New Thinking Needed on National Defense

Summary

Imprimis Podcast Summary: "New Thinking Needed on National Defense" Release Date: May 12, 2025 | Host: Hillsdale College

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Introduction

In the May 2025 episode of Imprimis, hosted by Hillsdale College, Stephen Bryan, a senior correspondent at Asia Times, delivers a compelling lecture on the pressing need for revamped strategies in American national defense. Adapted from his presentation at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Kansas City, Missouri, Bryan explores the multifaceted challenges facing the U.S. defense apparatus, emphasizing inefficiencies, technological dependencies, and the urgent necessity for innovation.

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1. Current Defense Expenditures and Their Effectiveness

Stephen Bryan opens the discussion by highlighting the staggering costs associated with U.S. national defense. “Our current defense expenses stand at $875 billion per year,” he states at [00:05]. When intelligence costs are included, this number escalates to approximately $1 trillion annually. Despite this massive financial commitment, Bryan points out significant shortcomings exposed by recent conflicts, notably the Ukraine war.

Key Points:

• High defense and intelligence costs do not correlate with military preparedness.
• The U.S. arsenal is vulnerable and would be quickly depleted in a sustained conflict.
• Allies are similarly underprepared, questioning the efficacy of current defense spending.

Notable Quote: “We have learned that America's arsenal as it stands today would be quickly depleted in any future sustained conflict.” – Emily at [00:53]

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2. Historical Context: Defense Production Then and Now

The conversation shifts to a comparative analysis between American defense production during World Wars I and II versus the present day. Historically, the U.S. exhibited unparalleled industrial prowess, rapidly converting civilian industries to military production.

Key Points:

• World War I: Deployment of 4.8 million soldiers and significant resource allocation, yet limited by lack of advanced weaponry like tanks.
• World War II: Massive scale-up with 16.8 million soldiers and the production of 2,751 Liberty ships in 18 shipyards, showcasing the ability to produce three ships every two days— a capability sorely missing today.
• Current shipbuilding has slowed dramatically, with production times extending to years, primarily outside the U.S., particularly in China.

Notable Quote: “In World War II, the US manufactured around 300,000 aircrafts... today, the total number... is about 25 times fewer.” – Emily at [02:58]

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3. Precision Guided Munitions (PGMs) and Technological Dependencies

Bryan delves into the complexities surrounding modern PGMs, which are integral to current defense strategies but come with their own set of challenges.

Key Points:

• PGMs require sophisticated electronics and multiple sensors, making them time-consuming and expensive to produce and maintain.
• Dependency on the Global Positioning System (GPS), operated by the U.S. Air Force at a cost exceeding $2 billion annually.
• The Ukraine war revealed delays in PGM manufacturing due to obsolete tooling and dismantled factories, necessitating starting production from scratch for new units.

Notable Quote: “We have also learned that the tooling needed to produce various types of PGMs no longer exists.” – Stephen Bryan at [04:10]

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4. Vulnerabilities in Supply Chains

A significant portion of U.S. defense manufacturing is entangled in global supply chains, primarily reliant on Asia and China. This dependency poses a strategic vulnerability, especially when geopolitical tensions arise.

Key Points:

• Specialized parts are often sourced internationally, causing production halts when supply chains are disrupted.
• Examples include the majority of FPV drones used in modern battlefields being built with Chinese-made parts.
• U.S. laws mandate that over 50% of defense hardware components be American-made, but outsourcing undermines this requirement.

Notable Quote: “This supply chain dependence is a direct result of the globalization of industry and the offshoring of America's manufacturing, mostly to Asia and especially to China.” – Emily at [05:14]

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5. Relationship with High-Tech Industries and Innovation Challenges

The defense sector's reliance on high-tech industries introduces additional complexities, particularly in innovation and production readiness.

Key Points:

• High-tech companies are often hesitant to engage in defense contracts due to perceived burdens and profitability issues.
• Political resistance among workers in high-tech industries to participate in defense research.
• The rapid evolution of technologies like AI and robotics outpaces the traditional, lengthy defense procurement and development cycles.
• Defense companies struggle to compete with non-defense giants like Google and Microsoft in acquiring cutting-edge technology.

Notable Quote: “As artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing and other cutting edge technologies are becoming increasingly important... this problem grows even more acute.” – Emily at [06:23]

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6. Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Warfare

AI's role in modern and future warfare is a critical focus, with Bryan emphasizing the transformative potential and current shortcomings in integrating AI within defense systems.

Key Points:

• Modern fighter jets, such as the F-35, rely on millions of lines of code, making software development a pivotal aspect of defense technology.
• AI systems are poised to make rapid, complex decisions, potentially surpassing human capabilities in battlefield scenarios.
• U.S. defense companies are trailing behind international counterparts in AI integration, risking technological inferiority.

Notable Quote: “New AI systems will make the kinds of decisions that are currently made by soldiers, pilots and command centers and will have the ability to process information at astonishing speeds.” – Stephen Bryan at [08:49]

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7. Manufacturing Flexibility and Strategic Resilience

Bryan proposes innovative solutions to enhance manufacturing flexibility, such as the establishment of multi-purpose facilities akin to Elon Musk's Gigafactories.

Key Points:

• Current defense manufacturing often results in specialized facilities that are underutilized post-contract, creating bottlenecks in urgent production scenarios.
• A flexible manufacturing approach would allow for rapid retooling and production of various PGMs using a common labor force.
• Encourages consolidation among suppliers to facilitate a national security-focused manufacturing hub.

Notable Quote: “This would require suppliers to agree to a consolidation plan to build their products in a common facility. In other words, we need a national security version of Elon Musk's Gigafactory.” – Stephen Bryan at [07:38]

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8. Cybersecurity and the Plague of Espionage

A stark warning is raised against the rampant cyber espionage targeting U.S. defense and commercial technologies, primarily orchestrated by adversarial nations like China.

Key Points:

• Technology theft allows adversaries to bypass R&D costs, accelerating their weapon development timelines.
• Current measures against cyber theft are insufficient, with minimal repercussions for perpetrators.
• The dual defense budget scenario: one for U.S. development and another for enemy acquisition of stolen technologies.

Notable Quote: “They are using all the tools of espionage at their disposal in an effort to replicate our most advanced defense and commercial technologies.” – Stephen Bryan at [11:28]

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9. Lessons from the Ukraine War and the Need for Sustainable Defense Policies

The conflict in Ukraine serves as a case study for the inefficiencies and mismatches in current defense strategies, particularly in anti-drone warfare.

Key Points:

• Expensive military hardware, such as tanks, proved ineffective against low-cost threats like FPV drones.
• The lack of proactive projects to counter emerging threats resulted in disproportionate responses, such as using $2 million missiles to down $30,000 drones.
• Suggests the necessity for innovative, cost-effective solutions and a reevaluation of defense spending priorities.

Notable Quote: “For each $30,000 Iranian drone we shot down, we employed two $2 million missiles. A grade schooler could do the math.” – Emily at [12:21]

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Conclusion

Stephen Bryan's lecture underscores the critical need for substantial reforms in U.S. national defense strategies. From addressing exorbitant and ineffective spending to reestablishing robust domestic manufacturing capabilities and embracing technological advancements like AI, the path forward demands strategic innovation and resilience. By learning from recent conflicts and mitigating vulnerabilities in supply chains and cybersecurity, the United States can better safeguard its national interests and maintain its defense superiority on the global stage.

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This summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from the "New Thinking Needed on National Defense" episode of Imprimis. For those seeking a deeper understanding of the complexities facing U.S. national defense, listening to the full episode is highly recommended.

Transcript

[Emily]

Hi, I'm Emily, a junior studying rhetoric and media at Hillsdale College, and this is Imprimis. Here is the March April 2025 issue, New Thinking Needed on National Defense By Stephen Bryan, senior correspondent at Asia Times. The following is adapted from a lecture prepared for delivery at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Kansas City, Missouri. Defending America and America's Friends and Allies is expensive if you add up the price tag, not even including secret programs or the cost of U.S. intelligence, our current defense expenses stand at $875 billion per year. When you add the cost of intelligence, which is vast, the total cost of defense rises to about $1 trillion annually.

[Stephen Bryan]

Despite these expenditures, the Ukraine war has exposed some dramatic inadequacies.

[Emily]

We have learned that America's arsenal as it stands today would be quickly depleted in any future sustained conflict. And we've learned that our allies are in far worse shape. This raises the question of how we can spend so much on our national security but still have a military that seems so woefully underprepared for a major conflict. Consider, for instance, the remarkable fact that, unlike Israel, we have no national air defense system. Historically speaking, the heyday of American defense production was during World War II. Vast civilian industries were converted to produce guns, artillery, tanks, and jeeps, and new plants were commissioned to build airplanes and ships. In World War I, the U.S. sent 4.8 million soldiers directly or indirectly into the war, mainly in Europe. We also sent 1.325 million horses and mules to the battlefield, depleting America's equine stock. The US Came into the fight with no tanks, and at war's end we had no tanks. We had 45 commissioned transport ships and another 80 former merchant marine vessels. By contrast, in World War II we sent 16.8 million soldiers to fight in Europe, North Africa, and Asia, around four times more than in World War I. And we manufactured 2,751 Liberty ships in 18 shipyards, turning out three ships every two days. Such a feat of production is inconceivable today. Building a cargo ship takes years, and most of the production takes place outside of the U.S. the availability of shipbuilding slots has been reduced, particularly in the most prolific shipbuilding nations. China's delivery time now averages around three years, with tankers at 2.8 years and liquid natural gas vessels even longer.

[Stephen Bryan]

Dry bulk carriers ordered in 2024 are currently expected to be delivered in 3.6 years on average.

[Emily]

In World War II, the US manufactured around 300,000 aircrafts, including 63,715 fighters and fighter bombers for the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines. Today, the total number of fighter aircraft in the Air Force, Navy and Marines is is 2,531, about 25 times fewer. Of course, we have new generations of weapons today that never existed before.

[Stephen Bryan]

These can be summarized under the name Precision guided munitions or PGMs. Some PGMs are relatively inexpensive, but most of them require sophisticated electronics and multiple sensors.

[Emily]

Many require support when in flight and guidance from satellites, most notably the Global Positioning System, which is run by the US Air Force and costs over $2 billion per year to operate. All of these PGMs are time consuming to build, test, operate and maintain. A key lesson of the Ukraine war is that when we deploy certain types of PGMs, such as anti tank missiles or man portable air defense systems like Stinger missiles, it takes years to manufacture new ones.

[Stephen Bryan]

We have also learned that the tooling needed to produce various types of PGMs no longer exists. Indeed, in some cases, entire factories have been dismantled.

[Emily]

This means that if we want more PGMs, we will have to start from scratch. Another weakness of our defense manufacturing capabilities is that we depend heavily on global supply chains. Specialized parts may be produced in the US but sometimes they come from other countries, including China. When supply chains are disrupted or certain parts are no longer manufactured, defense production grinds to a halt. The US Must reverse this trend quickly if we are to remain dominant. Consider the fact that most of the first person view FPV drones, drones controlled by a remote pilot using video cameras that are being used on the battlefield in Ukraine and elsewhere, are built with parts made primarily in China. This supply chain dependence is a direct result of the globalization of industry and the offshoring of America's manufacturing, mostly to Asia and especially to China.

[Stephen Bryan]

While US law requires that more than 50% of each piece of defense hardware consist of American made parts, that standard, already inadequate, runs up against the reality of the outsourcing of goods that are no longer made in America.

[Emily]

The defense industry can only control the supplier network tangentially by trying to ensure that components meet military specifications mil spec. Even then, there is a significant number of cheaters who produce substandard parts for expensive military platforms. In some cases, MILSPEC cannot be applied and only commercial parts can be purchased. A further problem is presented by the fact that our defense industry largely depends on global companies whose priorities do not necessarily include producing parts for defense manufacturers, both for economic and ideological reasons. The relationship between defense companies and their leading suppliers, usually high tech companies is often fraught.

[Stephen Bryan]

Some of these companies won't even bid on government contracts, which they say are burdensome, impose onerous workforce and electronic security requirements and are ultimately not profitable.

[Emily]

In addition, many workers in high tech industries will not participate in defense research for political reasons. As artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing and other cutting edge technologies are becoming increasingly important to the ability of the US to maintain its war fighting edge, this problem grows even more acute. Then there is the problem of time. The lifespan of a fighter jet from the design stage to retirement can last as long as 50 years. Modern high tech industries are designing, fielding and retiring products in a much shorter time frame. And they have no interest in manufacturing products that they deem obsolete.

[Stephen Bryan]

Forty years ago, I asked Bob Noyce, a co founder of intel, to look at one of our strategic missile systems where we were encountering supply problems. He recommended that the government itself needed to produce the older or sunset technologies because no one else would be willing to do it for us. The same problem persists today.

[Emily]

American defense companies essentially consist of three types. One, the big four. Lockheed Martin, rtx, formerly Raytheon, Boeing and General Dynamics, who dominate in terms of contract awards. Two, second tier companies, some of which are innovative while others are just looking for a contract and three, the suppliers. The big four often buy up innovative companies, which sometimes leads to good results, at least for a while. A complicating factor is that the competition to acquire new technology such as artificial intelligence is dominated by non defense companies with deep pockets. While defense companies are sometimes chasing the same innovations, there are no assurances they will succeed when outbid by Google, Microsoft, Nvidia or even offshore corporations. While the US Government helps defense companies by underwriting critical research and development, the Defense Department does not assist them with acquisitions of high tech companies. Almost all modern defense systems need complex software. For example, the F35 stealth jet runs on more than 8 million lines of code. As artificial intelligence capabilities increase in aerospace and defense, the amount of code will expand and new types of processors will be added to the F35 and many other platforms such as missiles, tracking systems, fire control systems and intelligence gathering devices.

[Stephen Bryan]

New AI systems will make the kinds of decisions that are currently made by soldiers, pilots and command centers and will have the ability to process information at astonishing speeds.

[Emily]

This is an excellent opportunity to make the old equipment much better and more effective. One important question is whether our major defense companies will be able to recruit enough high tech talent to do the job. We are living in a time when autonomous systems are taking over parts of the battlefield, including in the Ukraine war. But we are not alone in fielding these autonomous AI driven systems. China and Russia are making tremendous progress in this area. Consequently, our challenge is to upgrade our AI fighting systems rapidly. American defense companies are lagging behind their foreign competitors and the help they need is unlikely to materialize. Internally, it is urgent that they team up with commercial AI developers who should be encouraged to assist with national security priorities. I worked in a multinational defense company, then the eighth largest in the world, with annual revenues of over $20 billion. But like almost all such companies in the US and Europe, it was built through the acquisition of smaller firms that were combined to make one big corporation. The same is true of today's big defense companies. Typically, if a defense company is contracted by the government to produce a PGM such as the Stinger missile, it will build a facility to do that. When the contract runs out, or there are no more significant exports, the special facility is shut down. This poses a serious problem if the US urgently needs to surge production of that pgm. One solution to this problem would be the construction of a single flexible facility that could produce a range of PGM products using the same labor force. In that case, restarting a production line could be done much more quickly and easily. This would require suppliers to agree to a consolidation plan to build their products in a common facility. In other words, we need a national security version of Elon Musk's Gigafactory. One of the key vulnerabilities of our defense and high tech infrastructure is that the technology on which it relies is routinely stolen by foreign countries, especially China. In effect, we have two defense budgets, one for us and the other for our enemies. Despite various efforts to hinder or put a stop to this, cyber theft has become a huge business and is tremendously damaging to America's national security. Until very recently, we have done virtually nothing about this cyber espionage. The thieves are almost never punished. All we do is complain while our enemies bleed us dry. But cyber is only one area where where our adversaries are actively working to damage us.

[Stephen Bryan]

They are using all the tools of espionage at their disposal in an effort to replicate our most advanced defense and commercial technologies.

[Emily]

This relieves them of huge costs and speeds up their development schedule for new weapons such as ICBMs, submarines, advanced radars and satellites. We must take the steps necessary to protect our defense investments. If we don't, we may one day find ourselves engaged in a conflict with an enemy who is much better prepared for the fight than we are. An important thing we learned very early on in the Ukraine war was that the incredibly expensive tanks we gave to the Ukrainians were defenseless against very inexpensive FPV drones. A thoughtful national defense establishment would have drawn the conclusion from this that we should launch a crash project to develop an effective and inexpensive answer to drones.

[Stephen Bryan]

But no such project was launched. So when the Iranian backed Houthis started firing drones at ships in the Red Sea, what was the US response?

[Emily]

For each $30,000 Iranian drone we shot down, we employed two $2 million missiles. A grade schooler could do the math. That is not a sustainable defense policy. Recently, by the way, forces on the ground in Ukraine have found that relatively inexpensive shotgun technology is proving more effective against drones than previously tried methods. We need new thinking, something that doesn't come naturally to large bureaucracies like the one in the Pentagon, about national defense. A guiding principle of that new thinking must be that the defense budget is not inexhaustible. We should remain hopeful that the new leadership in the Pentagon will shake things up. To sign up for a free lifetime subscription to Imprimis, delivered to your mailbox or your inbox, go to hillsdale.edu Lifetime.

[Larry Arne]

Great Books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being. And we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues each week, Hillsdale College President Larry.

[Stephen Bryan]

Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to.

[Larry Arne]

Discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time, they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at podcast hillsdale.edu. that's podcast hillsdale Edu. Or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find your audio.