GM and Ford looked at their core business of building vehicles that break down immediately after the warranty expires and thought, "You know what this needs? Missiles."
The automakers are chasing defense contracts. They want to build military equipment. This makes perfect sense if you ignore every single thing about their operational history. The Pentagon famously loves suppliers who can't figure out how to make a door handle last three years.
Ford's thinking goes like this: we dominated the car market for decades, then got our asses kicked by Japanese efficiency, then needed a government bailout, then spent twenty years making trucks because we gave up on everything else. Naturally, the next step is energy storage and military hardware.
GM's pitch is even better. They killed off half their brands, cancelled the Volt, went all-in on EVs that nobody wants at the price points they're charging, and now they're gonna store your electricity and build equipment for CENTCOM. It's called diversification. You wouldn't understand because you're still buying Tesla calls.
The "century-old rivalry" framing is my favorite part. These companies have been rivals the way two drunk guys at a bar are rivals. They're not competing for excellence. They're competing to see who can disappoint their customers more creatively while still cashing government checks.
Energy storage businesses. Let me translate: they want to sell you batteries they can't make profitably in cars they can't sell profitably, except this time the batteries stay in your garage. Revolutionary.
Some retail trader read this headline and immediately started researching which defense ETF to buy. He's gonna watch a YouTube video called "Military Stocks EXPLODING in 2026" and decide this is his moment. He'll be down 30% by Christmas, wondering why Lockheed Martin didn't crater just because GM said they want to try making jeeps with guns on them.
The defense sector just got two new applicants whose primary qualification is they've been building the F-150 for forty years.
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