President Donald Trump was doing a victory dance, pumping his octogenarian fists and shuffling his feet to a dance-club hit now 58 years old.
Young man, there’s no need to feel down ...
He confirmed that the Navy will help Anduril Industries build a $6.6 billion shipyard on the Baltimore Harbor to manufacture submarine components.
“Right here in Sparrows Point, you’ll build the next generation of American submarines, including autonomous subs, torpedo tubes and critical components for our cutting-edge Virginia-class attack submarines — the greatest and quietest ever built,” the president said.
Hip, hip hooray!
Arsenal-2 will be the biggest job injection for Maryland’s economy in 10 years! An estimated $2 billion will energize the Baltimore region’s economy, with 14,000 construction jobs and a combined $312 million in wages.
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USA! USA! USA!
Am I the only one feeling conflicted?
It wasn’t just the wrapping for this good news, one of Trump’s legendarily weird speeches.
He mentioned childhood friends too dumb to attend the Naval Academy, bragged about seizing oil from Venezuela after the U.S. overthrow of dictator Nicolás Maduro and promised to finish the war he started with Iran, soon.
Through field and forest, the president wandered, reaching the point eventually.
“Now, with the men and women of Anduril, the workers of Maryland and the warriors of the U.S. Navy — which is just a special, special group — this place will roar with the sound of high-tech manufacturing building ships and submarines that will be feared by our enemies all over the world.”
Yippee.
The term is cognitive dissonance. It’s the tension I feel as my values clash with this new information.
Donald Trump has been undeniably bad for Maryland: jobs shed, school funding lost, food aid and health insurance canceled, an immigration purge sweeping up neighbors, friends and family, to name a few.
Here was the president a majority of Maryland voters didn’t want, rambling about undeniably good economic news.
It’s not just the messenger that’s confounding. It’s the message.
Happy for jobs, yes, but regretting another future now slipping away.
Arsenal-2 will rise where US Wind once planned to build a clean energy economy: wind farms to power the future.
It’s five times more jobs, with a more assured source of future funds. But it helps cement Maryland’s reliance on federal dollars rather than change it.
“We jumped at the opportunity to work with Anduril to transform our port site into a new manufacturing hub that will create thousands of near-term jobs,” US Wind CEO Jeffrey Grybowski said.
Trump giveth war and taketh away the wind. He really hates the wind.
Woot-woot?
Anduril Industries and its founder, Palmer Luckey, are the kind of American ingenuity you want to cheer.
A self-taught “boy genius,” he built early virtual reality headsets. He created Oculus VR and then sold his company to Facebook for $2 billion when he was 21.
Suck it, Thomas Edison!
Today he’s moved on to weightier ideas. He developed Lattice, which Anduril describes as an AI-powered platform that runs defense, security and public safety technology.
It merges sensors, networks and hardware in a single screen for a human operator. The biggest reach so far is the Army’s developing Integrated Visual Augmentation System — heads-up displays for soldiers.
“The IVAS program — one of the most important programs to the Army — represents just the beginnings of a new path in human augmentation, one that will allow America’s warfighters to surpass the limitations of human form and cognition, seamlessly teaming enhanced humans with large packs of robotic and biologic teammates,” Luckey wrote in 2025.
Um, can I get a huzzah?
Like no American tech billionaire before him, Luckey embraces defense, quickly building better ways to track and well, kill, enemies.
And he has political preferences for who picks the enemy.
He was fired from Facebook after donating $9,000 to an internet troll bashing Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election.
He donated to both Trump campaigns and, since starting Anduril in 2017, has contributed $5.9 million to Republican causes and candidates.
The love is mutual. The Trump administration has awarded Anduril defense and homeland security contracts potentially worth up to $1.5 billion. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor.
Luckey also was named to Project Meridian, a 120-day Pentagon study on future warfare, with Elon Musk and, strangely, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Anduril seems to be aware of the possibility for mixed feelings, launching a campaign to make you want cyborg warriors for freedom.
“Who Dares Strike at Liberty?” shone from electronic signs in Baltimore on Tuesday, along with “Rebuild the Arsenal” and “The Shipyard is the Weapon.”
“It’s time to build,” Andruil trumpeted on social media. “President Franklin Roosevelt turned to Baltimore’s shipyards to accomplish the same mission, to keep our fleet in the fight. For those aggressors who would again dare strike at American liberty: Arsenal-2 is our answer.”
Patriotism 21st-century style. Bravo!
And yet, and yet. Anyone else getting Terminator vibes?
I am not alone in my cognitive dissonance.
Gov. Wes Moore and other leaders praised the project, but I didn’t hear a “Thank you, Mr. Trump.”
The state worked to sell the Navy and Anduril on the deepwater port, rail access and proximity to major highways at Tradepoint Atlantic.
Maryland will kick in 13% of Anduril’s cost, build a workforce training center and ask for federal tax and regulatory relief.
The president, though, doesn’t share credit.
He rebuffed Moore because the Democratic governor wanted to put his stamp on a boon for Maryland. It’s a win for the governor’s reelection cakewalk, but also for his 2028 presidential ambitions.
So Trump stood alone on the stage overlooking the harbor, extolling the decision to build a shipyard in Maryland and then pay Anduril billions to make submarine dreams.
He talked of many things in his shambling way, then danced a merry jig.
Only the lost Key Bridge was left out, its ruins on the horizon, a silent reminder of the dissonance between what was and what wasn’t said.
Oh, Baltimore. So conflicted.
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