HARNESSING INNOVATION: A Lethal Empowerment Approach to Partner-Led Deterrence in Asia

Traditional US approaches to stability in the Indo-Pacific are not working. Despite deeper alliances, rising partner defense budgets, and record-setting US security cooperation investments, the frequency and intensity of Chinese harassment of smaller militaries in the region—from Taiwan to the Philippines—has only increased.

Washington’s approach has succeeded to date in deterring outright war with China, but not in reducing this kind of day-to-day coercion. These incidents not only heighten the risk of escalation in contested waters, they also threaten to entangle US forces in crises that partners could manage on their own—with the help of emerging technologies and military innovation.

Emerging and commercial technologies—such as decentralized, cell phone-enabled communications networks, 3D printers, unmanned service vessels with AI-enabled radio frequency sensors, commercial drones, and advanced operational planning tools—offer a way to close this gap, if employed effectively. History and academic research tell us that militaries with access to the right technologies at the right time can offset larger, more conventionally capable forces. Take, for example, Ukraine’s rapid adaptation of cheap, imported commercially available quadcopters and hobbyist racing drones into lethal strike systems early in the war (which it now produces domestically), changing the tactical balance against a larger Russian military. Similarly, in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Azerbaijani military leveraged imported Turkish Bayraktar drones and loitering munitions to neutralize much of Armenia’s armor and artillery advantage, demonstrating how less conventionally capable militaries can leverage accessible technology to offset superior forces.

Yet the US defense export system—rooted in Cold War-era laws designed to restrict transfers of sensitive platforms in technology controls, and transfer large, conventional platforms in security cooperation and partner force development—has struggled to keep pace. Innovative, dual-use, and commercially derived technologies often stall in opaque export licensing processes or cannot move through Foreign Military Sales channels because they are not formal “programs of record” in the Pentagon’s acquisition system. The result is that partners either go without these tools or turn to foreign competitors, eroding US influence and market share.

Traditional US approaches to enhancing stability in the Indo-Pacific are not working. Despite more than a decade of expanded alliances, growing partner defense budgets, and rising US security cooperation investments, the frequency and intensity of Chinese harassment of smaller militaries in the region—from Taiwan to the Philippines—has only increased.

These incidents not only heighten the risk of escalation in contested waters, they also threaten to entangle US forces in crises that partners could manage on their own—with the help of emerging technologies and military innovation. To be sure, Washington has succeeded in deterring high-end conflict between the United States and China—the most high-risk outcome—but that success has not translated into reducing gray zone coercion or enabling partners to independently withstand Chinese pressure.

Emerging and commercial technologies like decentralized, cell phoneenabled communications networks, 3D printers, compact radio frequency sensors, commercial drones, and portable solar-powered battery packs all offer an opportunity to rethink the US approach to defense exports and strengthen partner deterrent power. History and academic research tell us that military actors having access to the right new technology at the right time can meaningfully close the power gap between a larger, high-end military and a smaller, more unconventional force.²

Take, for instance, an incident in March 2024, when two Chinese Coast Guard vessels fired water cannons at the Philippine supply boat Unaizah May 4, as it resupplied Filipino sailors stationed on board the BRP Sierra Madre, a Filipino ship marooned on the disputed land mass the United States government calls Second Thomas Shoal.³ The water cannon impact shattered the Unaizah May’s windshield and injured four Filipino Navy personnel, raising questions about whether the United States would intervene on behalf of this treaty ally.⁴

Imagine instead that the sailors on the stranded Sierra Madre had access to 3D printers to produce critical spare parts on-demand, autonomous aerial delivery systems to receive emergency supplies without requiring vulnerable surface resupply missions, and advanced lithium-ion portable battery systems that could extend their operational independence for weeks. Further imagine that the Philippine Navy had a network of commercial surveillance drones combined with existing satellite information to create a real-time picture of Chinese vessel movements around the Shoal, while AIpowered route planning software allowed Philippine Coast Guard forces to identify optimal timing and approaches for resupply missions, dramatically reducing the risk of confrontation. None of these tools is science fiction—in fact, the US government transferred a portion of them to the Armed Forces of the Philippines in late 2024.⁵ And when taken together—and employed effectively—they could be decisive.

Similarly, in September 2024, personnel from China’s Maritime Safety Administration boarded a Vietnamese fishing vessel in waters near the Paracel Islands and beat the crew with metal rods, injuringseven of the ten fishermen onboard, including giving three broken limbs.⁶ Contrast this with how the incident might have unfolded had Vietnam’s Coast Guard had autonomous surface vessels with passive maritime domain awareness sensors—such as electro/optical infrared cameras, AIS receivers, or radio-frequency sensors— that could patrol contested waters and identify suspicious Chinese vessels approaching Vietnamese fishing fleets. These unmanned patrol boats could have immediately alerted Vietnamese Coast Guard forces to respond, or been pre-programmed to converge on threatening vessels, creating a deterrent presence that would complicate Chinese boarding operations without requiring Vietnamese personnel to be physically present. The tools to enable this kind of alternate outcome exist today.

Finally, at the further end of this spectrum of conflict, take the possibility of a Chinese naval blockade of Taiwan—an approach that China has increasingly simulated as part of its coercive strategy, with large-scale air, naval, and missile exercises encircling the island since 2018. Most recently, in April 2025, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) staged a live “encirclement exercise” during the “Strait Thunder-2025A” exercise involving ships, aircraft, and rockets around Taiwan’s coast.⁷ In such scenarios, Taiwan’s heavy reliance on imported energy and the potential fragility of medical supply chains would pose critical resilience challenges.

Imagine instead that Taiwan expanded even further its investment in emerging technologies to address these weaknesses—deploying community-scale, solar-plus-battery microgrids with Internet of Things-based energy management and automated public alert systems for real-time energy adaptation. At the clinical edge, while scaling up synthetic blood production (including freeze-dried red cells with extended shelf life), Taiwan’s growing medical 3D-printing ecosystem could produce basic medical supplies directly at field hospitals. For food security, Taiwan could lean on its estabolished microalgae industry while exploring next-generation cellular-agriculture options as they mature. Together, these investments would enhance Taiwan’s ability to survive under blockade and maintain civilian resilience, raising the costs of Chinese coercive efforts and complicating their political objectives, all without escalating militarily or firing a single shot.

Of course, access to emerging technologies does not automatically increase military power or strengthen an armed force’s ability to deter potential aggressors.⁸ Doctrine, training, organizational adaptation—and in the case of foreign partner training, cultural alignment—all can matter enormously.⁹ But history shows that without access to new tools, innovation never has a chance to change facts on the ground. Ukraine, for example, did not invent First Person View (FPV) drones; but it rapidly adapted cheap, commercially available quadcopters and hobbyist racing drones into lethal strike systems, changing the tactical balance against a larger Russian military. Similarly, in the 2020 Nagorno- Karabakh conflict, the Azerbaijani military leveraged imported Turkish Bayraktar drones and loitering munitions to neutralize much of Armenia’s armor and artillery advantage, demonstrating how less conventionally capable militaries can leverage accessible technology to offset superior forces.

Thus, this paper argues that the United States should deliberately harness emerging and commercial technologies to empower Indo-Pacific partners—especially Taiwan and willing Southeast Asian nations—to more effectively manage Chinese military coercion and share the burden of deterrence. For the most part, traditional US security cooperation has focused on high-end platforms and US-style force development, which often leaves smaller, less capable militaries without the ability to credibly threaten a larger, more sophisticated aggressor. An “innovation-first” approach to security cooperation—or what might be described as a “lethal empowerment” model of defense exports¹⁰—would instead emphasize providing access to adaptable, commercially derived, and disruptive technologies. By doing so, Washington can empower partners to pursue their own bottom-up military innovations, complicating Chinese planning and strengthening deterrence, while reducing the burden over time on the United States. At a time when US government leaders are asking allies and partners in Asia to spend more on defense, and take on more of the burden of regional deterrence, understanding how to harness these lessons is especially important.¹¹

To understand why the US government approach to defense exports and security cooperation must change, it is essential to examine how both warfare and the economics of defense innovation are transforming across the globe.

For more than a decade, scholars and policy leaders have warned that what some call the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”—the convergence of digital, physical, and biological technologies such as artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, and robotics—would transform international politics and warfare.¹² In 2018 at the BRICs Summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping noted the importance of capturing the power of this next technical revolution, a sentiment that former US President Joe Biden echoed in his inaugural address, and current US President Donald Trump underscored in early executive orders on export controls and drone manufacturing.¹³ In 2019, Anduril executive and former defense policy staffer Christian Brose wrote in Foreign Affairs that AI software systems combined with low-cost commercial sensors would drive a new revolution in military affairs by making it far easier to find and target enemy forces. In 2020, Audrey Kurth Cronin gave a detailed treatise on the potential that the “worldwide dispersal” of emerging technologies have to lethally empower non-state actors in an ever-growing number of ways. In 2022, the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence declared widespread adoption of AI across warfighting functions is essential for ongoing US military superiority. And in 2024, Michael Horowitz outlined how low-cost, commercially available technologies and autonomous systems are combining to change the way war is fought.¹⁴

At its core, these developments are converging around major technology trends that are reshaping military competition between high-end and smaller militaries: artificial intelligence enhancements to battlefield decision making, the rise of effective and affordable commercially-developed technologies with defense applications, and the changing defense export industry as a result.

Emerging Role of AI-Enhanced Command and Control

The first major technology trend is the integration of artificial intelligence into battlefield decision making—what militaries call “command and control.”¹⁵ While AI is permeating all warfighting functions, it is the command and control transformation that defense leaders believe and technology demonstrations suggest will give the most decisive military advantage—to the forces that manage widespread adoption, which is most likely to be sophisticated militaries.¹⁶ In simple 8 terms, AI-enabled command and control means a system in which AI agents fuse information from many different sensors (satellites, radars, drones, ships, and more) in real-time, and then generate recommendations or targeting options for commanders at a speed and level of complexity that no human staff could match. This kind of network-centric command and control is not just a new weapon—it is a system of systems that coordinates entire forces faster and more effectively, enabling a military to detect, decide, and act in ways a human opponent cannot easily counter.

The real-world impact of AI-enhanced command and control is still speculative, and full realization of such a system is technically difficult to build and integrate into doctrine, but demonstrations show how transformative it could be. For example, in the US Defense Advanced Research Project’s Agency (DARPA) 2020 AlphaDogfight Trials, an AI pilot went undefeated in five rounds of simulated air-to-air combat with an experienced pilot.¹⁷ As Paul Scharre observed, “It didn’t just fly better than the human. It fought differently.” The trial—and many others like it—revealed that AI agents excel in command and control by combining “superior precision, speed, coordination, situational awareness, resource management, and risk-taking…The cumulative effect of these advantages in games is devastating to human opponents.”¹⁸

AI-enhanced command and control is a more networked version of those advantages, in which retired Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan wrote that “sequential combat is a relic of the past, replaced by parallel and simultaneous all-domain warfare that achieves the desired mission effects in time and space while generating maximum chaos, friction, and disorientation for the adversary.”¹⁹ Former US Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work recognized the centrality of AI-enabled command and control in his 2016 speech on the Third Offset strategy, and the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence similarly said in its 2021 report: “In the coming decades, the United States will win against technically sophisticated adversaries only if it accelerates adoption of AI-enabled sensors and systems for command and control, weapons, and logistics.”²⁰

The early seeds of this transformation are already visible in US programs. Project Maven, one of the US Department of Defense’s flagship AI programs that uses artificial intelligence to speed up the department’s ability to scan images and identify potential military targets, has nearly tripled the number of images an intelligence officer can approve in an hour—from thirty to eighty.²¹ Project Convergence, the United States Army’s AI-enabled command-and-control initiative, has similarly cut the time it takes to pass decision data to weapons crews from minutes to seconds.²² Challenges remain to the United States military fully developing AI-enabled command and control across the joint force; yet these exercise outcomes illustrate the potential battlefield advantage the technology offers.

The US military is, of course, not alone in pursuing AI-driven command and control. According to the Department of Defense’s 2024 China Military Power Report, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is prioritizing AI-enabled capabilities, including investments in vehicle autonomy, predictive maintenance, logistics optimization, and battlefield targeting.

Chinese strategists argue that AI will transform the very character of warfare, ushering in an era of “intelligentized” conflict defined by integrating AI across military functions, shaping battlefield decisions, and advancing human-machine teaming.²³ As Elsa Kania has documented, as early as 2016 the PLA’s Joint Staff Department urged commanders to exploit the “tremendous potential” of AI in operational command, planning, decision support, and simulation—making AI central to PLA modernization goals.²⁴ Xi Jinping reinforced this vision at the Twentieth Party Congress in October 2022, calling on China to “speed up the development of unmanned, intelligent combat capabilities.”

While publicly available evidence of how far the PLA has progressed in integrating AI into command and control remains limited, news reports indicate it is actively experimenting—for example, in 2023 the PLA reportedly used an AI system to improve artillery targeting accuracy.²⁵ Barriers remain to Beijing’s achieving fully integrated AI-driven command and control, but China clearly views it as a strategic priority and will continue to invest.

More effective command and control does not, of course, guarantee deterrence. Deterrence is about shaping adversary expectations by raising the perceived costs of aggression, and lowering its likelihood of success (defined as achieving leadership’s political objectives). Still, a key part of any deterrence equation is the credibility of the military capability behind political threats. Thus, the deterrent potential that AI-enabled command and control could offer is significant. For advanced militaries like the United States and China, it would underscore their ability to project power and potentially rapidly defeat a smaller or less capable adversary. For smaller militaries, AI-enabled fusion of disparate data sources is poised to aid responses to localized coercion incidents, but the complexity and cost of adopting autonomy across the battlefield decision-making process makes large-scale integration unlikely. This suggests that AI-enabled command and control could hold significant benefits for large and small militaries alike, but the higher the scope or scale of the incident or conflict, the more likely it is for that benefit to flow to the more advanced force.

Increasingly Affordable and Effective Dual-Use Technology

The second trend is in the rise and proliferation of effective and affordable commercially developed technologies with defense applications (sometimes dubbed “dual-use” technologies). While this second trend is not new—emerging technologies have empowered new actors since the invention of dynamite, and autonomous aircraft have existed in various forms since the final days of World War II—the increasing availability and breadth of such technologies are new.²⁶ That availability, combined with the falling costs of manufacturing, have made it increasingly possible for less advanced militaries to challenge larger, more high-end conventional forces.²⁷ Most famously, in 2022 early in the war in Ukraine, Ukrainian forces employed affordable, medium-sized Turkish Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to penetrate Russia’s vaunted air defenses and strike Russian ground targets through vulnerabilities Russian forces later closed.²⁸ Ukraine has also employed commercially-derived technology to great effect in other ways—to damage Russia’s renowned Baltic Sea naval fleet, to provide real-time intelligence to front-line soldiers, and to strike land targets in deeply electronically fortified areas.²⁹ While these innovations have not ended the war in Ukraine, they have given a glimmer of hope to other Davids who fear facing their Goliaths. In just one metric of the persuasive power of Ukraine’s successes, Bayraktar’s UAV export agreements went from thirteen in 2020 to more than thirty-five in 2025, including UAV purchase commitments with Indonesia and Malaysia.³⁰

Advanced and less-capable militaries alike have drawn lessons from Ukraine and begun to invest in low-cost, commercially available systems³¹; yet history suggests that the economics and organizational dynamics of such adoption often favor smaller, more adaptive forces. While the People’s Liberation Army and associated forces boast large numbers of relatively inexpensive platforms—from missile inventories to paramilitary vessels—there is little evidence that they have leveraged new waves of low-cost, commercially available emerging technologies as effectively as smaller militaries.³² Further, the forces primarily responsible for gray zone coercion— the People’s Armed Force Maritime Militia and the China Coast Guard—though numerous, remain focused on physical presence and harassment tactics rather than integrating commercial drones, unmanned surface vessels, or other improvised systems in innovative ways.³³ While no smaller military can hope to offset China’s numerical advantage, they can seize asymmetric opportunities— deploying swarms of inexpensive loitering munitions, maritime unmanned surface vehicles, or improvised satellite constellations—in ways a more conventional and hierarchical PLA focused on presence is less likely to attempt. In this way, the accelerating spread of dual-use technology shifts the balance of advantage: favoring not those with the largest arsenals, but those most willing to adapt quickly and fight differently.

Rising Commercial Competition in Defense Exports

While emerging and commercial technologies are creating potential shifts in military power dynamics, the global defense ecosystem is shifting in ways that mean the United States no longer has a monopoly on the development and export of “dual-use” technologies. Traditional and non-traditional US defense companies are facing rising 12 competition globally, meaning that if the United States does not harness emerging and commercial technologies as a part of the strategy to build partner forces and deter conflict, others will—and the results from non-US firms or governments sharing new technologies with Indo-Pacific partners may not be aligned with US national security or economic interests.

Over the past two decades, countries such as South Korea, Turkey, France, and Italy have become major exporters of advanced platforms. In the past five years, governments in Europe and Asia have made slower but concerted investments to ensure their domestic defense sectors also cultivate emerging technologies to drive next-generation capabilities. In 2023, NATO launched the first multinational Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA), and in the past year, individual NATO members have expanded investments in emerging technology acquisition, such as the United Kingdom committing more than $5 billion to acquire autonomous systems, launching a novel acquisition approach to test and field an AI-enabled command and control system, and building a new task force to rapidly integrate commercial technology into its military.³⁴ In 2023, Australia established the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA) and Japan created the Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Agency’s Innovation Design Office the same year, all with the goal of bridging early-stage technology into defense applications.

While the investment dollars remain modest compared with US public and private investments, there are proof points to suggest Europe and Asia will build more defense tech startups over time: In Germany, Helsing has emerged as a leading AIenabled defense company, exporting to Estonia and Ukraine with ambitions in Asian markets; and in Ukraine, wartime necessity has spurred a dynamic defense startup ecosystem, with unmanned aerial systems at the center and growing export links to partners such as Taiwan. Taiwan is also domestically producing a growing number of commercial drones domestically with foreign partners. Over time, these new defense-focused technology firms are likely to fuel more competitive alternatives to US technologies, reducing Washington’s ability to shape how allies and partners employ emerging and commercial technologies if the United States does not move decisively to lead now.

Despite the potential that new technologies offer for partner-led deterrence in Asia, partners are often not able to access them. Often, technologies like low-cost commercially available drones, 3D printers,or AI-enabled operational planning software are not available to allies and partners—not because the technology is so sensitive or expensive that it can’t be transferred, but because the US defense export system is not set up for it.³⁵

There are two primary pathways for US companies to export defense articles and services to foreign governments: direct commercial sales (DCS) and government-to-government transfers, commonly referred to as Foreign Military Sales (FMS). DCS transactions often require export licenses, depending on the sensitivity of the item. If the US government interagency designates an item as a “defense article or service” it is listed on the US Munitions List (USML) and subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls oversees. If the item is not on the USML but is considered a “dual-use” or sensitive commercial technology, it is listed on the Commerce Control List (CCL) and subject the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), which the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security administers. In practice, this bifurcated system governs whether technologies are controlled as arms, dual-use, or commercial items—and thereby shapes how, or whether, they can be shared with allies and partners.

This system has its statutory foundations in the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, further codified in the 1976 Arms Export Control Act, and most recently updated through the 2018 Export Control Reform Act. While successive administrations have launched reform efforts—including a comprehensive review and tiering of the USML under President Barack Obama, an interagency initiative to accelerate FMS timelines under President Biden, and new FMS modernization directives under President Trump’s second term—none of these efforts has fully addressed the structural barriers that often keep novel dual-use commercial technologies from moving through US export channels.

The architecture of the US defense export system still reflects its Cold War origins. At the time of its creation, the United States and the Soviet Union dominated the global arms trade, and US 14 government investment accounted for as much as 69 percent of global research and development spending.³⁶ The system was deliberately designed to prevent unauthorized transfers of US military technology while facilitating sales of traditional weapons platforms to allies.³⁷ As a result, the institutional default has long been to restrict access unless explicitly approved.

That approach proved effective for legacy systems such as tanks, fighter aircraft, or air defense platforms. But it has failed to keep pace with today’s innovation ecosystem, where many militarily relevant technologies—AI-enabled software, commercial drones, and additive manufacturing tools—are born in the commercial sector. These technologies often stall in export review processes not because of their inherent sensitivity, but because the governing structures and institutional culture were not designed to accommodate the scale, speed, and ubiquity of commercially developed emerging technologies.

Compounding this challenge are structural and political barriers inhibiting fully addressing these challenges—from bureaucratic inertia within the executive branch, to political incentives in Congress, to incumbent privileges within industry, to real concerns about incidents of leaked sensitive information, to the challenging realities of trying to build a regulatory process that keeps up-to-date with rapidly evolving technology. In particular, the Department of Defense’s acquisition processes, combined with cultural norms among the security cooperation community, are not designed to bring new technologies into the security cooperation system in particular.³⁸ Pending legislative reforms toacquisition may offer partial relief, but without specific attention to a number of barriers specific to the FMS system, they risk worsening delays rather than fixing them.³⁹

Taken together, these institutional hurdles mean that even as new technologies become central to partner-led deterrence in Asia, US allies and partners often remain unable to access them through either FMS or DCS channels.

Among the challenges those reviews have highlighted, three major barriers stand out to implementing an updated approach suited to our contemporary strategic environment: procedural bias against commercial innovation, opaque and outdated export controls, and systemic delays that prevent strategic agility while eroding market position.

Procedural Bias Against Commercial Innovation

First, the US acquisition and security cooperation systems have historically been biased against innovative and commercially derived defense technologies in favor of “programs of record,” which are established platforms or capabilities that the Department of Defense has budgeted to buy over many years, and have passed key testing and acquisition milestones.⁴⁰ By definition, innovative defense technologies are often not yet programs of record—in other words, they are not a part of the traditional US government acquisition machinery that is the backbone of the current US foreign military sales process. That process establishes safety, production, and sustainment standards that a defense system must meet for a partner to be able to purchase them, and that makes it easy for a US government official to approve a foreign sale. As a result, a partner interested in buying an unmanned aerial system through the US FMS system often ends up buying a system that is on the order of eight to nine times more expensive than equivalent commercial technology, and often less capable.⁴¹ While the proposed legislative reforms to shift to a capabilities-based approach to acquisition may help with time, the impact of the reforms on emerging technologies in the US security cooperation system remains unclear. Further, while there are valid reasons that US government leaders may be wary of providing non-programs of record to foreign partners—such as rigorous testing and evaluation, an enduring sustainment tail—there are mitigations available that would enable more innovative technologies to move through the system while mitigating risk.

Opaque and Outdated Export Controls

Second, partners seeking to buy commercial technology often face an opaque and dated export licensing and technology transfer process, particularly for items controlled under ITAR as opposed to dual-use items subject to the EAR. The US government’s broad, disparate, and at times blunt approach to the exportability of defense technology erodes US competitiveness and ability to shape partner decisions. From the Technology Security and Foreign Disclosure process with its thirteen “pipes” governing technology release decisions, to decisions being described to applicants as “returned without action” (and with little explanation), the US government decision-making process around technology transfer and export licensing is opaque enough to scare off most would-be exporters.

Indeed, experts consulted for this paper were aware of numerous technology transfer requests that were denied, only to later see that denial overturned due to internal advocacy within the US government. The mercurial nature of the process has led officials to default to “no” positions to avoid diplomatic fallout, and companies often design systems specifically to avoid ITAR control, given the commercial risks of navigating an unpredictable process. In Ukraine, for example, a multitude of anecdotal evidence suggests that US-partnered commercial firms operated outside traditional licensing pathways under emergency conditions to get technology into the hands of warfighters quickly—a model one cannot assume will be repeated in other theaters.⁴² Neither companies nor foreign partners have enough information about how to adapt their technology, or their technology control processes, to make changes that would make this system more accessible, much less predictable.

Systemic Delays Preventing Strategic Agility—and Eroding Market Position

Finally, ongoing delays across the entire defense export system make the United States a less attractive partner and contribute to increasingly capable foreign defense competitors beating out US firms. France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Italy all have outcompeted the United States in several key defense sales in the past four years.⁴³ In late 2024, the Italian, British, and Japanese governments agreed to jointly produce a sixth-generation fighter jet without involving US companies, while Thailand chose the Swedish-made Gripen fighter jet over US alternatives. While these decisions were certainly driven by political considerations alongside economic factors, they illustrate the rising competition in the global defense industry that delays in the FMS system only exacerbate.

The Choice: Lethal Empowerment or Strategic Decline

When taken together, these forces could drive Indo-Pacific stability in one of two dramatically different directions. If Washington continues with the current defense export system—favoring transferring large, conventional (and expensive) platforms, even for less-capable military partners—in the near term, the current trends are likely to widen the gap between China and emerging regional defense powers. For example, partners like the Philippines and Vietnam, which already struggle to counter gray zone coercion at sea, will find it even harder to credibly threaten Beijing with military action in response to aggression. Taiwan, facing growing pressure from PLA exercises encircling the island, similarly requires more adaptable and affordable tools than traditional platforms alone can provide.

In the absence of reform, these less-conventionally-capable partners will be forced to rely even more heavily on the United States for security, rather than building independent deterrent capacity. Over time, the growing number of defense technology startups in Europe and Asia—from companies like Helsing in Germany to the wartime-driven ecosystem in Ukraine—are likely to fill some of this gap in defense commercial technology sales to governments in Asia. While such sales may provide Indo-Pacific partners with parts of the commercial tech capability they need to restore stability, they would simultaneously reduce US influence and market share in the region. In 18 essence, failure to reform the US defense export system will not only undermine Washington’s push for allies to take on more military responsibility, it could also erode the US defense innovation base.

If, instead, the United States and regional allies and partners take a lethal empowerment approach to defense exports—by prioritizing innovative, affordable, commercially available technologies for partners facing an asymmetric security threat, or “innovative defense technologies”—it could empower emerging defense powers across the region to truly share the burden of deterring conflict with China. To be fully effective, the approach must be paired with parallel reforms to security cooperation planning and partner training.⁴⁴ However, without a lethal empowerment approach, none of those reforms will achieve their intended goals. At best, this approach could enable partners to compensate for PLA technological and numerical advantage by making decision-makers in Beijing uncertain about the size and skill of militaries it may face in a fight. At a minimum, they would allow partners to close the widening gap with the PLA that is driving instability. While commercial drones, 3D printers, portable radio-frequency sensors, and mesh communication networks alone will not change the military balance in Asia, without them, emerging defense powers in the region won’t have a fighting chance.

The US government has nascent and ongoing efforts to channel novel technologies to US allies and partners in Asia, through the Maritime Security Consortium and increasingly through the Taiwan Security. Cooperation Initiative. While those efforts do not address the structural barriers outlined above, the near-term results do show the potential such technologies can offer when employed correctly.

These case studies illustrate the current and potential impact of emerging technologies on partner-led deterrence in Asia.

INFORMATION OPERATIONS

In the run-up to Taiwan’s 2024 presidential election, Chinese influence campaigns once again surged online. This time, outside researchers were better equipped to track them. Graphika, a USbased, AI-driven social media intelligence firm, used advanced network analysis to sift through social media content in Mandarin and flag patterns of coordinated inauthentic behavior. In late 2023, the group reported uncovering more than 800 fake Facebook profiles, along with associated pages and accounts, that amplified Chinese-language videos and memes about Taiwanese politics.⁴⁵ Local media coverage of the findings heightened public awareness of Beijing’s tactics, and many of the accounts were quickly removed by platforms.⁴⁶ The episode underscored how data-driven analytics can help spotlight foreign interference attempts— giving smaller democracies new tools to push back against disinformation campaigns that have long relied on speed and volume.⁴⁷

MARITIME DOMAIN AWARENESS

In 2023, the US government quietly began sharing HawkEye360 radio-frequency (RF) data with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand. For the first time, their maritime forces could see “dark” ships— vessels that had turned off their AIS transponders while moving through territorial waters. While partner capacity to leverage these new sources of information remains a work in progress, these feeds created a sharper picture of illegal fishing and smuggling operations across the South China Sea. They offer even greater potential when combined with commercial electro-optical imagery and advanced analytic tools.

That same year, the Philippines Navy received an undisclosed number of unmanned surface vessels (USVs) from the United States. Unlike manned patrol craft, these commercial USVs could remain at sea for weeks, moving at speeds more than double that of traditional patrol boats while operating at a fraction of the cost. By late 2024, the Philippine Navy reportedly built an unmanned surface vessel unit to operate in the South China Sea and monitor Chinese activity in contested waters.⁴⁸ Together and with training, satellite RF data and persistent unmanned patrols gave Manila new eyes on contested waters—shifting the balance from sporadic visibility to near-continuous awareness.

READINESS

In readiness, commercially available advanced analytic software offers enormous potential to close skills gaps and speed up training cycles. These platforms leverage artificial intelligence to automatically create connections across forms of intelligence information—a process that would typically require years of training on intelligence tradecraft to allow an analyst to present options to a commander.⁴⁹ Virtual reality training software offers mobile training simulators that can augment US foreign partner training, while artificial intelligence and machine learning platforms could identify PLA patterns and rapidly develop new concepts of operation to evade People’s Republic of China harassment and introduce strategic uncertainty in ways that would have required far more sophisticated planning.⁵⁰

LOGISTICS AND SUSTAINMENT

In sustainment, the convergence of additive manufacturing and modular clean energy solutions is transforming military logistics in austere environments. Deployable 3D printing capabilities now enable forces to fabricate critical components—such as vehicle parts and medical equipment—on site, significantly reducing reliance on extended supply chains. For example, Taiwan has partnered with US aerospace firm RapidFlight to develop a 3D-printed drone fleet, leveraging additive manufacturing to produce unmanned aerial vehicles more efficiently and cost-effectively.⁵¹ In parallel, modular clean energy systems are increasingly viable for sustaining operations in off-grid environments. US companies like Deployed Logix offer modular solar solutions designed for rapid deployment in remote and challenging environments—with the potential to allow partner forces to maintain electricity for command posts, radar systems, or communications equipment without relying on vulnerable fuel convoys or infrastructure that is fragile or non-existent.

The United States must fundamentally reorient its defense export approach from a Cold War-era system—designed to control technology transfer—to one that strategically shares commercial innovation with trusted allies and partners. This shift requires moving beyond traditional government-to-government sales toward empowering direct commercial partnerships, while simultaneously creating new pathways for the US government to validate and transfer cutting-edge technologies that may not be a part of the formal US acquisition system, or established programs of record. It also requires developing mechanisms to ensure US technology transfer processes keep pace with the current state of technology, while maintaining appropriate security safeguards. Success will require not just policy changes, but fundamental cultural and structural reforms across the defense export enterprise to match the speed and agility of America’s commercial technology sector—and the evolution of America’s adversaries.

Pillar 1: Democratize direct commercial sales and licensing—empower more companies to sell directly to foreign partners through streamlined technology transfer and export license processes.

Where possible, US innovative defense technologies should be sold directly to foreign governments—through direct commercial sales—which is often the most efficient sales pathway for companies, and the most efficient way for the US government to advance American interests with the least effort. Yet too often, US companies are wary of selling to foreign partners directly, as the opaque export licensing processes create concerns that those sales could harm business with their primary customer—the US Department of Defense. The following reforms would help modify that culture and empower US innovators to better support US national security and economic interests. Policymakers should:

• Require time-bound reviews of the two primary export control regimes governing foreign sales of US defense and dual-use technologies—the USML and the Commerce Control List (CCL)—to ensure they remain aligned with technological advances. Explore AI/ML driven solutions to ease the personnel burden, while dedicating additional staff to both licensing and updating the lists.
• Establish standards for partner nation technology transfer assessments to ensure adequate technical capabilities and security protocols, and transparent metrics for partners to make modifications to meet US requirements.
• Provide explanations to industry about technology transfer decisions—where classification rules allow—including guidance on product modifications that would increase the likelihood of exportability when an export license is denied.
• Dedicate additional funding for the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) in fiscal year 2026 and beyond toward additional personnel and software acquisition funding to support more regular updates to the Commerce Control List and more rapid licensing decisions, while also increasing funds for the Department of State’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) for similar purposes.
• Expand software and personnel resources for the Department of State’s and Department of Justice’s export violation monitoring programs, to ensure sufficient oversight of a greater volume of commercial technology exports.⁵²
• Pillar 1 and Pillar 2: Create transparent, consistent, and enforceable standards under the Technology Security and Foreign Disclosure architecture that would be implemented across the Department of Defense and the military departments.

Pillar 2: Systematically bring emerging technologies into US foreign military sales—drive defense innovation cultures with allies and partners by creating formal channels for the US government to transfer innovative technologies—or non-programs of record—to foreign governments.

The United States also needs channels to support partners in buying commercial, innovative technologies—these pathways can help build partner buy-in for new capabilities, enable them to acquire capabilities they could not otherwise afford, or give the partner assurances about the reliability of the system. The policy changes below would create a clear pathway for commercial technology firms to sell through these channels, while managing the risks. Policymakers should:

• Build on successes of existing security cooperation roadmaps with allies and partners across the Indo-Pacific by systematically developing roadmaps that incorporate commercial technology solutions.
• Create a dedicated office in each military department dedicated to non-program of record Foreign Military Sales, with an emphasis on innovative defense technologies.⁵³
• Establish a dedicated pathway whereby non-programs of record can be vetted through the core elements of the program of record process—requirements validation, developmental and operational testing, production and sustainment readiness, and contracting—but in a 23 scaled, faster format. The process could be funded through fees in the FMS process and managed by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), in coordination with the Services or the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).
• One model would be for DSCA to work with DIU to run a Commercial Solutions Offering (CSO) tailored for allies and partners, allowing non-programs of record to demonstrate mission applicability, undergo limited evaluation and production readiness checks, and begin a pathway to government-to-government transfer.

Pillar 3: Build innovation-focused export infrastructure—build on individual pockets of excellence within the US defense export and security cooperation communities by establishing cultural norms and personnel structures that foster defense export innovation.

A consistent theme throughout Foreign Military Sales and defense acquisition reforms reviews is the challenge of personnel and culture to efficiency in the defense export system. As the US government takes on defense acquisition reform, ensuring cultural reforms focused on innovation and urgency also permeate the foreign military sales enterprise—and that the structures and personnel exist to staff foreign defense sales—are both critical. Policymakers should:

• Incentivize US security cooperation officers to engage regularly with non-traditional defense firms.
• Create a cadre of FMS-focused contracting personnel, who are trained in and authorized to employ standard Department of Defense acquisition processes, as well as more rapidly acquisition authorities, such as Other Transaction Authorities.⁵⁴
• Build on the hearing on FMS reform that the Senate Armed Services Committee held in May 2025, with one public hearing per year from each committee of jurisdiction, to shine a spotlight on progress.
• Expand support for rapid temporary export licensing mechanisms for technology demonstrations, to expand foreign partners’ exposure to emerging technologies and buy-in across foreign institutions.

About the Author

This report and its findings are the sole responsibility of the author. Cover illustration by Leah Weingartner.

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