Steel mill construction cost analysis (disruptive technology case study)

$10–20B greenfield integrated mill cost today; no private builder since 1975. Parallels drawn with Boeing/Airbus airframes and Intel silicon foundries — all country-scale subsidies.

I'm actually referenced in there, because my daughter, one summer when she was in college, got hired by Clayton to do some research, and she was supposed to find out what it cost to build a steel mill. She came home one night and said, "Dad, I can't find anything. I've been looking for a week, can't find anything about the cost of building a steel mill." I said, "Well, I've got a slide I can give you." So the next day I brought in my slide, and that's why I'm referenced. I estimated that it cost Bethlehem Steel from 1965 through 1975 a billion dollars to build the Burns Harbor, Indiana plant. I think I told you, since then no private company has ever built a steel mill, because it would cost ten or fifteen billion dollars today, maybe twenty billion dollars to build an integrated steel mill. Only countries have bankrolled that. Same thing with Boeing and Airbus designing a new airplane. Intel putting in a silicon foundry — these investments get so large that it has to be a country that subsidizes it, because no company can take that type of risk.