Abstract: Over the last decade or so, governments everywhere have shifted from seeing transnational commerce and economic interdependence as a source of stability to viewing it as a source of vulnerability. The increasing focus on “weaponized interdependence” and “economic coercion” has catalyzed especially well-resourced governments to pursue economic security, a vague agenda that encompasses immunity to economic coercion by other states and, frequently, the ability to effectively wield coercion against adversaries. This paper documents the shift to “economic security” as a paradigm in the United States and China, two countries enmeshed in a security dilemma in which they view each other’s firms and economic resources as national security capabilities. The effects of the paradigm shift are profound for states and for firms, but reverberate through state-business relations and bureaucratic institutions in different ways in the US and China. In the US, the shift to economic security has brought massive government spending and bureaucratic reconfiguration to surveil the activities of firms. In China, the security imperative has catalyzed industrial policy spending and deleterious competition in relevant sectors. In both countries, the resulting form of state-business relations can be described as “involution,” the intensification of resource expenditure without corresponding increases in productive outcomes.