Something shifted in 2025.
For decades, U.S. maritime policy lived in the margins—mentioned in defense briefings, debated in niche Congressional hearings, largely invisible to the broader industrial agenda. Ports moved cargo. Shipyards struggled. Workforce pipelines thinned. And policymakers talked about revitalization without ever agreeing on how.
This year, that changed.
The October Convergence
In October, 49 maritime leaders gathered in Houston at the SHIPPINGInsight Leadership Roundtable—shipyard executives, port authorities, technology providers, workforce developers, investors—to do something the industry rarely does: align. Not on wishful thinking, but on a clear diagnosis of what’s actually blocking U.S. maritime capacity.
Five systemic barriers emerged: fragmented governance, workforce shortages, underinvestment in innovation, misaligned incentives for technology adoption, and the sustainability of the U.S.-flag fleet.
We published those findings in the Revitalizing America’s Maritime Power white paper. A week later, Congressional testimony on the SHIPS for America Act echoed the same priorities—almost word for word. For the first time in decades, industry and government were reading from the same page.
The convergence wasn’t coincidental. It reflected years of analysis finally meeting political will.
November: The National Security Strategy
Then came validation at the strategic level.
The 2025 National Security Strategy did something no prior NSS had done with such clarity: it placed maritime at the center of American industrial and economic security. Not as a supporting function. As a foundation.
The Strategy explicitly links future U.S. strength to the nation’s ability to build ships, move goods, protect supply chains, and scale production when needed. It calls for national mobilization to produce systems at scale and re-shore defense industrial supply chains.
This wasn’t a policy paper. It was a strategic declaration.
The maritime trade press noticed. Safety4Sea, Ship Management International, and others covered the industry’s unified response—a framework we authored showing how the NSS priorities map directly onto the operational roadmap developed in Houston. The Strategy’s four pillars—reindustrialization, hemisphere security, defense industrial surge, and economic security—all flow through the maritime industrial base.
December: Capital Starts Flowing
And then came the first real capital deployment.
On December 9, the Navy announced ShipOS—a $448 million partnership with Palantir Technologies to deploy AI across the Maritime Industrial Base. The program will connect shipyards, suppliers, and logistics systems through a unified data platform.
Early pilots already showed results: submarine schedule planning at General Dynamics Electric Boat dropped from 160 hours to under 10 minutes. Material review times at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard went from weeks to under one hour.
Is ShipOS a Navy program? Yes. But the shipyards it serves, the suppliers it connects, and the workforce it empowers are the same ecosystem that supports commercial maritime. The program initially covers two major shipbuilders, three public shipyards, and 100 critical suppliers—with expansion planned across the wider industrial base.
More importantly, ShipOS proves something: identifying the right problem first, then solving it, works. The program targets exactly what we identified—capability gaps, fragmented data systems, and innovation adoption barriers. It’s not solving every problem. But it’s solving the right problem first.
The Energy Connection
There’s another layer to this story that connects maritime revitalization to energy security.
Under current USTR provisions, starting in 2028, a percentage of U.S. LNG exports must be transported on U.S.-flagged vessels—rising to 15% by 2047. The U.S. is now the world’s largest LNG exporter at $34 billion annually. Yet the current fleet of U.S.-flagged LNG carriers consists of exactly one vessel—Crowley’s American Energy, built in France in 1994.
This creates both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge: we don’t have the shipyard capacity or specialized workforce to build LNG carriers at scale—YET. The opportunity: it forces the kind of coordinated industrial planning that maritime has lacked for decades. Hanwha’s acquisition of Hanwha Philly Shipyard signals that international partners recognize the opening.
Energy security and maritime security are now explicitly linked. You can’t achieve one without the other.
What We’re Watching in 2026
The momentum is real. And like any complex industrial shift, the next phase brings new questions.
Funding pathways. Multiple mechanisms are taking shape to support maritime investment—the SHIPS Act framework, the Maritime Security Trust Fund, allied-nation partnerships, tax incentives, and private capital alignment. Allied investment is already moving: Hanwha’s Philly Shipyard acquisition, Davie’s recent CFIUS-approved purchase of Gulf Coast shipyard assets in Texas, and the U.S.-Finland-Canada ICE Pact for icebreakers all signal that international partners recognize the opportunity. The question now is sequencing: which pathways can move fastest while longer-term structures develop.
Workforce development. This is a multifaceted challenge—not just recruitment, but training modernization, early career engagement, retention, and building pathways from sea to shore. AI tools like ShipOS multiply productivity, but they require trained operators at every level.
Sustained coordination. The convergence we saw in 2025—industry, Congress, and national security strategy aligned—is rare. Maintaining that alignment across budget cycles and leadership transitions will determine whether momentum becomes transformation.
What’s Next
For the first time, the machinery is in motion.
The SHIPPINGInsight 2026 roadmap kicks off February 25 in Houston. The SHIPS Act continues to advance with bipartisan support. And an industry-led coordination framework is taking shape to bridge the gap between federal strategy and private-sector execution.
The question has shifted from whether the U.S. will pursue maritime revitalization to how fast industry can organize to deliver.
The Pattern
Here’s what 2025 taught us:
Barriers don’t exist in isolation—they form interconnected systems. Governance fragmentation blocks capital flow. Capital scarcity prevents workforce development. Workforce gaps stall innovation adoption. Stalled innovation undermines operational efficiency. Inefficiency erodes competitiveness.
Fix the binding problem first, and the next one surfaces. The work isn’t done when you publish a framework. The work begins when capital starts flowing to the priorities you identified.
2025 was the year maritime became a national priority.
2026 will show whether we can execute. More to come.
—Beatriz
Dr. Beatriz Canamary | Founder & CEO, SuRe Strategy Group | Next Wave Systems | Advising maritime, port, and infrastructure leaders on scaling innovation in legacy industries
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