Advanced Manufacturing Oct. 18, 2018

Advanced Manufacturing: A Strategy to Support Advanced Security

The recently released National Security Strategy notes manufacturing is both an economic and national security imperative. Manufacturing is a key contributor to U.S. prosperity, impacting jobs, research and development, and new weapons systems. The state of U.S. manufacturing is at once both impressive and troubling. U.S. manufacturers remain on the cutting-edge of technology, but the last fifteen years have been devastating to the health of the sector and its workforce. This is a significant national security challenge. To remain a leading global power, U.S. policy must redirect the macroeconomic trends that have made other manufacturing destinations more attractive than the United States. To lead the world’s next industrial revolution, the United States needs to create a welcoming environment for advanced manufacturing, one that includes a collection of technologies like digitization, artificial intelligence, automation, big data analytics, and additive manufacturing.

Agribusiness Oct. 12, 2018

Agribusiness

Food insecurity is strategically important and ties directly to US agriculture, which remains “fundamental to our survival.” Its value must be leveraged to address, mitigate, and respond to global shaping forces that are challenging the US agribusiness industry and negatively impacting US sustainable agricultural goals as well as national objectives. Therefore, the US must continue to develop robust ‘whole of government’ policies that provide for food security, address threats of aggressive economic competition and agroterrorism, and inform a comprehensive strategic approach. This will be necessary to “protect the integrity, safety, and resiliency of America’s food system,” while advancing global food security, which “remains core to our national security.”

Aircraft (Formerly Air Domain) Oct. 10, 2018

Aircraft

The United States (U.S.) aircraft industry, also known as the Aerospace and Defense (A&D) industry, is a Department of Defense (DoD) and National Security (NS) asset. This research explores the importance of the A&D industry. The influence of U.S. government policy and regulation intended to protect and sustain the domestic A&D industry are counterbalanced with federal budget constraints and technology transfer concerns. Specific areas influencing the A&D industry include the balance between export control regulation and industry fiscal health, the implications to domestic defense competition when considering affordability, and the bolstering of the global supply chain in order to preserve U.S. NS interests. To improve the U.S. position in these areas, this paper examines the need for the U.S. to inculcate innovation in the A&D industry. Additionally, the U.S. must continue to reform export control regulations while balancing national security and economic growth opportunities through trade and exports. Finally, the U.S. must confront the challenges of an aging workforce, cyber security, and an increasingly fragile supply chain. A concerted effort on all fronts will ensure a viable A&D industry capable of generating economic growth and meeting security challenges of the 21st century.

Biotechnology Oct. 4, 2018

Biotechnology

In 1990, the U.S. Government launched the largest and most ambitious biology project ever: mapping the human genome. As significant to biology as putting a man on the moon was to physics, the goal for completion was fifteen years at a cost of two billion dollars.1 Thirteen years later, the U.S. Department of Energy and National Institute of Health had led a highly successful public-private partnership across research centers in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, Spain, and China to map 92% of the human genome with 99.99% accuracy. This initiative helped dramatically reduce the cost of human genome sequencing over the last twenty years. The first “draft” genome sequence in 1999-2000 cost ~$300 million worldwide (of which the National Institute of Health provided 50-60%). By 2017, commercially available techniques reduced this cost to below $1,000. This single metric portends groundbreaking potential for a wide variety of healthcare and quality of life applications. It also highlights a high return on government investment.

Education Oct. 2, 2018

Education

The U.S. education industry provides the foundation for American prosperity. Educational institutions offer various degrees, diplomas, and certifications, such as traditional liberal arts bachelor degrees, technical skills certifications, enhancement education, and specialized professional education. The education industry produces America’s most valuable product and its greatest asset - human capital, the one asset that is the foundation for all other industries. Investment in America’s education industry is essential to achieving National Security objectives of promoting American prosperity and preserving peace through strength for America’s competitive advantage. The return on investment from the U.S. education industry is a skilled workforce able to fill shortages in critical industries that enable the nation to strengthen its defense industrial base (DIB).

Oct. 1, 2018

Energy

2018 Antonelli Award Winner: On a Monday morning, just as the country is waking up to a new workweek, a team of terrorists attacks, boards, and explodes an outbound Liquefied Petroleum Gas tanker, sinking it in the Houston Ship Channel and thereby blocking the channel. The Kinder Morgan Pasadena refined products terminal fuel transfer facility located along the channel is shut down, and the connection to the Colonial Pipeline, which supplies the East Coast, is physically destroyed (see Figures 1 and 2). That evening, while many in the country are still processing the morning’s events, cyberterrorist actors attack Houston’s electrical grid, leading to blackouts along the shipping channel and leaving much of the country’s oil, gas, and chemical infrastructure cold and dark. Through these attacks, roughly 30-60 percent of America’s daily refined oil products are cut off, the nation’s largest petrochemical complex is isolated, and America’s most critical energy node is physically and electronically isolated—and will be for weeks. Even as federal and state officials rush to mitigate the attack's impact and to neutralize the threat, they recognize that the country will take years to register the full economic and social impact of the day’s events.

Environment Sept. 30, 2018

Environment

In the early 1950s, farmers in a Colorado town reported “unexplained sickness among livestock” and damaged crops. In time, researchers linked these problems to an Army chemical arsenal near Denver that had manufactured war materials years earlier. Rachel Carson documented this incident, among many others, in Silent Spring, the “bible” for the American environmental movement. Military operations and environmental concerns thus were linked before an industry emerged to address the challenges and opportunities presented by the interaction between humanity and the earth around us. This report examines the Environment Industry, a thriving industry with growing influence in this country as a vital source of support for national security. The effects of the environment on human safety and prosperity are undeniable, and as sea levels and temperatures rise, the United States is best served by being aware of the environment and planning to meet and anticipate threats from environmental conditions. The industry represents a unique advantage in the strategic deployment of resources because environmental concerns can have potentially devastating effects on the nation’s security, and these threats can be anticipated, prevented, mitigated, and adapted to using resources available from this industry.

Finance (Formerly Financial Services) Sept. 25, 2018

Finance

The preamble to the US Constitution enumerates the purpose of our government: to “establish Justice, insure [sic] domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”1 The Eisenhower School Industry Study program explores the US industrial base’s ability to provide resources for the common defense. As one of twenty studied industry sectors, the Financial Services Industry (FSI) not only contributes directly to the health of the US economy, it also provides credit and liquidity to finance the defense industrial base. Three views capture why the FSI remains critical to the United States’ national security. First, as the 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) establishes, “Economic security is national security.” A safe and resilient FSI underpins a secure and prosperous economy. Accordingly, the FSI is designated vital critical infrastructure key to US economic security. Thomas Jefferson articulated a second, competing point of view, “banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” Or more simply, the FSI poses a fundamental danger to the nation. The third point of view, that of Alexander Hamilton, highlights the FSI’s value to a nation’s future greatness: “And thus by contributing to enlarge the mass of industrious and commercial enterprise, banks become nurseries of national wealth…” Although seemingly divergent, these views all share a common theme, the criticality of the FSI to national security. Not only is FSI directly linked to today’s national security, it both poses an inherent danger while also being fundamental and essential to the nation’s growth, development and prosperity. The purpose of this study is to develop policy recommendations through which the financial services industry can more securely support and make a greater contribution to national security.

Healthcare Sept. 24, 2018

Health Care

The health care sector in the United States (U.S.) consumes approximately 17 percent of GDP, comprises 42 percent of mandatory Federal spending, drives deficit spending, and touches every aspect of American life, including military readiness. The Department of Defense (DoD) Unified Medical Program (UMP) – the consolidated budget for the Military Health System (MHS) – consumes more than eight percent of total DoD outlays. Absent significant change, increased DoD health spending will begin to crowd out readiness and modernization efforts. Similarly, U.S. mandatory spending, driven by the aging population and rising health care costs, will begin to crowd out discretionary spending by 2029. Compounding this grim financial picture, American health care is the world’s most expensive, but far from the world’s best in terms of access to primary care, prevention, coordination of services, and core measures such as morbidity and mortality.

Networking (Formerly NewsMedia, Information and Communications Technology) Sept. 23, 2018

Information and Communications Technology

The information and communications technology (ICT) industry is a driver of economic growth, an essential enabler of other industrial sectors, and a source of rapid and disruptive innovation. ICT is at the heart of the 4th Industrial Revolution, defined as convergence of the digital, physical, and biological worlds. Individual research and visits to ICT firms and institutions in the Washington, DC, area, California, China, and South Korea revealed that, while the U.S. remains the global leader in the ICT field, it faces intense competition from foreign competitors fully committed to winning the race for technological supremacy. Policymakers should focus on strengthening public-private collaboration and modernizing outdated regulatory structures to address national security needs while fostering the entrepreneurial environment that has allowed the U.S. ICT sector to thrive and lead globally.