There are two groups of people I’ve yet to see anything approaching intelligence about manufacturing—politicians and journalists.

M.G. Siegler writes in his latest newsletter about the new pressures from the Trump administration to get Apple to manufacture iPhones in the US. These politicians seem to think there is a magic wand that will immediately set up factories, find workers, build automation, establish supply chain, and start production at a competitive cost.

Now we know what the magic wand is—AI.

Siegler quotes:

White House trade advisor Peter Navarro criticized Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday over the company’s response to pressure from the Trump administration to make more of its products outside China.

“Going back to the first Trump term, Tim Cook has continually asked for more time in order to move his factories out of China,” Navarro said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “I mean it’s the longest-running soap opera in Silicon Valley.”

I first ran across Siegler when he wrote for Michael Arrington’s old TechCrunch website. He then became a VC for a while after Arrington sold TechCrunch. He’s on his own, now, writing about technology, especially Apple, and entertainment.

Siegler continues:

On one hand, it’s sort of wild that the administration has zeroed in on Apple here given not only all of Cook’s legwork over many years now to get into the President’s good graces, but also because the entire idea of manufacturing the iPhone in the US is just pure crazytown fantasy. Even if it were possible for Apple move such manufacturing, it would take years to get all the pieces up and running. And it would all-but destroy Apple’s business as we know it today because it would destroy the economics of their most-important device.

Siegler then offers advice to Tim Cook:

It’s not that complicated. Cook should just say they’re going to move iPhone manufacturing to the US – and then never actually follow through with it. Sure, this takes some amount of soul-selling to do, but honestly, we’re past that point already. How many other companies have promised things to give the President a good soundbite that simply are not going to happen? Undoubtedly a lot.

But then Navarro has a simple solution:

With all these new advanced manufacturing techniques and the way things are moving with AI and things like that, it’s inconceivable to me that Tim Cook could not produce his iPhones elsewhere around the world and in this country.

So, all of you manufacturing technology geeks who read my musings, what are you doing? Why haven’t you used AI yet to magically reduce manufacturing costs and smooth the supply chain and source materials?

Am I being sarcastic? Those are all questions (except the AI part) I wrestled with 50 years ago. I bet you are all wrestling with them today. Every day. As we used to say, it’s nontrivial.