America has the advantage of a powerful military, extraordinary technological capabilities, and access to private capital that most countries can only dream of. But none of those advantages matter much without the people who know how to put them to work.
That was one of the clearest takeaways from the opening night of The Cipher Brief’s 2026 Threat Conference, where former national security leaders examined the growing competition between the United States and China, and the role innovation, investment, and industrial capacity will play in determining America’s future.
Former National Security Agency Director Gen. Timothy Haugh offered an assessment of China’s strategic ambitions and its perception of American strengths and vulnerabilities. His remarks were followed by a discussion titled “Harnessing America’s Superpower: Innovation & Investment,” featuring retired Gen. Bryan Fenton, former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, and moderator Richard Berry, Cipher Brief expert, columnist, and strategic advisor to USSOCOM.
The conversations focused on everything from artificial intelligence and semiconductor manufacturing to economic warfare and military modernization. But beneath those topics was a common theme: America’s ability to compete will depend on how effectively it can mobilize its resources.
And resources don’t mobilize themselves.
Behind every breakthrough technology is an engineer. Behind every successful military operation is a trained operator. Behind every resilient supply chain is a network of people who understand how to build, manufacture, transport, and sustain the capabilities that protect the country.
If America wants to maintain its strategic advantage, it needs to think as seriously about its talent infrastructure as it does about its physical infrastructure.
China’s Strategy Is Bigger Than Military Power
Haugh’s remarks offered an important reminder that the United States isn’t simply competing against China’s military. It’s competing against a comprehensive national strategy.
“How does China perceive us at different times?” Haugh asked, encouraging the audience to examine strategic competition from Beijing’s perspective rather than simply evaluating China’s capabilities through an American lens.
Drawing on the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Party Congress, Haugh outlined Beijing’s objectives, including maintaining Communist Party control, strengthening economic and technological independence, asserting its claims over Taiwan, and expanding its influence in the Indo-Pacific.
China’s ambitions are economic, technological, diplomatic, and military. Beijing has sought to align those priorities under a broader national strategy. Haugh highlighted China’s interest in applying artificial intelligence to manufacturing and industrial productivity, rather than focusing exclusively on the development of increasingly sophisticated AI models.
“They have tied artificial intelligence with robotics and enhancing the means of production,” Haugh said.
It’s an important distinction. A nation can possess extraordinary intellectual property and still struggle to turn it into a strategic advantage if it lacks the workforce and industrial ecosystem to execute.
The Innovation Advantage Is an American Advantage
If Haugh’s remarks provided the competitive context, Fenton’s discussion offered a perspective on America’s opportunities.
Why would a former special operations commander spend so much time discussing economics, private investment, and industrial capacity? Because the military’s ability to execute its mission increasingly depends on capabilities that originate outside traditional defense organizations.
Fenton described the importance of the economic component of national power and the relationship between commercial innovation and military readiness.
The United States has remarkable advantages in private capital, entrepreneurial activity, technological development, and the ability to create new businesses.
“We’ve got the best innovators. We’ve got incredible private capital markets,” Fenton said.
He pointed to America’s technology ecosystems, including Silicon Valley, Austin, and Boston, as examples of the country’s extraordinary innovation capacity.
Those strengths are not incidental to national security. They are part of the foundation of American power.
Consider the innovations that have transformed modern military operations. Commercial satellite communications, autonomous systems, advanced computing, artificial intelligence, and drone technology all demonstrate the increasing overlap between private-sector innovation and military capability.
The war in Ukraine has offered a particularly visible example.
Ukrainian forces have used relatively inexpensive technologies, including unmanned systems, to challenge a much larger conventional military. Innovation has helped create asymmetric advantages that traditional measures of military strength might not predict. But those advantages didn’t emerge simply because someone invented a new technology. They required individuals willing to experiment, adapt, improvise, and apply commercial capabilities to urgent operational problems.
That’s the human element of innovation that can get lost in discussions of defense technology.
The United States doesn’t necessarily need to invent every technology inside a government laboratory or acquire every capability through a traditional defense contractor. Some of the most promising solutions may already exist in the commercial marketplace.
The question is whether the national security community can identify those solutions, understand their operational relevance, and bring the right people together to deploy them.
The Real Bottleneck May Not Be Innovation. It May Be Execution.
One of the recurring themes in Fenton’s discussion was the gap between developing innovative technology and producing it at the scale necessary to support military operations.
A promising prototype is not the same thing as a deployable capability. A successful demonstration is not the same thing as a sustainable industrial base. And a company capable of producing a handful of advanced systems may not be prepared to manufacture thousands. Fenton emphasized the importance of understanding supply chains, including the businesses responsible for producing the components and materials essential to military systems.
Rare-earth magnets, batteries, semiconductors, and other critical inputs are not simply economic concerns. They are national security dependencies. But securing those supply chains isn’t just a matter of finding alternative suppliers or investing in domestic production facilities.
It also requires people.
Building a new manufacturing facility accomplishes little without engineers who can design its processes, technicians who can operate its equipment, and specialists who can manage the complex supply chains necessary to keep it running.
The same applies to shipbuilding, aerospace manufacturing, cybersecurity, and nearly every other area of national security modernization. America’s industrial base is fundamentally a workforce issue. And it’s one that deserves considerably more attention in national security strategy.
We often talk about defense industrial capacity as though it’s a question of factories, facilities, and funding. Those things matter. But the ability to manufacture advanced capabilities is ultimately dependent on having people with the skills to make them.
The United States can invest billions in new technologies and production capacity. Without a corresponding investment in the workforce, those capabilities may never reach their full potential.
Government and Industry Need Each Other. And Both Need Talent.
Perhaps the most compelling theme from Fenton’s discussion was the relationship between government and industry.
“There are certain things a commander needs from industry that money probably cannot buy, and industry needs things from the government that they can only give,” Fenton said.
Government has unique responsibilities: identifying mission requirements, establishing national security priorities, reducing certain types of investment risk, and creating demand for capabilities necessary to protect the country. Industry brings innovation, investment, manufacturing expertise, and the ability to scale. Neither can accomplish the mission entirely on its own.
Fenton noted that commercial innovation has increasingly moved ahead of traditional government development cycles.
“In many ways, the private sector has shot ahead because a lot of this is dual use,” he said.
For decades, the defense industry has often operated under the assumption that national security innovation begins with a government requirement and ends with a government contract. That model is increasingly being challenged by commercial technology companies that may already have the solution before the government has finished defining the problem. And that’s a workforce issue as much as an acquisition issue.
The national security community needs more people who understand both worlds. Engineers who understand mission requirements. Acquisition professionals who understand commercial technology. Security professionals who can help nontraditional companies navigate the defense market.
The next generation of defense talent may not be looking for a defense job at all. That doesn’t mean their skills aren’t essential to national security. The United States benefits from an innovation ecosystem that includes universities, startups, venture capital firms, major technology companies, traditional defense contractors, national laboratories, and government agencies.
But the existence of those institutions doesn’t guarantee collaboration. The real competitive advantage comes from connecting them. And those connections are built by people.
A military operator who understands how to communicate an operational problem to a technology company. An engineer who recognizes a commercial application for a national security challenge. An investor willing to back a company developing a critical capability. A government acquisition professional who can create a path from promising prototype to operational deployment.
Those individuals may not attract the same attention as a new weapons platform or artificial intelligence breakthrough.
But they’re often the reason those innovations become useful.
National Security Needs More Than Traditional Defense Talent
For the cleared workforce, the conversation also highlighted a significant evolution in the skills and expertise required to support national security missions.
The traditional national security workforce has long been associated with military personnel, intelligence analysts, cybersecurity specialists, engineers, and defense contractors.
Those roles remain essential.
But the growing importance of economic security and commercial innovation is expanding the definition of national security talent. Increasingly, the country needs professionals who understand advanced manufacturing, global supply chains, venture capital, commercial technology, international economics, and the intersection of business and geopolitical risk.
It needs people who can move between government and industry, translating operational requirements into commercial opportunities and technological innovations into mission-ready capabilities.
It needs acquisition professionals who understand emerging technologies, security professionals who can support innovative companies entering the defense market, and recruiters who recognize that the next generation of mission-critical talent may not come from traditional defense career paths. And it needs leaders capable of building partnerships across organizations that haven’t always worked particularly well together.
That’s a different kind of workforce challenge than simply filling vacancies. It’s about creating an ecosystem where talent, technology, and mission requirements can connect. For a national security community that has historically struggled with lengthy hiring processes, security clearance delays, and rigid personnel structures, that’s no small task.
We can’t talk seriously about accelerating innovation while accepting workforce processes that make it unnecessarily difficult to bring innovative people into the mission.
The technology may be moving at machine speed. The workforce still operates on human timelines — and sometimes government timelines.
The American Superpower Is Human
The opening night of The Cipher Brief Threat Conference offered no shortage of reminders about the scale and complexity of the threats facing the United States.
China is pursuing a long-term strategy that integrates economic development, technological advancement, and military modernization. Global supply chains remain vulnerable. Emerging technologies are changing the character of conflict. And traditional approaches to acquisition and industrial production are being challenged by the pace of innovation.
But Fenton also offered an important reminder: The United States has enormous advantages that shouldn’t be underestimated.
Those advantages aren’t just found in weapons platforms, semiconductor technology, or defense budgets. They’re found in the people who build, invest in, manufacture, and deploy those capabilities. For the national security workforce, that’s both an opportunity and a responsibility.
We spend a great deal of time discussing how to accelerate defense innovation, expand industrial capacity, and maintain military superiority. We spend considerably less time discussing the talent required to accomplish those goals.
And while technology can advance rapidly, workforce development takes time.
The next era of strategic competition will require engineers, scientists, manufacturing specialists, cybersecurity professionals, acquisition experts, intelligence analysts, and military operators. It will also require people capable of moving between those communities and connecting innovations to real mission requirements. That’s not simply a recruiting challenge. It’s a national security imperative.
Fenton’s optimism was grounded in something the United States has demonstrated repeatedly throughout its history: an ability to bring extraordinary people and resources together to solve difficult problems. America’s greatest strategic advantage isn’t any single technology. It’s the talent capable of turning innovation into national power.
