Can universities manufacture a post-industrial future for the Midwest?

It's a fallacy that the US, or any developed country for this matter, can go "post-industrial." Manufacturing is the very essence of civilization. It fosters not only wealth but also R&D, infrastructure, machine parks, know-how, intellectual development of citizens. A country that no longer manufactures withers, declines, and inevitably turns into a newly impoverished third world country. Tertium non datur. The only rational question that is there is how and what to manufacture. Advanced robotics should replace human labor where feasible. Artificial Intelligence should help with design, optimization, marketing, logistics, etc. There is plenty of good engineering in the Midwest, foreign and domestic. There's plenty to build on.