Chapter 15
Organizing Power
Elizabeth Kunce and Elsa Kania
“Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act
but to act in concert.”
—Hannah Arendt
On Violence (1970)
Introduction: Organizing Power Under Pressure
In an era defined by great-power competition, rapid technological transformation, and persistent societal disruption, national power cannot be measured solely by military capability or technological innovation. A decisive variable is the speed, legitimacy, and coherence with which states organize whole-of-society resilience and civil-military integration under pressure. From this perspective, resilience must therefore be understood not as the capacity to recover from shock, but as a form of governance under sustained strain—one that aligns government, the military, the private sector, and civil society while preserving public trust and democratic legitimacy.
This chapter advances three core claims. First, resilience has become a central determinant of strategic advantage under conditions of persistent competition short of war. Second, the United States and the People’s Republic of China pursue fundamentally different models of civil-military and societal integration, with distinct implications for legitimacy, adaptability, mobilization capacity, and escalation control. Third, multinational technology corporations now occupy a structural position within national security ecosystems that existing governance frameworks are ill-equipped to manage, which creates challenges and opportunities for new forms of partnership.
Through a comparative analysis of democratic coordination in the United States and military-civil fusion within China’s authoritarian innovation ecosystem, the chapter situates contemporary U.S. initiatives, such as the 2025 Genesis Mission, within a longer American tradition of civil–military–industrial mobilization. We conclude with policy-relevant recommendations for institutionalizing democratic resilience as a core national security function, arguing that technological capability alone is insufficient without the institutional capacity to coordinate and mobilize resources coherently, legitimately, and at speed under sustained pressure.
