Jessica Lewis: If You Want to Sell Arms to America, You Have to Build in America

The core question just changed, and most Israeli founders haven’t caught up to it. Under Trump’s February “America First” arms transfer executive order, the U.S. government is no longer asking only whether a sale supports an ally. It’s asking: how does this benefit the U.S. defense industrial base? If you can’t answer that, you’re behind before you start.

We sat down with Jessica Lewis, who until recently served as Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, where she oversaw U.S. arms exports to allies and partners. She spent nearly two decades on the Hill, including as staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and national security advisor to Senator Harry Reid. She’s now a policy director at Brownstein. In other words, she has seen how this machine actually works from the inside, across multiple administrations.

Here’s what Israeli defense founders need to take from the conversation.

1. This is the biggest moment for arms exports in modern history, and it’s all changing at once.

Between Ukraine, the Middle East, and Indo-Pacific tensions, Lewis says U.S. arms exports are “playing a bigger role in national security policy for the U.S. than at any other time.” The U.S. controls roughly 44% of the global market and sells more than its next five competitors combined. At the same time, three systems are being reformed simultaneously: the arms transfer process, the procurement process, and the defense industrial base itself. “It’s a combination of massive growth and also change within the systems,” she said. Translation: the rules are moving fast, and the details on prioritization, by country and by system, won’t be clear until the fall.

2. The single biggest change: you have to produce in the U.S.

Asked point blank whether an Israeli company essentially has to be here with U.S. manufacturing, Lewis’s short answer was yes. “You are going to have your best chances of success if you do that.” The reasoning is structural, not political. If the U.S. is building air defense for its own warfighter and for allies on the same production lines, combining those runs delivers the economies of scale. So your job is to show how your production here helps those larger goals. And she was blunt that this outlasts the current administration: “whatever administration is going to come in is going to continue because it really is, it makes sense.” One warning she repeated for companies big and small: don’t make promises you can’t deliver on timelines. Bring clear data.

3. What America needs most is what the current wars are consuming.

No surprises here: air defense, UAS, and counter-UAS are the most needed systems. “If you’re producing something that feeds into those, I think that is a positive story to tell.” This is where Israeli founders have a real edge, because much of what you bring is battle-proven.

4. Partnerships with U.S. primes will matter more, not less.

There’s a long history of foreign and domestic startups partnering with big primes, where the startup brings a capability the prime lacks. Lewis pointed to Golden Dome responses as an example of companies across the board playing significant roles. Something unique enough can move on its own, but the partnership route is where she expects most of the action.

5. The two mistakes foreign defense companies make over and over.

First, they don’t think about export from the beginning. U.S. defense export law is complicated, with multiple systems and real compliance traps. People don’t realize, for example, that you need a marketing license just to market a U.S. defense export abroad, and they “accidentally cross those lines.” Since anything critical to the U.S. military has a good chance of eventually being exported, plan for it from day one.

Second, and this one stings for founders from parliamentary systems: they underestimate Congress. Every arms sale over a certain threshold goes in front of Congress in some form. All appropriations come from Congress. The annual defense authorization bill has huge impact on the industrial base. “Don’t just think of a government strategy that is only focused on the executive branch.” She’s watched companies and even government officials say, “I talked to the person at the State Department, what do you mean Congress is saying no?”

The bottom line

The America First framework rewires the whole logic of selling to the U.S. It’s no longer “we’re a trusted ally with great tech.” It’s “here’s how our production strengthens the American industrial base, here’s our export plan, and here’s how we work both the executive branch and Congress.” Build here, plan for export from the start, and treat Congress as a first-class part of your strategy.