The Diplomat quotes Brent Scowcroft Center Senior Fellow James Hasik on whether China’s defense industry is able to keep up with that of the United States:
Opinions differ on how much of an impact small businesses can make on Pentagon innovation. Jim Hasik addresses several conditions under which we can expect small businesses to do well, and illustrates his case with several examples. In areas with rapidly changing requirements, skill intensive production, and moderately secure knowledge (in terms of patent and trade secret protection), small firms can successfully ally with big firms, which have advantages with capital intensive production, and incremental innovation. Pete Dombrowski and Eugene Gholz, on the other hand, throw water on the idea of off-the-shelf commercial technology by arguing that small businesses face an immense challenge in navigating the byzantine Defense Department bureaucracy. My own work (on the intellectual property aspect) supports that of Dombrowski and Gholz.