Building Medical Supply Chain Resilience through a U.S. Manufacturing Reserve and Digital Stockpile
Summary
To prevent another medical supply chain breakdown like the one experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Government must create an emergency response plan to activate domestic, local medical supply manufacturing. A national network of small-to-mid-size manufacturers and prototyping labs — a U.S. Prototyping and Manufacturing Reserve — should be formalized and incentivized to act as first responders for emergency innovation and medical supply manufacturing needs.
To properly equip the Reserve, the Federal Government should build a comprehensive library of open source medical and emergency supply “blueprints” — a U.S. Digital Stockpile — that consists of manufacturing requirements to enable distributed local emergency production. Combined, these new national security resources will facilitate rapid local response to both regional disasters and international supply chain disruptions.
From use to testing to deployment, the scaffolding for responsible integration of AI into high-risk use cases is just not there.
The Federation of American Scientists supports Congress’ ongoing bipartisan efforts to strengthen U.S. leadership with respect to outer space activities.
By preparing credible, bipartisan options now, before the bill becomes law, we can give the Administration a plan that is ready to implement rather than another study that gathers dust.
Even as companies and countries race to adopt AI, the U.S. lacks the capacity to fully characterize the behavior and risks of AI systems and ensure leadership across the AI stack. This gap has direct consequences for Commerce’s core missions.