The US naval fleet is shrinking — 296 ships today against a statutory minimum of 355 set in 2018 — and last year built 9 ships while retiring 19, while the Chinese fleet of ~370 vessels grows toward 450 and China delivered over 1,000 commercial ships versus America's 5.
Dino contrasts the declining US naval fleet (296 ships, building 9 but retiring 19 last year, only 5 commercial ships built) with China's growing fleet (~370, building ~30 naval vessels, over 1,000 commercial ships), warning that Chinese commercial shipyards would convert to military production in a conflict. ✦ AI generated
Dino Mavrikis · All-In Podcast · 2026-08-06 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 7:08
So the US naval fleet has 296 ships today. There's a congressional mandate statutory minimum of 355 ships that was set by Congress in 2018. That was 8 years ago. Last year we built nine ships, but we retired 19 naval vessels. So we're going in the wrong like the completely wrong direction. The Chinese delivered somewhere in the ballpark of 30 ships. Their fleet size is around 370. They'll be at 450 before you know it. But the commercial market is where that discrepancy lies. Even larger, right? They delivered over a thousand commercial ships last year. The United States built five. Five. 1 2 3 4 5. One hand. So if a conflict actually kicks off, and we saw this in the US in World War II where we had the production capacity where we're building thousands of vessels every year. If a conflict kicks off, that commercial capacity isn't going to go to building cargo containers anymore. It's all going to flip to defense capacity and it's going to be building for what the Chinese Communist Party needs to to win a conflict.
verbatim transcript · starts at 7:08
7:08they have nuclear submarines aircraft carriers and hypersonic missiles so there's a massive massive change over the last 30 years and what's happened in the US ship building industry it's completely declined So the US naval fleet has 296 ships today. There's a congressional mandate statutory minimum of 355 ships that was set by Congress in 2018. That was 8 years ago. Last year we built nine ships, but we retired 19
7:38naval vessels. So we're going in the wrong like the completely wrong direction. The Chinese delivered somewhere in the ballpark of 30 ships. Their fleet size is around 370. They'll be at 450 before you know it. But the commercial market is where that discrepancy lies. Even larger, right? They delivered over a thousand commercial ships last year. The United States built five. >> Five. 1 2 3 4 5.
8:04>> 1 2 3 4 5. One hand. >> Wow. >> So if a conflict actually kicks off, and we saw this in the US in World War II where we had the production capacity where we're building thousands of vessels every year. If a conflict kicks off, that commercial capacity isn't going to go to building cargo containers anymore. It's all going to flip to defense capacity and it's going to be
8:24building for what the Chinese Communist Party needs to to win a conflict. And that's what we have to be building towards. That's what we're doing at Seronic. That's why we're thinking, okay, how do we build mass? How do we build scale in whatever it is that we do? >> And so, how do you do it, Vib? I would think and listen I'm a neopight here but if these are autonomous ships well you
8:46can remove things like you don't need beds you you don't need a commissary and you don't need uh latrines and I don't know what percentage of a corsair or battleship are there to uh support humans on the ship but I got to think it's half the mass of it is to is to keep humans on it am I directionally correct >> I think half is a little half is a