Transnational industry and national security: China and American industrial security

Concern over the national security implications of transnational industrial integration is growing in the United States. Direct and indirect Sino-American integration in high-technology industrial sectors is regarded as a threat to American industrial security in terms of the National Technology and Industrial Base and technological primacy. The American government has launched a number of national and international initiatives to strengthen the resilience of American defence supply chains and limit China’s capacity to derive defence-industrial benefits from industrial ties. The emerging industrial security framework supports the functional requirements of American defence firms, but threatens American arms programmes through its potential impact on the affordability of arms, the flexibility of arms production arrangements, the scale and time frame of arms production, and the development of arms over the long-term, as restrictions on offshore collaboration threaten industrial processes that are central to high-technology production and development.