Version: 4 (current) | Updated: 11/13/2025, 6:21:46 AM
Added description
**File metadata**
@file_pinax -> documents -> @china_taiwan_geopolitics:document {creator: @adam_tooze, created: @date_2022_08_03, subjects: [@china_taiwan_relations, @geopolitics, @nancy_pelosi, @taiwan, @china, @us_china_relations, @military_exercises, @economic_fallout, @microchips, @semiconductors, @taiwanese_economy, @us_bond_market, @chinese_stock_markets, @recession, @steel_industry, @real_estate_sector, @us_china_trade, @war_games, @military_strategy, @nuclear_war, @cold_war]}
@file_66957331_chartbook_140_china_taiwan_pelosi -> documents -> @chartbook_140_china_taiwan_pelosi:document {title: "Chartbook #140: China‑Taiwan‑Pelosi special", date: @date_2022_08_03, author: @adam_tooze}
@file_68454261_banalization_of_china_us_war -> documents -> @china_us_war_analysis:document {title: "Banalization of China‑US War", created: @date_2022_08_03, author: @adam_tooze}
/* ------------------------------------------------------------------ */
/* People */
@adam_tooze:person {full_name: "Adam Tooze"}
@nancy_pelosi:person {full_name: "Nancy Pelosi"}
@john_authers:person {full_name: "John Authers"}
@christopher_dougherty:person {full_name: "Christopher M. Dougherty"}
@raymond_greene:person {full_name: "Raymond Greene"}
@steve_wertheim:person {full_name: "Stephen Wertheim"}
@james_kitfield:person {full_name: "James Kitfield"}
@jacquelyn_schneider:person {full_name: "Jacquelyn Schneider"}
@c_m_dougherty:person {full_name: "Christopher M. Dougherty"} /* alias for tweet author */
/* ------------------------------------------------------------------ */
/* Places & Countries */
@china:place
@taiwan:place
@united_states:place /* common knowledge – not defined */
/* ------------------------------------------------------------------ */
/* Concepts & Policies */
@china_taiwan_relations:concept
@geopolitics:concept
@us_china_relations:concept
@military_exercises:concept
@economic_fallout:concept
@microchips:concept
@semiconductors:concept
@taiwanese_economy:concept
@us_bond_market:concept
@chinese_stock_markets:concept
@recession:concept
@steel_industry:concept
@real_estate_sector:concept
@us_china_trade:concept
@war_games:concept
@military_strategy:concept
@nuclear_war:concept
@cold_war:concept
@joint_all_domain_command_and_control:concept {abbr: "JADC2"}
@advanced_battle_management_system:concept {abbr: "ABMS"}
@agile_combat_employment:concept
@project_overmatch:program
@project_convergence:program
@strategic_competition:concept
@us_chip_ban:policy
@munitions_crisis:concept
@rare_earth_metals:concept
@munitions_shortage:concept {synonym: "munitions crisis"}
@defense_industrial_base:concept
/* ------------------------------------------------------------------ */
/* Organizations */
@us_air_force:organization
@us_navy:organization
@us_army:organization
@csis:organization
@cnas:organization
@rand:organization
@house_select_committee_ccp:organization {full_name: "House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party"}
@us_government:organization {reference: @united_states}
/* ------------------------------------------------------------------ */
/* Events */
@pelosi_taiwan_visit:event {description: "Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan", date: @date_2022_08_02, location: @taiwan}
@weibo_outage:event {description: "Weibo outage caused by massive traffic tracking Pelosi's plane", date: @date_2022_08_03, cause: @pelosi_taiwan_visit}
@taiwan_tabletop_war_game:event {description: "First “tabletop” war game to enhance defensive preparedness", date: @date_2024_12_30, location: @taiwan}
@war_game_cnas_2022:event {description: "CSIS war game on a Chinese invasion of Taiwan", date: @date_2022_08_11, participants: [@cnas, @christopher_dougherty]}
@war_game_congress_china_taiwan:event {description: "Congressional war game on a Chinese invasion of Taiwan", date: @date_2022_08_??}
/* ------------------------------------------------------------------ */
/* Aircraft, Drones & Weapons */
@ngad:aircraft {type: "sixth‑generation fighter", role: "penetrate contested airspace"}
@f35:aircraft {type: "fifth‑generation fighter"}
@b21:aircraft {type: "stealth bomber"}
@b52:aircraft {type: "strategic bomber"}
@f15ex:aircraft {type: "fourth‑generation fighter", role: "long‑range strike"}
@loyal_wingman:drone {type: "autonomous wingman"}
@kratos_valkyrie:drone {type: "attritable drone"}
@jassm:weapon {type: "long‑range cruise missile"}
@jassm_er:weapon {type: "extended‑range cruise missile"}
@lrsm:weapon {type: "long‑range anti‑ship missile"}
@sdb_ii:weapon {type: "small‑diameter bomb"}
@air_refueling:concept
@airlift:concept
/* ------------------------------------------------------------------ */
/* Relationships */
@nancy_pelosi -> visited -> @taiwan {event: @pelosi_taiwan_visit}
@nancy_pelosi -> caused -> @weibo_outage
@john_authers -> reported_on -> @us_bond_market {date: @date_2022_08_03, description: "Yields dropped after Pelosi visit"}
@us_government -> expanded -> @us_chip_ban {date: @date_2022_08_03, scope: "microchip equipment exports from 10 nm to 14 nm"}
@china -> dominates -> @rare_earth_metals
@defense_industrial_base -> faces -> @munitions_crisis
@us_air_force -> uses -> @joint_all_domain_command_and_control
@us_air_force -> uses -> @advanced_battle_management_system
@us_air_force -> uses -> @agile_combat_employment
@us_air_force -> uses -> @air_refueling
@us_air_force -> uses -> @airlift
@us_air_force -> doctrine -> @agile_combat_employment
@us_air_force -> doctrine -> @joint_all_domain_command_and_control
@us_air_force -> doctrine -> @advanced_battle_management_system
@us_air_force -> fielded -> @ngad
@us_air_force -> fielded -> @f35
@us_air_force -> fielded -> @b21
@us_air_force -> fielded -> @b52
@us_air_force -> fielded -> @f15ex
@us_air_force -> employed -> @loyal_wingman
@us_air_force -> employed -> @kratos_valkyrie
@us_air_force -> employed -> @jassm
@us_air_force -> employed -> @jassm_er
@us_air_force -> employed -> @lrsm
@us_air_force -> employed -> @sdb_ii
@us_navy -> part_of -> @project_overmatch
@us_army -> part_of -> @project_convergence
@us_air_force -> participates_in -> @war_game_cnas_2022
@us_air_force -> participates_in -> @taiwan_tabletop_war_game
@house_select_committee_ccp -> held -> @war_game_congress_china_taiwan
@cnas -> conducted -> @war_game_cnas_2022
@china_military:organization -> simulated -> @war_game_cnas_2022
@china_military -> simulated -> @war_game_congress_china_taiwan
@us_air_force -> opposed_to -> @china_military
@us_air_force -> suffers_losses_in -> @taiwan_tabletop_war_game
@us_air_force -> suffers_losses_in -> @war_game_cnas_2022
@us_air_force -> suffers_losses_in -> @war_game_congress_china_taiwan
@strategic_competition -> involves -> @china
@strategic_competition -> involves -> @united_states
@strategic_competition -> involves -> @taiwan
@strategic_competition -> involves -> @military_strategy
@strategic_competition -> involves -> @economic_fallout
@strategic_competition -> involves -> @microchips
@strategic_competition -> involves -> @semiconductors
@strategic_competition -> involves -> @steel_industry
@strategic_competition -> involves -> @real_estate_sector
@strategic_competition -> involves -> @us_china_trade
@strategic_competition -> involves -> @war_games
@strategic_competition -> involves -> @nuclear_war
@strategic_competition -> involves -> @cold_war
@us_government -> released -> @national_security_strategy:document {date: @date_2022_10_??, mentions: [@strategic_competition, @us_china_relations, @taiwan, @military_strategy, @nuclear_war, @cold_war]}
@national_security_strategy:document -> mentions -> @strategic_competition
@national_security_strategy:document -> mentions -> @us_china_relations
@national_security_strategy:document -> mentions -> @taiwan
@national_security_strategy:document -> mentions -> @military_strategy
@national_security_strategy:document -> mentions -> @nuclear_war
@national_security_strategy:document -> mentions -> @cold_war
/* ------------------------------------------------------------------ */
/* Additional notable links */
@china_taiwan_geopolitics -> includes -> @chartbook_140_china_taiwan_pelosi
@china_taiwan_geopolitics -> includes -> @china_us_war_analysis
@china_us_war_analysis -> references -> @taiwan_tabletop_war_game
@china_us_war_analysis -> references -> @war_game_cnas_2022
@china_us_war_analysis -> references -> @war_game_congress_china_taiwan
@china_us_war_analysis -> references -> @us_chip_ban
@china_us_war_analysis -> references -> @munitions_crisis
@china_us_war_analysis -> references -> @rare_earth_metals
@china_us_war_analysis -> references -> @strategic_competition
---<!--
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"post_id": "66957331.chartbook-140-china-taiwan-pelosi",
"post_date": "2022-08-03T10:30:20.880Z",
"is_published": true,
"email_sent_at": "2022-08-03T10:30:21.174Z",
"inbox_sent_at": "2022-08-03T10:30:21.174Z",
"type": "newsletter",
"audience": "everyone",
"title": "Chartbook #140: China-Taiwan-Pelosi special ",
"subtitle": ""
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<p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{"url":"https://adamtooze.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe now","action":null,"class":null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://adamtooze.substack.com/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p><strong>Crashing Weibo</strong></p><blockquote><p>US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan briefly crashed Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, as millions in the country discussed and debated her Asia trip. The microblogging platform apologized for a half-hour outage of its mobile app in the period immediately before Pelosi’s landing at 10:40 p.m. on Tuesday, when countless messages <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-02/pelosi-s-roundabout-flight-to-taiwan-shows-china-s-long-reach">tracking her plane</a> flooded social media.</p></blockquote><p>Source: <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-03/pelosi-knocks-out-china-s-weibo-as-millions-track-taiwan-trip?sref=wOrDP8KX">Bloomberg</a></p><p><strong>Why is Pelosi going to Taiwan?</strong></p><p>I found these three pieces particularly illuminating as background. </p><p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-62343675">BBC</a> on Pelosi’s long history of clashes with Beijing.</p><div data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM" class="tweet" data-attrs="{"url":"https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1136052504742027265?s=20&t=z_mRphOv38YRJIgeqYscDw","full_text":"28 years ago, we traveled to Tiananmen Square to honor the courage &amp; sacrifice of the students, workers &amp; ordinary citizens who stood for the dignity &amp; human rights that all people deserve. To this day, we remain committed to sharing their story with the world. <span class=\"tweet-fake-link\">#Tiananmen30</span> ","username":"SpeakerPelosi","name":"Nancy Pelosi","date":"Tue Jun 04 23:29:58 +0000 2019","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/upload/w_728,c_limit/l_twitter_play_button_rvaygk,w_120/rimg0e6puecmt2bmdfgv","link_url":"https://t.co/7UqiJVRS3t","alt_text":null}],"quoted_tweet":{},"retweet_count":6442,"like_count":20573,"expanded_url":{},"video_url":"https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1136051310825025536/vid/320x320/GWispyXPU0BNY820.mp4?tag=13","belowTheFold":false}"><a class="tweet-link-top" href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1136052504742027265?s=20&t=z_mRphOv38YRJIgeqYscDw" target="_blank"><div class="tweet-header"><img class="tweet-header-avatar" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/SpeakerPelosi.jpg" alt="Twitter avatar for @SpeakerPelosi"><div class="tweet-header-text"><span class="tweet-author-name">Nancy Pelosi </span><span class="tweet-author-handle">@SpeakerPelosi</span></div></div><div class="tweet-text">28 years ago, we traveled to Tiananmen Square to honor the courage & sacrifice of the students, workers & ordinary citizens who stood for the dignity & human rights that all people deserve. To this day, we remain committed to sharing their story with the world. <span class="tweet-fake-link">#Tiananmen30</span> </div></a><div class="tweet-video-wrapper"><video class="tweet-video" controls="true" src="https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1136051310825025536/vid/320x320/GWispyXPU0BNY820.mp4?tag=13" alt="Video"></video></div><a class="tweet-link-bottom" href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1136052504742027265?s=20&t=z_mRphOv38YRJIgeqYscDw" target="_blank"><div class="tweet-footer"><span class="tweet-date">11:29 PM ∙ Jun 4, 2019</span><hr><div class="tweet-ufi"><span href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1136052504742027265?s=20&t=z_mRphOv38YRJIgeqYscDw/likes" class="likes"><span class="like-count">20,573</span>Likes</span><span href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1136052504742027265?s=20&t=z_mRphOv38YRJIgeqYscDw/retweets" class="retweets"><span class="rt-count">6,442</span>Retweets</span></div></div></a></div><p>Andrew Desiderio at <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/28/pelosi-china-taiwan-00048352">Politico</a> on the making of a progressive hawk.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/190c61ba-b018-46dc-9276-fff32321961b">FT</a> added a constitutional angle:</p><p>“She has a long record of not bowing to Chinese pressure and feels passionately about upholding the principle of Congress being a co-equal branch of government,” Hass said.</p><p><strong>Extent of China’s military exercises around Taiwan has massively expanded since 1996.</strong></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SAac!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F02a2b667-5d1e-42ad-a840-c22429e87974_1412x1056.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SAac!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F02a2b667-5d1e-42ad-a840-c22429e87974_1412x1056.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SAac!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F02a2b667-5d1e-42ad-a840-c22429e87974_1412x1056.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SAac!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F02a2b667-5d1e-42ad-a840-c22429e87974_1412x1056.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SAac!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F02a2b667-5d1e-42ad-a840-c22429e87974_1412x1056.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/02a2b667-5d1e-42ad-a840-c22429e87974_1412x1056.png" width="1412" height="1056" data-attrs="{"src":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/02a2b667-5d1e-42ad-a840-c22429e87974_1412x1056.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":1056,"width":1412,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":830090,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SAac!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F02a2b667-5d1e-42ad-a840-c22429e87974_1412x1056.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SAac!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F02a2b667-5d1e-42ad-a840-c22429e87974_1412x1056.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SAac!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F02a2b667-5d1e-42ad-a840-c22429e87974_1412x1056.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SAac!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F02a2b667-5d1e-42ad-a840-c22429e87974_1412x1056.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Source: <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/96259e27-e252-4ed1-9305-8a115e89d5a0">FT</a></p><p><strong>Economic Fall Out</strong></p><blockquote><p><strong>Hal Brands</strong> wrote in June that <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-23/economic-chaos-of-a-taiwan-war-would-go-well-past-semiconductors">the economic fallout from a Taiwan invasion</a> would make Ukraine’s ructions feel like a ride on <a href="https://www.avclub.com/taylor-swift-private-jet-170-flights-statement-co2-1849352396">Taylor Swift’s jet</a> in comparison. </p></blockquote><p>That seems about right!</p><p><strong>Waterways</strong></p><p>China’s military drills are not just far more expansive than in the 1990s, they are taking place in some of the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-03/taiwan-turmoil-prompts-detours-and-delays-for-global-shipping?sref=wOrDP8KX">world’s busiest seaways</a>.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!w75_!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd56e2ee-d949-4d9a-b40e-813dee5fa2e2_1650x1230.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!w75_!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd56e2ee-d949-4d9a-b40e-813dee5fa2e2_1650x1230.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!w75_!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd56e2ee-d949-4d9a-b40e-813dee5fa2e2_1650x1230.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!w75_!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd56e2ee-d949-4d9a-b40e-813dee5fa2e2_1650x1230.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!w75_!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd56e2ee-d949-4d9a-b40e-813dee5fa2e2_1650x1230.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/cd56e2ee-d949-4d9a-b40e-813dee5fa2e2_1650x1230.png" width="1456" height="1085" data-attrs="{"src":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/cd56e2ee-d949-4d9a-b40e-813dee5fa2e2_1650x1230.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":1085,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":2032043,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!w75_!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd56e2ee-d949-4d9a-b40e-813dee5fa2e2_1650x1230.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!w75_!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd56e2ee-d949-4d9a-b40e-813dee5fa2e2_1650x1230.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!w75_!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd56e2ee-d949-4d9a-b40e-813dee5fa2e2_1650x1230.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!w75_!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd56e2ee-d949-4d9a-b40e-813dee5fa2e2_1650x1230.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p><strong>US Bond market ricochet </strong></p><p>John Authers at Bloomberg, as ever excellent</p><blockquote><p>Yields have dropped precipitously in recent weeks, despite the lack of any clarity that inflation is over. And that led to an extraordinary trading session Tuesday as they boomeranged back upward. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can claim a starring role with her <a href="https://blinks.bloomberg.com/news/stories/RG0P39DWX2PU">fraught visit to Taiwan</a>. Barring only the two worst days of the first Covid shutdown, and the Monday in June when the Fed leaked its intention to hike by 75 basis points at its next meeting, this was the biggest daily gain for 10-year yields in five years:</p></blockquote><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vPwX!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea599497-762e-4c97-860f-55f2b26050cd_1082x626.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vPwX!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea599497-762e-4c97-860f-55f2b26050cd_1082x626.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vPwX!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea599497-762e-4c97-860f-55f2b26050cd_1082x626.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vPwX!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea599497-762e-4c97-860f-55f2b26050cd_1082x626.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vPwX!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea599497-762e-4c97-860f-55f2b26050cd_1082x626.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ea599497-762e-4c97-860f-55f2b26050cd_1082x626.png" width="1082" height="626" data-attrs="{"src":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ea599497-762e-4c97-860f-55f2b26050cd_1082x626.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":626,"width":1082,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":488719,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vPwX!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea599497-762e-4c97-860f-55f2b26050cd_1082x626.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vPwX!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea599497-762e-4c97-860f-55f2b26050cd_1082x626.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vPwX!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea599497-762e-4c97-860f-55f2b26050cd_1082x626.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vPwX!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea599497-762e-4c97-860f-55f2b26050cd_1082x626.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{"url":"https://adamtooze.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe now","action":null,"class":null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://adamtooze.substack.com/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p><strong>China’s stock markets</strong> </p><p>Despite the nationalist outbursts on weibo, the Chinese stock markets have not enjoyed the war scare.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8KGt!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8242c534-bd49-4e1a-985d-87c56b31c24c_1304x1032.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8KGt!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8242c534-bd49-4e1a-985d-87c56b31c24c_1304x1032.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8KGt!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8242c534-bd49-4e1a-985d-87c56b31c24c_1304x1032.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8KGt!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8242c534-bd49-4e1a-985d-87c56b31c24c_1304x1032.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8KGt!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8242c534-bd49-4e1a-985d-87c56b31c24c_1304x1032.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/8242c534-bd49-4e1a-985d-87c56b31c24c_1304x1032.png" width="1304" height="1032" data-attrs="{"src":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/8242c534-bd49-4e1a-985d-87c56b31c24c_1304x1032.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":1032,"width":1304,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":282840,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8KGt!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8242c534-bd49-4e1a-985d-87c56b31c24c_1304x1032.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8KGt!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8242c534-bd49-4e1a-985d-87c56b31c24c_1304x1032.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8KGt!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8242c534-bd49-4e1a-985d-87c56b31c24c_1304x1032.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8KGt!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8242c534-bd49-4e1a-985d-87c56b31c24c_1304x1032.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Source: <a href="https://thedailyshot.com/2022/08/02/the-10-year-3-month-portion-of-the-treasury-curve-is-about-to-invert/">Daily Shot</a> </p><p><strong>China’s sliding into recession?</strong></p><p>Beyond the Taiwan scare, the outlook for the Chinese economy is increasingly grim. </p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!I9Of!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7336389d-c7b3-4baf-98da-862e9ed90d5f_1324x1004.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!I9Of!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7336389d-c7b3-4baf-98da-862e9ed90d5f_1324x1004.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!I9Of!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7336389d-c7b3-4baf-98da-862e9ed90d5f_1324x1004.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!I9Of!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7336389d-c7b3-4baf-98da-862e9ed90d5f_1324x1004.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!I9Of!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7336389d-c7b3-4baf-98da-862e9ed90d5f_1324x1004.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/7336389d-c7b3-4baf-98da-862e9ed90d5f_1324x1004.png" width="1324" height="1004" data-attrs="{"src":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/7336389d-c7b3-4baf-98da-862e9ed90d5f_1324x1004.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":1004,"width":1324,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":809244,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!I9Of!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7336389d-c7b3-4baf-98da-862e9ed90d5f_1324x1004.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!I9Of!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7336389d-c7b3-4baf-98da-862e9ed90d5f_1324x1004.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!I9Of!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7336389d-c7b3-4baf-98da-862e9ed90d5f_1324x1004.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!I9Of!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7336389d-c7b3-4baf-98da-862e9ed90d5f_1324x1004.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>As the real estate sector goes into crisis, one of the principal industrial victims is the steel industry. The growth in the sector from the 2000s was a spectacular industrial revolution. Now the sector is in deep trouble. </p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T48p!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048ba5ac-55f8-467a-b586-1f0573006872_912x532.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T48p!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048ba5ac-55f8-467a-b586-1f0573006872_912x532.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T48p!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048ba5ac-55f8-467a-b586-1f0573006872_912x532.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T48p!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048ba5ac-55f8-467a-b586-1f0573006872_912x532.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T48p!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048ba5ac-55f8-467a-b586-1f0573006872_912x532.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/048ba5ac-55f8-467a-b586-1f0573006872_912x532.png" width="912" height="532" data-attrs="{"src":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/048ba5ac-55f8-467a-b586-1f0573006872_912x532.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":532,"width":912,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":276325,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T48p!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048ba5ac-55f8-467a-b586-1f0573006872_912x532.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T48p!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048ba5ac-55f8-467a-b586-1f0573006872_912x532.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T48p!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048ba5ac-55f8-467a-b586-1f0573006872_912x532.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T48p!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048ba5ac-55f8-467a-b586-1f0573006872_912x532.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>As <a href="https://www.caixinglobal.com/2022-08-03/chinas-property-crisis-threatens-to-drag-down-steel-industry-101921418.html">Caixin</a> reports:</p><blockquote><p>China’s steel industry is entering a precarious new era as a worsening property crisis imperils demand and Beijing’s construction-led growth model looks increasingly untenable. Almost a third of China’s steel mills could go into bankruptcy in a squeeze that’s likely to last five years, Li Ganpo, founder and chairman of Hebei Jingye Steel Group, warned in June at a private company meeting. “The whole sector is losing money and I can’t see a turning point for now,” he said, according to a transcript of the gathering seen by Bloomberg News.</p></blockquote><p><strong>Taiwan’s robust growth</strong></p><p><strong>If real estate & steel are the critical domestic policy issues for Beijing, the main battlefield between China and the US, in which Taiwan is a key are, are microchips</strong></p><p>Out of the limelight, as <a href="https://www.caixinglobal.com/2022-08-02/us-expands-ban-on-sales-of-chipmaking-gear-to-china-101920890.html">Caixin reports</a>, the Biden administration is progressively tightening the noose on China’s microchip sector by widening the bans on equipment exports to China from 10 nm to the much more prosaic 14 nm generation of chips. </p><p><strong>Chip crackdown</strong></p><p>Beijing is carrying out a fierce crackdown on executives and bureaucrats tied to the microchip industry. A series of investigations have targeted senior figures associated with Tsinghua Unigroup Co. Ltd.</p><p><a href="https://www.caixinglobal.com/2022-07-29/head-of-chinas-biggest-chip-investment-fund-under-probe-101919296.html">Caixin:</a> The head of China’s biggest semiconductor investment fund is under investigation in the latest of a series of graft scandals rattling the state-backed fund. Ding Wenwu, president of <strong>China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund,</strong> has been probed by authorities and remained out of contact, several people with knowledge of the matter told Caixin. The fund, known as the “Big Fund,” is a key part of China’s drive to develop its homegrown integrated circuit industry to reduce reliance on imported technology.</p><p><a href="https://www.caixinglobal.com/2022-08-03/two-more-unigroup-executives-placed-under-investigation-101921421.html">Caixin</a>: Two more senior executives of China’s <strong>Tsinghua Unigroup Co. Ltd.</strong> face investigations as the debt-laden semiconductor conglomerate wraps up a bankruptcy reorganization.</p><p><strong>From shortage to glut</strong></p><p>Right now the Taiwanese economy is buoyed by dramatic recovery growth. Though much slower than China’s, growth has remained robust through Q2 2022.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_WFa!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F54fb52e4-2fe6-4a58-99d5-29e4a0b0b74a_1034x822.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_WFa!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F54fb52e4-2fe6-4a58-99d5-29e4a0b0b74a_1034x822.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_WFa!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F54fb52e4-2fe6-4a58-99d5-29e4a0b0b74a_1034x822.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_WFa!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F54fb52e4-2fe6-4a58-99d5-29e4a0b0b74a_1034x822.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_WFa!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F54fb52e4-2fe6-4a58-99d5-29e4a0b0b74a_1034x822.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/54fb52e4-2fe6-4a58-99d5-29e4a0b0b74a_1034x822.png" width="1034" height="822" data-attrs="{"src":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/54fb52e4-2fe6-4a58-99d5-29e4a0b0b74a_1034x822.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":822,"width":1034,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":154933,"alt":"","title":"","type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" title="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_WFa!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F54fb52e4-2fe6-4a58-99d5-29e4a0b0b74a_1034x822.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_WFa!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F54fb52e4-2fe6-4a58-99d5-29e4a0b0b74a_1034x822.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_WFa!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F54fb52e4-2fe6-4a58-99d5-29e4a0b0b74a_1034x822.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_WFa!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F54fb52e4-2fe6-4a58-99d5-29e4a0b0b74a_1034x822.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Source: <a href="https://thedailyshot.com/2022/08/01/employment-costs-continue-to-surge/">Daily Shot</a></p><p>But, looking forward as the Chinese economy slows, this is very bad news for Taiwan.</p><blockquote><p>The U.S. and the Chinese mainland are Taiwan’s two largest export markets, which combined account for just over half of the island’s overseas shipments. An economic slowdown in the U.S. has sparked recession talk as officials struggle to rein in the highest inflation in 40 years without cratering the economy. The Chinese economy, meanwhile, has been weighed down by ongoing Covid outbreaks and resulting regional lockdowns, leading economists to downgrade their forecasts for growth in 2022 to 3.9% in a recent <a href="https://www.caixinglobal.com/2022-07-29/us-chinese-mainland-economic-woes-point-to-end-of-taiwans-chip-led-boom-101919537.html">Bloomberg survey</a>. </p></blockquote><p>Taiwan’s export-driven growth may be about to come to an end.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WXmM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F182415e6-3df8-4842-bf03-cf575d97054d_912x532.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WXmM!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F182415e6-3df8-4842-bf03-cf575d97054d_912x532.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WXmM!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F182415e6-3df8-4842-bf03-cf575d97054d_912x532.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WXmM!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F182415e6-3df8-4842-bf03-cf575d97054d_912x532.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WXmM!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F182415e6-3df8-4842-bf03-cf575d97054d_912x532.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/182415e6-3df8-4842-bf03-cf575d97054d_912x532.png" width="912" height="532" data-attrs="{"src":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/182415e6-3df8-4842-bf03-cf575d97054d_912x532.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":532,"width":912,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":276325,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WXmM!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F182415e6-3df8-4842-bf03-cf575d97054d_912x532.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WXmM!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F182415e6-3df8-4842-bf03-cf575d97054d_912x532.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WXmM!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F182415e6-3df8-4842-bf03-cf575d97054d_912x532.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WXmM!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F182415e6-3df8-4842-bf03-cf575d97054d_912x532.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Looking ahead, both Taiwanese and Korean equity markets are pricing in a slump in microchip demand to come.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UYLT!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e17160a-1e86-4477-ad6e-31648c603472_1376x1056.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UYLT!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e17160a-1e86-4477-ad6e-31648c603472_1376x1056.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UYLT!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e17160a-1e86-4477-ad6e-31648c603472_1376x1056.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UYLT!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e17160a-1e86-4477-ad6e-31648c603472_1376x1056.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UYLT!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e17160a-1e86-4477-ad6e-31648c603472_1376x1056.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/7e17160a-1e86-4477-ad6e-31648c603472_1376x1056.png" width="1376" height="1056" data-attrs="{"src":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/7e17160a-1e86-4477-ad6e-31648c603472_1376x1056.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":1056,"width":1376,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":1294766,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UYLT!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e17160a-1e86-4477-ad6e-31648c603472_1376x1056.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UYLT!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e17160a-1e86-4477-ad6e-31648c603472_1376x1056.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UYLT!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e17160a-1e86-4477-ad6e-31648c603472_1376x1056.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UYLT!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e17160a-1e86-4477-ad6e-31648c603472_1376x1056.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Source: <a href="https://thedailyshot.com/2022/08/01/employment-costs-continue-to-surge/">Gavekal via Daily Shot</a></p><p>The economic upshot? In the second half of 2022 we may see both Europe and East Asia struggling with serious recessionary and deflationary pressures. </p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{"url":"https://adamtooze.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe now","action":null,"class":null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://adamtooze.substack.com/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p></p><p></p><!--
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<p></p><p>https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Taiwan-tensions/Taiwan-tabletop-war-game-sets-stage-for-population-wide-preparedness?utm_campaign=GL_asia_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=NA_newsletter&utm_content=article_link&del_type=1&pub_date=20241230190000&seq_num=15&si=80594</p><h1>Taiwan 'tabletop' war game sets stage for population-wide preparedness</h1><p>Security insider says Taipei aims to work with other countries, private sector</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LOOR!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1d9919d3-0519-4ea7-b67c-a9bf66e12e12_1560x877.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LOOR!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1d9919d3-0519-4ea7-b67c-a9bf66e12e12_1560x877.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LOOR!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1d9919d3-0519-4ea7-b67c-a9bf66e12e12_1560x877.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LOOR!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1d9919d3-0519-4ea7-b67c-a9bf66e12e12_1560x877.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LOOR!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1d9919d3-0519-4ea7-b67c-a9bf66e12e12_1560x877.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1d9919d3-0519-4ea7-b67c-a9bf66e12e12_1560x877.jpeg" width="1456" height="819" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1d9919d3-0519-4ea7-b67c-a9bf66e12e12_1560x877.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":819,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"20241229 taiwan 1","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":false,"topImage":true,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="20241229 taiwan 1" title="20241229 taiwan 1" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LOOR!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1d9919d3-0519-4ea7-b67c-a9bf66e12e12_1560x877.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LOOR!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1d9919d3-0519-4ea7-b67c-a9bf66e12e12_1560x877.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LOOR!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1d9919d3-0519-4ea7-b67c-a9bf66e12e12_1560x877.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LOOR!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1d9919d3-0519-4ea7-b67c-a9bf66e12e12_1560x877.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te visits a military base in response to recent Chinese drills, in Taoyuan on Oct. 18. His government is stepping up plans to enhance preparedness at all levels of society. © Reuters</p><p><strong>THOMPSON CHAU, Contributing writer</strong></p><p>December 30, 2024 13:00 JST</p><p>TAIPEI -- Taiwan's first "tabletop" war game held late last week was part of a concerted effort to enhance defensive preparedness that will continue into 2025, with Taipei seeking to work with like-minded partners, according to a senior Taiwanese security official.</p><p>The three-hour exercise brought together dozens of central and local government agencies to respond to a simulated attack by China. The drill -- chaired by Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim, presidential office chief Pan Men-an and National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu -- was held days after Beijing launched what Taiwanese officials described as its <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Taiwan-tensions/China-s-largest-maritime-deployment-in-decades-pressure-tests-Taiwan">biggest naval deployment</a> in nearly 30 years.</p><p>It also came weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House, with his administration <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Taiwan-tensions/Taiwan-braces-for-transactional-Trump-after-pay-for-defense-remark">expected to push Taiwan</a> to do more for its own defense.</p><p>"The scenario of the simulation was that Taiwan is facing an attack by China while Beijing has accelerated cooperation with other authoritarian countries, notably Russia, North Korea and Iran," a cabinet-level security official told Nikkei Asia, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The actions include China's increasingly clear ambition to control the first island chain, including recent actions in the East China Sea, South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait."</p><p>The official continued: "Beijing has also demonstrated its ability to project power at sea. We used this as a hypothetical scenario to test if Taiwan is able to cope with an attack or blockade."</p><p>The official stressed that the war game, which also included the Tainan city government, was a significant step toward strengthening Taiwan's security, as the standard operating procedures that various government agencies had been used to were insufficient. "In the face of such complex contingencies, each department cannot just respond to its own business," they said.</p><p>The idea is to develop a "whole-of-government coordinated response mechanism" to ensure smooth coordination.</p><p>President Lai Ching-te said after the war game that "we had scenarios, but no scripts, so the participating units did not prepare notes in advance, but reacted on the spot. When presented with a problem, they proposed countermeasures, which is closer to a real crisis situation."</p><p>The security insider suggested that while the government had been relatively quiet about its defensive preparations over the past couple of years, it has been more public since Lai took office in May and is shifting from a preparation stage to policy experimentation and testing.</p><p>"We are very serious," they said.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!g0mD!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc246d2c-f462-4c6d-a0c7-44931331f51f_1240x742.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!g0mD!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc246d2c-f462-4c6d-a0c7-44931331f51f_1240x742.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!g0mD!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc246d2c-f462-4c6d-a0c7-44931331f51f_1240x742.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!g0mD!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc246d2c-f462-4c6d-a0c7-44931331f51f_1240x742.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!g0mD!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc246d2c-f462-4c6d-a0c7-44931331f51f_1240x742.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/fc246d2c-f462-4c6d-a0c7-44931331f51f_1240x742.jpeg" width="1240" height="742" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/fc246d2c-f462-4c6d-a0c7-44931331f51f_1240x742.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":742,"width":1240,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"alt","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="alt" title="alt" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!g0mD!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc246d2c-f462-4c6d-a0c7-44931331f51f_1240x742.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!g0mD!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc246d2c-f462-4c6d-a0c7-44931331f51f_1240x742.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!g0mD!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc246d2c-f462-4c6d-a0c7-44931331f51f_1240x742.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!g0mD!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc246d2c-f462-4c6d-a0c7-44931331f51f_1240x742.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>China, meanwhile, has been stepping up pressure on Lai's Demogratic Progressive Party government, with further attempts to isolate Taiwan internationally and increased military activity in the region. Beijing considers Taiwan its territory and openly condemns Lai's pro-sovereignty position, and has refused to rule out an invasion.</p><p>To deter China, the DPP administration has sought to raise the defense budget for the eighth consecutive year and forge ahead with an <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/Taiwan-turns-to-own-Iron-Duke-Wellington-Koo-to-deter-China">asymmetric strategy</a>, prioritizing large quantities of small weapons like drones over expensive conventional arms.</p><p>Still, experts in Taipei and officials from the U.S. -- Taiwan's most important security partner -- see a need to increase Taiwan's capacity to cope with emergencies across the population.</p><p>"To deter conflict and face day-to-day <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Taiwan-tensions/China-cranks-up-gray-zone-incursions-Taiwan-warns">gray zone challenges</a>, whole-of-society resilience is just as important as military preparedness," Raymond Greene, the U.S. de facto ambassador to Taiwan, said in a public speech earlier this month.</p><p>"In the last few years, Taiwan has made remarkable strides in becoming more resilient in the face of natural and manmade threats," Greene said, adding, "Investments in broad crisis resilience capabilities, such as ensuring redundant communications systems, sufficient energy supplies, and medical readiness, are critical in building preparedness for any situation."</p><p>A senior official in Trump's first administration, who declined to be named, told Nikkei Asia that Lai's tabletop exercise would be seen as a positive sign in Washington, but that it needs to be followed by real investment in resilience. "These efforts increase deterrence by creating credible capacity to resist a blockade and survive an attack," the former official said.</p><p>Soon after taking office, Lai set up a Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee with top officials, civil society groups, experts and business representatives. The committee is tasked with drafting plans for civilian force training and utilization, as well as strategic supplies, critical infrastructure, medical care and other priorities.</p><p>The security official emphasized that other countries have an interest in working with Taiwan on such planning.</p><p>"These are not problems that Taiwan faces alone. For example, natural gas supply disruptions, energy disruptions, transport networks being hacked, critical infrastructure such as submarine cables being destroyed ... The risks of malicious sabotage aren't unique to Taiwan and are shared by other countries across the world," the official said, declining to name specific countries that would cooperate.</p><p>"We hope that by sharing Taiwan's experience we can urge the rest of the world to strengthen cooperation on societal resilience," they said.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xYlN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fad4b8e03-1f1a-41d6-9321-917aee5a7c5b_4998x2812.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xYlN!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fad4b8e03-1f1a-41d6-9321-917aee5a7c5b_4998x2812.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xYlN!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fad4b8e03-1f1a-41d6-9321-917aee5a7c5b_4998x2812.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xYlN!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fad4b8e03-1f1a-41d6-9321-917aee5a7c5b_4998x2812.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xYlN!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fad4b8e03-1f1a-41d6-9321-917aee5a7c5b_4998x2812.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ad4b8e03-1f1a-41d6-9321-917aee5a7c5b_4998x2812.jpeg" width="1456" height="819" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ad4b8e03-1f1a-41d6-9321-917aee5a7c5b_4998x2812.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":819,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"alt","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="alt" title="alt" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xYlN!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fad4b8e03-1f1a-41d6-9321-917aee5a7c5b_4998x2812.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xYlN!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fad4b8e03-1f1a-41d6-9321-917aee5a7c5b_4998x2812.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xYlN!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fad4b8e03-1f1a-41d6-9321-917aee5a7c5b_4998x2812.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xYlN!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fad4b8e03-1f1a-41d6-9321-917aee5a7c5b_4998x2812.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Emergency workers participate in the 2024 Min An drill in New Taipei City in July. Next year's edition will be combined into what the president calls the 2025 Urban Resilience Exercises. © Reuters</p><p>The official said the administration intends to beef up cooperation with the private sector, too, including information sharing with foreign companies related to their emergency plans and drills. There have already been some corporate-driven initiatives: In October, the American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan invited its counterpart in Ukraine to share experiences on navigating serious disruptions.</p><p>Lai's government is working to improve preparedness as it grapples with fractious domestic politics, including a fight with the opposition <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Taiwan-political-drama-erupts-over-top-court-s-fate-in-last-days-of-2024">over the Constitutional Court</a> and a redirection of government funds that could affect defense spending. All of the government's nominees for the top court were voted down last week.</p><p>Next year, Taiwan's annual air raid and disaster response drills -- the Wan An and Min An Exercises -- will be combined into what Lai has termed the "2025 Urban Resilience Exercises." The president said this "will strengthen the defensive mechanisms of the nonmilitary sector, and verify the ability of civil defense and disaster preparedness systems to protect our nation's people."</p><p>Marcin Jerzewski, a Taipei-based analyst with the European Values Center for Security Policy, emphasized the importance of countries working with Taiwan on drills and resilience.</p><p>"By engaging overseas participants in the tabletop, Taiwan can enrich their understanding of the challenges the island country faces amid China's growing belligerence," Jerzewski told Nikkei Asia. "At the same time, many of the challenges to resilience building are shared by Taiwan and other democracies, so their involvement can enhance Taiwan's response toolkit."</p><p></p><p></p><p>counterforce stuff </p><p>https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/us-strategy-and-force-posture-for-an-era-of-nuclear-tripolarity/</p><p></p><div data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM" class="tweet" data-attrs="{"url":"https://twitter.com/C_M_Dougherty/status/1557771471635861505?s=20&t=sH4aENUeHrwbqYzyBwCl-w","full_text":"1/23 Given recent coverage of <span class=\"tweet-fake-link\">@CSIS</span> Taiwan wargames featuring my <span class=\"tweet-fake-link\">@CNASdc</span> colleagues <span class=\"tweet-fake-link\">@becca_wasser</span> &amp; <span class=\"tweet-fake-link\">@StaciePettyjohn</span> and erstwhile colleague <span class=\"tweet-fake-link\">@ZackCooper</span>, I thought I’d share my experience as a player and how the game relates to other work on the cross-Strait military balance.","username":"C_M_Dougherty","name":"Christopher M. Dougherty","date":"Thu Aug 11 16:50:35 +0000 2022","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"retweet_count":32,"like_count":138,"expanded_url":{},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}"><a class="tweet-link-top" href="https://twitter.com/C_M_Dougherty/status/1557771471635861505?s=20&t=sH4aENUeHrwbqYzyBwCl-w" target="_blank"><div class="tweet-header"><img class="tweet-header-avatar" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/C_M_Dougherty.jpg" alt="Twitter avatar for @C_M_Dougherty" loading="lazy"><div class="tweet-header-text"><span class="tweet-author-name">Christopher M. Dougherty </span><span class="tweet-author-handle">@C_M_Dougherty</span></div></div><div class="tweet-text">1/23 Given recent coverage of <span class="tweet-fake-link">@CSIS</span> Taiwan wargames featuring my <span class="tweet-fake-link">@CNASdc</span> colleagues <span class="tweet-fake-link">@becca_wasser</span> & <span class="tweet-fake-link">@StaciePettyjohn</span> and erstwhile colleague <span class="tweet-fake-link">@ZackCooper</span>, I thought I’d share my experience as a player and how the game relates to other work on the cross-Strait military balance.</div></a><a class="tweet-link-bottom" href="https://twitter.com/C_M_Dougherty/status/1557771471635861505?s=20&t=sH4aENUeHrwbqYzyBwCl-w" target="_blank"><div class="tweet-footer"><span class="tweet-date">4:50 PM ∙ Aug 11, 2022</span><hr><div class="tweet-ufi"><span href="https://twitter.com/C_M_Dougherty/status/1557771471635861505?s=20&t=sH4aENUeHrwbqYzyBwCl-w/likes" class="likes"><span class="like-count">138</span>Likes</span><span href="https://twitter.com/C_M_Dougherty/status/1557771471635861505?s=20&t=sH4aENUeHrwbqYzyBwCl-w/retweets" class="retweets"><span class="rt-count">32</span>Retweets</span></div></div></a></div><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/06/09/america-weapons-china-00100373</p><p>https://rhg.com/research/sanctioning-china-in-a-taiwan-crisis-scenarios-and-risks/</p><p>https://www.pogo.org/report/2023/06/a-rational-china-oriented-military-strategy</p><p>https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/taiwan-china-g7-sanktionen-1.5955199</p><p></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jPOv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F06f78e10-d340-4ce5-86ae-a59d77698c34_1268x932.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jPOv!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F06f78e10-d340-4ce5-86ae-a59d77698c34_1268x932.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jPOv!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F06f78e10-d340-4ce5-86ae-a59d77698c34_1268x932.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jPOv!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F06f78e10-d340-4ce5-86ae-a59d77698c34_1268x932.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jPOv!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F06f78e10-d340-4ce5-86ae-a59d77698c34_1268x932.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/06f78e10-d340-4ce5-86ae-a59d77698c34_1268x932.png" width="1268" height="932" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/06f78e10-d340-4ce5-86ae-a59d77698c34_1268x932.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":932,"width":1268,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":1555389,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jPOv!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F06f78e10-d340-4ce5-86ae-a59d77698c34_1268x932.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jPOv!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F06f78e10-d340-4ce5-86ae-a59d77698c34_1268x932.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jPOv!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F06f78e10-d340-4ce5-86ae-a59d77698c34_1268x932.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jPOv!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F06f78e10-d340-4ce5-86ae-a59d77698c34_1268x932.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>https://www.ft.com/content/f7922fdb-01bf-4ffd-9c5c-79f15468aa71#myft:my-news:page</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>"Increasingly, Sino-American relations are blighted by some of the worst aspects of the first cold war. ... But this time, the (occasionally) redeeming seriousness of the American-Soviet stand-off is missing. "The Sino-American competition is in danger of becoming a shallow, petulant parody of a cold war." But it could be very dangerous: “Zhao Tong, an arms-control expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, suggests that China is consciously accepting higher tensions and short-term risks. He says that in Chinese thinking, America is the aggressor and would have backed off by now if it truly feared a catastrophe. Accordingly, China believes that scaring America more will reduce long-term risks.</p><p>Veterans of the original cold war shudder at such reckless logic, for they recall when terror was a spur to restraint. In China’s contest with America, a lack of fear is the scariest thing of all.”</p><p>https://www.economist.com/china/2023/03/02/why-arent-china-and-america-more-afraid-of-a-war "</p><p></p><p>The U.S. defense industrial base would face even greater challenges if war broke out in Asia. To help understand the complexities and challenges of a war in the Taiwan Strait, CSIS conducted two dozen iterations of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. In the war game, retired military officers and civilian experts played the roles of military leaders from China, Japan, Taiwan, the United States, and other participants. Using an operational map of the western Pacific and a map of Taiwan for ground combat, players took turns conducting military actions, such as firing ballistic missiles and deploying aircraft carriers.</p><p>In virtually every iteration of the war game, the United States expended more than 5,000 long-range missiles of various types in three weeks of conflict. Among the most important munitions to prevent a Chinese seizure of all of Taiwan are long-range precision missiles, including missiles launched by U.S. submarines, and these ran out quickly in the war game. The same is true of ship-based munitions, such as the SM-6, which would also be expended in large quantities in such a conflict.</p><p>Antiship cruise missiles offer a useful case study. In every iteration of the CSIS war game, the United States expended its inventory of antiship cruise missiles within the first week of the conflict. These missiles were particularly useful because of their ability to strike Chinese naval forces from beyond the range of Chinese air defenses. These air defense systems are likely to be formidable—especially early in a conflict—and may be able to prevent most aircraft from moving close enough to drop short-range munitions. Bombers used in the war game generally employed these munitions because they could be based outside the range of <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/coming-chinese-weapons-boom">Chinese missiles</a>.</p><blockquote><p><strong>The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that great-power wars are industrial conflicts.</strong></p></blockquote><p>There are no quick solutions to ramping up missile production capacity to meet these needs, but that is all the more reason to start now. The first step is to incentivize U.S. defense companies to build more. But these firms are generally unwilling to ramp up arms production and take financial risks without having contracts in place, especially multiyear ones. Given the large capital and personnel investments required, it is not a sound business decision to produce more munitions or weapons without a clear demand signal and clear financial commitments from the U.S. government. Although the Department of Defense signs multiyear contracts for ships and airplanes, it generally does not sign multiyear contracts for many munitions. In addition, the U.S. military services frequently cut munitions from their budgets at the end of each fiscal year to make room for other priorities or to fix problems that arise during the acquisition of larger weapons systems.</p><p>Workforce and supply chain constraints also prevent companies from increasing the production of weapons systems and munitions that would be needed in a major war. Companies need to hire, train, and retain workers. Moreover, supply chains for the U.S. defense sector are not as secure as they should be. In some cases, just a single company makes a key component. The Javelin, for instance, relies on a rocket motor that is currently produced exclusively by the company Aerojet Rocketdyne. Only one company, Williams International, builds turbofan engines for most cruise missiles.</p><p>There are also significant vulnerabilities with some rare-earth metals, which China has a near monopoly on, that are critical for manufacturing various missiles and munitions. China dominates the advanced battery supply chains across the globe, including the refining of cobalt, copper, lithium, and nickel, as well as the production of anodes, separators, and electrolytes. China is the global leader in cast products, which are used in most military platforms and munitions from ships to missiles. Beijing produces more than the next nine countries combined, including over five times as much as the United States. The Department of Defense depends on foreign governments, including China, for large cast and forged products, which are used in some defense systems and machine tools.</p><p>Finally, lead time is a significant constraint. Missiles, space-based systems, and ships face the longest replacement times. It can take roughly two years to produce many types of missiles, and this is generally based on the time needed to deliver the first missiles—not the last ones.</p><p>https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/americas-looming-munitions-crisis</p><p></p><p>https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/03/09/america-and-china-are-preparing-for-a-war-over-taiwan</p><p>https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/to-prepare-to-fight-china-is-studying-america-s-wwii-pacific-campaign</p><p></p><div data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM" class="tweet" data-attrs="{"url":"https://twitter.com/jim_mitre/status/1557915969065992192?s=20&t=FlvFD_Wo8p9YUev1bDEjWA","full_text":"In a plausible future where China is sufficiently powerful to challenge U.S. global primacy, several scenarios of systemic U.S.-China conflict could escalate into a broader war of power transition.\n\nNew RAND research illustrates these scenarios: ","username":"jim_mitre","name":"Jim Mitre","date":"Fri Aug 12 02:24:46 +0000 2022","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"retweet_count":215,"like_count":538,"expanded_url":{"url":"https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA830-1.html","image":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1e3715df-60ad-45e3-8fac-a984dd850420_1448x1080.jpeg","title":"Hypothetical Scenarios of U.S.-China Conflict","description":"The prospect of China overtaking the United States to attain global primacy appears unlikely, but it is not impossible. An analysis of two conflict scenarios—one low-intensity and one high-intensity—illuminates how a U.S.-China war of power transition might unfold.","domain":"rand.org"},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}"><a class="tweet-link-top" href="https://twitter.com/jim_mitre/status/1557915969065992192?s=20&t=FlvFD_Wo8p9YUev1bDEjWA" target="_blank"><div class="tweet-header"><img class="tweet-header-avatar" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/jim_mitre.jpg" alt="Twitter avatar for @jim_mitre" loading="lazy"><div class="tweet-header-text"><span class="tweet-author-name">Jim Mitre </span><span class="tweet-author-handle">@jim_mitre</span></div></div><div class="tweet-text">In a plausible future where China is sufficiently powerful to challenge U.S. global primacy, several scenarios of systemic U.S.-China conflict could escalate into a broader war of power transition.
New RAND research illustrates these scenarios: </div><a class="expanded-link" href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA830-1.html" target="_blank"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1e3715df-60ad-45e3-8fac-a984dd850420_1448x1080.jpeg" class="expanded-link-img" loading="lazy"><div class="expanded-link-bottom"><span class="expanded-link-domain">rand.org</span><span class="expanded-link-title">Hypothetical Scenarios of U.S.-China Conflict</span><span class="expanded-link-description">The prospect of China overtaking the United States to attain global primacy appears unlikely, but it is not impossible. An analysis of two conflict scenarios—one low-intensity and one high-intensity—illuminates how a U.S.-China war of power transition might unfold.</span></div></a></a><a class="tweet-link-bottom" href="https://twitter.com/jim_mitre/status/1557915969065992192?s=20&t=FlvFD_Wo8p9YUev1bDEjWA" target="_blank"><div class="tweet-footer"><span class="tweet-date">2:24 AM ∙ Aug 12, 2022</span><hr><div class="tweet-ufi"><span href="https://twitter.com/jim_mitre/status/1557915969065992192?s=20&t=FlvFD_Wo8p9YUev1bDEjWA/likes" class="likes"><span class="like-count">538</span>Likes</span><span href="https://twitter.com/jim_mitre/status/1557915969065992192?s=20&t=FlvFD_Wo8p9YUev1bDEjWA/retweets" class="retweets"><span class="rt-count">215</span>Retweets</span></div></div></a></div><p>https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/opinion/america-world-war-iii.html</p><p>https://thechinaproject.com/2022/12/01/deja-vu-to-2002-the-u-s-china-and-parallels-to-the-iraq-war-run-up/</p><p>https://www.foxnews.com/world/war-game-suggests-u-s-needs-bolster-taiwans-defenses-now-avoid-heavy-casualties</p><p></p><p>https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/opinion/america-world-war-iii.html?</p><p><strong>By Stephen Wertheim</strong></p><p><strong>Mr. Wertheim is a scholar and writer on U.S. foreign policy.</strong></p><ul><li><p><strong>Dec. 2, 2022</strong></p></li><li><p>11 MIN READ</p></li></ul><p>In March, as President Biden was facing pressure to intensify U.S. involvement in Ukraine, he responded by invoking the specter of World War III <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/17/why-biden-white-house-keep-talking-about-world-war-iii/">four times</a> in one day.</p><p>“Direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III,” he <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2022-03-11/u-s-will-not-fight-war-against-russia-in-ukraine-biden-video?sref=QmOxnLFz">said</a>, “something we must strive to prevent.” He <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/11/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-house-democratic-caucus-issues-conference/">underscored the point</a> hours later: “The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews — just understand, and don’t kid yourself, no matter what you all say, that’s called World War III, OK?”</p><p>More than any other presidential statement since Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Biden’s warning signaled the start of a new era in American foreign policy. Throughout my adult life and that of most Americans today, the United States bestrode the world, essentially unchallenged and unchecked. A few years ago, it was still possible to expect a benign geopolitical future. Although “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/08/what-genesis-great-power-competition/595405/">great power competition</a>” became the watchword of Pentagonese, the phrase could as easily imply sporting rivalry as explosive conflict. Washington, Moscow and Beijing would stiffly compete but could surely coexist.</p><p>How quaint. The United States now faces the real and regular prospect of fighting adversaries strong enough to do Americans immense harm. The post-Sept. 11 forever wars have been costly, but a true great power war — the kind that used to afflict Europe — would be something else, pitting the United States against Russia or even China, whose economic strength rivals America’s and whose military could soon as well.</p><p>ADVERTISEMENT</p><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/opinion/america-world-war-iii.html?#after-story-ad-6">Continue reading the main story</a></p><p>This grim reality has arrived with startling rapidity. Since February, the war in Ukraine has created an acute risk of U.S.-Russia conflict. It has also vaulted a Chinese invasion of Taiwan to the forefront of American fears and increased Washington’s willingness to respond with military force. “That’s called World War III,” indeed.</p><p>Yet how many Americans can truly envision what a third world war would mean? Just as great power conflict looms again, those who witnessed the last one are disappearing. <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/wwii-veteran-statistics">Around 1 percent of U.S. veterans</a> of World War II remain alive to tell their stories. It is estimated that by the end of this decade, fewer than 10,000 will be left. The vast majority of Americans today are unused to enduring hardship for foreign policy choices, let alone the loss of life and wealth that direct conflict with China or Russia would bring.</p><p>Preparing the country shouldn’t begin with tanks, planes and ships. It will require a national effort of historical recovery and imagination — first and foremost to enable the American people to consider whether they wish to enter a major war if the moment of decision arrives.</p><p><strong>N</strong>avigating great power conflict is hardly a novel challenge for the United States. By 1945, Americans had lived through two world wars. The country emerged triumphant yet sobered by its wounds. Even as the wars propelled the United States to world leadership, American leaders and citizens feared that a third world war might be as probable as it today appears unthinkable. Perhaps that is one reason a catastrophe was avoided.</p><p>For four decades, America’s postwar presidents appreciated that the next hot war would likely be worse than the last. In the nuclear age, “<a href="https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/113/presidents-news-conference">we will be a battlefront</a>,” Truman said. “We can look forward to destruction here, just as the other countries in the Second World War.” This insight didn’t keep him or his successors from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/opinion/sunday/united-states-cold-war.html">meddling in third world countries</a>, from Guatemala to Indonesia, where the Cold War was brutal. But U.S. leaders, regardless of party, recognized that if the United States and the Soviet Union squared off directly, nuclear weapons would <a href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v02p1/d114">lay waste</a> to the American mainland.</p><p>ADVERTISEMENT</p><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/opinion/america-world-war-iii.html?#after-story-ad-7">Continue reading the main story</a></p><p>Nuclear terror became part of American life, thanks to a purposeful effort by the government to prepare the country for the worst. The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv15r577t">Federal Civil Defense Administration advised</a> citizens to build bomb shelters in their backyards and keep clean homes so there would be less clutter to ignite in a nuclear blast. The film “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/mbrs01836081/">Duck and Cover</a>,” released in 1951, encouraged schoolchildren to act like animated turtles and hide under a makeshift shell — “a table or desk or anything else close by” — if nukes hit. By the 1960s, <a href="https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/civil-defense/miscellaneous/fallout.html">yellow-and-black signs</a> for fallout shelters dotted American cities.</p><p>The specter of full-scale war kept the Cold War superpowers in check. In 1950, Truman sent U.S. troops to defend South Korea against invasion by the Communist North, but his resolve had limits. After Gen. Douglas MacArthur implored Truman to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402390008437791">blast China and North Korea with 34 nuclear bombs</a>, the president fired the general. Evoking the “disaster of World War II,” <a href="https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/96/address-dinner-civil-defense-conference">he told the nation</a>: “We will not take any action which might place upon us the responsibility of initiating a general war — a third world war.”</p><p>The extreme violence of the world wars and the anticipation of a sequel also shaped President John F. Kennedy’s decisions during the Cuban missile crisis, when the Soviet Union moved to place nuclear weapons 90 miles from Florida. Kennedy, who had served in the Pacific and rescued a fellow sailor after their ship went down, grew frustrated with his military advisers for recommending preventative strikes on Soviet missile sites. Instead of opening fire, he imposed a naval blockade around Cuba and demanded that the Soviets withdraw their missiles. A one-week superpower standoff ensued. Approximately <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Awaiting_Armageddon/8MmCPgN14msC?gbpv=1&bsq=%2210%20million%20Americans%22">10 million Americans</a> fled their homes. Crowds descended on civil defense offices to find out how to survive a nuclear blast. The Soviets backed down after Kennedy secretly promised to remove U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey. The world had come so close to nuclear Armageddon that Kennedy, <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-university-19630610">citing the danger of a third and total war</a>, took the first steps toward détente before his death in 1963.</p><p><strong>B</strong>ut memory is never static. After the Soviet Union collapsed and generations turned over, World War II was recast as a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/books/review-looking-for-good-war-elizabeth-samet.html">moral triumph</a> and no longer a cautionary tale.</p><p>In the 1990s, an outpouring of film, history and literature celebrated the “greatest generation,” as journalist Tom Brokaw anointed those who won the war for America. Under their watch, the United States had saved the world and stopped the Holocaust — which retrospectively <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/n/novick-holocaust.html">vaulted to the center</a> of the war’s purpose, even though stopping the mass murder of European Jews was not why the United States had entered. A new generation, personally untouched by great power war, reshaped the past, revering their elders but <a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/10129/good-war-american-memory">simplifying the often varied and painful experiences</a> of veterans.</p><p>In this context, the double lesson of the world wars — calling America to lead the world but cautioning it not to overreach — narrowed to a single-minded exhortation to sustain and even expand American power. Presidents began to invoke World War II to glorify the struggle and justify American global dominance. On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor in 1991, George H.W. Bush <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Public_Papers_of_the_Presidents_of_the_U/VQWJjIi3rEoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22isolationism%20flew%20escort%20for%20the%20very%20bombers%20that%20attacked%20our%20men%2050%20years%20ago%22">told the country</a> that “isolationism flew escort for the very bombers that attacked our men 50 years ago.” Commemorating the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994, Bill Clinton recalled how the Allied troops gathered “<a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-50th-anniversary-d-day-pointe-du-hoc-normandy-france">like the stars of a majestic galaxy</a>” and “<a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-50th-anniversary-d-day-utah-beach-normandy">unleashed their democratic fury</a>,” fighting a battle that continued.</p><p>In 2004 the imposing World War II Memorial, one decade and $197 million in the making, went up between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. George W. Bush, a year into invading Iraq, <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/05/20040529-2.html">gave the dedication</a>: “The scenes of the concentration camps, the heaps of bodies and ghostly survivors, confirmed forever America’s calling to oppose the ideologies of death.” Preventing a repeat of World War II no longer involved exercising caution; it meant toppling tyrants.</p><p>ADVERTISEMENT</p><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/opinion/america-world-war-iii.html?#after-story-ad-8">Continue reading the main story</a></p><p>Besides, why dwell on the horrors of global conflict at a time when no such thing even seemed possible? With post-Soviet Russia reeling and China poor, there were no more great powers for the United States to fight. Scholars discussed the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44481533">obsolescence of major war</a>.</p><p>It wasn’t just major war that seemed passé. So did the need to pay any significant costs for foreign policy choices. Since the Vietnam War roiled American society, leaders moved to insulate the American public from the harms of any conflict, large or small: The creation of an all-volunteer force did away with the draft; air power bombed targets from safe heights; the advent of drones allowed killing by remote control.</p><p>The deaths of <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/Suicides">more than 7,000 service members</a> in the post-Sept. 11 wars — and approximately four times as many by suicide — devastated families and communities but were not enough to produce a Vietnam-style backlash. Likewise, although the wars have cost a whopping <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/BudgetaryCosts">$8 trillion</a> and counting, the payments have been spread over decades and passed to the future.</p><p>Not having to worry about the effects of wars — unless you enlist to fight in them — has nearly become a birthright of being American.</p><p><strong>T</strong>hat birthright has come to an end. The United States is entering an era of intense great power rivalry that could escalate to large-scale conventional or nuclear war. It’s time to think through the consequences.</p><p>The “acute threat,” as the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Biden-Harris-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-10.2022.pdf">new National Security Strategy states</a>, comes from Moscow. President Vladimir Putin controls thousands of nuclear weapons, enough to destroy civilization many times over. Since invading Ukraine, he has threatened to use them.</p><p>Mr. Putin could <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/03/03/how-does-this-end-pub-86570">plausibly act on that threat</a> under several scenarios: if U.S. or NATO forces directly enter the conflict, if he believes his rule is threatened or if Ukrainian forces verge on retaking Crimea. No one knows precisely what might prompt the Kremlin to employ a nuclear weapon, but Mr. Biden recently said that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/world/europe/biden-armageddon-nuclear-war-risk.html">the risk of Armageddon</a> was the highest it has been since the Cuban missile crisis.</p><p>ADVERTISEMENT</p><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/opinion/america-world-war-iii.html?#after-story-ad-9">Continue reading the main story</a></p><p>Mr. Biden <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-says-u-s-will-not-unilaterally-send-troops-defend-n1285619">has ruled out using force</a> to defend Ukraine. His administration is pursuing a <a href="https://www.state.gov/625-million-in-additional-u-s-military-assistance-for-ukraine/">finely tailored objective</a>: It seeks to strengthen Ukraine’s position on the battlefield in order to strengthen its hand in peace negotiations. That goal does not commit the United States to ensuring a complete Ukrainian victory. Yet the Ukrainian Army’s recent successes have prompted American commentators to redouble their backing for Kyiv and further marginalize talk of diplomacy (not that Mr. Putin has shown any readiness to stop the killing).</p><p>If the possibility of war with Russia was not enough, U.S. relations with China are in free fall, setting up the world’s two leading powers to square off for decades to come.</p><p>Despite Mr. Biden’s caution toward Russia, he is contributing to the rising chances of conflict with China. In a <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/05/24/troubling-repercussions-of-biden-s-taiwan-gaffes-pub-87196">series of interviews</a>, he asserted that the United States has a commitment to defend Taiwan (in fact, it is obligated only to help arm the island) and vowed to send U.S. troops in the event of a Chinese invasion. These repeated gaffes are likely intended to deter Beijing in light of its <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-relations-tension-us-policy-biden">many recent military maneuvers around the island</a>. But especially in tandem with high-level congressional visits to Taipei, they <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/09/20/on-taiwan-president-biden-should-listen-to-senator-biden-pub-87962">risk implying</a> that the United States wishes to keep Taiwan permanently separated from the mainland — a position it is hard to imagine Beijing will ever accept.</p><p>Equally important, Mr. Biden seems to be saying that defending Taiwan would be worth the price of war with China. But what would such a war entail?</p><p>A series of recent war games held by think tanks help us to imagine what it would look like: First, a war will likely <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA830-1.html">last a long time</a> and take many lives. Early on, China would have incentives to mount a massive attack with its now highly developed long-range strike capability to disable U.S. forces stationed in the Pacific. Air Force Gen. Mark D. Kelly said that China’s forces are “designed to <a href="https://www.airandspaceforces.com/war-with-china-will-end-badly-if-usaf-gives-up-air-supremacy/">inflict more casualties in the first 30 hours</a> of combat than we’ve endured over the last 30 years in the Middle East.”</p><p>In most rounds of a war game recently conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the United States swiftly lost two aircraft carriers, each carrying at least 5,000 people, on top of hundreds of aircraft, <a href="https://breakingdefense.com/2022/08/a-bloody-mess-with-terrible-loss-of-life-how-a-china-us-conflict-over-taiwan-could-play-out/">according to reports</a>. One participant noted that although each simulation varied, “what almost never changes is it’s a bloody mess and both sides take some terrible losses.” At some stage, those Selective Service registrations required of young American men might need to be expanded and converted into a draft.</p><p>Second, each side would be tempted to escalate. This summer, the Center for a New American Security held a war game that ended with China detonating a nuclear weapon near Hawaii. “Before they knew it,” both Washington and Beijing “had <a href="https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/dangerous-straits-wargaming-a-future-conflict-over-taiwans">crossed key red lines</a>, but neither was willing to back down,” the conveners concluded. Especially in a prolonged war, China could mount <a href="https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/china">cyberattacks to disrupt critical American infrastructure</a>. It might shut off the power in a major city, obstruct emergency services or bring down communications systems. A new current of fear and suspicion would course through American society, joining up with the nativism that has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/10/books/review-reign-of-terror-9-11-era-trump-spencer-ackerman.html">reverberated through national politics</a> since Sept. 11.</p><p>The economic consequences would be equally severe. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which produces most of the world’s advanced semiconductors, would profoundly damage the U.S. and global economy regardless of Washington’s response. (To this end, the United States has been trying to <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/11/22/after-chips-act-limits-of-reshoring-and-next-steps-for-u.s.-semiconductor-policy-pub-88439">move more semiconductor manufacturing home</a>.) But a U.S.-China war would risk catastrophic losses. Researchers at RAND estimate that a yearlong conflict would <a href="https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1100/RR1140/RAND_RR1140.pdf">slash America’s gross domestic product</a> by 5 to 10 percent. By contrast, the U.S. economy contracted 2.6 percent in 2009, the worst year of the Great Recession. The gas price surge early in the Ukraine war provides only the slightest preview of what a U.S.-China war would generate. For the roughly <a href="https://www.pymnts.com/study/reality-check-paycheck-to-paycheck-inflation-consumer-spend-expenses/">three-fifths of Americans</a> who currently live paycheck to paycheck, the war would come home in millions of lost jobs, wrecked retirements, high prices and shortages.</p><p>In short, a war with Russia or China would likely injure the United States on a scale without precedent in the living memory of most citizens. That, in turn, introduces profound uncertainty about how the American political system would perform. Getting in would be the easy part. More elusive is whether the public and its representatives would maintain the will to fight over far-flung territories in the face of sustained physical attack and economic calamity. When millions are thrown out of work, will they find Taiwan’s cause worth their sacrifice? Could national leaders compellingly explain why the United States was paying the grievous price of World War III?</p><p>These questions will be asked during a conflict, so they ought to be asked in advance. Even those who think the United States should fight for Ukraine or Taiwan have an interest in educating the public about the stakes of great power conflict in the nuclear and cyber age.</p><p>The last nuclear-related sign I saw, a few weeks ago, proudly declared a small liberal suburb of Washington, D.C., to be a “nuclear-free zone.” “Duck and Cover” deserves a 21st-century remake — something a bit more memorable than the Department of Homeland Security’s <a href="https://www.ready.gov/nuclear-explosion">“Nuclear Explosion”</a> fact sheet, which nonetheless contains sound advice. (For example, after the shock wave passes, you have 10 minutes or more to find shelter before the radioactive fallout arrives.) For every moral condemnation of adversaries’ actions, Americans should hear candid assessments of the costs of trying to stop them. A war game <a href="https://www.nbc.com/meet-the-press/video/war-game-what-would-a-battle-for-taiwan-look-like/NBCN142309777">broadcast on “Meet the Press</a>” in May offered one model. Even better to follow it with a peace game, showing how to avoid devastation in the first place. Without raising public awareness, political leaders risk bringing about the worst-case outcome — of waging World War III and losing it when the country recoils.</p><p><strong>A</strong>s international relations have deteriorated in recent years, critics of U.S. global primacy have <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-06-16/managing-new-cold-war">frequently warned</a> that a <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-06-17/washingtons-dangerous-new-consensus-china">new cold war</a> was brewing. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/opinion/sunday/trump-china-cold-war.html">I have been</a> <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/the-dangers-of-a-new-cold-war-with-russia">among them</a>. Yet pointing to a cold war in some ways understates the danger. Relations with Russia and China are not assured to stay cold. During the original Cold War, American leaders and citizens knew that survival was not inevitable. World-rending violence remained an all-too-possible destination of the superpower contest, right up to its astonishing end in 1989.</p><p>Today the United States is again assuming the primary burden of countering the ambitions of governments in Moscow and Beijing. When it did so the first time, it lived in the shadow of world war and acted out of a frank and healthy fear of another. This time, lessons will have to be learned without that experience.</p><p><strong>Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and Catholic University. He is the author of “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tomorrow-World-Birth-Global-Supremacy/dp/067424866X">Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy</a>.”</strong></p><p><em><strong>The Times is committed to publishing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/opinion/letters/letters-to-editor-new-york-times-women.html">a diversity of letters</a> to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some <a href="https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014925288-How-to-submit-a-letter-to-the-editor">tips</a>. And here’s our email: <a href="mailto:letters@nytimes.com">letters@nytimes.com</a>.</strong></em></p><p><em><strong>Follow The New York Times Opinion section on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/nytopinion">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/NYTOpinion">Twitter (@NYTopinion)</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/nytopinion/">Instagram</a>.</strong></em></p><p></p><p>https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/wargame-chinese-invasion-taiwan-deterrence-failure-house-committee</p><p></p><p></p><p>Members of Congress are slated to hold a war game on a possible <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tag/china">Chinese invasion</a> of <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tag/taiwan">Taiwan,</a> highlighting that “the enemy gets a vote” and providing a warning sign about the consequences of U.S. deterrence potentially failing in the Pacific.</p><p>Beijing and Chinese leader <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tag/xi-jinping">Xi Jinping</a> have long declared <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/china-other-election-interference-mccaul-xi-plotting-pick-taiwan-next-leader">their desire to bring the democratic island nation of Taiwan under their control,</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tag/mike-gallagher">Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI),</a> chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, told the <em>Washington Examiner</em> that his committee “will host a table-top exercise this week to explore the military and economic ramifications of a deterrence failure, and, thus, conflict in the Taiwan Strait.” The war game will be held Wednesday evening.</p><p><strong><a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/defense-national-security/taiwan-speaker-island-must-become-fishbone-xi-jinping-choke-on">TAIWAN SPEAKER SAYS ISLAND MUST BECOME "FISHBONE" CHINA WOULD CHOKE ON</a></strong></p><p>Gallagher pointed out that the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/russias-ukraine-invasion-wake-up-call-increased-taiwan-will-fight">choices made by foreign adversaries such as China</a> inevitably affect even the most carefully laid plans by U.S. military strategists, and said a goal of the war game will be to answer, “How do our policies do after they make contact with our competitor’s strategies?” He added, “Tabletops aren’t just for military planners — they can be used to game out trade policy, cyber defense, and many other issues in Congress’s remit. Too often, Congress only considers first-order consequences of its policies.”</p><p>A source close to the House CCP committee told the <em>Washington Examiner</em> that “it’s sort of like Mike Tyson’s ‘everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.’ And then we want to simulate a scenario where we get punched in the mouth and we experience what it looks like when our strategy collides with our competitor’s strategy.”</p><p>The Wisconsin Republican got the top U.S. general in Europe to admit in April 2022 that Western efforts to <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/afghanistan-debacle-played-role-in-putins-ukraine-decision-general-says">deter</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/integrated-deterrence-gop-charges-pentagons-new-buzzy-strategy-is-broken">Russian leader Vladimir Putin failed,</a> culminating in the Kremlin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022.</p><p>Gen. Tod Wolters of U.S. European Command told Gallagher during House testimony last year that he considered it part of his mission to deter Putin from invading and that he considered himself part of an interagency effort to “deter and dissuade” Russia. Gallagher asked if the general agreed that <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/us-commander-acknowledges-biden-failed-to-deter-russia-from-invading-ukraine">deterrence had failed</a>, and Wolters replied, “I can’t argue with your conclusion.”</p><p>Gallagher’s war game will explore what will happen if deterrence similarly fails with China and if Beijing decides to try to take Taiwan by force.</p><p>Adm. John Aquilino, commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, was <a href="https://armedservices.house.gov/hearings/full-committee-hearing-us-military-posture-and-national-security-challenges-indo-pacific">asked</a> by Gallagher about Taiwan war games during House testimony on Tuesday.</p><p>“You know how war games work. You can pick the time — what does today look like, what does two years from now or what does four years from now look like,” Aquilino said. “So we look at all of those to ensure that we’ve got a broad view and we leave no holes in our understanding and analysis.”</p><p>The admiral added, “War-gaming is a learning objective. So when people talk about ‘hey, who won, who lost?’ — war-gaming is not about that. It’s about learning and understanding vulnerabilities, strengths, and helps you go forward and figure out how to adjust.”</p><p>Gallagher told the admiral that “usually when we run these war games, one thing quickly becomes apparent: We go Winchester on critical weapons systems,” meaning that the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/we-will-deliver-those-weapons-mccaul-vows-fix-taiwan-defense-chinese-drills-coast">U.S. quickly runs out of key munitions</a>, with Gallagher noting that “we run out of long-range fires” in these scenarios. The Republican asked the admiral, “What worries you about the stock of long-range fires that we have west of the international dateline, and what do you think is our best way to replenish our stockpiles and make sure you have what you need in theater prior to the start of shooting?”</p><p>Aquilino replied that “I’m not too worried as it applies to our ability to deter and then deliver effective contingency operations if required,” and, when pressed by Gallagher again, he repeated that “I’m not worried.”</p><p>A source close to the House CCP committee told the <em>Washington Examiner</em> that the Wednesday war game will be run by the think tank Center for a New American Security, with roughly 18 committee members playing national security advisers for the United States as “Blue” and CNAS playing China as “Red.” The source said that “we think that depending on how many steps they get through it will probably amount to about a month of fighting, which is very significant in a military and naval context.”</p><p>Becca Wasser, Andrew Metrick, and others from CNAS will play the role of Chinese invaders. Wasser is the head of The Gaming Lab at CNAS and also teaches a course on war-gaming at Georgetown University. Metrick was previously a wargamer at Northrop Grumman.</p><p>Gallagher previously held a Taiwan-focused war game in March with House Republicans at a retreat in Florida.</p><p>“The war game at the GOP Leadership Conference showed my colleagues and me that America and our allies are not currently up to the task of defending these ideals through military strength,” Gallagher <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/28/gop-wargames-chinese-attack-taiwan/">told</a> the <em>Washington Post</em> at the time. “We need to learn the hard lessons of failed deterrence in Ukraine and arm our friends in danger before the shooting starts.”</p><p>CNAS has itself hosted numerous China-Taiwan war games, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYfvm-JLhPQ">including</a> one for <em>Meet the Press</em> in May 2022.</p><p>“The wargame indicated there is no quick victory for either side if China decides to invade Taiwan,” CNAS <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/CNAS+Report-Dangerous+Straits-Defense-Jun+2022-FINAL-print.pdf">wrote</a> of that war game in June 2022.</p><p>CNAS also held an August 2022 war game around the time that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visited Taiwan.</p><p><strong><a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/">CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER</a></strong></p><p>“In the first three weeks after invading Taiwan, China sank two multibillion-dollar U.S. aircraft carriers, attacked American bases across Japan and on Guam, and destroyed hundreds of advanced U.S. jet fighters,” the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/war-game-finds-u-s-taiwan-can-defend-against-a-chinese-invasion-11660047804">wrote</a> when recounting the tabletop exercise’s results. “China’s situation was, if anything, worse. It landed troops on Taiwan and seized the island’s southern third, but its amphibious fleet was decimated by relentless U.S. and Japanese missile and submarine attacks and it couldn’t resupply its own forces.”</p><p>President Joe Biden has <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/haines-points-clear-biden-comments-defending-taiwan-chinese-invasion">repeatedly vowed that the United States would respond militarily</a> to defend Taiwan if China attacked Taiwan, and each time, the White House has subsequently insisted America’s decadeslong policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan was not shifting.</p><p>https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/wargame-chinese-invasion-taiwan-deterrence-failure-house-committee</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>How a reckless report could increase the chance of a crisis with China</p><p>A new study from the Council on Foreign Relations on US Taiwan policy is both dangerous and misleading.</p><p><strong>JUNE 29, 2023</strong></p><p>Written by<br><a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/author/mswaine/">Michael D. Swaine</a>, <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/author/jwerner/">Jake Werner</a> and <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/author/jpark/">James Park</a></p><p>https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/06/29/how-a-reckless-report-could-increase-the-chance-of-a-crisis-with-china/</p><p></p><p>https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/9/15/23874025/china-washington-wall-street-cold-war</p><div><hr></div><p><em><strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/authors/jonathan-guyer">Jonathan Guyer</a></strong> covers foreign policy, national security, and global affairs for Vox. From 2019 to 2021, he worked at the American Prospect, where as managing editor he reported on Biden’s and Trump's foreign policy teams.</em></p><p>Congress’s <strong><a href="https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/">new China-focused committee</a></strong> hasn’t traveled to China yet. But they came to New York this week to meet with Wall Street executives, foreign policy leaders, and journalists in what may at times have felt like a foreign country.</p><p>That’s because New York and Washington see China rather differently.</p><p>Chairman Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin, acknowledged the dissonance on Monday when speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The median view on Wall Street on China is much different than the median, bipartisan view on China on Capitol Hill. And that’s really why we’re here,” he <strong><a href="https://www.cfr.org/event/us-strategic-competition-china">said</a></strong>. “Even those in the financial community who are less hawkish on China than I am, what they want, above all other things, is certainty, predictability, clarity.”</p><p>A <strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2022/9/19/23320328/china-us-relations-policy-biden-trump">bipartisan consensus on China</a></strong> has emerged in Washington as one of the few policy arenas where there’s continuity between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Under that view, China poses an<strong> </strong>imminent risk to the US and international stability, and both domestic and foreign policy need to be focused on <strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/23130583/biden-asia-china-foreign-policy">countering Beijing’s global reach</a></strong>.</p><p>Contrast that to New York: As America and the world’s financial hub, Wall Street executives think first of the depth of economic connection between the US and China, the challenge of fully decoupling the American economy from the Chinese (or the milder version of that which is called <strong><a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/23/derisking-us-china-biden-decoupling-technology-supply-chains-semiconductors-chips-ira-trade/">derisking</a></strong>), and the fears that the decline of US power could lead to <strong><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/opinion/dollar-strength-reserve-currency.html">de-dollarization</a></strong> (that is, the US dollar no longer serving as the anchor of the global financial system).</p><p>No one doubts that a scenario in which China were to invade neighboring Taiwan would be catastrophic for the region and the world. But the conversation in Washington has come to assume that <strong><a href="https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3521976/kendall-outlines-china-threat-in-stark-detail-offers-blueprint-for-effective-re/">Xi Jinping is on a seemingly inevitable path to war</a></strong>. Many analysts <strong><a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/no-hope-china-will-rejoin-the-world-top-beijing-based-businessman-says-20230904-p5e1yp.html">disagree</a></strong>, however, and fear that the zero-sum logic obscures the actual threat at hand. Gallagher and committee ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois, participated in a <strong><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/53fd65a6-31ac-40f9-9201-ae9f15257f9f">war game</a></strong> with financial leaders on how to deter a potential Taiwan war and how any conflict would affect the global economy.</p><p>For Stephen Roach, the former chief economist of Morgan Stanley and a symbol of New York’s view on Beijing, the entire premise of the war game <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/SRoach_econ/status/1700458366437380437">represented</a></strong> a “one-sided campaign to stoke fear over China’s military intentions.” He <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/SRoach_econ/status/1683436433921527809">has said</a></strong> that the committee is engaged in “mindless China bashing.”</p><p>While there are downsides to a foreign policy dictated by Wall Street, trying to synthesize those concerns with Washington’s could help the US chart a safer path forward in a dangerous time.</p><p>Jake Werner, a scholar at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and author of a <strong><a href="https://quincyinst.org/report/competition-versus-exclusion-in-u-s-china-relations-a-choice-between-stability-and-conflict/">new report</a></strong> on these tensions, says that the US-China relationship has become so toxic that it’s gotten more and more difficult to have a substantive policy conversation. “All they’re hearing are voices about how China is this terrible danger,” he told me. “Our attention really needs to focus very clearly on this zero-sum structure of competition and changing that, rather than focusing on China.”</p><h3><strong>How New York sees China</strong></h3><p>In Washington’s panels and speeches, the China threat — especially toward Taiwan — has become priority No. 1, seeping into discussions of seemingly every region and conflict in the world. For the nation’s capital, China has become an all-encompassing reason to expand the already expansive <strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/22840615/us-defense-spending-increase-afghanistan-withdrawal">US military budget</a></strong>, explore deals with unsavory partners like <strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/8/3/23817467/biden-israel-saudi-arabia-normalization-middle-east-policy">Saudi Arabia</a></strong> and <strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/6/23/23770369/modi-india-weapons-arms-deal-drones-jet-engines">India</a></strong>, and engage in protectionist policies that are designed to deliberately exclude China from semiconductors and other advanced technologies.</p><p>Meanwhile in New York, an entirely different conversation is unfolding. At a February <strong><a href="https://www.iiss.org/en/events/2023/03/chinas-economy-potential-and-constraints/">panel</a></strong> hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, New York Federal Reserve experts explored how constraints on the Chinese economy might affect Beijing’s international posture. Taiwan didn’t come up. There was some discussion about the <strong><a href="https://apnews.com/article/china-defense-budget-aircraft-carriers-cdac45c8d36a47cffda68be99b7c9ee7">slight increase</a></strong> in Chinese military spending in the context of economic development.</p><p>Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary, says it’s “<strong><a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/14/china-economy-larry-summers-world-bank-imf-spring-meetings-trade-inflation/">dangerous</a></strong>” to have China policy discussions dominated only by hawks. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, whose <strong><a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/jpmorgans-top-trader-sees-china-biggest-overseas-opportunity-2023-02-15/">bank has significant plans</a></strong> for investments in China, has urged “<strong><a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/jpmorgans-dimon-says-us-china-need-have-real-engagement-2023-05-31/">real engagement</a></strong>” between the US and China. And even as Trump advanced intensive nativism and demonized China, especially during the early days of the pandemic, Wall Street saw opportunity. “I continue to firmly believe China will be one of the biggest opportunities for BlackRock over the long term, both for asset managers and investors,” Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of the world’s biggest asset manager, <strong><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-has-one-powerful-friend-left-in-the-u-s-wall-street-11606924454">told</a></strong> shareholders in 2020. (The committee’s <strong><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/blackrock-msci-face-congressional-probes-for-facilitating-china-investments-2147ce2c">probes</a></strong> into major investment powerhouses, like BlackRock and MSCI, have spooked Wall Street.)</p><p>Though Chinese leaders have ignored Biden officials’ phone calls, the US business sector retains close contact with China. And that could be a good thing in dialing down tensions between the two countries. China and the US still have <strong><a href="https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/country-papers/3268-2022-statistical-analysis-of-u-s-trade-with-china/file#:~:text=U.S.%20export%20totaled%20%24153.8%20billion,%25%20of%20(%2429.4%20billion).">a massive trading relationship</a></strong>, and that kind of interconnectivity and private-sector communication was something America didn’t have with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and it could serve as a relaxant amid the deteriorating government-to-government relationship.</p><p>Not everyone agrees. A career national security official who served in the Trump administration told me that the broader policy conversation in New York about China feels like a time warp. New York, from their perspective, still isn’t convinced of the threat, which feels like a throwback to five years ago when they were trying to convince other federal agencies that China was indeed a top security priority.</p><p>In fact, Wall Street seems to want to go back even further, this former official thinks — back to the early Obama years or even earlier, when a constructive US-China relationship seemed possible. “The idea of papering over stuff and having happy meetings is exactly what got us into this mess. The idea of shelving our disputes and pushing things off and ignoring them has hurt us tremendously. I think that is quite accepted here in Washington, and that is the stance of both the Trump and the Biden administrations. But in New York, that’s not the case,” they said.</p><p>For his part, Rep. Gallagher says that Wall Street is literally <strong><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/29/us-investment-china-technology-companies/">financing</a></strong> the Chinese military.</p><p>“People in this room probably disagree with my views about the level of restrictions we should put on American capital going to China,” Gallagher said at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Some of the biggest differences are not necessarily Democrat versus Republican.”</p><h3><strong>How Washington sees China</strong></h3><p>Established this year, the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party has no legislative power. But it is using its platform, and primetime hearings, to shape the Washington conversation around the economic, technological, and security challenges that China poses.</p><p>Committee members have <strong><a href="https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/media/committee-travel">traveled</a></strong> to Detroit to meet automakers, Iowa to meet farmers, and Wisconsin to meet manufacturers — all of whom have economic interests in China. Some have been abroad to Australia and Papua New Guinea. In February, Gallagher took a <strong><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/22/china-committee-chair-makes-secret-trip-taiwan/">secret trip</a></strong> to Taiwan. But if the committee is hearing from a diversity of policy voices, it’s not apparent from their public hearings; many experts who have testified largely share the view that China poses an existential threat to the United States.</p><p>That view has translated to policy. The Biden administration has created new multilateral forums, especially in Asia, to exclude China. Biden has kept in place <strong><a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/cost-trumps-trade-war-china-still-adding">Trump’s tariffs on China</a></strong> and scaled up Trump’s export controls and sanctions designations, and promised new bans that build on the semiconductors blockade.</p><p>Bipartisanship is a defining characteristic of the China Select Committee — as it is in China policy more widely, a rarity in today’s Washington — yet there are some disagreements between the two parties. Consider the diplomatic blitz of US cabinet officials like the secretaries of <strong><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/blinken-wrap-up-rare-visit-china-may-meet-xi-jinping-2023-06-18/">State</a></strong>, <strong><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/15/business/janet-yellen-magic-mushrooms-china/index.html">Treasury</a></strong>, and <strong><a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/28/china-us-trade-raimondo-wang-engagement-decoupling-working-group-semiconductor/">Commerce</a></strong> traveling to China in recent months. “You have to have dialogue. And when you’re talking, you’re not fighting,” Krishnamoorthi, the Democratic ranking member, said at CFR. “Sometimes my Republican counterparts ... fear that we are making concessions before we talk to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]. And I disagree. I think you can talk and you can walk and chew gum at the same time.” Gallagher, by contrast, has <strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0nT0By_Qyc">criticized</a></strong> the administration’s recent trips and engagement with China.</p><h3><strong>Is there a midpoint between the two views?</strong></h3><p>Like the Biden and Trump administrations, the congressional committee frames the challenge around <strong><a href="https://prospect.org/world/biden-can-do-better-than-trumps-china-policy/">strategic competition</a></strong>.</p><p>Werner, the Quincy Institute researcher, argues in a <strong><a href="https://quincyinst.org/report/competition-versus-exclusion-in-u-s-china-relations-a-choice-between-stability-and-conflict/">new policy report</a></strong> that the term “competition” vastly misstates what’s really going on between the US and China, especially since Trump. This isn’t like a competition between Coke and Pepsi, Werner writes, but something more akin to the zero-sum rivalry between the Sinaloa and Jalisco drug cartels — and that helps explain why China has reacted so forcefully to a barrage of US policies that seek to shut China out of global systems.</p><p>“The reason that there’s this danger of escalating out of control is because there’s this underlying zero-sum structure of competition,” he told me. “And the desire to exclude China in the extensive and unprecedented ways that the Trump administration and the Biden administration have pursued, that comes from a sense of Chinese competition as being an intolerable threat, so we have to remove it and therefore exclude it.”</p><p>In the process, Washington views everything China-related through a security lens. “You can see it very clearly in the hypersensitivity to a Chinese presence anywhere, about anything, in the United States that suddenly sets off alarm bells,” Werner explained.</p><p>In some senses, the Biden administration may appreciate the drawbacks of a purely exclusionary approach. “I don’t want to contain China,” Biden said while traveling to Vietnam last week. “I just want to make sure that we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away, everybody knows what it’s all about. And one of the ways you do that is you make sure that we are talking about the same things.”</p><p>It almost sounds like a recognition that excluding China might not work and that a pragmatic and successful approach must transcend the New York and Washington bubbles. The task is urgent. No one wins in a superpower war.</p><p></p><p>From inside the US mil-industrial complex: Affordable Mass: The Need for a Cost-Effective Precision-guided Munitions (PGM) Mix for Great Power Conflict </p><p>By Mark A. Gunzinger Director of Future Concepts and Capability Assessments, The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies</p><p>Most airto-surface munitions in DOD’s inventory were designed for campaigns of the past 30 years where U.S. forces confronted lesser regional militaries that operated weak air defenses. DOD is now planning for conflicts with peer and near-peer adversaries equipped with integrated air defense systems (IADS) that are highly capable against nonstealthy aircraft and their legacy weapons. T his is why the Air Force is acquiring 5th generation F-35 fighters and B-21 stealth bombers that can penetrate advanced IADS and launch strikes close to defended targets. However, new stealth aircraft alone will not be enough—General Mark Kelly, who leads the Air Force’s Air Combat Command, has said his service will not have a true 5th generation force until its “fifth-gen fighters have fifth-gen weapons and fifth-gen sensing.”3 From an operational perspective, putting 3rd generation weapons on the Air Force’s stealth F-35s, F-22s, B-2s, and future B-21s will greatly limit their combat effectiveness.4 T he good news is DOD is developing multiple new PGMs suitable for strikes in contested environments. The not-so-good news is many of these efforts are intended to field very-long-range weapons that will permit its non-stealthy aircraft to launch stand-off attacks against targets while remaining outside the reach of an enemy’s air and missile defenses. These long-range stand-off PGMs can cost millions of dollars each, and, because of their extended flight times and small warheads, they may not be effective against highly mobile targets or targets that are sheltered in hardened facilities. At the same time, the Air Force and other services continue to acquire large quantities of non-stealthy, short-range arming stealth aircraft with direct attack weapons for large-scale strikes in highly contested environments would greatly increase risk and reduce options for them to avoid air defenses. Plus, the force “packages” needed to suppress threats enough to allow stealth aircraft to use direct attack weapons against defended targets would require multiple supporting aircraft and an excessive amount of resources. Using stealth aircraft for these risky missions should be reserved for cases where large, penetrating direct attack weapons are required to kill high-value hardened targets. … Unpowered JDAMs can reach targets up to 15 nm from their release points, depending on the releasing aircraft’s altitude and speed. They are precise enough to reduce unwanted collateral damage and cost between $25,000 and $45,000 each depending on the variant. It is not surprising that JDAMs became the signature air-tosurface PGM of the post-Cold War era.15 T he Air Force also acquired small quantities of much larger GPS-guided direct attack 5,000-pound and 30,000-pound bombs to penetrate and kill hardened targets.16</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TbTk!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0040f0a7-5740-4eb0-9dd6-59e22e6ed527_2060x1016.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TbTk!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0040f0a7-5740-4eb0-9dd6-59e22e6ed527_2060x1016.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TbTk!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0040f0a7-5740-4eb0-9dd6-59e22e6ed527_2060x1016.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TbTk!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0040f0a7-5740-4eb0-9dd6-59e22e6ed527_2060x1016.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TbTk!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0040f0a7-5740-4eb0-9dd6-59e22e6ed527_2060x1016.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/0040f0a7-5740-4eb0-9dd6-59e22e6ed527_2060x1016.png" width="1456" height="718" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/0040f0a7-5740-4eb0-9dd6-59e22e6ed527_2060x1016.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":718,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":292573,"alt":"","title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" title="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TbTk!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0040f0a7-5740-4eb0-9dd6-59e22e6ed527_2060x1016.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TbTk!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0040f0a7-5740-4eb0-9dd6-59e22e6ed527_2060x1016.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TbTk!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0040f0a7-5740-4eb0-9dd6-59e22e6ed527_2060x1016.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TbTk!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0040f0a7-5740-4eb0-9dd6-59e22e6ed527_2060x1016.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>The Air Force should pursue a new generation of mid-range stand-in PGMs to develop a munitions inventory with the capacity to strike 100,000 or more aimpoints in a major conflict with China or Russia. … Powered subsonic JASSM-ERs cost about $1.1 million each, which is about six times the average cost of a mid-range weapon like the Small Diameter Bomb II (SDB II), which is a 250-pound class unpowered bomb equipped with wings that allow it to glide to a target. … The procurement unit cost of some air-launched hypersonic (Mach 5-plus) weapons now in development, like the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC), may be in the range of $3 million to $4 million. Cost is a critical factor since DOD must buy enough PGMs to strike 100,000 or more aimpoints during a major campaign against China or Russia. T his is not an unreasonable projection, given U.S. air forces attacked approximately 40,000 Iraqi aimpoints during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.1 </p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cJAB!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3b3090de-6352-4551-aebe-b09cb2bb16da_2102x1252.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cJAB!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3b3090de-6352-4551-aebe-b09cb2bb16da_2102x1252.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cJAB!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3b3090de-6352-4551-aebe-b09cb2bb16da_2102x1252.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cJAB!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3b3090de-6352-4551-aebe-b09cb2bb16da_2102x1252.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cJAB!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3b3090de-6352-4551-aebe-b09cb2bb16da_2102x1252.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/3b3090de-6352-4551-aebe-b09cb2bb16da_2102x1252.png" width="1456" height="867" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/3b3090de-6352-4551-aebe-b09cb2bb16da_2102x1252.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":867,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":3700061,"alt":"","title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" title="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cJAB!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3b3090de-6352-4551-aebe-b09cb2bb16da_2102x1252.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cJAB!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3b3090de-6352-4551-aebe-b09cb2bb16da_2102x1252.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cJAB!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3b3090de-6352-4551-aebe-b09cb2bb16da_2102x1252.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cJAB!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3b3090de-6352-4551-aebe-b09cb2bb16da_2102x1252.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Figure 6 shows how JASSM, JASSMER, and LRASM inventories the Air Force is procuring could be quickly depleted in a f ight against a peer aggressor. This example assumes only half of the Air Force’s nonstealthy B-52s and B-1s—41 aircraft—are tasked to launch JASSM and LRASM.50 Even at this modest tempo, the USAF’s entire inventory of these PGMs could be depleted in about a week. </p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FFzM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7974cfee-515a-427d-b2fe-6e238ac770fe_2214x1180.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FFzM!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7974cfee-515a-427d-b2fe-6e238ac770fe_2214x1180.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FFzM!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7974cfee-515a-427d-b2fe-6e238ac770fe_2214x1180.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FFzM!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7974cfee-515a-427d-b2fe-6e238ac770fe_2214x1180.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FFzM!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7974cfee-515a-427d-b2fe-6e238ac770fe_2214x1180.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/7974cfee-515a-427d-b2fe-6e238ac770fe_2214x1180.png" width="1456" height="776" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/7974cfee-515a-427d-b2fe-6e238ac770fe_2214x1180.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":776,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":243395,"alt":"","title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" title="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FFzM!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7974cfee-515a-427d-b2fe-6e238ac770fe_2214x1180.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FFzM!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7974cfee-515a-427d-b2fe-6e238ac770fe_2214x1180.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FFzM!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7974cfee-515a-427d-b2fe-6e238ac770fe_2214x1180.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FFzM!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7974cfee-515a-427d-b2fe-6e238ac770fe_2214x1180.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hoth!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F588afe5f-d88a-4453-a291-98c760293893_1850x910.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hoth!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F588afe5f-d88a-4453-a291-98c760293893_1850x910.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hoth!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F588afe5f-d88a-4453-a291-98c760293893_1850x910.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hoth!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F588afe5f-d88a-4453-a291-98c760293893_1850x910.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hoth!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F588afe5f-d88a-4453-a291-98c760293893_1850x910.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/588afe5f-d88a-4453-a291-98c760293893_1850x910.png" width="1456" height="716" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/588afe5f-d88a-4453-a291-98c760293893_1850x910.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":716,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":252709,"alt":"","title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" title="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hoth!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F588afe5f-d88a-4453-a291-98c760293893_1850x910.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hoth!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F588afe5f-d88a-4453-a291-98c760293893_1850x910.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hoth!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F588afe5f-d88a-4453-a291-98c760293893_1850x910.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hoth!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F588afe5f-d88a-4453-a291-98c760293893_1850x910.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>https://mitchellaerospacepower.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Affordable_Mass_Policy_Paper_31-FINAL.pdf</p><p></p><h1>What War Games Really Reveal</h1><h2><em>Outcomes Matter Less Than Who Pays and Who Plays</em></h2><h3>Jacquelyn Schneider</h3><p><em>December 26, 2023</em></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp" width="1" height="1" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":1,"width":1,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"A war game simulation on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., April 2023","title":"A war game simulation on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., April 2023","type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="A war game simulation on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., April 2023" title="A war game simulation on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., April 2023" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">A war game simulation on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., April 2023 Amanda Andrade Rhoades / Reuters</figcaption></figure></div><p>Jacquelyn Schneider is a Hoover Fellow and Director of the Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.</p><ul><li><p><a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/authors/jacquelyn-schneider">More by Jacquelyn Schneider</a></p></li></ul><p>Share &<br>Download</p><p><a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/print-article/node/1131210">Print</a></p><p><a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/user/login?destination=/united-states/what-war-games-really-reveal">Save</a></p><p>Last January, the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives created a special committee to examine the economic and military challenges China poses to the United States. Mike Gallagher, a Republican representative from Wisconsin who is one of Washington’s most vocal China hawks, was an obvious choice to lead the panel. For the past year, Gallagher has used the committee to sound the alarm on China and rally support for new measures that could hinder Beijing in its competition with the United States.</p><p>In his quest to build political consensus around a tougher approach to <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/regions/china">China</a>, Gallagher (and the committee’s ranking Democrat, Raja Krishnamoorthi) has employed one particularly effective tool: the war game.</p><p>In April, Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi convened a bipartisan group of lawmakers to spend an evening playing a war game that simulated a conflict between the United States and China over <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/regions/taiwan">Taiwan</a>. In Gallagher’s opening remarks, he said he hoped that playing the game would impart “a sense of urgency” and demonstrate “that there are meaningful things we can do in this Congress through legislative action to improve the prospect of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.” Players were asked to act as advisers to the president, recommending diplomatic, economic, and military responses to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. These members of Congress gathered around a campaign map, their foreign and domestic moves adjudicated by a war-gaming facilitator from a Washington think tank. Their goal was to deter China, represented by a team made up of think-tank staff members. According to Gallagher, the game revealed that the United States needed to “arm Taiwan to the teeth”—a strong endorsement for a multibillion-dollar package of Taiwanese military aid that his China committee was considering at the time. Since then, Gallagher has taken his war game on the road, playing a version with Wall Street executives in New York City in early September, and he says he plans to play a similar game with leaders of American technology companies.</p><p>These congressional games came on the heels of a series of high-visibility unclassified Taiwan war games played in 2022 at prominent American think tanks. The outcome of these games made waves in American media, securing segments on the Sunday morning news shows and headlines in <em>The</em> <em>New York Times</em> and <em>The</em> <em>Washington Post</em>. The games drew broad attention partly because of who was playing them: among the participants were Michèle Flournoy, a former undersecretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Defense and a possible future secretary of defense in a Democratic administration, and General James “Mike” Holmes, the retired four-star commander of Air Combat Command. Although run with different players and designs, these games demonstrated that there would be “no quick victory” for either side, that all military forces involved would suffer dramatic casualties, that the United States desperately needs more munitions, and that such a conflict would have a dangerous potential for escalation—even to nuclear war.</p><h3>Subscribe to <em>This Week</em></h3><p>Our editors’ top picks, delivered free to your inbox every Friday.</p><p>Sign Up</p><p>Despite the attention devoted to these outcomes, the games did not reveal anything novel or surprising about China or weaknesses in the U.S. military arsenal. But they did reveal something about policymaking and influence-peddling in the <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/regions/united-states">United States</a>, where advocates of various foreign and domestic policies have come to see war games as a useful tool in advancing their agendas.</p><p>War games go beyond predicting futures; they are interactive and evocative experiences for players and compelling stories for domestic and foreign audiences. They can be used (knowingly and unknowingly) to influence choices about budgets, weapons, foreign policies, and, ultimately, international power. By designing and framing a war game carefully, planners can create an outcome of their choosing. Accordingly, a war game often reveals more about the interests and intentions of the players than it does about the outcome of the game itself.</p><p>In the case of the Taiwan games that are so popular in Washington right now, their value is not in informing defense leaders that a war between the United States and China would be difficult to win. U.S. officials don’t need war games to tell them that. The games are more useful to officials—and to outside observers—for what they reveal about the factions and players in American politics pushing the country to start preparing for war with China.</p><h3><strong>REHEARSING WAR</strong></h3><p>It is important to understand what war games are. While the Chinese game of Go is often credited as the first “war game,” it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that war games became professional military tools. The military campaign game Kriegsspiel introduced maps, dice, and rule sets created by Prussian officers. The games were interactive and engaging, and—for the first time in war-gaming history—realistic enough to simulate military battles. As the Prussian field marshal Friedrich Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Müffling exclaimed in 1824 after being introduced to it, “This is no ordinary game—this is a school of war!” The games were used so extensively in Prussian campaign planning and military training that many argued that they were key to Prussia’s victory over Austria in 1866. The combination of immersion and vividness captured the attention of Europe’s new industrial-age military leaders, who were keen to apply new scientific approaches to the large ground wars of the Napoleonic era.</p><p>Kriegsspiel focused on ground wars. In the United States, however, the most influential war games focused on naval warfare. As early as the turn of the nineteenth century, the U.S. Navy employed war games as part of its budgeting and planning process, and it was the navy that professionalized military war games in the United States by making them a part of officer training. Similar to Kriegsspiel, which was modified by officers as they experimented with military campaign tactics, the navy war games between World War I and World War II modified rules, scenarios, and players to account for different tactics, technologies, and points of view—all while gaming a Pacific war against Japan.</p><p>These interwar games shaped the naval tactics, logistics, and aircraft carrier deployments of the Pacific campaigns of <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/tags/world-war-ii">World War II</a>. After the war, Admiral Chester Nimitz told an audience at the U.S. Naval War College, “The war with Japan had been reenacted in the game room here by so many people in so many different ways that nothing that happened during the war was a surprise—absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics toward the end of the war.”</p><p>During the <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/tags/cold-war">Cold War</a>, U.S. war games evolved to incorporate the impact of nuclear weapons. This new generation of games, played by the economist Thomas Schelling and the political scientist Lincoln Bloomfield at MIT; Bernard Brodie, Albert Wohlstetter, and Herman Kahn at RAND; and officers at the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon were largely free play, with limited rules or strict parameters. Unlike the navy’s interwar games, designed to train military officers, these games involved senior civilian officials placed in highly immersive scenarios meant to recreate the high-stakes decision-making of a nuclear crisis. In one instance, a group convened for three straight days at Camp David in Maryland to war-game a scenario that foreshadowed the Berlin crisis of 1961. Red and blue cells had four hours to make each move, their actions adjudicated in heated debate among top experts of the day. The experience was so absorbing that Schelling, one of the organizers, remembered that “these were games in which people got desperately involved. . . . Their pride, their self-esteem, and sometimes even their local reputations were very much wrapped up.”</p><blockquote><p>War games are not crystal balls.</p></blockquote><p>War games reached an important inflection point in the 1960s with a series of games code-named Sigma that were focused on Indochina. These games included highly detailed scenarios, limited rules built by and adjudicated by a staff of experts (some sources claim that each scenario involved more than 1,000 man-hours<strong> </strong>to create) and played by senior decision-makers from across the federal government. The games’ findings—that strategic bombing would fail to convince the North Vietnamese to surrender and that the United States would end up stalemated in a bloody conflict in Vietnam—were remarkably prescient.</p><p>Despite the Sigma games’ success at predicting the outcome of the Vietnam War, senior government officials, including Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, distrusted the heavy emphasis placed on human decision-making. McNamara sought to decrease the subjectivity of games by replacing human play with computer simulations of warfare. The proponents of this “scientific” approach argued that computer-run war games could solve nuclear conflict by reducing human error caused by irrationality and emotion.</p><p>Ultimately, the drive to automate war games created a backlash as scholars at RAND and other war-gaming centers criticized the attempt to trivialize the human decision-making part of war. In the years after McNamara’s departure, the Pentagon returned to games that evoked the large-scale, richly detailed scenarios of the earlier Sigma games. Worried about potential nuclear escalation with the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the Reagan administration called on Schelling to once again design immersive political-military games. Dubbed the Proud Prophet games, the series ran over seven weeks in 1983 and<strong> </strong>included 200 players.</p><p>Perhaps paradoxically, the normalization of games within defense planning led to a kind of stagnation in game design as they began to mirror the bureaucratization of the national security state. When Robert Work became deputy defense secretary in 2014, he concluded that war games were not evolving or providing valuable information. He tried to lead a renaissance, investing in war-gaming initiatives throughout the Pentagon, including the creation of a large library of games.</p><h3><strong>GAMING WASHINGTON</strong></h3><p>The history of war games shows how game designers and conveners can influence outcomes through their choice of players, rules, and scenarios. This is why, even though war games are ostensibly designed to help people understand how a war might play out, the results of this “inner” game can reveal only so much. Instead, it is the outer game—who convened the game, who is playing it, how the game is played and distributed, and ultimately why it is played—that offers real insight.</p><p>The essential puzzle piece to understanding the outer game is the decision to run the game in the first place. Games are costly. The most famous U.S. war games—such as the Sigma, Global War Game, or Proud Prophet series—required thousands of man-hours to prepare and took senior decision-makers away from their primary duties for extended periods. Games can require so much logistical support that even the top gaming facilities in the Department of Defense, such as the one at the Naval War College, can run only a few a year. Because of the resources involved, there is a behind-the-scenes bureaucratic and political fight to determine which games will be “sponsored” and prioritized. The act of gaming a particular region, weapon capability, or doctrine signals who is currently wielding the most power in the Department of Defense and what that person or group cares about. For example, a 2019 “Global Integrated War Game” seemed at first glance to be an innocuous and jargon-heavy future warfighting scenario. A closer look at the sponsoring institutions—the Joint Chiefs of Staff and functional commands such as Cyber Command, Strategic Command, and Special Operations Command—revealed how the games were being used to influence a power shift within the Department of Defense away from the combatant commands, which focus on specific geographic regions, toward “global integrators,” commands whose functions span the globe.</p><p>Games played outside of government can also signal public sentiment and political will, providing adversaries with clues to the level of popular support for a particular scenario. If war games about a specific adversary are played widely in civilian society, this could be a sign that this society is considering the prospect of a future war. In Washington, games run by different think tanks can signal convergence around a policy problem. For example, today’s Taiwan games are being funded and run by think tanks that span ideologies and political parties.</p><p>The selection of participants can also reveal intentions. Game conveners may choose players who they believe will help them get to a certain outcome and avoid players that might derail their purpose. Alternatively, conveners can choose players based on how these participants might influence policy after playing the game. In this case, players become part of an entrepreneurial policy initiative in which the highly evocative experience of the game compels players to adopt a policy position. For example, for the 20XX future military capability games played from 1995 to 2000, the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment carefully chose the players, selecting up-and-coming civilian and military leaders who the team believed might influence defense policy on military technology for decades.<strong> </strong>One of those was Work, the future U.S. deputy secretary of defense, who cited the influence of these games on his technology-centered Third Offset Strategy, which called for investments in autonomy, unmanned systems, and network technologies.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp" width="1" height="1" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":1,"width":1,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"U.S. Congressman Mike Gallagher at a war game in Washington, D.C., April 2023","title":"U.S. Congressman Mike Gallagher at a war game in Washington, D.C., April 2023","type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="U.S. Congressman Mike Gallagher at a war game in Washington, D.C., April 2023" title="U.S. Congressman Mike Gallagher at a war game in Washington, D.C., April 2023" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">U.S. Congressman Mike Gallagher at a war game in Washington, D.C., April 2023 Amanda Andrade Rhoades / Reuters</figcaption></figure></div><p>Sometimes the mere act of attendance in a war game can lend credibility to the game’s outcomes. In his book <em>Obama’s Wars, </em>the journalist Bob Woodward describes a war game the Pentagon was running to help decide how many troops would be needed for the surge of U.S. forces into Afghanistan in 2009. According to Woodward, Douglas Lute, President <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/topics/obama-administration">Barack Obama</a>’s special assistant and senior coordinator for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the time, argued that the National Security Council, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department should boycott the game because he believed it was designed to find a certain outcome (namely, the number of troops the Pentagon believed should be sent to Afghanistan). As Woodward recounts, Lute told his colleagues: “We should not participate in this. First of all, we don’t need the war game. I can tell you what the answer’s going to be. So I’m not spending a day over there in the Pentagon drinking lousy coffee to get to the self-evident conclusion. . . . If State and DNI and NSC participate in this war game, we’re going to give it the legitimacy that it does not deserve.”</p><p>Choices about scenario, assumptions about adversaries’ objectives and capabilities, rules about how participants can play and what capabilities they can use, and the way in which outcomes are assessed can significantly affect the outcome of a game. These variables often shed light on what the game’s conveners want to achieve from playing it. For example, in the early twentieth century, U.S. Army advocates of airpower called for the integration of the airplane into war games at the Army War College, hoping that this would help bolster their case. Facilitators restricted how aircraft could be used, however, effectively assuring that airpower played very little role in the outcome of the game. To the chagrin of airpower enthusiasts, those who opposed building out the army’s airpower capabilities had new evidence to stymie investment in aircraft when the game was over.</p><p>Finally, how the outcome of a war game is shared or publicized reveals the intentions of the game’s conveners. This is especially true for games played within the Department of Defense, where games are usually classified and their distribution is highly restricted. Declassifying or leaking games suggests that organizations have incentives to publicize the results—as a deterrent threat or to send a bureaucratic signal. In 2020, for example, the Department of Defense disclosed at a news briefing that it had conducted a war game focused on Russian tactical nuclear weapons. The department revealed that the game was played at Strategic Command and included Mark Esper, then the secretary of defense, as a player. Much about the game was unusual: the use of tactical nuclear weapons, the participation of a sitting secretary of defense, and the almost unprecedented disclosure of highly classified strategic gaming. But the war game and its publicization came at an important moment in a bureaucratic fight. The Trump administration had supported the development of tactical nuclear weapons in its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. With the <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/topics/trump-administration">Trump administration</a> in its final months, advocates saw a closing window of opportunity to secure funding and support for the controversial weapons. This may be why the administration decided to declassify and advertise the war game, which concluded that the United States needed a tactical nuclear weapon option to deter the Russians from using one.</p><h3><strong>THE DRUMS OF WAR</strong></h3><p>The circumstances surrounding today’s U.S.-Chinese games—who plays them, what they focus on, how they are played, and how they are publicized—provide important clues about the future path of U.S. policy toward China. The games’ findings—that Taiwan will urgently need arms and supplies from the United States, that the United States needs more munitions, and that the fight could be long and bloody—reflect what U.S. defense officials have been saying for almost a decade. But now those conclusions are being generated by a bipartisan bloc in Congress, reflecting the emergence of a faction within U.S. domestic politics that is keen to increase military and economic aid to Taiwan.</p><p>Two assumptions that undergird most of these games reveal how U.S. policy toward China is becoming more hawkish. The first is that the defense of Taiwan is a strategic interest for the United States. Players are asked not to debate whether the United States should aid Taiwan but instead how to do so. It is easy to imagine a different outcome if players were told to debate that basic objective. The second vital assumption is that China intends to invade Taiwan. “Last night’s exercise reaffirmed what we already know: <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/tags/xi-jinping">Xi</a> is running hypothetical invasion scenarios in his head every single day,” announced Ashley Hinson, a Republican representative from Iowa, after the congressional game in April. But the game, which provides no new information about Xi’s intentions, could not have reaffirmed anything of the sort: what is inside Xi’s mind is unknowable.</p><p>A few years ago, it may have been more likely to hear about war games involving inadvertent conflicts with the Chinese in the East or South China Sea. Those games focused on crisis de-escalation and deterrence and generally led to calls for the kind of power projection the United States has been comfortable conducting in the region over the last two decades: carrier group transits, combat patrols of U.S. fighter and intelligence aircraft, and exercises with allies and partners. The new war games, however, imagine a deliberate invasion of or attack on Taiwan by an overtly aggressive China. For the players representing the United States in these newer games, the goal is not just to de-escalate a simmering crisis but rather to defend the island—a mission that calls for a different set of policies than games designed to mitigate the danger of an attack rather than defeat it.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp" width="1" height="1" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":1,"width":1,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"U.S. Marines at a military camp in the Philippines, April 2019","title":"U.S. Marines at a military camp in the Philippines, April 2019","type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="U.S. Marines at a military camp in the Philippines, April 2019" title="U.S. Marines at a military camp in the Philippines, April 2019" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dzjd!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F108dc046-1ad3-41ef-985f-1739ad2db141_1x1.webp 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">U.S. Marines at a military camp in the Philippines, April 2019 Eloisa Lopez / Reuters</figcaption></figure></div><p>It is worth considering what Beijing might conclude from watching the public discussion of these war games. For starters, the games likely reduce the uncertainty of Washington’s stated position of “strategic ambiguity” when it comes to the question of whether the United States would use force to defend Taiwan: it’s hard to imagine anything less ambiguous than a loud, public, and bipartisan discussion of the pros and cons of various options for how the U.S. military could help protect the island. The games might also signal to Beijing that anti-Chinese factions are gaining power and influence inside the U.S. political system, with a consolidation of support among power brokers in favor of military industrialization, restrictive trade, and increased arms sales to Taiwan.</p><p>China might also look at these war games and conclude the United States is on an unalterable course toward war. That would be a mistake: the games all fall short of calling for American forces to be stationed in Taiwan or for the United States to unambiguously, preemptively declare a military alliance with its government. They also do not anticipate or call for a U.S. military campaign against mainland China. These are important omissions from the games, although Chinese policymakers may interpret these omissions to be strategic rather than indicative of genuine restraint on Washington’s part.</p><h3><strong>DON’T GET PLAYED</strong></h3><p>War games are not crystal balls, but they are powerful tools of influence. Domestically, war games can rally constituencies in Congress, the armed services, opposing political parties, or the public. Internationally, games can signal a country’s intentions and help bolster the credibility of steps it has taken to deter conflict. War games reveal what states care about, what domestic political actors want, and how states believe wars will occur and play out. The immersive quality of such games and the way they bring people together for a shared experience make them uniquely effective forms of persuasion. As Bloomfield, the political scientist and statesman, wrote of the games run by MIT during the Cold War, reentering the real world after a game was “like coming out of a deep sleep after a particularly vivid dream. It takes time for the carryover of emotional content from the game to reality to wear off.”</p><p>The richness of that experience is what makes war games so engaging and what helps them illuminate otherwise unpredictable situations. But they can be biased toward a specific conclusion and in this way become dangerous tools of propaganda to make a case for war. Done wrong, they can also turn the horrific reality of war into an abstraction, which could make a conflict seem less deadly. That is the effect that the sociologist Irving Horowitz had in mind in 1963 when he criticized Cold War–era thinkers such as Kahn, Schelling, Wohlstetter and Henry Kissinger as inhabitants of “a world of nightmarish intellectual ‘play.’”</p><p>On the other hand, as Gallagher has pointed out, war games can also demonstrate the cost and seriousness of war, leading states to carefully build deterrence and defensive capabilities. Games about why wars start, not just who wins, can reveal patterns of inadvertent escalation and suggest mechanisms or strategies that opposing countries can take to avoid war in the first place. Furthermore, games can play an important diplomatic role in building trust between both allies and adversaries.</p><blockquote><p>War games can be biased toward a specific conclusion.</p></blockquote><p>It would be harder for organizers to manipulate war games if the press and the public better understood them. That means asking the right questions about the games’ outcomes, including how the players arrived at those outcomes. Who is paying for and convening the game? What are their motivations for running the game? Who is playing the game? What assumptions and rules are embedded in the game? Are details of the game being leaked, publicized, or disseminated in a way that could benefit the sponsors? Asking and answering such questions does not nullify the utility of a game’s findings; instead, it provides necessary context for interpreting them.</p><p>The true value of war-gaming is its ability to immerse policymakers in a scenario that might be otherwise unthinkable and in which they might learn something about themselves. This is why war games do not predict the future but can shape it. Today’s war games do not foresee a future war between the United States and China. But the fact that they are being played at all should be viewed as a warning about where things are headed.</p><p></p><h1>A US Air Force war game shows what the service needs to hold off — or win against — China in 2030</h1><p>By Valerie Insinna</p><p> Apr 12, 2021</p><p></p><p>WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force repelled a Chinese invasion of Taiwan during a massive war game last fall by relying on drones acting as a sensing grid, an advanced sixth-generation fighter jet able to penetrate the most contested environments, cargo planes dropping pallets of guided munitions and other novel technologies yet unseen on the modern battlefield.</p><p>But the service’s success was ultimately pyrrhic. After much loss of life and equipment, the U.S. military was able to prevent a total takeover of Taiwan by confining Chinese forces to a single area.</p><p>Furthermore, the air force that fought in the simulated conflict isn’t one that exists today, nor is it one the service is seemingly on a path to realize. While legacy planes like the B-52 bomber and newer ones like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter played a role, many key technologies featured during the exercise are not in production or even planned for development by the service.</p><p>Still, the outcome was a marked improvement to similar war games held over the last two years, which ended in catastrophic losses. The Air Force’s performance this fall offers a clearer vision of what mix of aircraft, drones, networks and other weapons systems it will need in the next decade if it hopes to beat China in a potential war. Some of those items could influence fiscal 2023 budget deliberations.</p><p>China is “iterating so rapidly, and I think that forces us to change,” said Lt. Gen. Clint Hinote, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements, told Defense News in March. “If we can change, we can win.”</p><p><strong>A ‘hard target’</strong></p><p>Air Force officials talked about the classified war game’s results with Defense News in March, just months before the service is set to release its fiscal 2022 budget — its first spending request under the new Biden administration.</p><p>In similar war games held in 2018 and 2019, the Air Force failed disastrously.</p><p>The 2018 exercise involved an easier scenario in the South China Sea where the service fielded a force similar to the one it operates today; but it lost the game in record time. The following year, during a Taiwan invasion scenario, the Air Force experimented with two different teams of aircraft that either operated inside of a contested zone or stayed at standoff distances to attack a target. The service lost, but officials believed they were closer to finding an optimal mix of capabilities.</p><p>The findings helped determine what the Air Force fielded for its 2020 war game — played out by the Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability team — over a two-week period.</p><p>One breakthrough moment, recounted Hinote, occurred at the start of the game. When the officer in charge of commanding the “red team,” which simulated China, looked out at the playing field, he initially declined to move forward with an invasion of Taiwan. China considers the self-governing province of Taiwan as its sovereign territory, and has vowed to unite it with the mainland.</p><p>“The red commander looked at the playing board and said: ‘This is not rational for China to initiate an invasion, given this posture that I’m facing,’” Hinote said.</p><p>But the Air Force wasn’t going to end the war game before it even started. The red commander pushed forward with an invasion anyway.</p><p>For the war game, the Air Force made several underlying assumptions that the U.S. military and its partners will be successful in overcoming certain fiscal and technological challenges.</p><p>For example, in the service’s version of the future, the U.S. military had implemented its <a href="https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2020/09/04/behind-the-scenes-of-the-us-air-forces-second-test-of-its-game-changing-battle-management-system/">Joint All-Domain Command and Control </a>concept, which would allow the armed services to send data among their previously unconnected sensors and shooters. This meant the Air Force had fielded its <a href="https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2021/03/17/air-force-curtails-abms-demos-after-budget-slashed-by-congress/">Advanced Battle Management System</a>, which could work with networks and communications technologies procured as part of the Navy’s Project Overmatch and the Army’s Project Convergence efforts.</p><p>In addition, Taiwan had successfully increased defense spending as outlined by President Tsai Ing-wen, who has called for buying drones and electronic warfare equipment along with M1A2 Abrams tanks and F-16V fighter jets, as well as upgrading to its Patriot missile defense system, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-defence-spending/taiwan-plans-to-invest-in-advanced-arms-as-china-flexes-its-muscles-idUSKBN1F00PC">according to Reuters</a>.</p><p>The U.S. Air Force also fought with a notional force that allowed it to operate different technologies that are not currently in its budget plans.</p><p>In addition, before the conflict started, the Air Force took steps to disaggregate both its operational footprint and its command-and-control structure. It made <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/smr/a-modern-nato/2019/08/28/denied-hot-meals-and-indoor-toilets-us-airmen-prepare-for-the-fog-of-war/">investments to remote airfields </a>across the Pacific region — fortifying and lengthening runways as well as <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018/08/27/us-air-force-tests-base-in-a-box-in-poland-to-prep-for-future-wars/">pre-positioning repair equipment</a> and fuel — so that forces could deploy to those locations during a war instead of main operational bases. This approach is something the service calls <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/singapore-airshow/2020/02/11/the-us-air-force-has-unconventional-plans-to-win-a-war-in-the-asia-pacific/">“agile combat employment.”</a></p><p>“We tried to design ourselves where we would be a hard target. As an example, we never filled up any airfield more than 50 percent, so even if you lost that entire airfield, you wouldn’t lose your entire fleet,” Hinote said.</p><p>Finally, instead of separate command organizations for the land, maritime and air domains, the Air Force created small command-and-control teams comprised of five to 30 individuals from all the services. The team members were able to oversee the battlespace and direct forces using portable technology, such as hand-held tablets.</p><p>“You would pass off the command of your forces, and in a way that meant that you were not ever knocked out of the fight,” Hinote said. “They could knock [Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii] out of the fight. In fact, they do almost every time we play this. But what they can’t do is they can’t knock out every command-and-control element that you have out there.”</p><p>Now, what has emerged is a list of what the Air Force thinks it needs to win a war after 2030:</p><p><strong>Tactical aircraft</strong></p><p>The air power community has been divided in recent years over how to affordably replace the Air Force’s aging tactical aircraft fleet while ensuring there are enough advanced fighters to battle the likes of Russia or China.</p><p>Should the service move forward with its plan to eventually replace the A-10, F-16 and some F-15C/D aircraft with stealthy fifth-generation F-35s? Or could a mix of F-35s and new fourth-generation jets like the F-15EX give the service more flexibility?</p><p>This disagreement heightened in February, when Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown floated the idea of designing a less expensive, non-stealthy follow-on fighter <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/02/18/the-air-force-is-interested-in-buying-a-budget-conscious-clean-sheet-fighter-to-replace-the-f-16/">to replace the service’s oldest F-16s</a>, instead of replacing them with the F-35, as had been planned for decades.</p><p>The service is currently evaluating its options through a tactical aircraft study to inform the fiscal 2023 budget, which could result in cuts to the Air Force’s program of record for 1,763 F-35As.</p><p>“We don’t have to make that decision this year,” Hinote said. However, he added, the roles each aircraft played during the war game could influence the outcome of the study “to a great degree.”</p><p>In the war game, four types of aircraft made up the Air Force’s future fighter inventory. Three of those are ongoing programs of record for the service:</p><ul><li><p>The highly advanced <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2020/09/15/the-us-air-force-has-built-and-flown-a-mysterious-full-scale-prototype-of-its-future-fighter-jet/">Next Generation Air Dominance aircraft</a>, or NGAD, and its associated systems, which were capable of penetrating <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/smr/air-force-priorities/2021/02/26/air-force-general-worried-us-wont-field-sixth-gen-fighter-in-time-to-beat-china/">highly contested airspace</a>.</p></li><li><p>The Lockheed Martin-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which operated as a “workhorse” aircraft attacking targets at short ranges.</p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/04/07/the-f-15ex-has-a-new-name/">Boeing F-15EX</a> aircraft, which mainly conducted defensive missions but were also loaded with long-range missiles and <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/04/06/the-first-flight-test-of-the-air-forces-air-launched-hypersonic-booster-didnt-go-as-planned/">hypersonic weapons</a> to strike targets farther downrange.</p></li></ul><p>Finally, the service operated a non-stealthy, light, tactical fighter for homeland and base defense, which could also be flown in support of counterterrorism missions. That aircraft, which aligns with Brown’s idea for a “fourth-generation plus” replacement for the F-16, doesn’t currently exist in the service’s budget plans.</p><p>For years, Air Force officials have portrayed the F-35 as the aircraft that it would use to infiltrate into enemy airspace to knock out surface-to-air missiles and other threats without being seen. However, in the war game, that role was played by the more survivable NGAD, in part due to the F-35′s inability to traverse the long ranges of the Pacific without a tanker nearby, Hinote said.</p><p>Instead, the F-35 attacked Chinese surface ships and ground targets, protected American and Taiwanese assets from Chinese aircraft, and provided cruise missile defense during the exercise. But “it’s not the one that’s pushing all the way in [Chinese airspace], or even over China’s territory,” Hinote said.</p><p>Notably, the F-35s used during the war game were the more advanced <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/03/18/development-costs-for-the-f-35s-modernization-program-increased-by-19b-in-a-year/">F-35 Block 4 aircraft </a>under development, which will feature a suite of new computing equipment known as <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/paris-air-show/2019/06/21/lockheed-hypes-f-35s-upgrade-plan-as-interest-in-sixth-gen-fighters-grows/">“Tech Refresh 3,” </a>enhancements to its radar and electronic warfare systems, and new weapons.</p><p>“We wouldn’t even play the current version of the F-35,” Hinote said. “It wouldn’t be worth it. … Every fighter that rolls off the line today is a fighter that we wouldn’t even bother putting into these scenarios.”</p><p><strong>Drones and more drones</strong></p><p>Much of the Air Force’s legacy drone inventory — such as the <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/06/04/the-air-force-is-looking-for-a-next-gen-replacement-to-the-mq-9-reaper-drone/">General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper </a>and Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk — operated in combat during the 2000s and 2010s across the uncontested battlespaces of the Middle East, where U.S. adversaries could not present significant electronic warfare or counter-air capabilities. But a war with a competitor like China some 30 years later requires <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/air-force-association/2020/09/17/defense-companies-are-lining-up-to-build-a-replacement-for-the-mq-9-reaper/">more advanced and survivable drones</a>.</p><p>For the war game, the Air Force relied on a mix of systems that are either under development or not currently sought by the service’s acquisition arm.</p><p>Autonomous “Loyal Wingman” drones <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/12/07/these-three-companies-will-build-prototypes-for-the-air-forces-skyborg-drone/">flew alongside penetrating fighters</a> in contested zones, providing additional firepower and sensor data to human pilots. Hinote pointed to <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/03/02/australia-makes-another-order-for-boeing-made-loyal-wingman-drones-after-a-successful-first-flight/">Australia’s Loyal Wingman aircraft,</a> which is produced by Boeing and flew for the first time in February, as an “impressive” capability that the U.S. sought to mirror in its war game.</p><p>Across the Taiwan Strait, the service operated <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/12/11/the-first-nine-attempts-to-retrieve-swarming-gremlins-drones-failed-heres-whats-next/">a mass of small, inexpensive drones </a>that formed a mesh network. Although they were mostly used as a sensing grid, some were outfitted with weapons capable of — for instance — hitting small ships moving from the Chinese mainland across the strait.</p><p>“An unmanned vehicle that is taking off from Taiwan and doesn’t need to fly that far can actually be pretty small. And because it’s pretty small, and you’ve got one or two sensors on it, plus a communications node, then those are not expensive. You could buy hundreds of them,” he said.</p><p>In the second island chain, the Air Force operated low-cost attritable drones out of installations such as Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. These aircraft, like the <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/04/05/the-valkyrie-drone-launches-an-even-smaller-drone-from-inside-its-payload-bay/">Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie</a> currently undergoing tests by the service, delivered ordnance against ships, aircraft and ground-based targets. Attritable drones are cheap enough that combat losses can be endured by commanders.</p><p>Even farther out, the service flew a notional successor to the RQ-4 Global Hawk, which Hinote said would not survive a conflict with China in the mid-2030s.</p><p>Instead of concentrating on ISR, the Air Force primarily used the RQ-4 replacement as a long-range communications node, sometimes outfitting it with more exquisite radar that can track moving, airborne targets. Hinote likened the platform to an unmanned version of <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/smr/air-force-priorities/2021/02/26/us-air-force-top-general-isnt-ready-to-buy-the-e-7-wedgetail-just-yet/">Australia’s E-7A Wedgetail</a> aircraft.</p><p>“You’re using the huge aperture in there and all the power that’s there, but it’s crewed by people on the ground somewhere else,” he said. “It’s kind of a transition from where we are today to the future. You can’t do that with the E-3 [airborne early warning and control plane]; it’s just too old of an aircraft.”</p><p><strong>Bombers, tankers and airlift</strong></p><p>Neither China nor the United States resorted to using nuclear weapons during the war game — a consequence, Hinote said, of being able to present a credible threat to China that the U.S. has the arsenal necessary to retaliate to a Chinese strike. However, the <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/01/19/watch-the-skies-in-2022-for-the-first-b-21-bomber-flight/">B-21</a> and B-52 bombers played active roles, providing conventional firepower during the scenario, with the B-21 penetrating into contested zones and the B-52 <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/smr/air-force-priorities/2021/02/25/to-early-to-say-when-b-52-engine-contract-will-be-awarded-air-force-general-says/">remaining at standoff distances</a>.</p><p>Once the war game started and the fight began, it became difficult for the Chinese and U.S. militaries to conduct airlift missions within range of each other’s missile threats. That made it critical for the U.S. Air Force to be able to pre-position food, water, medical supplies and the equipment needed run an airfield — including aircraft parts, fuel and weapons — at the locations from which it plans to operate, Hinote said.</p><p>Even though airlift assets like the C-17 and C-130 couldn’t transport cargo or people to the fight in the early days of the conflict, the aircraft still played an offensive role by <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/05/27/air-force-looking-to-up-gun-its-airlift-planes/">launching palletized munitions</a> that are bundled together with a guidance package and airdropped from a plane.</p><p>“One interesting thing about possible war with a peer competitor is you’re pretty agnostic as to where the fires come from; you just need the fires,” Hinote said. “I don’t want to give the impression that we’re going to create bombers out of every C-17 out there. But in certain phases of a campaign like this, you really need the extra missiles.”</p><p>A full complement of KC-46 tankers <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/smr/air-force-priorities/2021/02/24/despite-growing-pains-the-kc-46-will-begin-limited-operations-soon/">fulfilled the aerial refueling mission</a> during the scenario, but were kept out of high-threat environments.</p><p>The Air Force also experimented with <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/02/02/air-force-study-on-future-aerial-refueling-tanker-could-start-in-2022/">several notional next-generation tanker designs </a>to understand the trade-offs between fielding many small tankers capable of refueling many aircraft at a time versus operating large tankers that can carry a massive amount of fuel.</p><p>“We’re hoping that that’s going to help us as we think about what is the next step in air refueling. Do we just go buy more KC-46s? Do we look at some other type of tanking concepts and try to create a capability around that?” Hinote wondered. “I don’t have an answer for that yet because the excursions were somewhat inclusive, and they depend on a lot of things that you’re making decisions on now,” such as the mix of fighters and bombers.</p><p><strong>What happens now?</strong></p><p>The outcome of the war game was a United States victory, where the U.S. Air Force helped rebuff the Chinese military from taking over Taiwan. But any U.S. fight with a nation-state like China has the potential to be catastrophic for both countries.</p><p>Both the United States and Taiwan suffered high levels of attrition during the exercise, with an even higher rate of casualties among Chinese forces. Hinote declined to share exact figures due to the classification of the exercise, but said the Air Force incurred losses an “order of magnitude” lower than those projected by the service in its 2018 war game.</p><p>“The force that we had programmed, say, in 2018 took devastating losses. This force doesn’t take those devastating losses,” Hinote said. “They do take losses. We do lose a lot of airmen. It is a difficult fight.</p><p>“And that kind of gets to the point of what does it take to stand up to China in the Indo-Pacific, literally on their front doorstep. And the answer is: It takes a willingness to be able to suffer those losses. It’s just a difficult, very sobering reality that we have.”</p><p>The service plans <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/air-warfare-symposium/2020/02/24/convincing-congress-secretive-programs-could-prove-harmful-to-air-force-funding-plans/">to take its findings to Capitol Hill </a>in the hopes of gaining the support of lawmakers for the difficult force posture decisions coming down the line in upcoming budget discussions. Brown, the Air Force’s top general, has indicated that <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/08/31/new-and-old-aircraft-programs-could-get-the-ax-as-top-us-air-force-general-calls-for-a-ruthless-prioritization-of-its-capabilities/">programs could be canceled and legacy aircraft retired </a>as the service seeks to revolutionize its technology.</p><p>But as Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense budget expert with the American Enterprise Institute, <a href="https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/The-2020s-Tri-Service-Modernization-Crunch.embargoed.pdf">wrote in a March report</a>, Congress has repeatedly rolled back the service’s plans to cut its existing force structure.</p><p>“This leaves the Air Force trapped in a near-term Catch-22,” she stated. “On one hand, it is trying to divest itself of decades-old legacy airframes, which drive up [operations and maintenance] costs every year, so that it can reinvest in next-generation platforms. On the other hand, its replacement aircraft programs will not be operational fast enough to meet the ongoing demands of global operations, even if the net savings from legacy divestments are sufficient to fund new platforms.”</p><p>During the war game last fall, the Air Force invited staff members from the congressional defense committees to help shape the exercise and interpret the results, hoping to pave the way for its narrative to gain traction among lawmakers.</p><p>“We’re trying to help people see the future, what it might look like, the types of choices it would take” to win a war, all keeping in mind “the evidence-based possibility that if we were able to change, we probably wouldn’t have to fight,” Hinote said. “And that’s a reason to change.”</p><p>About Valerie Insinna</p><p>Valerie Insinna is Defense News' air warfare reporter. She previously worked the Navy/congressional beats for Defense Daily, which followed almost three years as a staff writer for National Defense Magazine. Prior to that, she worked as an editorial assistant for the Tokyo Shimbun’s Washington bureau</p><p>https://www.defensenews.com/training-sim/2021/04/12/a-us-air-force-war-game-shows-what-the-service-needs-to-hold-off-or-win-against-china-in-2030/.</p><p></p><p></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!O-0a!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4746b135-827e-4c3b-b70b-63f876324c81_253x60.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!O-0a!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4746b135-827e-4c3b-b70b-63f876324c81_253x60.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!O-0a!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4746b135-827e-4c3b-b70b-63f876324c81_253x60.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!O-0a!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4746b135-827e-4c3b-b70b-63f876324c81_253x60.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!O-0a!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4746b135-827e-4c3b-b70b-63f876324c81_253x60.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/4746b135-827e-4c3b-b70b-63f876324c81_253x60.png" width="253" height="60" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/4746b135-827e-4c3b-b70b-63f876324c81_253x60.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":60,"width":253,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"Yahoo News","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="Yahoo News" title="Yahoo News" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!O-0a!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4746b135-827e-4c3b-b70b-63f876324c81_253x60.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!O-0a!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4746b135-827e-4c3b-b70b-63f876324c81_253x60.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!O-0a!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4746b135-827e-4c3b-b70b-63f876324c81_253x60.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!O-0a!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4746b135-827e-4c3b-b70b-63f876324c81_253x60.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div></div></div></a></figure></div><h1><strong>'We're going to lose fast': U.S. Air Force held a war game that started with a Chinese biological attack</strong></h1><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!f5q5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6314545-f39e-46c6-8793-3e4a45009daf_80x80.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!f5q5!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6314545-f39e-46c6-8793-3e4a45009daf_80x80.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!f5q5!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6314545-f39e-46c6-8793-3e4a45009daf_80x80.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!f5q5!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6314545-f39e-46c6-8793-3e4a45009daf_80x80.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!f5q5!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6314545-f39e-46c6-8793-3e4a45009daf_80x80.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/d6314545-f39e-46c6-8793-3e4a45009daf_80x80.png" width="80" height="80" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/d6314545-f39e-46c6-8793-3e4a45009daf_80x80.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":80,"width":80,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" title="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!f5q5!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6314545-f39e-46c6-8793-3e4a45009daf_80x80.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!f5q5!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6314545-f39e-46c6-8793-3e4a45009daf_80x80.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!f5q5!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6314545-f39e-46c6-8793-3e4a45009daf_80x80.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!f5q5!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6314545-f39e-46c6-8793-3e4a45009daf_80x80.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div></div></div></a></figure></div><p><strong><a href="https://www.yahoo.com/author/james-kitfield-/">James Kitfield</a>Contributor</strong></p><p>Wed, March 10, 2021 at 12:00 PM EST</p><p>11 min read</p><p>Last fall, the U.S. Air Force simulated a conflict set more than a decade in the future that began with a Chinese biological-weapon attack that swept through U.S. bases and warships in the Indo-Pacific region. Then a major Chinese military exercise was used as cover for the deployment of a massive invasion force. The simulation culminated with Chinese missile strikes raining down on U.S. bases and warships in the region, and a lightning air and amphibious assault on the island of Taiwan.</p><p>The highly classified war game, which has not been previously made public, took place less than a year after the coronavirus, reportedly originating in a Chinese market, spread to the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, taking one of the U.S. Navy’s most significant assets out of commission.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EfRO!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe6483103-5897-48b6-afb2-daca89e89c81_809x540.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EfRO!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe6483103-5897-48b6-afb2-daca89e89c81_809x540.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EfRO!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe6483103-5897-48b6-afb2-daca89e89c81_809x540.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EfRO!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe6483103-5897-48b6-afb2-daca89e89c81_809x540.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EfRO!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe6483103-5897-48b6-afb2-daca89e89c81_809x540.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e6483103-5897-48b6-afb2-daca89e89c81_809x540.jpeg" width="809" height="540" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e6483103-5897-48b6-afb2-daca89e89c81_809x540.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":540,"width":809,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) leaves its San Diego homeport Jan. 17, 2020. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Dylan Lavin via Getty Images)","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) leaves its San Diego homeport Jan. 17, 2020. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Dylan Lavin via Getty Images)" title="The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) leaves its San Diego homeport Jan. 17, 2020. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Dylan Lavin via Getty Images)" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EfRO!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe6483103-5897-48b6-afb2-daca89e89c81_809x540.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EfRO!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe6483103-5897-48b6-afb2-daca89e89c81_809x540.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EfRO!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe6483103-5897-48b6-afb2-daca89e89c81_809x540.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EfRO!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe6483103-5897-48b6-afb2-daca89e89c81_809x540.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">The USS Theodore Roosevelt in San Diego in 2020. (Seaman Dylan Lavin via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div><p>Then in September in the midst of the war game, actual Chinese combat aircraft intentionally flew over the rarely crossed median line in the Taiwan Strait in the direction of Taipei an unprecedented 40 times and conducted simulated attacks on the island that Taiwan’s premier called “disturbing.” Amid those provocations, China’s air force released a video showing a bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons carrying out a simulated attack on Andersen Air Force Base on the U.S. Pacific island of Guam. The title of the Hollywood-like propaganda video was “The god of war H-6K [bomber] goes on the attack!”</p><p>In case the new U.S. administration failed to get the intended message behind all that provocative military activity, four days after President Biden took office, a large force of Chinese bombers and fighters flew past Taiwan and launched simulated missile attacks on the USS Roosevelt carrier strike group as it was sailing in international waters in the South China Sea.</p><p>Little wonder that many foreign affairs and national security experts believe the global pandemic has accelerated trends that were already pushing the United States and China toward a potential confrontation as the world’s leading status quo and rising power, respectively. This month the Council on Foreign Relations released a special report, “The United States, China, and Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War,” which concluded that Taiwan “is becoming the most dangerous flash point in the world for a possible war” between the United States and China. In Senate testimony on Tuesday, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Phil Davidson, warned that he believes China might try and annex Taiwan “in this decade, in fact within the next six years.”</p><p>Meanwhile, a leading Chinese think tank recently described tensions in U.S.-China relations as the worst since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, and it advised Communist Party leaders to prepare for war with the United States.</p><p>What many Americans don’t realize is that years of classified Pentagon war games strongly suggest that the U.S. military would lose that war.</p><p>“More than a decade ago, our war games indicated that the Chinese were doing a good job of investing in military capabilities that would make our preferred model of expeditionary warfare, where we push forces forward and operate out of relatively safe bases and sanctuaries, increasingly difficult,” Air Force Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements, told Yahoo News in an exclusive interview. By 2018, the People’s Liberation Army had fielded many of those forces in large numbers, to include massive arsenals of precision-guided surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles, a space-based constellation of navigation and targeting satellites and the largest navy in the world.</p><p>“At that point the trend in our war games was not just that we were losing, but we were losing faster,” Hinote said. “After the 2018 war game I distinctly remember one of our gurus of war gaming standing in front of the Air Force secretary and chief of staff, and telling them that we should never play this war game scenario [of a Chinese attack on Taiwan] again, because we know what is going to happen. The definitive answer if the U.S. military doesn’t change course is that we’re going to lose fast. In that case, an American president would likely be presented with almost a fait accompli.”</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7-YA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6c4da3ee-820b-49d9-9193-65d53913d0a7_810x540.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7-YA!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6c4da3ee-820b-49d9-9193-65d53913d0a7_810x540.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7-YA!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6c4da3ee-820b-49d9-9193-65d53913d0a7_810x540.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7-YA!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6c4da3ee-820b-49d9-9193-65d53913d0a7_810x540.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7-YA!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6c4da3ee-820b-49d9-9193-65d53913d0a7_810x540.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6c4da3ee-820b-49d9-9193-65d53913d0a7_810x540.jpeg" width="810" height="540" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6c4da3ee-820b-49d9-9193-65d53913d0a7_810x540.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":540,"width":810,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"Chinese People&#39;s Liberation Army personnel participate in a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on October 1, 2019, to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China. (Greg baker/AFP via Getty Images)","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="Chinese People&#39;s Liberation Army personnel participate in a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on October 1, 2019, to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China. (Greg baker/AFP via Getty Images)" title="Chinese People&#39;s Liberation Army personnel participate in a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on October 1, 2019, to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China. (Greg baker/AFP via Getty Images)" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7-YA!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6c4da3ee-820b-49d9-9193-65d53913d0a7_810x540.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7-YA!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6c4da3ee-820b-49d9-9193-65d53913d0a7_810x540.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7-YA!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6c4da3ee-820b-49d9-9193-65d53913d0a7_810x540.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7-YA!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6c4da3ee-820b-49d9-9193-65d53913d0a7_810x540.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">People’s Liberation Army soldiers at a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div><p>With Beijing continuing to tighten an iron grip on Hong Kong, engaging in deadly skirmishes with India along their shared border and routinely bullying its smaller neighbors in the South China Sea, the Biden administration recently announced a new Pentagon task force to review U.S. defense policy toward China, to be headed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.</p><p>Inevitably, the deteriorating security of Taiwan will be a major focus of the new task force. “By the way, three of China’s standing war plans are built around a Taiwan scenario,” Hinote said. “They’re planning for this. Taiwan is what they think about all the time.”</p><h2><strong>More in World</strong></h2><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!88qu!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff75d5dc2-be44-4794-9497-91e90b9a8096_200x200.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!88qu!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff75d5dc2-be44-4794-9497-91e90b9a8096_200x200.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!88qu!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff75d5dc2-be44-4794-9497-91e90b9a8096_200x200.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!88qu!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff75d5dc2-be44-4794-9497-91e90b9a8096_200x200.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!88qu!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff75d5dc2-be44-4794-9497-91e90b9a8096_200x200.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/f75d5dc2-be44-4794-9497-91e90b9a8096_200x200.jpeg" width="200" height="200" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/f75d5dc2-be44-4794-9497-91e90b9a8096_200x200.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":200,"width":200,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" title="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!88qu!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff75d5dc2-be44-4794-9497-91e90b9a8096_200x200.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!88qu!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff75d5dc2-be44-4794-9497-91e90b9a8096_200x200.jpeg 848w, 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href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0Ln3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8e76c94-05a6-4556-9694-2933483e7e96_200x200.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0Ln3!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8e76c94-05a6-4556-9694-2933483e7e96_200x200.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0Ln3!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8e76c94-05a6-4556-9694-2933483e7e96_200x200.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0Ln3!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8e76c94-05a6-4556-9694-2933483e7e96_200x200.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0Ln3!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8e76c94-05a6-4556-9694-2933483e7e96_200x200.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/f8e76c94-05a6-4556-9694-2933483e7e96_200x200.jpeg" width="200" height="200" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/f8e76c94-05a6-4556-9694-2933483e7e96_200x200.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":200,"width":200,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" title="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0Ln3!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8e76c94-05a6-4556-9694-2933483e7e96_200x200.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0Ln3!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8e76c94-05a6-4556-9694-2933483e7e96_200x200.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0Ln3!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8e76c94-05a6-4556-9694-2933483e7e96_200x200.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0Ln3!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8e76c94-05a6-4556-9694-2933483e7e96_200x200.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div></div></div></a></figure></div><h3><strong><a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/reeves-stealth-raid-set-hit-140000118.html">Reeves stealth raid set to hit 15,000 more farmers with inheritance tax</a></strong></h3><p>The Telegraph</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!u75e!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F85ff641f-238b-4571-85bb-0dca57f9284d_200x200.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!u75e!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F85ff641f-238b-4571-85bb-0dca57f9284d_200x200.jpeg 424w, 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data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/85ff641f-238b-4571-85bb-0dca57f9284d_200x200.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":200,"width":200,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" title="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!u75e!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F85ff641f-238b-4571-85bb-0dca57f9284d_200x200.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!u75e!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F85ff641f-238b-4571-85bb-0dca57f9284d_200x200.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!u75e!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F85ff641f-238b-4571-85bb-0dca57f9284d_200x200.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!u75e!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F85ff641f-238b-4571-85bb-0dca57f9284d_200x200.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div></div></div></a></figure></div><h3><strong><a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/chinese-nationals-arrested-gold-bars-173424088.html">Chinese nationals arrested with gold bars and $800,000 cash in DR Congo</a></strong></h3><p>BBC</p><p>In the early 2000s, China experts and military analysts at the RAND Corporation were given a trove of classified U.S. intelligence on Beijing’s military plans and weapons programs, and were asked to war-game a confrontation 10 years into the future. China was in the midst of an unprecedented economic growth spurt that saw its GDP increase annually by double digits, with commensurate steep increases in its defense spending. Equally worrisome, the PLA had clearly studied U.S. military operations over the course of two wars against Iraq. Both operations relied on a methodical, months-long buildup of forces to uncontested bases in the region, followed by U.S. aircraft dominating the skies and then carrying out devastating attacks on the enemy’s command-and-control systems.</p><p>China’s answer was a well-funded strategy that the Pentagon refers to as “anti-access, area denial” (A2/AD), meaning it would prevent an adversary like the U.S. from being able to carry out the sort of significant military buildup it carried during the two Iraq wars. The PLA’s military plans rely on space-based and airborne surveillance and reconnaissance platforms; massive precision-guided missile arsenals; submarines; militarized man-made islands in the South China Sea; and a host of conventional air and naval forces to hold U.S. and allied bases, ports and warships in the region at risk. Because it lies only 90 miles from Taiwan, China needs only to hold U.S. forces at bay for a matter of weeks to achieve its strategic objective of capturing Taiwan.</p><p>“Whenever we war-gamed a Taiwan scenario over the years, our Blue Team routinely got its ass handed to it, because in that scenario time is a precious commodity and it plays to China’s strength in terms of proximity and capabilities,” said David Ochmanek, a senior RAND Corporation analyst and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for force development. “That kind of lopsided defeat is a visceral experience for U.S. officers on the Blue Team, and as such the war games have been a great consciousness-raising device. But the U.S. military is still not keeping pace with Chinese advances. For that reason, I don’t think we’re much better off than a decade ago when we started taking this challenge more seriously.”</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!80D-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8a902fc6-95b7-4440-afd4-f77cd3b86fab_810x540.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!80D-!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8a902fc6-95b7-4440-afd4-f77cd3b86fab_810x540.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!80D-!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8a902fc6-95b7-4440-afd4-f77cd3b86fab_810x540.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!80D-!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8a902fc6-95b7-4440-afd4-f77cd3b86fab_810x540.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!80D-!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8a902fc6-95b7-4440-afd4-f77cd3b86fab_810x540.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/8a902fc6-95b7-4440-afd4-f77cd3b86fab_810x540.jpeg" width="810" height="540" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/8a902fc6-95b7-4440-afd4-f77cd3b86fab_810x540.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":540,"width":810,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"An Island that lies inside Taiwan&#39;s territory is seen with the Chinese city of Xiamen in the background on February 04, 2021 off the coast of Lieyu, an outlying island of Kinmen that is the closest point between Taiwan and China. Kinmen, an island in the Taiwan strait that is part of Taiwan&#39;s territory, is so close to China that the deep-water port of Xiamen, one of China&#39;s biggest, lies less than three miles away across the water. (An Rong Xu/Getty Images)\n","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="An Island that lies inside Taiwan&#39;s territory is seen with the Chinese city of Xiamen in the background on February 04, 2021 off the coast of Lieyu, an outlying island of Kinmen that is the closest point between Taiwan and China. Kinmen, an island in the Taiwan strait that is part of Taiwan&#39;s territory, is so close to China that the deep-water port of Xiamen, one of China&#39;s biggest, lies less than three miles away across the water. (An Rong Xu/Getty Images)
" title="An Island that lies inside Taiwan&#39;s territory is seen with the Chinese city of Xiamen in the background on February 04, 2021 off the coast of Lieyu, an outlying island of Kinmen that is the closest point between Taiwan and China. Kinmen, an island in the Taiwan strait that is part of Taiwan&#39;s territory, is so close to China that the deep-water port of Xiamen, one of China&#39;s biggest, lies less than three miles away across the water. (An Rong Xu/Getty Images)
" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!80D-!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8a902fc6-95b7-4440-afd4-f77cd3b86fab_810x540.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!80D-!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8a902fc6-95b7-4440-afd4-f77cd3b86fab_810x540.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!80D-!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8a902fc6-95b7-4440-afd4-f77cd3b86fab_810x540.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!80D-!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8a902fc6-95b7-4440-afd4-f77cd3b86fab_810x540.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">The island of Kinmen, seen with the Chinese city of Xiamen in the background, lies inside Taiwan’s territory and is the closest point between Taiwan and China. (An Rong Xu/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div><p>Part of the problem is that China advanced its A2/AD strategy while the Pentagon was largely distracted fighting counterterrorism and counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for two decades. Beijing is also laser-focused on Taiwan and regional hegemony, while the U.S. military must project power and prepare for potential conflict scenarios all around the globe, giving the Pentagon what Ochmanek calls an “attention deficit disorder.” Finally, there is the complacency of the perennial winner that makes it hard for senior U.S. military officers to believe that another nation would dare to take them on.</p><p>“My response is that China’s growing military confidence is manifesting itself in an increasingly belligerent approach to its neighbors, the growing frequency of the PLA’s violation of the airspace of Taiwan and Japan, and the bullying of other neighbors in the South China Sea,” said Ochmanek. “Under Xi Jinping there has been a dramatic increase in such provocations compared to a decade ago, and I think it’s grounded in his belief that militarily, China is strong enough now to credibly challenge us.”</p><p>By 2017 the Pentagon, led by then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, started to take notice.</p><p>“When we were developing the National Defense Strategy in 2017, the trend lines looked very bad vis-à-vis China, and got a lot worse as you projected into the future,” said Elbridge Colby, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development. “Yet despite that fact there were, and I think still are, a lot of people who resisted the idea that war with China is even possible, let alone losable. That’s why both strategic level and more operational war games were so important. They help show how these things are possible — but also how we can redress the problem.”</p><p>In 2018 the Defense Department issued a seminal National Defense Strategy identifying great-power competition with China and Russia, and not terrorism, as the primary challenge to the U.S. After the lopsided Blue Team defeat in the Air Force’s annual war game in 2018, senior officers and defense officials began giving a classified “Overmatch Brief” to select members of Congress.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nzcl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62775f80-0edd-4f2e-b86e-6f5b46b9b7d8_811x540.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nzcl!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62775f80-0edd-4f2e-b86e-6f5b46b9b7d8_811x540.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nzcl!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62775f80-0edd-4f2e-b86e-6f5b46b9b7d8_811x540.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nzcl!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62775f80-0edd-4f2e-b86e-6f5b46b9b7d8_811x540.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nzcl!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62775f80-0edd-4f2e-b86e-6f5b46b9b7d8_811x540.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/62775f80-0edd-4f2e-b86e-6f5b46b9b7d8_811x540.jpeg" width="811" height="540" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/62775f80-0edd-4f2e-b86e-6f5b46b9b7d8_811x540.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":540,"width":811,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"Former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis visits FOX News Channel&#x002019;s ","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="Former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis visits FOX News Channel&#x002019;s " title="Former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis visits FOX News Channel&#x002019;s " srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nzcl!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62775f80-0edd-4f2e-b86e-6f5b46b9b7d8_811x540.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nzcl!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62775f80-0edd-4f2e-b86e-6f5b46b9b7d8_811x540.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nzcl!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62775f80-0edd-4f2e-b86e-6f5b46b9b7d8_811x540.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nzcl!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62775f80-0edd-4f2e-b86e-6f5b46b9b7d8_811x540.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">Former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. (Steven Ferdman/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div><p>In the most recent war game, the Pentagon tested the impact of potential capabilities and military concepts that are still on the drawing board in many cases. The Blue Team, which represented U.S. forces, adopted a more defensive and dispersed posture less reliant on large, vulnerable bases, ports and aircraft carriers in a conflict with the Red Team, which represented China.</p><p>The strategy strongly favored large numbers of long-range, mobile strike systems, to include anti-ship cruise missile batteries, mobile rocket artillery systems, unmanned mini-submarines, mines and robust surface-to-air missile batteries for air defense. A premium was put on surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities for both early warning and accurate intelligence to enable quicker decisions by U.S. policymakers, and a more capable command-and-control system to coordinate the actions of more dispersed forces.</p><p>“We created a force that had resiliency at its core, and the Red Team looked at that force and knew that it would take a tremendous amount of firepower to knock it out,” said Hinote. The biggest insight of the war game, he said, was revealed when he talked afterward with the Red Team leader, who played the role of the PLA’s top general.</p><p>“The Red Team leader is the most experienced and aggressive officer in these war games across the Defense Department, and when he initially looked at the resiliency of our defensive posture both in Taiwan and the region, he said, ‘No, I’m not going to attack,’” recalled Hinote. “If we can design a force that creates that level of uncertainty and causes Chinese leaders to question whether they can accomplish their goals militarily, I think that’s what deterrence looks like in the future.”</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kBrf!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4bcb358a-2423-4888-a27c-669f6bd5146e_817x540.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kBrf!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4bcb358a-2423-4888-a27c-669f6bd5146e_817x540.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kBrf!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4bcb358a-2423-4888-a27c-669f6bd5146e_817x540.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kBrf!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4bcb358a-2423-4888-a27c-669f6bd5146e_817x540.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kBrf!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4bcb358a-2423-4888-a27c-669f6bd5146e_817x540.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/4bcb358a-2423-4888-a27c-669f6bd5146e_817x540.jpeg" width="817" height="540" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/4bcb358a-2423-4888-a27c-669f6bd5146e_817x540.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":540,"width":817,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"Members of Taiwan&#39;s armed forces participate in a military exercise in Hukou, Hsinchu County, Taiwan, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021. (I-Hwa Cheng/Bloomberg via Getty Images)","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null,"offset":false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="Members of Taiwan&#39;s armed forces participate in a military exercise in Hukou, Hsinchu County, Taiwan, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021. (I-Hwa Cheng/Bloomberg via Getty Images)" title="Members of Taiwan&#39;s armed forces participate in a military exercise in Hukou, Hsinchu County, Taiwan, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021. (I-Hwa Cheng/Bloomberg via Getty Images)" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kBrf!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4bcb358a-2423-4888-a27c-669f6bd5146e_817x540.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kBrf!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4bcb358a-2423-4888-a27c-669f6bd5146e_817x540.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kBrf!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4bcb358a-2423-4888-a27c-669f6bd5146e_817x540.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kBrf!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4bcb358a-2423-4888-a27c-669f6bd5146e_817x540.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">Members of Taiwan’s armed forces participate in a military exercise in January. (I-Hwa Cheng/Bloomberg via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div><p>Despite loud alarms raised by the war games, the Pentagon has been slow to adjust its long-term spending plans or to invest in the kinds of military capabilities necessary to defend Taiwan or contested island chains in the South China Sea. Instead, older weapons systems like massive warships, short-range tactical fighter aircraft and heavy tank battalions continue to enjoy support from loyal constituencies both inside the Pentagon and in Congress. What’s needed, experts say, are bolder actions like the Marine Corps’ recent decision to completely divest itself of tanks and heavy armor by 2030 in order to invest in anti-ship missiles and mobile strike teams optimized for a conflict with China.</p><p>On a sober note, Hinote pointed out that the Blue Team force posture tested in the recent war game is still not the one reflected in current Defense Department spending plans. “We’re beginning to understand what kind of U.S. military force it’s going to take to achieve the National Defense Strategy’s goals,” he said. “But that’s not the force we’re planning and building today.”</p><p>https://www.yahoo.com/news/were-going-to-lose-fast-us-air-force-held-a-war-game-that-started-with-a-chinese-biological-attack-170003936.html?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGOqb46mDGA2-tO95hO091CfMi_0_UCcm2_wxU34dFIfm_pG7BsDcXQJynrv3PJcVuT2DXqdGZSu4XWHEzoeBZRBlGisfGEwogzkYZa9bWaGgRRgsZu8xNqN9sSPYdtwl_raR2elnGje7hbsrKR6YpnHyIFLJ8KAVpqI3uJ1aTkb</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>No children (leaf entity)