INDUSTRIAL SECURITY & RESILIENCE PROJECT
The Industrial Security & Resilience Project examines whether public investment in America’s industrial base becomes real productive capacity, and where it breaks down between appropriation and execution.
Based at the Berkeley Institute for Security and Governance, ISRP studies how the United States finances, builds, and protects the industrial capacity that national security depends on. When governments commit public dollars to manufacturing, energy, and critical supply chains, the project asks what those commitments actually produce.
ISRP combines comparative policy research with engagement with manufacturers and state and federal officials, to give policymakers better tools for designing, verifying, and governing industrial policy.
Project Leads
Gaius Ilupeju
Research Fellow
Samantha Lee
Research Fellow
Affiliation
Berkeley Institute for Security and Governance, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley
Research Areas
Incentive Verification
How states confirm that companies receiving industrial incentives deliver the jobs and investment they promised.
Industrial Capacity
Whether public investment in manufacturing, energy, and critical supply chains becomes real productive capacity.
Comparative State Policy
Side-by-side analysis of state programs, starting with California and Texas, to identify where implementation succeeds and where it breaks down.
Featured Publication
Working Paper · 2026
From Appropriations to Execution: How California and Texas Enrich our Understanding of the Industrial Subsidy Verification Gap
Gaius Ilupeju and Samantha Lee
States spend billions on industrial incentives, but few can show whether subsidized firms deliver the jobs and investment they promised. This paper compares California’s California Competes Tax Credit and Employment Training Panel with Texas’s incentive programs to identify where verification succeeds and where it breaks down.
Research Fellows
Gaius Ilupeju
Research Fellow
Gaius Ilupeju is a Research Fellow at the Berkeley Institute for Security and Governance. He holds an M.A. in Global Studies from UC Berkeley, where his research examined Africa’s spatial governance challenge and its implications for nuclear energy adoption, and B.A. degrees in History and Political Science from UC Davis, where he was a member of the University Honors Program.
As Chief Executive Officer of the Associated Students of UC Davis, the largest student-run organization in the United States, Gaius secured nearly $6 million in investments for future students, including $4.4 million in capital project funding, and helped oversee $226 million in student fees on the Council on Student Affairs and Fees. He also co-authored the UC Davis Chancellor’s AI Council report on campus-wide AI governance. His policy interests include transportation, a just energy transition, and resource access for underserved communities.
Samantha Lee
Research Fellow
Samantha Lee is a Research Fellow at the Berkeley Institute for Security and Governance. She holds a Bachelor’s with Honors and an M.S. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR), both from UC Berkeley.
Previously, she spent two summers as an Operations Research intern with Space Systems Command at the U.S. Space Force and co-founded Berkeley’s Foundations of Machine Learning program to expand AI and machine learning education across underserved Bay Area communities—reflecting her view that cultivating domestic talent is itself a national security investment. She brings analytical rigor to the project’s work on strengthening our country’s industrial base.