If You Build It, They Will Come: A Discussion with Dr. Jerry McGinn

Roman Schweizer:
From DOD to Congress and from the White House to Wall Street, the NatSec Need to Know podcast, an unrehearsed podcast presenting insightful discussion and forecasts of the major national security and defense issues of the day. Welcome to a special edition of the NatSec Need to Know. We're joined today by Dr. Jerry McGinn, who's the executive Director of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University. He's a prior DOD industrial-based policy official, and he's got a long-standing record in industry as well as in government on defense policy.
Jerry recently published a fantastic study looking at the defense industrial base entitled Before the Balloon Goes Up: Mobilizing the Defense Industrial Base Now to Prepare for Future Conflict. We're excited to have him and discuss his findings and recommendations. Jerry, thanks so much for joining us today, very excited to talk about your new report. It's something that's been on my mind, and I'm sure a lot of other folks in Washington have thought about it, and I've actually heard it from investors as well. New report out titled Before the Balloon Goes Up: Mobilizing the Defense Industrial Base Now to Prepare for Future Conflict, published it on October 3rd, so just tell me a little bit about the background. What made you think of doing this, and what was the process?
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Well, thanks for reaching out, Roman. It's great to be with you, and I'm excited about your podcast, which is still somewhat new, at least a 24 venture, so that's great. The challenges with the supply chain and with our industrial base have been talked about a fair amount, particularly during COVID, and then particularly on the military side after we started supporting Ukraine, about the brittleness of some of the supply chains, the lack of time to be able to surge capacity. So what I decided to do is take a broader step back. I was like, "Okay, well, what if we have a major conflict?" Not where we're supplying weapons to folks in Ukraine, but where our forces are at risk, where they're engaged in... Let's say if China attacks and tries to invade Taiwan's Strait, are we ready for that in terms of not just the immediate response, but can we sustain and prevail in victory like in World War II where we were able to build that and so on? So that was the final research question in this effort.
Roman Schweizer:
And let me ask you this... And I think it's fascinating. You looked at sort of four case studies, World War II, MRAP I guess procurement, development procurement, COVID and Ukraine. I mean, I'm sure there are other... You could have looked at Korea or... I mean, there are other different opportunities. But tell me a little bit about those case studies and your findings.
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Yeah. So to address this question, I wanted to look at have we done this in the past? And everyone talks all about the arsenal for democracy in World War II, and so I wanted to kind of look at that, but I also want to look at I think more recent and frankly more applicable examples. And that is kind of the MRAP, COVID and Ukraine, and draw lessons from that to apply them for today. And so that's the first thing we did, and I can give you the high level takeaways from those if you'd like. But essentially it was the importance of strong national leadership. I mean, that is the President and Congress finding ways to achieve success. And that was very clear in all the cases really, except Ukraine, is where you've seen some of the challenges there. In World War II, FDR basically took what he could get.
Before Pearl Harbor there was a strong isolationist sentiment, and so he couldn't... He would have to negotiate with Congress, and the first thing they did was doing shipbuilding, because that was popular domestically with members of Congress. So they sort of did this. And in the case of MRAP, the Secretary of Defense essentially took it on himself to lead this effort and went to Congress repeatedly, went to the White House repeatedly to get that. In the case of Ukraine... And COVID was an existential event, so you had strong leadership from both presidents during that period. With Ukraine, you had less of that. You had strong articulation, but it hasn't been as repeated by the administration, and it hasn't addressed some of the skepticism on some parts. So you see that sort of.
Another one has been the importance of a consensus bipartisan to be able to do things. And then on the programmatic side, in terms of making things happen, it's having flexible kind of acquisition practices that allow you to design things that you can produce quickly. So if you look at... In World War II, the B-24, they iterated on the design of that quickly so they could develop that, and test it, and then kind of field it. And in the case of the MRAP, what they did is instead of... Soldiers were dying from roadside bombs, so what the Secretary said is, "Damn it, we're going with an existing design, very, very, very, very simple requirements." Not kind of a three-year process, but simple requirements, existing design, which is actually marginally a foreign design.
And then multi-source procurement, "We're going to fricking flood the zone, we're going to procure different variants, but we're going to produce it." And lo and behold, from the drop of the RFP, and within three years they had 16,000 MRAPs produced. And that's sick, that's amazing, that shows the power of the industrial base. And COVID you saw that dramatic response too, for all the knock that the acquisition system gets, they got $40 billion on contract within eight months, and they were doing $200 million a day within a month of the onset of the pandemic. That is kind of when we can do it, we can do it. And it just shows that those kind of principles kind of come through in those cases. And then I try to apply those forward.
Roman Schweizer:
So many questions, but I want to make this a little personal. And this is not to brag about my summer vacation, but I was in Europe this summer and had a chance to go to Normandy, Omaha Beach, obviously very somber moment, there's a phenomenal museum. I think every American and every European should go. But in the museum there's displays, and I actually had to take a picture of it because I want to do something with this, but this is perfect for this discussion.
There's an M4 Sherman tank, which went into mass production in 1942, 49,000 were built. And they were built by the following Chrysler, Ford, GM, Wright, Pacific Car and Foundry, Pressed Steel Car Company, Pullman Standard Car Company, American Locomotive, Federal Machine and Welder, Fisher Body, and even others. I mean, that's what we're talking about. I just struggle to think today would we have 10 companies making Tomahawks, or F-35s, or M1A... How would we ever break out of that mold today? But obviously MRAPs was almost a new class of vehicles, so you could kind of do that, and maybe we'll get there with attritable aircraft or some other things.
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Yeah. Well, you do see a little bit. I mean, in the case of Ukraine, they had a huge procurement of [inaudible 00:08:31] rounds in December, an award, it was awarded to nine companies. And six of those were here in the US, three of them, one was in Poland, one was in India, and one was in Canada. So you're seeing it is doable, but it's not the model we've had for the past... Since the end of the Cold War, which is focusing on efficiency and spending every dollar, taxpayer dollar, with judiciousness. But what that's led to... And there's goodness in that, it needs to happen.
But what you don't get there, is you get precision, but you don't get... It's harder to surge, and you get kind of exquisite handmade systems that you can't kind of mass produce. And the focus on we used to do multi-sourcing, like back in the seventies and the eighties. And with the Navy and your background, they used to have multi-providers of missiles. And there you would have companies competing on cost for delivering whatever weapon, missile to the Navy or to the Air Force. And we got out of that business because to save money. So we have to relook at these things like second sourcing, in my view, to be able to have the scale or the ability to scale that we need.
Roman Schweizer:
No, I think absolutely. I mean, I think it's just a change in environment, a change in the global situation where we're at. And again, it's not... I don't want to say desperate times require desperate measures, but it does require a change in thinking. I mean, this is not a paid advertisement or shout out, but for folks who are not defense acquisition nerds like myself or folks who haven't worked in the business, there's a really great book called Freedom's Forge by Arthur Herman that kind of went into the sort of buildup in World War II and what it took to do that. And I will say, I'm sure we'll have a link in the show notes to Jerry's report, there's amazing statistics about how oil production... Various types of manufacturing went up from... I think it's 1942 to the end of the war, or just a scale of production of even fuel, and steel, and materials, and things like that. I mean, it's shocking how significant.
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Yeah. Can I interrupt there for a second?
Roman Schweizer:
No, no, please go ahead.
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Yeah, so two things I'd like to add, two sources I'd like to add. So Herman's book's great, but that table you cite that is in the report actually come from Mark Wilson's book, which is called Creative Destruction, which is a historian's view of the arsenal democracy development. And it's a little different from Herman's, Herman's really focuses on the captains of industry, on Knudsen and Henry Kaiser. Whereas the other book, it focuses on that, but also focuses on government and how the war production board worked and so on. And so I highly recommend both of them because it gives I think a more complete picture of that. And the other one I would recommend is a book by my former colleague here at the center, Jim Hasik, he did the kind of I think the best study on the MRAP experience, which is out, and that's in the Texas A&M Press. But anyway, I'll stop with the advertisements.
Roman Schweizer:
No, no, those are great. I mean, look...
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Advertising our center stuff, which thanks for [inaudible 00:12:20] report.
Roman Schweizer:
Right, right. Well, no, but that's also a good... I haven't read Creative Destruction, so I was jotting that down as we were speaking, and I know Jim Hasik does great work. But that's one of the things I actually have thought about and would obviously be tremendously controversial. Obviously, in World War II, we had the War Production Board, which was created by Roosevelt in January of 42, so a couple months after the war started. I actually didn't know, but that even going back to World War I, we had a War Industries Board.
So I mean, really when the proverbial brown matter hits the fan, we have sort of managed this in a centralized way, which is anathema to the way we kind of do business in a normal capitalist society. But I mean, do you think it would take something... And again, I understand you're a public citizen and not working for DOD these days. But I mean, would it take centralized control and the kind of stuff of allocating materials, controlling production, price caps or wage and price controls to really ramp up how... I don't want to say draconian, but how serious of measures would you have to be in order to scale at the level that might be required?
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Yeah, so I think it's a great question, and I think I would break it into two parts. And this really came out in the cases. I mean, the War Production Board, there was a predecessor in World War I, and a [inaudible 00:14:13] in World War II. It was also... One of the cases, the findings I took out of this, is the really importance of close government industry collaboration. Because in terms of understanding what it means, what it takes to build a new plant or to build a capacity, how quickly can it be done and all that. And that was really done hand in glove during World War II. And the fact of the matter is we actually have the authority to do that now, and it's one of my recommendations. So the Defense Production Act, which you know, and your readers probably know well, listeners, became popular in COVID.
That's a Korean war kind of authority, which is built off of the authorities that FDR used in World War II. But we could talk about DPA separately, if you'd like. But one aspect of DPA that has not been used at all is the authority to create what's called a National Defense Executive Reserve, which is a volunteer pool of industry executives working with government. And they can do things like establish volunteer agreements between government industry on surge capability. I mean, there's just tremendous ability to do something in advance, to do this kind of the collaborative planning and so on that we did in World War II. And it's just sitting there. So I recommend that we do that, we exercise that authority now. And so that is something that I think... I don't think it's controversial, because that would really be a collaborative effort between government industry. Now, the other stuff you're talking about, in terms of wage and price controls and so on, that's more kind of direct government action, and I don't have a point of view on that stuff, and I didn't write about that at all in the report.
Roman Schweizer:
All right, I'm going to have to dive in a little deeper because I do find that fascinating of why. Now, look, I know you've got a day job and plenty to do and maybe you're not the guy to do this. But I mean, we've got Defense Business Board, we've got a Defense Science Board. I mean, I don't even know if DOD... It would be a broader, right?
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Well, I think you could do it, I think it would be something that would have to be directed by the Executive Office of the President, but you could delegate for execution of DOD, and you could have it be run by the Defense Business Board or something like... So I think they need to figure out how to do it in a way which makes sense for today, but the authority's right there, so it's like, "Let's go."
Roman Schweizer:
I mean, I almost feel like I'm going to run a little counter and maybe talk out of school, but I mean, you'd want commerce represented, you'd want some other... So I almost don't want to give it to DOD, just to...
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Yeah, yeah, that's fair enough.
Roman Schweizer:
Somebody at OMB or something like that, because I mean, who can call balls and strikes, but again, that's...
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
The challenge is execution, the White House doesn't execute on anything, so anyway.
Roman Schweizer:
No, I mean, that's fair. I mean, because on the flip side, the two other things that I'm thinking about is... And this is more on the other side, is we've given $52 billion to Commerce to do CHIPS Act, and I have heard good and bad. I would say more largely on the bad side in terms of how that's been executed, and the handcuffs that come with that, and how long it takes to get under contract. Whereas the COVID response, DOD can spend $52 billion in a day. I mean, there's a lot of experience with acquisition, and contracting, and the federal acquisition regulations and things like that. So no, I get it. Look, I think one of the things I just want to point out to folks who look at the report, I mean, the thing that I liked about it is you looked at sort of the elements of mobilization, authorities, design, resourcing, acquisition, sustainment, public support, allies and partners, and then you kind of make recommendations in each of those categories.
I think it's a very well-founded approach to break out the key elements of this, because a lot of times you just glom it all together and there's a lot of pieces of it. I mean, even the resourcing piece, the budgeting, the PPBE process and all that stuff, I think it's very well organized. I have to ask though, so I mean, I guess this is the punchline. Have you yet... I mean, I suspect you will probably brief... Again, being formerly run the industrial-based policy shop in DOD, have you briefed it to DOD? Have you briefed it to the Hill? What's the reaction been? What is the level of response? I don't want to say seriousness, because who knows, we'll see where it goes, but what's the feedback been?
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Yeah, I mean, the feedback has been positive. I have heard from senior government officials about the report, and I'm briefing some in the coming weeks. And likewise, professional staffers on the Hill have expressed interest, and I'm speaking with them. And what I've tried to do in the report of the recommendations, is I'm not looking to create bespoke new kind of things, but I am trying to build off a lot of the things that are already happening. There's a lot of good that's happening in department and with Congress, and sort of trying to take that to the next level, which can be... Some of it is policy changes, and those are mostly focused on the department. Some of those are authorities usage, as I talked about with the Defense Production Act. And then some of it requires congressional actions, either through the authorization or appropriations. And I try to lay those things out in the different elements, like you talked about, in a way that's kind of actionable. And it comes in each of these different segments.
Roman Schweizer:
No, I think that's great. On the Ukraine... So to make this about today and where I think DOD and Congress should be interested, I have had some personal frustration I think with what seems to be the pace and intensity of contracting, and in terms of support for Ukraine. And you kind of mentioned that, and you laid out... I mean, I will just sort of comment so that you don't have to. But you talk about strong leadership, whether it's MRAPs or World War II, you talk about the bipartisan stuff, and that just really hasn't been the case with Ukraine. And I think also you've had some pushback over the last several years from industry about contracts, inflation, how to address... But my personal frustration is I just don't think there is the sense of urgency.
And the amount of money, call it 79 billion I think that DOD has gotten regarding Ukraine, if anyone seriously believes Xi Jinping has a 2027 date for Taiwan, we have gotten all the advanced warning, all the advanced money we need to prime the pump to get all this stuff up on scale and producing to have a deterrent effect. And I think that's one of... I forget the exact term, but I think the current DOD industrial-based strategy uses the term maybe economic deterrents, or economic preparedness, or something like that, right?
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Yeah.
Roman Schweizer:
Yeah. So I mean, I think this sort of goes hand in glove with that of like, "Well, wait a minute. Let's get the senior level of attention, let's get the bipartisan support for Ukraine." And it's good for US companies, it's good for US jobs. But I've used the term dithering, and I don't mean that necessarily at any one person, but I feel like we're in a situation where... This report kind of points out, this is exactly where we need to be going on this stuff. I don't know, I'm not asking you to opine or say anything about people in government, but I mean, do you think that's right where we're at at this moment in time? I mean, I think that's why it's such a [inaudible 00:23:03].
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Yeah, no, I think yeah, because part of the reason for this report is people have been saying for the last several years, "It's 1938, it's 1939, we got to get the industrial-based movement." And we've made some progress, but it's definitely not the sense of urgency. I mean, I remember Bob Gates famously said when he started the MRAP thing, was he said, "Our soldiers are at war, but the Pentagon is not." And he had to drive that sense of urgency personally. And it's not a criticism of... Everyone's trying to do their job and they're working... I know the people in the building are working their tails off. But when you don't really mobilize and you're not on this war footing, you still have all the qualifications you have to do or parts, you still have all the bureaucratic crap that slows things down.
You still have all the constituencies that you got to deal with, that muck, muck, muck, muck, and that don't allow you to kind of just cut through and go. And so that's what I'm try to get at here. Throwing a lot of money at a problem really helps, and the cases show that. But it's not just the amount, it's how you can execute. And that's where PPBE comes in, and it's really problematic for executing fast, particularly on a large scale. So that's why I talk about money is important, but it's how you execute and the ability to do that, which is why we need to implement the recommendations that came out of the Congressional commission last year. But there's an aspect which has really kind of come to me in the last... And I do briefly mention in the report, but it's really of interest I think to the institutional investors, to your audience.
We got to find a way I think to get the capital markets more engaged in this. By that, I mean... To be honest, you're familiar with the Office of Strategic Capital, OSC it's called, and their efforts to set up kind of... They just announced a NOFO, a notice of finding opportunity or whatever. But they're doing loans for companies in the industrial base. And I was like, "Why do we need that? Why do we need loans?" Because as you well know, the private equity and venture capital, they're investing in defense a lot. And so why do we need that? And I've come to the conclusion that where it really helps is in a multiplier effect. Because what the challenge is, is a lot of these... And you see this, industrial-based investments, they do a lot of them through Defense Production Act and other things, CHIPS, as you mentioned earlier. Those efforts require companies to give cost share, is to say, "Okay, government's going to put forward this much, but then what's the company going to do? How's this going to impact the commercial markets? What's the multiplier effect?"
And that's where actually private capital could play a role with a loan program in that way, to have that multiplier effect, to maybe build industrial capacity ahead of need based on a demand signal from the government. So I don't have a fully formed point of view on that. But when I was at an event not too long ago where they talked about it, it was like, "Do we need a wealth sovereign fund, a wealth fund?" And I wonder if that might be a way, because getting from... Today we're 3% of GDP in defense, getting back to the Cold War level of 6%, that is what we should do. But there's so many barriers to that politically, structurally, debt and so on, that you can't just [inaudible 00:27:13] to do it. So I'm just wondering, how do we close that gap? And so again, I don't have fully formed views of it. And I touch on it in the report, but I just think there's a real opportunity for... Again, and that's where maybe this government industry collaboration can come in.
Roman Schweizer:
Yeah, no, I think that's a good point. And there's no shortage of privately backed companies who are trying to break into defense. Obviously, I won't mention their names, but everybody knows the names. And certainly there's PE and VC interest, particularly in selected segments, space, unmanned, robotic, much less defined, not so much the capital... I mean, most people aren't going to throw a lot of money at building a new shipyard when you've got some big heavy traditionals to compete.
But I mean, again, even there are in terms of unmanned, unmanned surface or unmanned UUVs and things like that, but nobody's going to come out and become a second source for nuclear-powered aircraft carriers or things like that. The one thing, as we were talking about, the thing that I don't know, but I think would probably shock the heck out of people, and I wish I had the stats at my fingertips. But there's been a fair amount of talk about the Chinese maritime capacity, shipbuilding capacity in terms of the number of ships they can build per year and things like that. And I think just if there was some way... I don't know, was it... Who used to put out the Soviet military balance? Was it DIA or... Back in the day, the book that...
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The classified kind of stuff, yeah, so there's that.
Roman Schweizer:
But they put out the unclassified, glossy, scare the hell out of everybody about what the Soviets were doing. But I mean, really, I think if somebody ever did a side-by-side, because I think China is scaling, china can throw a ton of money, they don't have... Well, they have plenty of bureaucracy, centrally managed bureaucracy, but they can jam through the red tape and demand company share IP or do whatever. But I think it would be interesting if people actually looked at the industrial capacity. I mean, that's the one that you scare people, because if you have a shooting war, it's who can build the most on a continuing basis over a period of three to five years, which was what happened in World War II. And I don't think we're any... We would have to convert that industrial capacity on the fly, whereas they're already running at a rate well above us.
So I'm sorry, we've been talking for a long time and now I've gone and depressed myself. Well, no, is there anything we missed in terms of... I mean, to me, I'm looking at the report, I'm looking at that National Defense Executive Reserve. I mean, to me that would almost be a predecessor to a War Production Board. So I mean, World War II, it was the... What was it? Industries, War Industries Board, War Production Board, so now this would have to be... What was it? The DIV, the Defense Industrial Based Board or something. Because the other thing that's fascinating to me is... And this is based on what we've just been talked about, in the next war, if in this circumstance, it wouldn't be... I think in your stats, I wish I had... Let me see if I can just find the chart from the book that you mentioned, the critical materials. Hold on one sec.
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Yeah.
Roman Schweizer:
We may have to edit this down, let's see.
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Page 13.
Roman Schweizer:
So on page 13 in the report, and this is what you talk about, the expansion of production, synthetic rubber, avgas, merchant ships, TNT, airframes, magnesium, aluminum, electric power and steel. And in the future, that might be... Certainly semiconductors would be on that list, maybe carbon fiber would be on that. And again, that's just what I mean. That's why you might need Commerce or even Department of Agriculture. And as we've talked about, I mean, hell, that could be lines of software code or things like that.
So I mean, that almost gets me to this thought of the industrial base change from World War I, to World War II, to, all right, just for giggles, we'll say World War III is what we're really postulating about. But that industrial base for World War III is going to be so much different. It could be robotics, or what are the key metrics going forward? So no, I think that's great stuff, I mean, I really think. And that Reserve Executive Board could almost be the foundation of what... If the balloon ever went up, as you aptly said, these would be the guys that would run that board or be the foundation for that. Yeah, I think that's great, fascinating stuff. I mean, great point.
I try not to make light of anything really, but I have a little bit of an irreverence streak in me. So maybe if Donald Trump becomes President, he will appoint Elon Musk as that to run the War Production Board or something like that. I'm obviously jesting, but I say that for maybe some shock and entertainment value. All right, Jerry, we've covered a lot of ground. Anything else, anything I've missed, or anything you'd like to emphasize about this report?
Dr. Jerry McGinn:
Yeah, I mean, the other... I think we have covered a lot of ground. The only other big thrust that I'd like to cover, is that there's an important aspect of us building domestic capacity for a lot of these kind of weapons systems. And there's a lot, and I think there's a recognition that we need to... We offshore too much capacity, we need to kind of fix that. But the other aspect of that is that we can't do this alone. So we go to war with our allies and partners, we have a global economy, we work together. We've supplied... Like I talked about with Ukraine, we're supplying 155, not just from US capacity, but from allies. We have to really adopt really a build allied approach in terms of building overall global capacity.
And people try to conflict that by America with the sentiment for building domestic capacity, and I would just argue that these things are not kind of in conflict, it's a much more of a both, and. We need to build domestic capacity, but we have a finite amount, and we need to work... Well, we go to war with these allies and partners, they buy our stuff, we buy... They have subsidiaries here in the US that build major systems. Let's do that better, let's do international industrial collaboration better, let's do co-production better, let's do co-development better, let's build exportability into systems at the front end.
And so I lay out a series of things that can help build off the things that we're doing. And you see this real with this AUKUS effort, this Australia, US, UK effort to build submarines in Australia, and also kind of get into other advanced technologies. This requires some changes in export controls, which have to be monitored and so on. But the real kind of industrial collaboration, that helps build systemic capability outside of the US, that helps build an overall industrial capacity to build more kind of systems. So that kind of is really important, regardless of whether we have a Republican or Democratic administration come next January.
Roman Schweizer:
Yeah, no. And I apologize for not bringing that up, because that is a great point in the report. And you mentioned AUKUS, we've got some co-production or licensed production with Japan, even some stuff with Germany. I mean, the one thing I wonder, and I'm sure you just say more is better regardless, some of this can be done at the government level, government proposing, or forcing, or cajoling. But also some of this can be done at the company level. I mean, I think companies... Would a US prime be well-served to go find a partner in Japan or a partner... And that's a lot of times what they do.
But no, I think you're right. I mean, I think diversifying their production base, diversifying supply chains adds an element of security, but also there's an incentive to do it because then you become part of that other country's industrial base, and you're going to be able to participate in the growth in that market. So there's a lot of good reasons to do it. Well, we've talked about it for... This has been a fascinating discussion. I think we've covered a lot of ground, as I said. It is great to see you, be with you, and talk about this, and look forward to hearing more about this stuff in the future. So thanks so much for being with us, Jerry.

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