That implodes domestic supply-chains and cracks the DIB (Defense Industrial Base)
Mitha ’23 [Farooq; international policy and national security. Mitha has published opinion-editorials offering commentary on issues concerning the Middle East and the American political system; “Small businesses are key to national defense,” The Hill, 2/7/23, https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/3847967-small-businesses-are-key-to-national-defense/, wally]
Small businesses make up 99.9 percent of all businesses in the U.S. and more than half of all American employees work for a small business. They’re a critical contributor to our national security: last year alone the Department of Defense spent $83 billion on small business prime contracts and nearly 25 percent of DoD’s prime contracts go to small businesses.
Sounds like a great success story, however despite their immense value, the number of small businesses in the U.S. Defense Industrial Base has declined by 40 percent in the last decade. That’s both an economic and national security risk for our nation as we seek to strengthen our domestic supply chains, increase competition, and reduce dependency on single and foreign sources of supply.
This trend has several causes, but one of them is that working with DoD as a smaller firm isn’t always easy. Small businesses don’t have the same resources that larger firms do to help comply with DoD regulations and practices, which can discourage them from wanting to work with us. Also, there are so many points of entry into our marketplace that small businesses often don’t know where to start.