Over the next few years, I plan to address — or help others address — a wide range of questions related to the political economy of the industrial aspects of international security. Candidates for attention include
Industrial mobilization — How do economies effectively mobilize for war in the 21st century? How will labor and capital constraints affect national choices in mobilization? How should prewar planning differ from experiences from the 20th century?
Industrial structure — How should the industries supporting military supply evolve in horizontal, vertical, and orthogonal (conglomerate) directions? What policy mechanism can or should encourage such evolution?
Finance — What are the right combinations, in what circumstances, of different sources of private and public capital for funding military-industrial activities? What procurement policies regarding profits and cash flow should governments adopt for short-term and long-term success in providing for their armed forces?
Economic statecraft — What are the actionable and sustainable elements of economic statecraft in the early 21st century? How do those relate to preparations for economic warfare?
Counter-mobilization — What are the effective ways to counter-mobilize, against an enemy’s mobilization, whether through physical attack, coercion, and blockade?
Human and organizational capital — How should militaries and industries, together or separately, shape their approaches to people, in recruiting, education, retention, hierarchy, and promotion? What makes a successful captain of industry?
State capitalism — In what ways can hierarchies and markets be usefully combined to support international security? What are the dangers? How can they be structurally avoided?
International commercial policy — What combination of procurement, subsidy, taxes, trade controls, and standards-setting properly supports national and international security? How do these goals clash with those of static and dynamic economic efficiency?
Development — How has international assistance in human and economic development assisted with the national security of donor countries? How can these experiences be usefully leveraged in reconstituting such activities for the future?
Experiential learning — What are the effective ways to leverage simulation in teaching, collectively, military officers, government officials, industrialists, and technologists?
War planning — What do combined military and industrial simulations indicate about the possible trajectories of large-scale, long-duration, industrialized warfare in the 21st century? How should militaries and industries plan prewar, and what should they expect in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years of such a war?