Robotic arms along assembly line in modern factory. Heavy industry, technology and machine learning. 3D rendering (Getty images)

Earlier this year, the bipartisan congressionally-appointed commission on which we serve sounded the alarm that America is at risk of losing its military and technological edge to China. One way to meet that challenge is to redefine how the industrial base fits into national security to create an all-elements of national power approach.

Currently, the view of industrial national security tends to focus on efforts to keep the defense industrial base healthy, productive, and resilient. The emphasis has been ensuring China or Russia cannot buy companies that are integral parts of the defense supply chain, improving and expanding production of the weapons in demand around the globe, and ensuring the security of critical infrastructure essential to the defense industrial base.

But in 2024, and certainly going forward, this is simply too myopic a view of the role industrial policy plays as the backbone to American security. There is an integral link between the defense industrial base and American industry as a whole. The materials, components, and manufacturing produced by American industry are as essential to the defense industrial base as they are to U.S. economic strength. The next administration should ensure that industrial policy receives significant attention to strengthen national security.

Industrial policy requires making strategic public investments designed to strengthen economic and national security — not only what is traditionally thought of as the defense industrial base, but in broader goods and manufacturing category for both America and its allies. This means ensuring effective production of and supply chains for goods and manufacturing that serve interests and needs across the economy – not just the defense industrial base — as an expanded aperture strengthens U.S. security.

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An effective industrial strategy rests on three pillars, each with tangible steps the new administration should take:

Defense Production: First, a new administration must enable the U.S. industrial base to rapidly surge and scale production to manufacture goods, from silicon wafers to aluminum pipes to attritable drones.  This requires repurposing available mechanisms for public-private financing via the Defense Production Act, within Development Finance Corporation or Department of Energy authorities, or creating new ones.  It means legislatively reforming existing U.S. permitting processes, including addressing unintended consequences of the 50+ year old National Environmental Protection Act.

It also requires industry to embrace more flexible design, test, and manufacturing processes such as additive manufacturing, and leveraging software to automate and speed defense production.  This must be enabled by significant reform of overly rigid government test, evaluation, and qualification regulations.

Build Our Workforce: Second, the strategy must harness the American workforce to lead the world economically and provide for a more secure American future. America needs more workers skilled in trade: plumbers, welders, electricians, and those ready to mine and process the minerals that power phones, batteries, automobiles, and weapons systems. Equally, America needs scientists, technologists, and innovators at every level in every field to maintain a cutting edge.

The next administration must recast the narrative so that industrial and technical jobs, whether they in civil, military service or in private industry, are seen as critical public service without which the nation cannot function – let alone lead.  The narrative must be paired with smart investments in community colleges, vocational certifications, STEM recruitment, and the ability for those with needed skills to move seamlessly between public and private sectors.

Work With Partners: Third, the strategy should leverage allies as industrial and technological force-multipliers. Industrial collaboration helps create redundant and resilient supply chains, expands manufacturing capacity, and taps into key leading technologies such as quantum computing. International industrial cooperation strengthens American security and economy by increasing production and innovation in the right technologies. It requires re-engineering export controls like the International Traffic in Arms Regulation and developing swifter information sharing with America’s most trusted friends — in other words, more open channels for industrial collaboration abroad.

Consider an America that with like-minded international partners can develop software and computer chips, create a sustainable and resilient critical mineral supply chain, build the defense equipment needed to deter China, and offer more job opportunities and skilled workers to fill them.

The good news: This is all possible, and there have been steps made in the right direction.

Major economic and energy legislation of the last few years – the bipartisan infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act — lay a foundation for onshoring key industries paired with the ability to “friend-shore” with allies and partners.   The next administration must iterate on these Biden administration initiatives, taking a step further to implement a truly innovative industrial strategy that reimagines manufacturing as a core pillar of American strength.

Luckily, there is a growing bipartisan agreement that things need to change. Just look at the presidential campaign today — eight years ago, strengthening the U.S. industrial base to ensure American competitiveness would hardly have gotten a mention. Now you can see candidates talking openly about competing with China economically, reducing dependency on China for key supply chains, and deterring destabilizing actions that threaten U.S. and global security.

Our commission assessing the National Defense Strategy highlighted the dangers of inaction. The next president must be maximally focused on moving industrial strategy from words to action to demonstrate that defense of the nation is not just the responsibility of the military alone. For an industrial strategy to work, the president must make it a White House priority that pulls together all elements of national power.

At an executive level, a joint team from the National Security Council and the National Economic Council should lead implementation, honing flexible and innovative policy options for the president and playing a coordinating role across government to execute the strategy. At the legislative level, the presidential candidates should consider calling upon the next Congress to constitute a bicameral, bipartisan task force on industrial strategy implementation. The House Select Committee on China, HASC and SASC members, and supporters of the CHIPS and Science Act would be strong candidates for participation.

America and its allies acting together present a formidable integrated economic and security edge that can counter China’s attempts to corner markets and coerce economically and militarily.  The next president must make clear the nature of the threat and opportunity, pair it with a call to action, and offer pathways for every American, anchored in the industrial strategy that will guide America for the rest of the century.

America’s future, and with it, global security, stability, and prosperity, depend on it.

Mara Rudman serves as a Commissioner on the bipartisan, Congressionally-appointed Commission on the National Defense Strategy. Becca Wasser serves as a staff member of the same Commission.