Building a Trusted ICT Supply Chain

Dependency on China and other adversary countries for some of our most critical supply chains threatens to undermine the trustworthiness of critical technologies and components that constitute and connect to cyberspace. This dependency also risks impairing the availability of these same critical technologies and components and compromises American and partner competitiveness in global markets in the face of Chinese economic aggression.

To address these challenges, the Commission proposes a five-pillar strategy built on the firm foundation of public-private and international partnerships. Specifically, the Commission provides a roadmap and recommendations focused on:

1. Identifying key technologies and equipment through government reviews and public-private partnerships to identify risk.

2. Ensuring minimum viable manufacturing capacity through both strategic investment and the creation of economic clusters.

3. Protecting supply chains from compromise through better intelligence, information sharing, and product testing.

4. Stimulating a domestic market through targeted infrastructure investment and ensuring the ability of firms to offer products in the United States similar to those offered in foreign markets.

5. Ensuring global competitiveness of trusted supply chains, including American and partner companies, in the face of Chinese anti-competitive behavior in global markets.

This white paper specifies five key and eight supporting recommendations to build trusted supply chains for critical ICT technologies, including guidance to conduct a public-private collaborative process to identify goods and materials critical to the continual function of the economy, society, and government. The paper also supports reinvigorating American high-tech manufacturing and innovation with partner nations to ensure continual availability of these goods and materials. In addition, the white paper recommends an approach to ensure that American and partner companies are able to compete with Chinese companies in domestic and global markets through the use of strategic government investment and instruments of the development community.