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A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it.***Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Defense released its first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy, a 59-page document aimed at “ensuring that the U.S. defense industrial base meets the demands of a challenging national security landscape well into the future.” The strategy is centered around four areas the Department of Defense views as critical to building a modernized defense industrial base and deterring adversaries like China and Russia, including “resilient supply chains, workforce readiness, flexible acquisition, and economic deterrence.” We asked four experts to tell us more about the strategy, how it has been received, and what its impact could be.Read more below.Elaine McCusker Senior Fellow American Enterprise InstituteThe Pentagon’s new National Defense Industrial Strategy succeeds in describing the problems facing the nation’s production capacity and supply chains and in acknowledging culpability in creating it but falls short in offering what we really need for rapid, measurable, and sustainable improvement. For example, the Department of Defense admits that its own policy in the early 1990s that encouraged consolidation among defense contractors contributed to today’s lamentable competitive environment. It also does a good job of making the critical connection between the problem and the budget, noting that the shrinking defense share of the nation’s gross domestic product has resulted in a corresponding contraction of defense-oriented companies and the workforce required to support them. But it continues to rely on old solutions rather than proposing real investments and corrections to current buying practices that would support industrial vibrancy. The strategy has been received with some hope, combined with a realistic concern that its “generational”