Utah's state motto is a single word: Industry.
When Utah adopted a new flag in 2024, its emblem – a beehive – was put at the center. It symbolizes a state that has come together to build things since its founding.
The hive is busy. I traveled to Utah for the second time in six months to see it firsthand.
Through four conversations – the governor, an ecosystem architect, a student in the pipeline, and a new graduate up for grabs – I got a live snapshot of what a winning model looks like on the ground.
The Governor
Standard & Works spoke with Governor Spencer Cox at his Operation Gigawatt Summit in Park City
"You are in the home of the greatest density of cranes in North America. Here in Utah we still know how to build stuff."
That was how Governor Spencer Cox opened his Operation Gigawatt Summit in Park City – what he dubbed the most exclusive energy conference in the country.
It drew the Secretary of Energy, the NRC Chair, the EPA Administrator, and an eye-popping roster of CEOs and investors to hear Utah's pitch and see a national model for energy abundance take shape in real time.
To Cox, energy abundance isn't just a policy position, it's a societal imperative.
"When an electron meets the human mind and those two things combine, we unlock civilizational expansion and human flourishing."
In an interview, I asked him what other states could learn from Utah's approach.
“We are seeing this in a bipartisan way across lots of states,” he said. “ New York went from shutting down nuclear to announcing the need for a new wave of nuclear – something I never thought would happen.”
On the stakes, he was blunt:
"China is beating us, and we can't allow that to happen. We have the minds. We have the initiative. We have the right people to gain that advantage back. But we have to have an all-of-the-above strategy right now and open our doors to this new technology."
The Ecosystem Builder
47G CEO Aaron Starks in his office in Salt Lake City
On the wall behind Aaron Starks's desk is a framed copy of the Salt Lake Tribune from the day Japan surrendered and World War II ended.
It’s a reminder of the threat and the opportunity that drives everything Starks is building as CEO of 47G – the Utah aerospace and defense ecosystem that has become a model for other states trying to organize around this sector and seize this moment of reindustrialization.
47G represents more than 230 member companies, making it the nation's fastest-growing aerospace and defense organization.
But the number undersells what 47G has actually built:
A genuine coalition where industry, academia, national labs, military installations, and startups are not just coexisting but actively working together, pulled toward the same horizon.
Last week that work came into focus at Project Alta, a two-day summit at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City – 47G’s latest step to cement Utah as the capital of advanced air mobility.
Utah is already in the lead for that distinction, winning selection by the U.S. Department of Transportation as one of just eight states to anchor an eVTOL Integration Pilot Program.
"This summit is about execution," Starks said. "We're bringing together the companies, policymakers, and innovators who are ready to move beyond concept and into deployment – and Utah is where that work is happening."
One forcing function is 2034. When Utah hosts the Winter Olympics, the plan is to move people between venues across the state via a network of electric air taxis.
I quickly learned this is not conceptual – it’s a deadline.
Electric and autonomous aviation is only one thread of 47G’s web. The ecosystem 47G has spent years assembling runs deeper.
Its center of gravity is Hill Air Force Base is one of the most consequential military installations in the country.
Hill is home to the Ogden Air Logistics Complex, the Air Force's largest single-site depot for maintaining and overhauling everything from F-35s to ICBMs.
Along the base’s fenceline is Falcon Hill, a fast-forming aerospace research cluster that’s home to Weber State University’s MARS Center, a 47G collaboration where students work on active projects for defense contractors.
On a tour with 47G’s Guy Letendre, I met students engineering high-performance composites to ensure hypersonic missiles and vehicles withstand the most extreme environments.
Next door to MARS, an open field is slated to come to life over the next 18 months as CAMP – the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Production – an MRO training hangar designed to expand the workforce pipeline for Hill's “Fighter Depot,” the spine of the Air Force's fleet maintenance operation.
100 miles west, 47G is also the catalyst for the state's bid to build a commercial spaceport and a first-of-its-kind drone testing complex.
Vision by vision. Company by company. Brick by brick.
This is how 47G is building.
The Student in the Pipeline
With Tylin in the MARS Center along the Hill AFB fenceline
Tylin grew up in Syracuse, Utah – about 20 minutes from Hill Air Force Base – and has been obsessed with planes since he was a kid. He got his pilot's license in 2017.
He's now a manufacturing engineering student at Weber State, working at the MARS Center with plans to stay for his master's in systems engineering.
When Tylin found the job posting as a sophomore, the description felt suspiciously perfect. When he got the offer, he spent a week trying to talk himself out of being excited.
"Once I actually started, I was like – no, this actually is as cool as it sounded."
It got better. The Olympic committee came to MARS asking for help optimizing skeleton sleds, because the carbon fiber composites used in the sport are exactly what the lab works with. Tylin has been an amateur skeleton slider since he was 10.
"If you'd asked me at 12 what kind of stuff I wanted to do," he said, "I'd have said rockets and skeleton sleds. And that's exactly what I'm doing."
"It’s stupidly perfect – to the point that one of these days I'm just gonna wake up and realize it was all a dream."
Tylin sees students on different paths feeling the same way: "Regardless of what kind of engineering you like to do, there's something here that you're going to like."
The Future Workforce
Driving with Braxton in Park City
I took a drive with Braxton, a high school senior in Heber City about to graduate. He's strongly considering the trades.
He told me he’s drawn to the work, the variety, the scale of what he might build.
He hasn't decided between HVAC and electrical yet, but he knows what he wants: "doing something different every day, not just the same repetitive task."
The pull of blue-collar work – and specifically the chance to work on big projects – has broken through. Not just for him. Several of his friends feel it too.
There's a practical dimension as well:
“When companies started being like, 'Hey, we'll pay for you to go do your training if you want to work here' – I feel like that's what's making it more accessible."
He had heard Utah is doing things in aerospace, but didn't know about some of the state’s big ambitions like the spaceport or eVTOLs. When I told him about MARS feeding directly into rocket and missile work, he went silent for a moment.
"That is awesome. That's sick. That sounds really cool."
The Throughline
Utah’s incredible fusion of beauty and industry on display at the Kennecott copper smelter along the Great Salt Lake’s shores
A governor leading a state unified in its ambition.
An ecosystem architect turning the biggest ideas into tangible achievements.
A student doing the work he was made for.
A new graduate feeling the gravitational pull of it all.
Cox summed it up: "Ambition paired with virtue. That's what Utah is. That's who America was and who we can be again – if we build, and we build the right way."
This is the beehive at work.
📷 1 for the Road
A highlight of my visit to Utah was Rio Tinto’s Bingham Canyon copper mine – the largest man-made excavation on earth. The mine’s symphony of workers, machines, and earth moving are the physical embodiment of Utah’s industrial ethos and the beehive in full swing.
