Foreword
The 2025 Nat Sec EDGE Convention introduced collectively a various coalition of leaders from authorities, business, funding, and innovation to confront a shared actuality: America’s nationwide safety benefit is eroding-and our skill to adapt at pace will decide the result of future conflicts.
Throughout two days of discussions, senior officers, technologists, operators, and buyers delivered a transparent message: the U.S. is engaged in an unprecedented strategic competitors with near-peer adversaries who’re transferring quicker, with fewer constraints, in an effort to realize dominance in rising domains. Whereas the U.S. nonetheless holds an innovation edge, our conventional methods for acquisition, classification, and threat administration are too sluggish, too fragmented, and too siloed to reply to the rate of as we speak’s threats.
What emerged from this gathering in Austin, TX was not simply urgency-but readability. The U.S. wants a brand new mannequin for nationwide safety innovation-one constructed round pace, belief, integration, and mission-first execution. This implies enabling “new primes” that may transfer on the tempo of expertise, equipping the protection industrial base with safe pathways to scale, and empowering operators and decision-makers with the instruments to bridge coverage, procurement, and operational want.
It additionally means recognizing that the issue is not technological- it’s sociological. The innovation exists. The capital exists. The risk is obvious. What’s lacking are the connective tissues: the incentives, partnerships, and belief frameworks that may speed up options from idea to deployment.
This report captures probably the most vital messages and moments from Nat Sec EDGE. It’s supposed as each a file and a roadmap-for these shaping the way forward for American safety.
Suzanne Kelly, Brad Christian, Ethan Masucol and Connor Curfman contributed to this report.
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