"And it has to do with having no inventory or stockpiles on the shelf, but items arrive as you need to build your product. What that means is that it's much more difficult to actually find stockpiles of already built weapons"
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Reiss is translating a wonky supply-chain principle into a geopolitical argument: if your adversary runs “just-in-time” production, you won’t catch them red-handed with warehouses full of finished missiles. The line sounds like logistics, but it’s really about evidence and persuasion. By invoking “inventory” and “stockpiles,” he borrows the language of modern manufacturing to lower the temperature around a charged question: Why aren’t we finding the weapons we were told to expect?
The intent is defensive and strategic. Defensive, because it preemptively answers skeptics who equate the absence of caches with the absence of capability. Strategic, because it nudges policymakers and the public toward a different standard of proof: not “show me the pile,” but “follow the procurement, the components, the production rhythm.” It’s an argument for intelligence methods that track networks and inputs rather than trophies.
The subtext is also a quiet admission about the limits of inspection and occupation. “Items arrive as you need to build your product” implies a system designed to be hard to verify and easy to deny, whether by design or necessity. It reframes the hunt for “already built weapons” as almost naive, suggesting that certainty will be rare and contested.
Contextually, this kind of phrasing fits the post-9/11, post-invasion debates where diplomats had to reconcile high-stakes claims with messy realities on the ground. The technocratic tone is not accidental: it offers plausibility without drama, a way to keep a narrative standing when the physical artifacts refuse to cooperate.
The intent is defensive and strategic. Defensive, because it preemptively answers skeptics who equate the absence of caches with the absence of capability. Strategic, because it nudges policymakers and the public toward a different standard of proof: not “show me the pile,” but “follow the procurement, the components, the production rhythm.” It’s an argument for intelligence methods that track networks and inputs rather than trophies.
The subtext is also a quiet admission about the limits of inspection and occupation. “Items arrive as you need to build your product” implies a system designed to be hard to verify and easy to deny, whether by design or necessity. It reframes the hunt for “already built weapons” as almost naive, suggesting that certainty will be rare and contested.
Contextually, this kind of phrasing fits the post-9/11, post-invasion debates where diplomats had to reconcile high-stakes claims with messy realities on the ground. The technocratic tone is not accidental: it offers plausibility without drama, a way to keep a narrative standing when the physical artifacts refuse to cooperate.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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