I went to the 'save America' conference in Detroit, where patriotic founders vied for VC dollars
The conference speakers, who were mostly company builders and their investors, boldly shared the event's mission: "Welcome to year two of the save America conference," Chris Power, CEO of automated factory startup Hadrian, said in his opening speech. "We're about to go into a generational grudge match with the Chinese Communist Party."
Reviving the country's manufacturing and defense base has become an ascendant obsession in Silicon Valley, fueled in part by Trump 2.0's assertions about tariffs energizing American manufacturing and a proposed $1 trillion defense budget for fiscal year 2026. (The House passed an $832 billion defense funding bill for the same year early Friday.)
Y Combinator, a program that invests in and provides mentorship for early-stage startups, collaborated with the June event in requesting applications from founders who hope to modernize manufacturing. According to PitchBook, defense tech investments soared to $1.4 billion in the first quarter of 2025, compared with $200 million in the same period last year.
A handful of companies announced news at the two-day event in what seemed like a competition for venture eyeballs.
Anduril founder Palmer Luckey hinted at the possibility of the company producing American-made computers. Hadrian announced its $260 million Series C financing led by Founders Fund and Lux Capital, and a factory expansion loan facility arranged by Morgan Stanley. Chariot Defense, a startup that makes energy infrastructure for the military, launched at Reindustrialize, publicizing a seed funding round led by General Catalyst and XYZ Venture Capital. Regent said that it will start making its seaglider vessels for defense applications. It became yet another company targeting dual-use strategies.
And California Forever, the group behind a new city a stone's throw away from San Francisco, announced on Thursday plans to build a manufacturing park.
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'The art of the possible'
Growing geopolitical tensions with China, which has a strong manufacturing base and a modernizing military, undergirded Secretary of the Navy John Phelan's address about the importance of skilled laborers in the industrial race against American adversaries.
"We've spent the last 10 years teaching people how to code," he said in a speech on Wednesday. "We're going to spend the next 10 years teaching people how to use their hands."
Selling venture capitalists with deep pockets on the image of a pro-industrialization America seemed as important as the mission itself. Whitney Houston's 1991 Super Bowl performance of the national anthem blasted over speakers to a packed auditorium before Phelan's speech. The conference's imagery blended old and new Americana: a waitress confronted with a buzzing drone, a worker riding an electric scooter, and Wyoming's cowboys under the shadow of the Grand Tetons and a fighter jet.
"The people that founded this country and the people that pushed out into the frontier are really inspiring to a lot of the folks who are attending," Mike Slaugh, a Reindustrialize cofounder and producer, told Business Insider. "They see the art of the possible."
Slagh worked on Reindustrialize's branding with Warpcraft, a design firm for hardware and frontier tech startups. He said the creative team generated and edited the images using artificial intelligence.
Americana Swagger
Attendees' outfits spoke volumes, too. They sported event-provided nametags affixed to American flag-printed lanyards and picked up tie-dye merch on their way out. Some strutted the halls wearing "Make American Nuclear Great Again" caps, a riff on Trump's MAGA trucker hat. Others opted for headgear that promoted their portfolio companies.
Swag aside, Gregory Bernstein, a Reindustrialize cofounder and CEO of investment firm New Industrial Corporation, told BI that the mission captivated many: "It's like an actual movement," he said. "The people who come are here because they legitimately want to solve this problem. It's not an ego thing."
But not everyone bought in. Protesters from a group called Engineers Against Apartheid, according to a flyer obtained by BI and distributed by the demonstrators, gathered outside the conference venue and in front of a nearby Gucci store to protest the event and defense companies like Palantir Technologies.
Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar said at the conference on Thursday, "Our greatest threat isn't China. It's ourselves."
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