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13 July 2024

The Pentagon Can’t Wait to Innovate

Leon E. Panetta and Mike Gallagher

The U.S. faces grave national-security threats around the globe. Conflicts in the Middle East and Europe, combined with a shifting balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, embolden America’s adversaries and threaten the free world. If the U.S. doesn’t act swiftly to ensure our technological edge, we’ll risk further deterrence failures and the erosion of international freedom.

China and Russia are expanding their global influence through conventional military power and advances in manufacturing and critical technology. The U.S. is unlikely to adopt industrial policy or match our enemies in sheer production volume. That’s OK; our path forward instead lies in America’s capacity to innovate.

Our enemies prioritize personal power and ambition over their citizens’ interests. Such authoritarians are also willing to steal to overcome a dearth of homegrown innovation. The well-documented theft of intellectual property and cyberattacks conducted by state-sponsored actors in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea reveals that our enemies have contempt for the rules-based international order. Yet we needn’t stoop to their level to compete. By embracing American innovation and ingenuity as cornerstones of our national-defense strategy, we can uphold and strengthen our fundamental values.

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