Voice to Congress

Problems - National Security

The U.S. buys enormous military power, but it still underdelivers on resilience, efficiency, and homeland security fundamentals.

Why the U.S. Pays More and Gets Less in National Security

The United States does not get "less" because it lacks money. It gets less because too much spending is concentrated in expensive military power, while too little is converted into resilient national systems, fast acquisition, secure supply chains, hardened infrastructure, and durable public trust. That is an inference from the current evidence, not a claim that the U.S. is weak overall. The U.S. remains the world's dominant military power, but its returns are uneven across the full national security picture.

1. The U.S. spends vastly more than anyone else. SIPRI estimates U.S. military expenditure at $997 billion in 2024, about 37% of world military spending, 3.2 times China's, and 66% of all NATO spending. That gives the U.S. unmatched global military reach.
2. But money is not converting into speed and efficiency. GAO reported in 2025 that DoD plans to invest nearly $2.4 trillion in 106 of its costliest weapon programs, yet the expected time to deliver even an initial capability has stretched to almost 12 years from program start. GAO's conclusion was blunt: these timelines are "incompatible with meeting emerging threats."
3. The Pentagon still struggles with basic financial accountability. DoD completed its eighth annual full-scope department-wide financial audit for FY2025 and again received a disclaimer of opinion, meaning auditors could not obtain sufficient evidence to support an opinion on the department-wide financial statements. DoD continues to target a clean audit opinion by 2028.
4. National security is bigger than the military, and the U.S. still has major resilience investment gaps. CISA identifies 16 critical infrastructure sectors as vital to national security and daily life. Yet ASCE's 2025 Report Card still gave U.S. infrastructure only a C, said nine of 18 categories remain in the D range, and estimated a $3.7 trillion gap between planned investment and what is needed. In other words, even after major spending, the country's operating systems remain only middling.
5. The homeland remains highly exposed to cyberattack. The FBI said ransomware was again the most pervasive threat to critical infrastructure in 2024, with complaints rising 9% from 2023. CISA's 2025 year-in-review says it blocked 2.62 billion malicious connections on federal civilian networks and 371 million within critical infrastructure environments. Those numbers show the scale of defensive activity required to protect federal and critical-infrastructure networks.
6. The U.S. still depends on foreign supply chains in key security sectors. The White House stated in January 2026 that U.S. semiconductor capacity is insufficient to meet domestic demand, leaving the country dependent on foreign sources. A separate January 2026 White House action said the U.S. is too reliant on foreign sources of processed critical minerals and called that reliance a significant national security vulnerability. When essential inputs come from abroad, large defense budgets buy less real security than they appear to on paper.
7. Public trust is part of national security, and it is weak. Pew reports that trust in the federal government remains one of the lowest levels in nearly seven decades. A country can spend enormous sums on weapons and still be strategically brittle if its citizens have low trust in institutions and its society is easier to divide, manipulate, or paralyze.

The Real Problem

The U.S. security model is still heavily optimized for global power projection, but modern national security also depends on:

• fast procurement
• secure domestic production
• resilient infrastructure
• cyber defense
• institutional trust
• whole-of-society readiness.

The evidence suggests the U.S. is excellent at buying scale, but less effective at turning that scale into efficient, resilient, integrated security at home.

Bottom Line: America pays more for national security because it funds the world’s largest military. It gets less than it should because too many security dollars are slowed or diluted by long acquisition timelines, weak financial accountability, infrastructure gaps, cyber exposure, foreign supply-chain dependence, and domestic fragmentation.

What You Can Do