Recently, the Deloitte Center for Government Insights released an important report that tackled a critical issue on public-private partnerships. Given today’s global threats and competition from America’s rivals, it is time that we up our game and ensure we can deliver public-private partnerships at scale.

The report, “High-stake collaboration: The private sector’s influence on great power competition,” is a thoughtful piece that identifies what’s working and what’s not when it comes to public private partnerships. The 21^st century struggle for global dominance is ultimately an influence game. All countries, but especially the great powers, are working to optimize and leverage their strongest attributes – DIME-FIL (Diplomatic, Informational, Military, Economic, Financial, Intelligence, Law enforcement) alongside leadership expertise in government and private industry – to influence other countries to collaborate and help them achieve higher levels of national security than they otherwise could. Deloitte argues that today’s great power competition has made partnerships between the U.S. government and the private sector even more critical to winning the geostrategic competition of the 21^st century.

The Deloitte article emphasizes the importance of public-private collaboration, both passive and active, in strengthening U.S. national security. Some of the best resonating points from the article include:

• U.S. Public and Private Interests are Intertwined: Geopolitical competition is not just about military might but rather deploying the full range of a nation’s power to achieve national security goals. From the White House and Congress to corporate board rooms and small business offices, there is clear awareness that global competition is on an upswing.
• Challenges to Collaboration Must be Addressed Head-On: Barriers to knowledge, risk aversion, resource constraints, and misaligned incentives make it hard for the public and private sectors to work together to achieve U.S. national security goals. The Deloitte report wisely identifies specific mechanisms to enhance both active and passive collaboration between the public and private sectors.
• The Implications are Big and Broad: This is not just about achieving short-term successes. It is about maximizing long-term U.S. competitiveness. If better public-private sector collaboration is achieved, it creates a big strategic win for the U.S.

The Deloitte article offers some specific recommendations for enhancing collaboration. U.S. companies are a key enabler of U.S. national security, based on their central role in enabling U.S. national economic security. Greater awareness of this fact can guide U.S. Government officials towards foreign affairs policy approaches that leverage, rather than counter, the capabilities of the U.S. private sector towards common geostrategic goals.

This report is particularly of interest in light of U.S. Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC) Global Economic Hub, which will soon release a report that deepens the understanding that economic security is national security. The hub has been conducting research that illustrates the risks to U.S. national security if America does not show up in the world to deploy its full economic toolkit. We have seen over and over again how U.S. adversaries are leveraging economic tools to counter U.S. influence throughout the world. The report will identify approaches that U.S. policymakers can use to strengthen our nation’s international economic advantage in collaboration with the U.S. private sector.