Medical Supply Chains and National Security: Manufacturing the Future  

For decades, the United States benefited from medical supply chains optimized for efficiency and low cost. That model concentrated much critical manufacturing capacity overseas—from sterile injectables and key pharmaceutical starting materials to device components—leaving patients exposed to geopolitical disruption, quality failures, and shortages. But no country makes everything, and full onshoring is neither realistic nor the goal. The challenge is to build a resilient and competitive system comprising targeted domestic capacity, trusted allied production, diversified sourcing, and advanced technologies, including AI. This session will examine how we can design such a system for the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors, and explore where they diverge in their understanding of what resilience requires—and who, they think, should pay for it.