Innovation as National Power

There is hard power, soft power, and even smart power. But what is also needed to meet the challenge of China is innovation and entrepreneurship as a form of national power.

The strategic challenge of the Chinese Communist Party has been a wake-up call for politicians and the public alike. In fact, the newly formed Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party in Congress has begun to wrestle with the challenge of strategic competition – to include, just last week, conducting a wargame with committee members to open their eyes to the acute issues we face as a nation and Western society. Such a wargame with the representatives of the people in Congress is both practical and needed because, to date, the exact nature of the challenge from China has been abstract within the public dialogue.

But what is missing from these wargames, and our national-level conversation in general, is a dialogue on national power. That is to say, how should we organize as a nation and what are the technologies and resources required to meet the challenge from China? Without such a conversation around national power, we are at risk of addressing the challenge from the Chinese Communist Party through limited means – even as it holds the potential to be existential in nature to American and Western values, principles, norms, and laws.

The debate over national power is not new. It has long been how political scientists investigate and assess statecraft. Much has been written over the years about hard power – a form of national power that was described in John Hillen’s 2016 War on the Rocks article as “the power to threaten or use coercive force.” A foil to hard power is, of course, soft power – a term coined by Harvard’s Joseph Nye in his 1990 book, Bound to Lead. Nye makes a distinction between hard and soft power and even suggests that soft power could be used in lieu of hard power. Hillen further suggests that “power that is ‘soft’ is seductive — promising more sophistication, less cost, a more refined and nuanced tool, more flexibility, and less intractability.” Nye’s rejoinder to the limits of soft power has been to suggest smart power – “a power that combines hard power, which relies on coercion, and soft power, which relies on attraction.”

The problem with the heuristic of hard, soft, and even smart power is it assumes much of national power resides in or is directly related to the institutions of the state. Such a mental model fails to recognize the power of a country’s populace.

Indeed, the American public is an untapped form of national power.

Harnessing the collective energy of Americans to work on public challenges is “innovation power.”

Without capturing the innovative and entrepreneurial energy of Americans to directly work on government problems, the United States will continue to experience what Steve Blank, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and Pete Newell, retired Army Colonel and former commander of the Rapid Equipping Force, describe as the “Red Queen problem.”

The Red Queen problem is a reference to Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass from the Alice and Wonderland series in which the Red Queen says to Alice: “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”

Hard, soft, and smart power are subject to the Red Queen problem because they are largely focused on the capabilities and capacities of the state. What these forms of national power fail to contemplate is how to disruptively get ahead of the strategic competitor by leveraging the whole of American society.

Innovation as a form of national power would allow us to focus our strategic investments on the people – at all ages and all walks of life – so they can engage in a new form of national service – call it a modern “civilian innovation corps.”

We, as a country, can do this and more – but only if we recognize our citizenry as a unique form of national power.

“Innovation power” will not only allow us to out-compete China. It will give our children the future they both need and deserve.

A power that is truly powerful.


Alex Gallo is the author of “Vetspective,” a RallyPoint series that discusses national security, foreign policy, politics, and society. Alex also serves as the Executive Director of the Common Mission Project, a 501c3, that delivers an innovation and entrepreneurship program, Hacking for Defense®, which brings together the government, universities, and the private sector to solve the strategic challenges. He is also a fellow with George Mason University’s National Security Institute, an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, and a US Army Veteran. Follow him on Twitter at @AlexGalloCMP.