Food Security is National Security
Building national resilience through what Americans eat
What We’re Proposing
The U.S. national security establishment has spent years building the case that food security is a matter of national security. Yet it has done so almost entirely from one side of the equation: Stockpiles, biosecurity, trade, critical infrastructure.
No part of the federal government currently treats what Americans eat as a lever of that same resilience. Producing protein exclusively through animals requires far more land, water, and input per calorie than producing more of it directly from plants - the same inefficiency that leaves a food system over-reliant on animal proteins more exposed to shocks like geopolitical conflict, avian flu, climate disruption, and supply chain fragility.
We are working to secure the inclusion of demand-side resilience language in at least one of four live federal mechanisms: The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the National Security Strategy, a National Security Memorandum, or a 2027 amendment to the Farm, Food, and National Security Act.
The Precedent
When Washington decides an ordinary problem is actually a security problem, it moves billions of dollars and vast resources fast. A National Intelligence Estimate named HIV/AIDS a security threat in 2000; the result was PEPFAR - over $100 billion invested, an estimated 25 million lives saved.
Bioterrorism became Project BioShield: Result, $5.6 billion. Semiconductor dependence became the CHIPS Act: Result, $52.7 billion. These campaigns achieved public and bipartisan support, because all Americans can come together over the resilience of our nation.
The resilience of our food systems hasn't had that moment yet. We’re going to give it that moment. What Americans eat is a matter of national security.
Our Campaign
GIE Foundation exists to study how democratic institutions absorb the shocks of a faster and more unstable century - including systemic stresses, like on our food systems.
We are building the research case for and targeting a specific, defensible policy insertion into documents, programs, and bills that already exist and are already being written.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The federal government's official advice on what to eat - the document that legally sets the nutrition standards behind school lunches, WIC food packages, and SNAP benefit calculations for tens of millions of Americans. Updating it to favor more resilient protein sources would shift what an entire country is told, and in many cases given, to eat.
The National Security Strategy. The President's own yearly public statement of what threatens the country and what the government intends to do about it. Naming diet in it would put food choices on the same footing as energy security and cyber defense.
A National Security Presidential Memorandum. A formal presidential directive telling federal agencies exactly what to do about a specific threat. Extending the existing one on food to cover diet, not just supply chains, would turn this idea into an actual government mandate.
The Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026. This is the live federal bill that already links food to national security by name, and already creates a new incentive at the checkout counter for SNAP shoppers who buy a specific protein type - our work is to see more resilient protein sources added to that same incentive, written into the statute itself, which takes another act of Congress to undo make this as a matter of law.