What the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy Signals for Defense, Cybersecurity, and Industry

The 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy released in November is explicit about how the United

States now defines security. It rejects vague aspirations and instead focuses on “a concrete, realistic plan that explains the essential connection between ends and means.”

That clarity has consequences for defense contractors, technology providers, manufacturers, and cybersecurity leaders, because the strategy repeatedly makes clear that national power depends on economic strength, industrial capacity, and private-sector execution, not just military force.

Below are the key themes of the U.S. National Security Strategy, grounded directly in the document’s own language.

Economic Security Is National Security

The U.S. National Security Strategy states plainly that the United States must protect “its economy” alongside “its people, its territory, and its way of life.” Economic vitality is not treated as adjacent to security, it is foundational to it.

The strategy emphasizes the need for “a resilient national infrastructure that can withstand natural disasters, resist and thwart foreign threats, and prevent or mitigate any events that might harm the American people or disrupt the American economy.” It further warns that “no adversary or danger should be able to hold America at risk.”

To achieve this, the strategy calls for “the world’s most robust industrial base,” arguing that American national power “depends on a strong industrial sector capable of meeting both peacetime and wartime production demands.”

What this signals to industry: Economic resilience, supply chain control, and domestic production capacity are no longer economic policy preferences, they are national security imperatives.

The Defense Industrial Base Is a Strategic Priority and a Known Weakness

The U.S. National Security Strategy is unusually candid about the limitations of the current defense industrial base. It highlights the “huge gap” revealed in recent conflicts between “low-cost drones and missiles versus the expensive systems required to defend against them.”

The document calls for “a national mobilization to innovate powerful defenses at low cost, to produce the most capable and modern systems and munitions at scale, and to re-shore our defense industrial supply chains.”

This is not incremental reform. The strategy frames industrial capacity as a prerequisite for deterrence, stating that “a strong, capable military cannot exist without a strong, capable defense industrial base.”

Implication: Production speed, scalability, and affordability are now strategic considerations, not just operational ones.

Cybersecurity as a Competitive Weapon

Cybersecurity appears throughout the U.S. National Security Strategy as more than a defensive function. The strategy repeatedly references “espionage,” “industrial theft,” and “hostile foreign influence” as direct threats to U.S. interests.

It explicitly calls out “grand-scale intellectual property theft and industrial espionage” and places them alongside military and economic threats. The document also emphasizes the importance of protecting U.S. networks to enable “real-time discovery, attribution, and response.”

Cyber activity is framed as part of broader strategic competition, used to weaken economies, hollow out industrial bases, and erode technological leadership without triggering conventional conflict.

The shift: Cybersecurity is treated as an instrument of national competition, not merely an IT control or compliance exercise.

Technology Leadership and Standards Are Strategic Assets

The 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy stresses that the United States must “remain the world’s most scientifically and technologically advanced and innovative country” and must “protect our intellectual property from foreign theft.”

It further asserts that U.S. technology and U.S. standards, particularly in “AI, biotech, and quantum computing,” should “drive the world forward.”

This is a clear statement of intent: technological leadership is not just about innovation, but about shaping global ecosystems and dependencies.

For industry: Participation in national security–aligned markets increasingly depends on alignment with U.S. technology standards, architectures, and security expectations.

Industrial Espionage Is Explicitly a National Security Threat

The strategy leaves little room for ambiguity when addressing foreign economic and cyber activity. It identifies “industrial espionage,” “intellectual property theft,” and “predatory economic practices” as direct threats to American security and prosperity.

These activities are not framed as isolated crimes or corporate losses. They are treated as systemic threats that undermine the U.S. economy, weaken military superiority, and distort global competition.

Key takeaway: Companies that hold sensitive designs, data, or defense-related intellectual property are now explicitly within the national security risk perimeter.

The Private Sector Is Now Part of National Defense

Perhaps most consequentially, the U.S. National Security Strategy repeatedly emphasizes that achieving its objectives requires “marshaling every resource of our national power.”

This includes close collaboration between government and industry. The strategy highlights the need for partnerships that strengthen supply chains, secure infrastructure, harden cyber networks, and ensure production capacity at scale.

The document makes clear that protecting national interests requires “closer collaboration between the U.S. Government and the American private sector,” particularly in technology, infrastructure, and defense-related manufacturing.

The reality: Private companies are no longer simply vendors to national security efforts. They are operational participants in them.

What the U.S. National Security Strategy Makes Clear

Taken together, the U.S. National Security Strategy outlines a world in which:

• Economic strength underwrites military power

• Industrial capacity shapes deterrence

• Cybersecurity enables competition below the threshold of war

• Technology standards determine long-term influence

• The private sector is embedded in national defense outcomes

The strategy’s message is not subtle: national security now runs through factories, networks, supply chains, and the companies that operate them.

For defense contractors, technology firms, and cybersecurity leaders, this is not abstract policy. It is the strategic environment in which future contracts, expectations, and risks will be defined.

Source: U.S. National Security Strategy, November 2025