Your award-winning DAU team has launched a new online course--ACQ 3200 Foreign Investment and National Security, an approximately six-hour course on adversarial capital in the defense industrial base (DIB).  Our DAU team closely collaborated and coordinated with Global Investment and Economic Security (GIES) and the Navy Foreign Investment Review teams, with significant input and assistance from throughout the Department of Defense.  GIES is a Directorate in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Industrial Base Policy. 

Foreign direct investment in the US averages between $200-300 billion a year, and while most foreign direct investment is beneficial, near-peer adversaries are using economic levers to compete and impost costs on the United States and its national security.  While Great Power Competition with near-peer competitors is the defining posture of this decade, adversaries are using a mix of economic and political warfare strategies to weaken the United States and our allies. By understanding the nature of these threats, our national security enterprise will be in a better position to implement risk mitigation strategies in their everyday work to safeguard national security priority programs.

The acquisition community-targeted training course covers risks of adversarial capital within the defense industrial base and possible mitigation steps.  The course will educate the national security enterprise on the risks of foreign investment and the disruptive nature of adversarial capital to defense supply chains, real estate transactions, and the defense industrial base. 

Foreign investment is not inherently bad.  However, adversarial foreign involvement with DIB companies, universities, and other U.S. entities has led to the theft of technical information not only of weapons and other defense systems but other critical and dual-use technologies. The course explains the purpose and role of the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), including jurisdiction, real estate coverage, and its national security focus. The course addresses applicable statutory and regulatory governance for acquisition professionals to analyze potential foreign involvement in DIB and the state of DoD’s supply chains.

The full course is available on DAU at: https://icatalog.dau.edu/onlinecatalog/courses.aspx?crs_id=12836