.S.-flagged vessel fees and Section 301 penalties tied to Chinese-built ships feeding a self-sustaining Maritime Trust Fund [1]. That’s a shipping-side answer to “who pays.” The SEAS Act is a corporate-side answer. The Gulf Act is an allied-side answer. None of these ideas need to compete for the same dollars or the same bill number — but they do need a body capable of seeing all of them at once, which is precisely what a Select Committee would provide.

What We’re Asking

We’re not asking Congress to adopt any specific funding mechanism in this post — ours or anyone else’s. We’re asking Congress to create the structure that would let good mechanisms be evaluated on the merits rather than lost to committee turf. A Select Committee for Maritime Industrial Revival, stood up before September conference, would let Congress treat this as the “generational task” Heritage rightly calls it [1], instead of a jurisdictional scramble.

The nation’s maritime revival has been, in Heritage’s words, a bipartisan, bicameral effort since its inception [1]. It should stay that way through conference. A Select Committee is how it does.

References

[1] The Heritage Foundation, “Maritime Legislation: Explainer and Next Steps,” Factsheet No. 285, August 12, 2026.
[2] H.R. 8800 (FY27 NDAA), House passage with maritime amendments, 2026; expected House-Senate conference, September 2026.
[3] Americans for a Stronger Navy / Center for Maritime Strategy, “Defense Reinvestment as Naval Strategy,” March 2026.

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The “China + 1” Illusion: What Global Trade Shifts Mean for U.S. Naval Readiness

Maritime analyst Dr. Sal Mercogliano recently highlighted a critical dynamic shaping modern trade: “The world is diversifying around China, not away from it.”

While economic headlines often celebrate Western supply chains “decoupling” from Beijing, maritime shipping data tells a very different story. Between 2023 and 2025, Chinese containerized exports surged to regional manufacturing hubs—up 40% to India, 36% to Vietnam, and 37% to Thailand.

Rather than pulling manufacturing out of China’s sphere of influence, companies are increasingly relying on a “China + 1” strategy. Raw materials, components, and machinery are still produced in Chinese factories, shipped to South and Southeast Asia for final assembly, and then sent onward to Western markets.

For the U.S. Navy and the defense industrial base, this isn’t true decoupling—it’s re-routing. And it presents serious risks to American sea power.

The Hidden Risks to the Fleet

Naval power relies on secure, resilient supply chains. The expansion of China’s sub-tier manufacturing network impacts U.S. naval readiness across three primary fronts:

  • Deep Defense Industrial Base (DIB) Vulnerabilities: Federal regulations strictly forbid purchasing major military hardware directly from strategic competitors. However, Tier-3 and Tier-4 sub-suppliers—who provide basic electronics, circuit boards, and specialized alloys—remain heavily dependent on Chinese inputs. In a crisis, Beijing could restrict exports of critical sub-components, stalling U.S. ship construction and maintenance.
  • The Critical Mineral Bottleneck: Modern warships depend on Rare Earth Elements (REEs) for permanent magnets, radar systems, sonar arrays, and electric motors. An Arleigh Burke-class destroyer requires roughly 5,200 lbs of rare earth elements, while a Virginia-class submarine requires 9,200 lbs. Because China controls over 80% of global REE refining capacity, shifting final assembly to third-party nations does not resolve this primary vulnerability.
  • Strained Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs): Multi-leg supply chains (China \rightarrow Southeast Asia \rightarrow U.S.) make maritime trade routes longer and more fragmented. This places greater operational demand on the U.S. Navy to monitor, protect, and maintain freedom of navigation across critical maritime chokepoints like the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca.

Policy Action: The Return of Domestic Industrial Mobilization

Recognizing these deep supply chain risks, federal leaders recently announced the revival of a World War II-era model: the Smaller War Plants Commission (SWPC), spearheaded by the Department of Defense and the Small Business Administration (SBA).

Because roughly 70% of the defense industrial base consists of small businesses, this initiative targets the exact lower-tier chokepoints that threaten naval readiness. By expanding capital access and streamlining support for small domestic manufacturers, the SWPC focuses on critical areas:

  • Domestic production of microelectronics and legacy chips.
  • Critical mineral refining on American soil.
  • Specialized castings, forgings, and shipbuilding components.

Rebuilding the U.S. Fleet requires ensuring American warships aren’t grounded by missing foreign-sourced parts during a crisis. Programs like the SWPC are essential steps toward restoring true maritime sovereignty.

Rebuilding True Maritime Strength

Securing U.S. naval readiness requires moving past the illusion of trade diversification:

  1. Map Deep-Tier Supply Chains: Track sub-tier components to eliminate single-point dependencies on foreign raw materials.
  2. Onshore Critical Refining: Leverage domestic programs to build processing facilities for critical minerals and defense components.
  3. Expand Shipyard Infrastructure: Invest directly in U.S. commercial and naval shipyard capacity so the fleet can build, maintain, and repair vessels independently.

As Dr. Mercogliano’s analysis reminds us, trade routes may shift on paper, but strategic dependencies remain. Rebuilding American sea power means securing the industrial foundation behind every ship, sensor, and sailor.

Take Action for American Sea Power

Join Americans for a Stronger Navy in advocating for policies that rebuild domestic shipbuilding, secure defense supply lines, and maintain a fleet capable of protecting global freedom of navigation.

  • Sign up for updates at strongernavy.org
  • Share this analysis on social media to spread awareness about U.S. maritime security.

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The Jones Act Waiver: A Diagnostic Report on America’s Maritime Capacity Gap

Bill Cullifer, Founder
Bill Cullifer, Founder

The Jones Act Waiver: What It Actually Revealed

I am not a maritime economist. I am not a Jones Act scholar. I am a former blue-water destroyer sailor who stood watches aboard USS Henry B. Wilson (DDG-7) in the 1970s, and a former telecommunications and web engineering executive who spent three decades watching American industry move offshore — including firsthand business travel to China during the early 2000s tech transfer era. I come to this the way I come to most naval policy questions: as a student, not an expert.

I have a bias, and I want to name it up front. I watched American manufacturing hollow out in real time. So when someone argues the fix for a hollowed-out merchant marine is removing one of the last laws requiring any of it to be American-built, -owned, -flagged, or -crewed, my instinct is skepticism.

That instinct is what sent me digging. Over the past several weeks I’ve read the primary MARAD compliance filings behind the 2026 Jones Act waiver, followed the public arguments of four people who know this issue far better than I do, and engaged two of them directly. What I found didn’t confirm my bias. It refined it.

What the Waiver Actually Is

On March 17, 2026, during the Strait of Hormuz crisis, the federal government waived the Jones Act’s cabotage rules, allowing foreign-flagged vessels to move fuel, fertilizer, and related cargo between U.S. ports. That waiver has been extended twice, is now the longest suspension of Jones Act rules in the program’s history, and by August was being driven substantially by gasoline prices ahead of the midterms rather than the original national-security rationale.

I went to the primary source: MARAD’s own compliance filings, which every operator is legally required to submit within 10 days of each waiver voyage, including a specific field — an “Explanation of National Defense Interest.” What I found in those filings surprised me. A meaningful share of operators listed that required field simply as “Not Applicable.” Most of the rest reused identical boilerplate language, word for word, across unrelated shippers and vessels. That’s not proof the waiver is bad policy. It is proof that its stated legal basis — a case-by-case national defense necessity — isn’t being documented as case-by-case in practice, for a real share of its use.

Four Voices, One Diagnosis

Public debate over the Jones Act has been framed as a binary choice: repeal the century-old law, or defend it as written. I went looking for the strongest version of every position I could find, and heard from four people who do not agree with each other, or always with me:

Colin Grabow of the Cato Institute has built the most detailed public data tracking waiver voyages, and reads it as proof the law suppresses legitimate demand.

Dr. Steven Wills of the Center for Maritime Strategy argues reform, not repeal — that the law is connective tissue between America’s commercial shipyards and naval surge capacity, and removing it without building a replacement trades a flawed foundation for no foundation at all.

Dr. Sal Mercogliano, historian and host of “What’s Going On With Shipping,” rejects both camps. As he put it directly:

“It’s not the Jones Act that’s the issue. It’s our maritime policy. We’ve been asleep at the wheel while China woke up and has seized the reins.”

William P. Doyle, a former U.S. Federal Maritime Commissioner, adds a sharper security dimension — documenting a Chinese state-owned vessel operating in U.S. coastwise trade under the waiver while qualified American tonnage sat idle.

Four different prescriptions. But underneath the disagreement, a shared diagnosis: a shipyard base too thin to survive between crises, a mariner workforce that shrinks every drought cycle, and a country that let China take over 70 percent of global shipbuilding orders while looking the other way.

The Question Nobody’s Asking

None of these four voices, in their public positions, centers a funding mechanism as the answer. That’s the gap I wrote this report to address. Not repeal or defend — who actually pays to rebuild the capacity everyone agrees we’ve lost.

Read the Full Report

I’ve written up the complete research — the MARAD filings analysis, all four positions in full, and where I’ve landed — as a diagnostic report rather than a single post, because the material deserved more room than a blog format allows.

Download the full report: The Jones Act Waiver — A Diagnostic Report on America’s Maritime Capacity Gap

I’ll be tagging Colin, Sal, Steven, and William when this goes live. Their work is half of what’s in it, and I’d value their read.

Stronger together. Break the silos.

— Bill Cullifer
Americans for a Stronger Navy | StrongerNavy.org

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The Carrier Irony: The Strongest Navy in the World — Worn Thin

Bill Cullifer, Founder
Bill Cullifer, Founder

Introduction

Over the years, I’ve watched with pride as the United States Navy continues to answer the call — anywhere, anytime. We remain the most capable blue-water navy on earth. Our carriers project power globally. Our submarines dominate beneath the waves. Our sailors perform with professionalism and discipline that few nations can match.

But there’s a hard truth we need to confront as Americans.

We are running our fleet — and our sailors — very hard.

The USS Gerald R. Ford and the Bigger Pattern

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When the USS Gerald R. Ford deploys, it represents American industrial power, advanced engineering, and decades of naval aviation expertise. It is the most technologically advanced aircraft carrier ever built.

And yet, like so many ships before it, it has faced extended deployments, compressed maintenance cycles, and intense operational tempo.

This is not about one ship.

It’s about a pattern.

For more than two decades, global demand for U.S. naval presence has increased — while fleet size has not kept pace. The Navy today operates fewer ships than it did during much of the Cold War, yet it is tasked with deterring conflict in the Western Pacific, reassuring allies in Europe, maintaining stability in the Middle East, countering threats in the Red Sea, and responding to crises in the Caribbean and beyond.

The math is unforgiving.

The Carrier Debate — And the Irony

We often hear arguments that aircraft carriers are obsolete, too vulnerable, or relics of a past era.

Yet when tensions rise, when diplomacy tightens, when regional stability wavers — who gets called?

The carrier.

Because nothing else can:

• Deliver sustained airpower without relying on host nation permission
• Generate massive sortie rates from international waters
• Provide immediate, sovereign options to a president
• Signal deterrence visibly and credibly

Critics focus on vulnerability.
Decision-makers focus on options.

That is the carrier irony.

We debate their relevance in peacetime — and depend on them in crisis.

The Real Issue: Capacity, Not Capability

The U.S. Navy is still the strongest in the world.

But strength without depth creates strain.

Extended deployments affect more than headlines. They impact:

• Sailor fatigue and family stability
• Training cycles
• Shipyard scheduling
• Long-term readiness

When maintenance gets compressed, the effects don’t show up immediately. They show up later — in availability gaps, repair delays, and cascading readiness challenges across the fleet.

This is not alarmism.

It is operational reality.

Why Americans Should Care

Most Americans assume we have a massive Navy that can surge indefinitely.

They see a carrier sent to a region and feel reassured.

They do not see the maintenance backlogs, the stretched crews, or the industrial bottlenecks behind the scenes.

Sea power underwrites global commerce. Roughly 90 percent of global trade moves by sea. Energy flows, supply chains, and strategic chokepoints all depend on maritime stability.

When the Navy is stretched thin, that stability becomes more fragile.

This isn’t about war. It’s about deterrence, economic security, and preventing conflict before it starts.

The Path Forward

The answer is not to bash carriers.

The answer is not to overuse them either.

The answer is depth:

• More ships
• Stable deployment cycles
• Stronger shipbuilding capacity
• Investment in maintenance infrastructure
• Support for the sailors and families who carry the burden

America’s Navy belongs to the American people. And if we expect it to remain the strongest in the world, we must understand what it actually takes to sustain that strength.

We can be proud of our Navy.

But pride alone does not build ships.

Public understanding does.

That’s why we launched Charting the Course: Voices That Matter — a 24-part educational series breaking down how we got here, what went wrong, and what must happen next. Our goal is simple: educate the public, connect the dots, and build the support needed to close the readiness gap before it’s too late.

Let’s roll.

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The Next War Will Be Won by the Bench, Not the Starting Lineup

Abstract

As I continue to learn from naval professionals, analysts, and thoughtful voices like CDR Salamander, Brent Sadler, and Steven Wills, one reality keeps coming into sharper focus: wars between major powers are not decided by what we start with, but by what we can replace after the fighting begins. Many of our most advanced systems today are designed in ways that make rapid replacement, repair, and adaptation extremely difficult. This is not simply a funding or acquisition issue — it is a design, industrial, and national alignment issue. Understanding this is essential if Americans are to understand what true naval power requires in the 21st century.

Bill Cullifer, Founder
Bill Cullifer, Founder

Introduction

As I continue this journey with Americans for a Stronger Navy, I find myself learning as much as I am advocating.

One of the most valuable parts of this work has been listening to and reading professionals like CDR Salamander, retired U.S. Navy Commander and widely read naval commentator; Brent Sadler, Senior Research Fellow for Naval Warfare and Advanced Technology at The Heritage Foundation and former U.S. Navy submariner; and Dr. Steven Wills, naval historian and former U.S. Navy officer, who are describing a reality that should concern every American — not just those in uniform or working in the defense industry.

Here’s the light-bulb moment. Imagine two football teams. One starts the game with the best players in the league — faster, stronger, more skilled. The other starts with good players, but has a deep bench. When players get hurt, they substitute quickly. When equipment breaks, they replace it. When fatigue sets in, they rotate fresh players onto the field. By the fourth quarter, the first team is exhausted, short-handed, and can’t keep up. The second team wins.

Wars between major powers work the same way. It’s not the starting lineup that decides the outcome. It’s the depth of the bench.

Today, we have an impressive starting lineup. What professionals like Salamander, Sadler, and Wills are warning us about is the size of our bench.

That was true in World War II. It is proving true in Ukraine today. And it will be true in any future conflict in the Pacific.

Here’s the uncomfortable part: many of the systems we build today are extraordinarily capable — but they are not designed to be built, repaired, or replenished at wartime scale.

The Lesson We Forgot from World War II

In World War II, America did not win because our tanks, ships, and aircraft were perfect. We won because they were designed to be built in massive numbers by the factories we already had. Design matched industrial strength. Throughput, not elegance, won the war.

What CDR Salamander Is Warning Us About

“In a fight defined by attrition, adaptation, and industrial endurance, the winning systems will not be the perfect ones on paper but the ones that can be produced, replaced, and improved the fastest.”

Brent Sadler and Maritime Statecraft

Sadler calls this maritime statecraft — naval power tied directly to shipyards, logistics, trade, workforce, and industry.

Steven Wills and the Structural Slide

Wills shows this is a structural capacity problem, not a readiness statistic.

What This Means for Middle America

Factories, trades, ports, shipyards — naval power begins in American towns long before a ship leaves port.

How We Got Here — The Quiet Erosion of Industrial Depth

This didn’t happen overnight. Industrial redundancy gave way to efficiency. What was once economic change is now understood as national security fragility.

Maritime Commerce — The Part Most Americans Never See

Over 90 percent of global trade moves by sea. Naval strength protects American prosperity.

How the Country Benefits

Stable supply chains, energy security, jobs, reliable trade, and deterrence.

The Good News

The good news is this: America has solved this problem before. In the 1930s, we did not yet have the industrial capacity that would later win World War II. What we had first was understanding. Once Americans understood what was required, industry, workforce, and national focus followed. We are at a similar moment now.

Why Americans Should Care

If war comes in the Pacific, it will not be decided in the first month. It will be decided in month six by who can replace losses fastest.

That’s why we launched Charting the Course: Voices That Matter — a 24-part educational series breaking down how we got here, what went wrong, and what must happen next. Our goal is simple: educate the public, connect the dots, and build the support needed to close the readiness gap before it’s too late.

Let’s roll.

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U.S. Navy on Track to Commission Only 2 Ships in 2025 — Lowest in Decades — While Silicon Valley Banks Billions from China Operations

Naval Advocacy Group Calls for “Strategic Seas Act” Requiring Tech Companies Profiting from China to Fund Fleet Modernization

December 31, 2025 — Americans for a Stronger Navy today released new data showing the U.S. Navy is projected to commission only 2 ships in 2025, marking the steepest decline in naval shipbuilding in modern history and creating a critical gap in America’s ability to counter China’s rapidly expanding fleet.

The analysis reveals a stark 10-year trend: from 2015 to 2025, the Navy averaged just 8 ships commissioned per year — falling far short of the 12 ships per year required to meet strategic goals. This represents a shortfall of approximately 40 fewer ships over the decade, occurring precisely as China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy has become the world’s largest naval force.

“We’re watching American naval power erode in real time,” said Bill Cullifer, founder of Americans for a Stronger Navy. “The 2025 commissioning rate of just 2 ships isn’t a budget blip — it’s a strategic crisis that threatens our ability to maintain freedom of navigation in the Pacific and protect the very trade routes that make Silicon Valley’s global business model possible.”

The Taxpayer-Funded Tech Paradox

The organization notes a troubling disconnect: many of Silicon Valley’s most profitable companies were built on taxpayer-funded research from DARPA, the National Science Foundation, and Department of Defense programs — yet now generate billions in revenue from China while the Navy that protects their supply chains faces resource constraints.

“American taxpayers funded the fundamental research that created Google, GPS, the internet, smartphone AI, and semiconductor breakthroughs,” Cullifer said. “These companies now generate enormous profits from Chinese markets, yet contribute nothing directly to the naval forces that secure the Pacific shipping lanes their business depends on.”

The Strategic Seas Act: A Solution

Americans for a Stronger Navy is calling for Congress to pass a “Strategic Seas Act” that would require technology companies with significant China operations to contribute a modest percentage of those revenues to a dedicated Naval Modernization and Maintenance Fund.

Key provisions would include:

  • Companies with over $5 billion in annual China revenue contribute 2% to the fund
  • Revenues earmarked specifically for ship repair backlogs, shipyard modernization, and Pacific Fleet readiness
  • Projected to generate billions annually based on current tech sector China operations
  • Estimated to fund 4-6 additional ship commissionings per year, substantially closing the strategic gap

“This isn’t a tax — it’s a user fee,” Cullifer explained. “If you’re generating billions moving products and data across the Pacific, you should help pay for the destroyers and submarines that keep those sea lanes open. If you’re profiting from China’s market, you should help fund our ability to compete with China’s military.”

Bipartisan Issue Gaining Momentum

The proposal has gained interest across the political spectrum, appealing to defense hawks concerned about Chinese military expansion, economic populists focused on corporate responsibility, and fiscal conservatives seeking efficient solutions to readiness gaps.

“This issue transcends party politics,” said Cullifer. “Whether you’re concerned about China as a strategic competitor, frustrated by corporate tax avoidance, or worried about return on taxpayer investment in R&D, the answer is the same: those who profit most from the Pacific trade system should contribute to its protection.”

By The Numbers

U.S. Navy Ship Commissioning (2015-2025):

  • 2015: 11 ships
  • 2016: 11 ships
  • 2018: 10 ships
  • 2020: 8 ships
  • 2022: 6 ships
  • 2024: 3 ships
  • 2025: 2 ships (confirmed)

Strategic Requirement: 12 ships per year
10-Year Average: ~8 ships per year
Cumulative Shortfall: ~40 ships

Call to Action

Americans for a Stronger Navy is calling on Congress to:

  1. Hold hearings on the naval shipbuilding crisis and its implications for Pacific deterrence
  2. Commission a GAO study examining the relationship between taxpayer-funded tech R&D, corporate profits from China operations, and naval readiness gaps
  3. Introduce and pass the Strategic Seas Act in the 119th Congress
  4. Ensure 2026 defense authorization bills include dedicated funding to address the ship commissioning shortfall

“China is building a fleet designed to push the U.S. Navy out of the Western Pacific,” Cullifer concluded. “We built Silicon Valley with taxpayer dollars. Silicon Valley profits from Pacific trade. It’s time Silicon Valley helps us maintain the naval power that makes their business model possible. This isn’t just fair — it’s strategically essential.”

About Americans for a Stronger Navy

Americans for a Stronger Navy (StrongerNavy.org) is a non-partisan advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring the United States maintains the naval capabilities required to protect American interests, support allies, and preserve freedom of navigation in an era of great power competition.

For full data, graphics, and supporting documentation, visit StrongerNavy.org/shipbuilding-crisis

EDITOR’S NOTE: High-resolution graphics showing ship commissioning trends, comparative data with Chinese naval expansion, and the taxpayer investment in Silicon Valley technologies are available upon request.

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The Wake-Up Call America Can’t Ignore: Captain Fanell’s Stark Warning on China’s Naval Supremacy

A Navy Intelligence Officer Was Fired for Telling the Truth. Now We’re Living His Warning.

In February 2014, Captain James Fanell, then the senior Intelligence Officer for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, gave a speech that would cost him his career. His crime? Warning that China was modernizing its navy at an alarming rate and preparing for what Beijing called a “short, sharp war.”

The Pentagon’s response was swift and chilling. Rather than heed his warning, they publicly rebuked him. An Office of the Secretary of Defense officer visited his secure facility with a direct order: stop giving speeches like that. The message was clear—don’t “provoke” China. Within months, Captain Fanell was fired.

Ten years later, his testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability reads like a prophetic indictment of three decades of strategic failure. And for Americans who care about naval power and national security, it should be required reading.

The Numbers Don’t Lie: We’re Losing the Naval Race

Here’s the reality Captain Fanell laid out in stark terms: In 2005, the U.S. Navy enjoyed a 76-warship advantage over China. By 2023, we faced a 39-combatant deficit. That’s a swing of 115 naval platforms in less than two decades—and the trend shows no sign of reversing for at least another decade.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy is now the largest in the world. But it’s not just about numbers. China has achieved qualitative parity, if not superiority, in critical areas. Their new Renhai-class cruisers pack 112 vertical launch tubes carrying supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles with ranges of 186 miles. Meanwhile, our carrier strike groups lack sufficient defenses against hypersonic weapons.

Captain Fanell’s assessment is blunt: “If there is conflict with the PRC, it will be on, over, and below the high seas, from Okinawa to Guam to Honolulu, all the way to the West Coast and into the U.S. homeland. This will be a conflict the likes of which the U.S. has not experienced since World War II.”

How Did We Get Here? The Anatomy of Strategic Failure

Captain Fanell identifies three catastrophic failures that brought us to this precipice:

1. Threat Deflation by the Intelligence Community

For decades, the U.S. intelligence community consistently underestimated China’s capabilities and intentions. Admiral Robert Willard noted in 2009 that China had “exceeded most of our intelligence estimates of their military capability and capacity every year.” This wasn’t occasional miscalculation—it was systematic error, always in the same direction: underestimating the threat.

The intelligence community failed its prime directive. As Commander Joseph Rochefort, the architect of America’s victory at Midway, famously said: an intelligence officer must tell his commander today what the enemy will do tomorrow. On China, our intelligence apparatus failed spectacularly.

2. Avarice Over Strategy

Business interests and financiers prioritized profits over national security. The promise of cheap labor and vast markets blinded American leaders to a fundamental strategic truth: every dollar China earned was partly spent building the military force that now threatens us.

As Captain Fanell notes: “From a strategic perspective, there is no ‘Goldilocks’ amount of safe trade in high tech with China. Indeed, the right amount is zero.”

3. A Flag Officer Corps That Failed to Sound the Alarm

Perhaps most damning is Captain Fanell’s assessment of Navy leadership. He contrasts today’s admirals with the principled officers of the Cold War—admirals like Arleigh Burke and Hyman Rickover, who fought relentlessly for the capabilities needed to counter the Soviet threat.

Where are today’s equivalents? For 20 years, not a single U.S. Navy admiral spoke out publicly against the dangerous trajectory of naval power shifting to China. Instead, they embraced “engagement at all costs,” hosting Chinese admirals on our carriers and submarines, while China used those very lessons to build a navy specifically designed to defeat us.

The culture became one of “going along to get along”—where career advancement trumped the oath to the Constitution.

The Scarborough Shoal Lesson: When Weakness Invites Aggression

Captain Fanell recounts a watershed moment that demonstrates the cost of our failures: the 2012 Scarborough Shoal incident. When China attempted to seize the shoal from the Philippines, the U.S. brokered an agreement for both sides to withdraw. The Philippines complied. China did not.

The U.S. response? Nothing. We failed to back our treaty ally, and China seized sovereign territory without firing a shot.

The lesson China learned was clear: America will not stand up to Chinese aggression. Within a year, under the leadership of then-Vice President Xi Jinping, China began building seven militarized artificial islands in the South China Sea—three of them the size and capacity of Pearl Harbor. Today, they’re fully militarized despite Xi’s 2014 assurances to President Obama that they wouldn’t be.

What Must Be Done: Seven Urgent Recommendations

Captain Fanell doesn’t just diagnose the problem—he prescribes bold solutions:

  1. The National Security Community Must Admit Failure – Only by acknowledging how completely they missed the threat can we begin to fix the system.
  2. Restructure Decision-Making – Move CFIUS chairmanship from Treasury to Defense. Economic interests can no longer trump national security.
  3. Expect Resistance and Stay the Course – The “engagement” advocates will fight every reform. We must persist despite bureaucratic resistance.
  4. Act with Urgency – We don’t have years to correct course. China’s timeline for the “Great Rejuvenation” is measured in years, not decades.
  5. Create a “Team B” on China – Just as alternative analysis challenged benign assumptions about the Soviet Union in the 1970s, we need contrarian voices on China now.
  6. Study Chinese Military Doctrine – During the Cold War, we knew Soviet doctrine inside and out. We must achieve the same familiarity with PLA thinking and strategy.
  7. Target the CCP Directly – This requires political warfare, rolling back Chinese gains in the South China Sea, and making clear that the Chinese Communist Party is illegitimate.

A Navy Built for the Fight We Face

Americans for a Stronger Navy has long advocated for the fleet we need, not the fleet we can afford. Captain Fanell’s testimony reinforces this urgency.

We need:

  • A crash naval building program reminiscent of the 1940 Naval Expansion Act
  • Hypersonic weapon defenses for our carrier strike groups
  • A distributed maritime architecture that can survive and fight in contested waters
  • Forward-deployed forces capable of deterring Chinese aggression

But ships and weapons aren’t enough. We need leadership willing to speak hard truths, even when they’re politically inconvenient. We need admirals who will fight for the Navy our nation requires, not manage their careers toward comfortable retirements.

The Stakes: Freedom or Totalitarian Abyss

Captain Fanell frames this struggle in the starkest terms: “The Sino-American security competition is the great struggle of the 21st Century and promises to resolve the dispositive question of the age—whether the world will be free and protected by the U.S. or fall into a totalitarian abyss as sought by the PRC.”

This isn’t hyperbole. It’s the assessment of an intelligence officer who spent his career studying Chinese capabilities and intentions—and was punished for telling the truth.The Choice Before Us

We face the same reality as a patient diagnosed with cancer. We can follow the prescribed treatment—painful, expensive, and difficult though it may be—or we can ignore the diagnosis and hope for the best.

Captain Fanell’s testimony shows us that hope is not a strategy. Engagement failed. Wishful thinking about China’s “peaceful rise” failed. Prioritizing corporate profits over national security failed.

What remains is the hard work of rebuilding American naval power, restructuring our national security apparatus, and confronting—not engaging—the Chinese Communist Party’s bid for global hegemony.

The good news? America still possesses fundamental strengths: our Constitution, our tradition of individual liberty, our innovative spirit, and our alliances. These are more powerful and durable than the Chinese Communist Party’s coercion and control.

But these strengths won’t matter if we lack the naval power to defend them. And we won’t build that power unless we acknowledge how badly we’ve failed, learn from officers like Captain Fanell who tried to warn us, and commit to the urgent work of reclaiming maritime dominance.

A Call to Action

Americans for a Stronger Navy exists precisely for this moment. We need:

  • Public Awareness: Share Captain Fanell’s testimony. Demand that political leaders address this threat honestly.
  • Congressional Action: Pressure representatives to fund naval shipbuilding and reform the national security bureaucracy.
  • Cultural Change: Celebrate officers who speak truth to power, even when that truth is uncomfortable.
  • Strategic Seriousness: Reject engagement policies that strengthen our adversary.

Captain Fanell ends his testimony with optimism rooted in American exceptionalism. We should share that optimism—but only if it’s paired with urgent action.

The decade of concern is here. The question is whether we’ll rise to meet it.

Americans for a Stronger Navy advocates for robust maritime power as essential to American security and prosperity. Captain Fanell’s full testimony is available through the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and deserves wide distribution among citizens, policymakers, and military professionals.