Skilled people as strategic reserves

Should skilled people be treated as a strategic reserve that must be maintained across generations?

Yes; apprenticeships, teaching, and recorded knowledge let skilled people reproduce expertise and preserve institutional memory.

A listener suggests that skilled people are a strategic reserve worth maintaining even if they cannot be stockpiled like timber or equipment. The answer argues for apprenticeship systems in which experienced people produce the next generation of skilled workers. That process preserves institutional and cultural memory as well as individual techniques. Historians do similar work through books, lectures, and recordings that allow others to carry knowledge forward. A state cannot recreate mature expertise instantly after allowing the chain of teaching and practice to break.