Program Summary
The Department of Defense (DoD) has a critical need to secure its sources of materiel against both intentional—including adversarial—and unintentional disruptions. Extensive global networks of private-sector vendors, commonly called “supply chains,” collaborate to provide these key resources, including precursor components and materials. The Resilient Supply-and-Demand Networks (RSDN) program adopts the phrase “supply-and-demand network” (SDN) in lieu of “supply chain” to emphasize that the strategic challenges are more extensive than the logistic challenges of delivering (“supplying”) materiel.
SDNs are open, complex, evolving systems whose dynamics reflect the impact of both external factors (e.g., conflict, climate change) and internal behaviors (e.g., inventory management). These factors are often driven by the locally focused decisions of SDN participants themselves. The economic forces of globalization have historically emphasized SDN efficiency (cost and timeliness) over SDN resilience (response to shocks). SDN resilience is a characteristic of the SDN system as a whole. Resilience enhancements, therefore, require coordinated action among SDN participants, who may individually lack the incentive and discretion to undertake this complex process.
SDNs are potential sources of strategic surprise for the DoD. Surprise in the context of SDNs is rarely beneficial. Key underlying sources of SDN surprise are:
- Imperfect knowledge of the current structure of the SDN itself;
- Difficulty in predicting different kinds of shocks from the wide landscape of threats and vulnerabilities; and,
- Difficulty in predicting changes in the SDN due to endogenous behavioral shifts, which can be amplified abruptly and dramatically through feedback effects.
To expose and mitigate these sources of surprise, RSDN will develop novel information resources and practical analytical tools, including:
- Granular, up-to-date maps of SDNs, identifying individual providers (network nodes) and their specific trading relationships with each other (network edges);
- Augmentation of the basic network maps with detailed organizational features describing the nodes and detailed descriptions of the procurement relationships governing the edges;
- A broad and extensible set of analytical tools for exploring fragilities (threats and vulnerabilities) in SDNs; and,
- Techniques for stress testing SDNs by specifying and simulating their responses to exogenous shocks and endogenous feedback.
Additional information is available in the RSDN BAA.