The Empty Arsenal of Democracy
How America Can Build a New Defense Industrial Base
Michael Brown
May/June 2025
Published on April 22, 2025
Lincoln Agnew
MICHAEL BROWN is Partner at Shield Capital and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Security and Technology. From 2018 to 2022, he served as Director of the Defense Innovation Unit at the U.S. Department of Defense.
It is every president’s nightmare. The Chinese military is massing troops in Fujian Province and an armada offshore, just across the strait from Taiwan. According to U.S. intelligence, this buildup is no mere feint—Beijing is really preparing for war. Global stock markets are crashing, as the world faces what economists estimate could be a $10 trillion shock. The White House must suddenly answer a question it has long put off: Will it use military force to defend Taiwan?
This is not an outlandish hypothetical. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made clear that retaking Taiwan is essential to what his government calls “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” and Beijing is rapidly expanding its military. It is also just one of many scenarios that would result in a war involving Washington. China is threatening the United States’ treaty allies. Russia is menacing eastern Europe’s NATO members. Iran has accelerated its nuclear program. The odds that the United States might have to fight in a great-power war are higher today than at any point this century.
The U.S. military is arguably the most powerful in the world. But it is not ready for such a conflict. Its weapons are sophisticated. Its soldiers are second to none. Yet the United States has low stockpiles of munitions, its ships and planes are older than China’s, and its industrial base lacks the capacity to regenerate these assets. The U.S. supply of precision-strike missiles, for example, would last no more than a few weeks in a high-intensity conflict and would take years to replace. In war games that simulate a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, Washington runs out of key munitions within weeks.
American officials are aware of the shortages. In response, Congress and the Department of Defense have contracted to expand existing defense production lines and, in some cases, to restart old ones. Yet these recent efforts are insufficient to compensate for more than three decades of complacency and atrophy. Washington has hiked defense spending to $825 billion—a record nominal level. But this represents under three percent of U.S. GDP, the lowest level this century and among the lowest since World War II. Of that $825 billion, just 21 percent is dedicated to procuring new munitions and equipment.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/empty-arsenal-democracy-michael-brown
