International defense collaboration has been part of the American story since the country’s inception — a dynamic that continues drawing discussion around protecting national interests while leveraging capabilities beyond home.
For analysts and thought leaders like Dr. Jerry McGinn, director of the Center for the Industrial Base at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the most pressing questions focus not on whether to work with allies and partners, but on how.
“We go to war together with our allies, we operate with our allies, and we are part of one global industrial base,” McGinn said.
He cited the F-35 — the largest combat aircraft program in history — as one example. It involves more than 1,900 suppliers across at least 10 countries and is used in nearly 20 countries.
Today, McGinn is focused on helping leaders from government, industry and academia understand and strengthen relationships that work toward bringing resources together to meet mission needs. He helps stakeholders build capacity for scaling manufacturing through processes that can meet demand when it’s needed most.
War doesn’t wait.
“The relationship between government and industry is critical to the development, fielding and sustainment of capabilities that enable the success of our warfighters on the battlefield,” McGinn said. “Challenges across our industrial base and in our supply chains, demonstrated starkly during COVID, in the support of Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, and during recent operations in the Middle East, illustrate why I have chosen to focus on these issues.”
The center works to strengthen government-industry collaboration to foster innovation and build capacity across national and international industrial bases. McGinn stepped into his role as director in 2025 following seven years as director of the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University.
From West Point to the Pentagon and Beyond
McGinn’s 35 years of working in national security include roles within the military, government, industry, academia and at think tanks. For the last two decades, he has focused on the industrial base. He joined CSIS in the summer of 2025 to establish the CIB, bringing with him his breadth of experience to understand the motivations and needs of stakeholder groups.
“I also know firsthand the unfortunate structural barriers that create challenges and inhibit success in many areas,” McGinn said. “Thus, I am laser-focused on working to find solutions that enable our government and industry to work effectively together to address our national security challenges.”
McGinn’s father was a West Point graduate who served in Vietnam and was friends with strong leaders like Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., the Army general who led coalition forces in the Gulf War.
“I grew up around these men and saw how close they were,” McGinn said. “At first, I didn’t think West Point was for me because I was a little different than my father. But eventually I came to the conclusion that I wanted to serve and then decide later where that would take me.”
McGinn graduated from West Point in 1990 and served in the Army. When he got out, he earned two master’s degrees and a doctorate before going to work at the RAND Corporation as a political scientist conducting research. He’s also worked at Northrop Grumman, QinetiQ and Deloitte.
He became interested in defense industrial policy, which led him to the Pentagon and a senior role in the Office of the Secretary of Defense focused on manufacturing and industrial base policy. There he developed a deep understanding of how the military is trained and equipped. His work with the Defense Science Board gave him insight into how captains of industry and their companies built American defense systems.
McGinn began understanding the interplay between government and industry and how the parties can improve collaboration to achieve goals. He encourages others to find avenues to broaden their experiences.
“Where you stand depends on where you sit,” he said. “If you know only the government perspective, you have only one point of view. If you have only the industry perspective, you have only one point of view. If you know only the analyst or academic perspective, it limits how you look at problems and how you solve them.”
McGinn said there is a common misconception of government officials as bureaucrats in a way that paints them as caricatures interested only in processes.
“And then there is a government perspective in some ways that companies are reckless and only interested in the bottom line and not looking to serve the country,” he added. “Both of those are not true. They are dramatically false.”
The ICE PACT and Thoughts on International Collaboration
In 2026, the center is especially focused on addressing Department of War and federal industrial base challenges; government contracting trends in defense, civilian and international sectors; industry-government collaboration; and international industrial cooperation. They do this through studies, analyses, public and private events, and publications focused on these topics. One area of chronic concern is the lack of production at scale, he said.
“We build incredibly capable systems,” he said, “but they take a long time to build, and then we use them up very quickly in conflict.”
There is currently a focus on creating the ability to surge manufacturing as needed to be able to scale quickly in response to conflict. Another aspect of his work involves both understanding and bringing together different points of view to work toward a common goal.
McGinn said GovCon has changed dramatically since he entered the market. A decade ago, there was recognition of the need to change how government and industry work together to solve problems. That need has continued across both Democrat-led and Republican-led administrations, he said. There has been progress, he said, as new technologies are deployed, including AI and machine learning, to solve military and national security challenges.
“There was a recognition in both government and industry that the status quo way of doing business was not getting us where we need to be,” he said. “We were struggling to produce systems that would not be obsolete by the time they were fielded.”
It isn’t only about United States production and manufacturing, he added, but about bringing global capabilities to the national mission.
“That is a facet of our industrial base that has been that way for some time, and it’s not going to change,” McGinn said. “One of my points of view is that we want to recognize that to grow global capacity is a good thing. If we work closer with our allies, build things together, they buy some of our systems, that makes us more interoperable and builds overall global capacity for our national security challenges.”
Even amid adversarial rhetoric about allies, last year’s icebreaker deal tells a different story. The U.S. committed to building seven icebreakers — two in Finland, where the domain expertise lives and American shipbuilders can learn from it, and five in an Alabama shipyard.
“That shipyard has been closed for many years and it was bought by a Canadian company that reopened it,” he said. “Even today, you see collaboration to address the national security challenge that involves not just the U.S. but our close allies in part.”
Did you know…?
McGinn hiked 1,600 miles on the Appalachian Trail when he left the military and before entering graduate school. The AT, he said, is a moving community of people headed the same direction. Sometimes, it creates just the right atmosphere for deep friendships.
“I spent about a thousand miles walking with two other gentlemen who became my friends,” he said. “One was a gentleman who built log cabins and another one was a swim instructor at Amherst College. It was an incredible experience meeting people from all walks of life, walking from Georgia to Massachusetts.”
McGinn ran out of time to finish the trail before grad school but hopes to return one day to hike the last three states.