How to Score Economic Security

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Earlier this year we launched an economic security contest. We had two prompts:What are the most important high level KPIs that policy should aim for? What is the analogy of the Fed’s ‘2% inflation and full employment’ target for economic security?Where today would you put $10-50bn to get the most for your investment in economic security? Feel free to propose both defensive and offensive ideas, and either a portfolio of ideas or the one large idea you think will deliver the most value.Last week we ran our first essay winner. Our second essay comes from Naveen Krishnan, a Belfer Young Leaders research fellow at Harvard with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, where he specializes in artificial intelligence capabilities and U.S. national security policy. He is an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. His views are his own and do not represent those of the U.S. Navy or Harvard.The United States stopped manufacturing its own TNT in 1986. For decades afterward, the Army bought its primary explosive fill from Russia and Ukraine. When one supplier invaded the other in February 2022, the Army needed to surge 155mm artillery shell production from 14,500 rounds per month to over 100,000. The binding constraint (instead of money) was America’s physical inability to produce the explosives, propellants, and shell casings at the required pace. Congress appropriated nearly $5 billion. But four years and billions of dollars later, production has reached only 40,000 rounds per month.This is what an economic security failure looks like: the absence of the indust…