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Re:How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry by wahern on Monday November 10, 2025 @06:49AM (#45875018)
> Friends aren't good enough

They are if you actively manage your relationships with an eye to maintaining redundant access to necessary materiel or having multi-pronged defense strategies. Singapore is constantly nurturing strategic defense ties with multiple allies and attempting to avoid existential reliance on any single ally. And the one nation they definitely wouldn't rely on is Malaysia, the country most likely to threaten their sovereignty. Ukraine's problem was they were politically too dysfunctional and dependent on Russia defense trade until Russia's successive invasions forced them to reform domestically. (To be fair, Russia had a hand in prolonging their dysfunction.)

Re:How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry by energy123 on Monday November 10, 2025 @07:19AM (#45875226)
I think there's a lot of nuance, because the right move will depend on exactly what specific item we are talking about, combined with local factors, and this answer will vary from country to country. No country should be fully autarkic even for the defense supply chain, that much we agree on. That said, the principles that you've laid out, such as seeking redundancy, are universally good ones to follow for the non-autarkic parts of the supply chain.