Center for the Industrial Base

Reimagining government-industry collaboration to foster innovation, build capacity, and achieve victory.

CSIS’s Center for the Industrial Base (CIB), formerly the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group (DIIG), provides impactful research on the ways in which the United States and its allies can collaborate more effectively with industry of all types and build their respective industrial bases. The center primarily focuses on 1) DOD and federal industrial base challenges, 2) government contracting trends in defense, civilian agencies, and international markets, 3) industry-government collaboration, and 4) international industrial cooperation. CIB monitors important developments in the global defense industry and produces major research projects and long-form reports; commentaries and articles in popular media; and annual conferences and livestream roundtables.

About the Center for the Industrial Base

Learn more about the CSIS Center for the Industrial Base and the experts and staff that contribute to our analysis.

Jerry McGinn
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Photo: MATTHEW WEINBERGER/DVIDS

Photo: MATTHEW WEINBERGER/DVIDS

Outlining the Challenges to U.S. Naval Shipbuilding

The U.S. naval shipbuilding enterprise struggles to produce ships at the scale and speed demanded despite being a bipartisan priority for successive administrations and Congress. The White House must tackle complex, longstanding challenges to improve shipbuilding capacity.

Report by Seamus P. Daniels, Henry H. Carroll, Cynthia R. Cook, Oliver Buntin, and Sarah O’Rourke — December 16, 2025

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Overcoming the Barriers to Forward Deterrence

The United States relies on its unmatched network of allies to help fill gaps in U.S. industrial capacity and capability. But a variety of regulatory barriers inhibit cooperation and create challenges for allies who want to purchase from or work with the United States.

Commentary by Cynthia R. Cook and Audrey Aldisert — July 1, 2025

Strengthening NATO Starts with Fixing Its Industrial Base

The transatlantic defense industrial base has long been fragmented and inflexible. The NATO summit presents an opportunity to address key factors that keep arms sales, technology transfer, and defense industrial cooperation ill-suited to meet current security demands.

Commentary by Audrey Aldisert — June 24, 2025

How Supporting Ukraine Is Revitalizing the U.S. Defense Industrial Base

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Congress has approved $113 billion to aid the response. U.S. security assistance to support Ukraine is reinvigorating the U.S. defense industrial base and creating American jobs.

Commentary by Elizabeth Hoffman, Audrey Aldisert, Cynthia R. Cook, Gregory Sanders, and Shivani Vakharia — April 18, 2024

Global Security Forum 2023: Transatlantic Defense

The 2023 Global Security Forum, the CSIS International Security Program’s flagship annual conference, took place on April 5, 2023. This year’s conference theme was transatlantic defense and featured a keynote address by Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Christopher W. Grady.

Event — April 5, 2023

Powering Proliferation: The Global Engine Market and China’s Indigenization

The military turbofan engine market proliferates technology nations like China need to build modern jet engines to compete with the United States. This brief explores China’s push to modernize its capabilities and broader dynamics in the global military engine market.

Brief by Alexander Holderness, Nicholas Velazquez, Jasmine Phillips, Gregory Sanders, and Cynthia R. Cook — March 21, 2023

Destruction, Subversion, and the Long War

As the war in Ukraine continues, CSIS's Cynthia Cook argues that both sides have increasingly moved to cost-imposing strategies, and the war will end when one side decides that its costs are too great to bear.

Commentary by Cynthia R. Cook — May 3, 2022

The Truth of the Matter

Military Aid to Ukraine

CSIS’s Dr. Cynthia Cook joins the podcast to discuss President Biden’s $33 billion proposed military aid package to Ukraine

Podcast Episode by H. Andrew Schwartz and Cynthia R. Cook — April 29, 2022

CSIS the truth of the matter