Transcript of Can the U.S. Win a War in the Pacific Against China? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm here with Thomas Shugart, Jonathan Hackett, and Jack Murphy. For the people that don't know who Tom is, he actually did a great episode on The Team House. You should check that out, talking about his career. He's a former U.S. Navy submariner who served more than 25 years, and he's now a data analyst— defense analyst, excuse me— and an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for New American Security. Where obviously he focuses on, uh, the Indo-Pacific, um, and the involving, uh, like, and just the balance between America and Chinese militaries and stuff. So he's the guy who's, uh, keeping his eye on all this. He's got a great Twitter account. I suggest anyone's interested in this topic to check him out and follow him there. I'll leave a link in the description as well. You can find them. Uh, Tom, thanks for joining us.

Pleasure to be here. Thanks, D. Of course.

Um, I mean, obviously I feel like the Chinese-American, uh, you know, rivalry has kind of taken a back seat, at least in the press, um, since Iran started. And there's obviously some connections there too. Like, there's some rumor that China is helping Iran with some targeting, or at least supplies. Uh, you know, definitely they were the biggest Iranians, uh, they were Iran's biggest customer for oil. So there are some connections there, but I definitely want to focus on that US-Chinese rivalry, where it's at. You know, I just saw that China just had some like live fire drills off the coast of Taiwan a few days ago for a couple days. And, uh, like just where we're at essentially now, July 2026, with this, you know, this thing that will basically define the next probably 50 years.

So I, I would say that, uh, while there has been perhaps a drop-off a bit in the rhetoric of the, of the competition, as it were, I mean, the, the, the facts on the ground haven't— from China's side, certainly haven't dialed back at all. Um, you know, they are being aggressive as they ever were in the South China Sea. You know, we just saw the other day Chinese sailors, you know, beating on Philippine sailors with sticks Remember, that's a treaty ally of the United States we're talking about that they're, you know, conducting violent action against. The development of the Chinese military has, if anything, the trajectory has increased in the last few years. We now have multiple classes of nuclear submarines under production. We have the commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence in testimony recently said that Chinese submarine production is now going to go all nuclear. They're not going to build conventional submarines anymore., which is quite a surprise to me, and development. Um, we have their first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier under construction. We have the revelation that they are, uh, using even more than we thought commercial shipping in practicing, uh, conducting amphibious assaults.

Uh, we have increasing numbers of Chinese aircraft crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait. We now have the Chinese, not just Coast Guard, but their whole of government, uh, other agencies as well acting like they own the waters east of Taiwan, waters that are actually, you know, really should be divided between the Philippines and, and, uh, and Japan. I mean, so the, the facts on the ground in the, in the Pacific, uh, are if anything more aggressive than they were in the past. It's just the US government doesn't seem to be choosing to make a lot of hay about it right now at this point. I guess they've got other things they're busy with.

Yeah, boys, any questions? Go ahead, please.

Well, I mean, I think, you know, based on what you're saying, I'd be interested to hear you expand on the arms production, because my impression, at least of China, is that their strategy in the past has been not to meet us tank for tank, fighter jet for fighter jet, carrier for carrier. Is that still true? And if it is, what do you think this— or how do you interpret this sort of like, I guess, increase in proliferation?

So I think what we'll see is until Taiwan is resolved one way or another, uh, there will be a pretty significant asymmetry between what China is doing and their capabilities are developing and what we traditionally see as U.S. power projection capabilities. Because Taiwan's only 100 miles away, right? So you need different capabilities to do that. So for example, let's talk about amphibious assault vessels. So, you know, when you look at the US Navy and its amphibious assault vessels, you have, you know, large amphibious assault ships, you know, 40,000+ tons in some cases. They're equipped to operate, you know, thousands of miles from home for months at a time. That's overkill for the Taiwan Strait. You don't— you need something that can efficiently take troops as fast as possible, load them as fast as possible, go 100 miles, unload them as fast as possible, come back and get more, right? So So while China does have and is building more amphibious assault ships that are similar to those that we build, that's not the meat and potatoes of what they would need to do a Taiwan invasion. That's where China uses an asset that it has and we don't have any, any longer, which is a massive merchant marine.

So they're going to— so the vast majority of the sealift capacity that China would use, and this is not theoretical, right? We see them practicing doing this routinely in their exercises. So they use civilian vessels. That have been modified, built to national defense standards, owned by state-owned companies that are run by the Chinese Communist Party. I mean, literally the leadership structure of these companies is dual-headed, Chinese Communist Party and company. They use these all the time. These are ferries, these are landing craft tank, which I call LCTs, and I can expand on this some more. It's a remarkable discovery last year. So civilian vessels that are used for the dump trucks of the sea, that are derived on landing craft designs. We're now seeing them use those in exercises. So that's going to kind of be the meat and potatoes of, of a, of a Taiwan invasion. On the firepower end of it, it's going to be rocket launchers, like kind of China's HIMARS, so to speak, um, but that are long, you know, longer range. So those are capabilities that are asymmetric that are going to be focused on that kind of assault. Now, at the same time, China is developing capabilities that do look more like the traditional markers of U.S. global power projection.

So nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, more nuclear submarines, nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, tankers, strategic airlift— that's all gonna— is starting to look in some cases toward that, you know, toward the future where you have a China that has, you know, they made it clear their goal is to have a world-class military. Well, that's the kind of things you have to have a world-class military that, that projects power worldwide. So over time, I think it will start to look a little bit more like like those US capabilities, but they still got to get past Taiwan first.

And Tom, I'm curious, you know, China is building up a lot of these assets, these physical things, but their forces haven't been tested in combat. And of course, that is a huge question mark of how will they stand up? Just like any military, including our own in World War II, you know, there were early moments when we learned a lot of lessons very quickly. And I'm curious, how do you see that playing out? How has China developed kind of a rapid lessons learned uptake to— in anticipation of something like that happening.

So I think that, that, that point has validity, the sense that they have not engaged in combat operations. But what I'd say it's important to keep in mind is what kind of combat operations have they engaged in and have we engaged in. So the United States, yes, has engaged in lots of wars over the last, uh, you know, 20 years. However, none of them were against a, a peer competitor that had anything close to our capabilities. So I think, the, the utility of that and calling a difference between the two is maybe a little less than people might think. Let me give you an example. Um, between World War I and World War II, you know, the, the Wehrmacht didn't fight anyone for 20 years. There was almost no one in the, uh, German army— very few, you know, you had a few really senior officers who had been in World War I 20 years before, but very few of their personnel had been involved in combat with a, with a peer adversary in high-end warfare. On the other hand, you had the, the UK, who had been engaged in all kinds of brushfire wars, you know, colonial, essentially imperial management around the world against various— we call them third world countries today.

Uh, well, which army was better prepared for high-end combat when the shooting started between peer-industrialized nations? I would say, I would say, I don't think you would want to look at the Germans and say, well, they weren't ready for the war because they didn't fight they didn't fight for 20 years, but clearly they were. They were doing the right kind of training for the fighting that they were going to have to do. Now, of course, you did have German observers in other conflicts, you know, in the Spanish Civil War, uh, probably observing. I know they're— I think they're working with the Russians some, probably in the Finland War, might have been observing there.

Chinese Civil War also.

Yeah. And, and, well, and who do we have watching the Russia-Ukraine conflict? You've got Chinese observers there getting the latest lessons learned. Probably at Russian headquarters, seeing how they do business, learning lessons from them. So I'm, I'm not as confident about that. Also, I would keep in mind that we have to look at the fact that any conflict in the Western Pacific is going to be— its decisive elements are probably going to be in the air and at sea. You know, they're going to be air and naval combat. I mean, if there is an attempt to invade Taiwan, the conflict will eventually be finished one way or the other on the ground in Taiwan, but it'll be decided in the air. And at sea. You know, if the Chinese military through air and sea superiority has unfettered access to Taiwan and can send as much troops and supplies as it wants across, I don't see any way that Taiwan survives that. So, and that assuming that Taiwan is isolated and can't get supplies in like Ukraine can. So if that conflict is gonna be decided in air and at sea, well, when's the last time anybody fought a peer, navy at sea.

It was not the Iran War, that's for sure. Uh, the closest thing we have is the Falklands in 19— in the 1980s. Um, so I, you know, we have to remember that there's two ships in the United States Navy that have sunk another warship at sea, and that's USS Constitution, which we did it in 18— in the War of 1812 and is in Boston Harbor. And now we have USS Charlotte, the submarine that sank an essentially— I wouldn't say defenseless, but pretty helpless Iranian frigates. So I don't think either side has a lot of experience in really high-end naval combat, and I think we have to be very careful about, about thinking otherwise.

I mean, the other question I'd like to ask, and this is more of a political question I suppose, is sort of the timing. And we've been having this conversation for many years now, and, and China has made— it's always been China's policy to reintegrate, reunify Taiwan into the mainland. Why hasn't that happened yet? What are the Chinese waiting for? Is the wars in Ukraine, in the Middle East, is that sort of like figuring into their calculus that they don't want to become a global pariah? What do you think is the reason why they haven't made this attempt yet?

So I always make clear that I am a military analyst, not a political analyst.

Yeah, I know.

So I look at it from a military perspective. And I think certainly up until this point, It's been pretty clear that they didn't have the military capability to be able to successfully— to have confidence that they would win an invasion of Taiwan and succeed in the event of a US intervention, that they didn't have the ability to deter a US intervention, and they didn't have the ability, if they failed to deter, to defeat a US intervention. So that's a pretty clear reason why they wouldn't try. So the question becomes, when do they reach the point where they do have the confidence that they're going to succeed? That either they have the confidence that they will be able to convince the United States not to intervene, or if the US intervenes, it won't matter, they'll be able to defeat it. So that's why we have to, I think, have to be watching those capabilities that they're developing. I think at this point, probably deterring a US intervention is what they may be hoping for. But if you look at Chinese doctrine, they always say you have to be ready for that intervention of the powerful enemy, they call it, which is their code for the United States.

That means they have to be ready for a protracted conflict. They also talk about that in their doctrinal texts. So, you know, that is, I think, what they're worried about. I think that's what's kept them from pulling the trigger from a military perspective. So then the question is, will there come a time— you know, Xi Jinping has told the PLA to be ready to execute an invasion of, or an assault on Taiwan in 2027. Are they going to be there? I don't know. I mean, it's it's hard to tell at this point, but I think they're doing the kinds of things that I would expect them to do to be able to do that.

Oh, you might be muted, John.

Oh yeah, John's having some mic problems. Yeah, we'll see. John's going— I'll be right back after these messages. Now, hello everyone. If you're hearing this, uh, you are not a member of the Patreon, you can get your hands on ad-free episodes that come out early, and you can ask us questions, maybe we'll answer them. You can also watch the Team House podcast completely ad-free and early, and you can also watch it live as we interview our guests. And it's the best way to support the channel. So if you can, if you're open to it, you can go to patreon.com/theteamhouse. That link is in the description. We appreciate the supporters and we hope you would consider being one. So it's patreon.com/theteamhouse. Thanks, guys. In your mind, Tom, what's your— like, what's the most pressing issue between the US and China, both militarily and politically. I mean, if they did go in in 2027 and try to take Taiwan, obviously this is kind of skewing into a political question. Will the US be there to interdict, to stop it, to try and stop it? You know, we're seeing like THAAD missile batteries being moved from the— in and around the theater and stuff like that.

I mean, that obviously signals something to China, right? Where are you at with that? Like, where's your thought process there?

I just don't know at this point. I mean, you know, we had pretty clear statements from the last administration, from the president, from President Biden, that, you know, he said things like straight up the United States would intervene in the case of a Chinese assault on Taiwan, where to the point that the administration, you know, the folks below him kind of reeled it back at times and said, well, the United States our policy remains the same as it ever was, you know, or strategic ambiguity, you know, we would consider it to be a grave problem, but it doesn't mean we're going to, you know, they would, they would kind of walk that back. Uh, President Trump has kind of said things now and then that it's hard to tell where he would go on this, uh, where, you know, he's given indications he wouldn't, would not defend Taiwan in some cases. Um, but at the same time, you have it, you have a national defense strategy that very explicitly says the goal is to prevent China from gaining control of the first island chain, of which China— of which Taiwan is kind of the linchpin in the center of the first island chain.

So it's hard to know, quite frankly, what, what, what this administration would do in the event of that. Um, I think any administration against the Chinese military that really has been fully prepared is going to face some pretty grave decisions about, about what to do. This would not be free for the United States to intervene, and China has been looking at this problem for decades now and is basically building the military that is the scariest that you could deal with, you know, that is built for the American way of war, that is designed to destroy the bases that the US has come to rely upon in the region, that's designed to attack the US's highest value naval units at sea, its aircraft carriers. If you look in particular, you know, there was one kind of ominous development recently. The Air Force War College, Air War College's China Aerospace Studies Institute, CASI, recently released a, uh, a study that they had found using open-source imagery a new type of Chinese missile launcher being tested out in the desert in western China. And what this was was basically a large rectangular kind of retractable roof silo complex, but it wasn't just one silo.

It appeared to be one kind of building that would have multiple medium-range ballistic MRBM-sized missiles in it. And if you do the math, I'm guessing something like 12 to 16 missiles per one of these things. So basically the roof would roll back and this thing would launch like a vertical launch system, but full of humongous MRBMs, missiles that can hit all of Japan, potentially Guam or beyond. That's— these were just under development, but this is a couple of years ago, and they move pretty fast on this stuff. So it's possible that, you know, that, that sort of thing could be under construction now. Why does that worry me? Because that is the kind of weapon system that is built for a first strike, that's built for them to use it first. It's a use it or lose it type weapon system. Here you got a fixed target with a bunch of missiles in one place that are relatively expensive, that could be struck in the event of an ongoing conflict. It's very much the kind of thing you use to initiate a conflict. Or to threaten the start of it. So I talked about this on Twitter, like, this is, this is a textbook first-strike weapon.

So to see them testing those a couple of years ago now, this is when these images were taken, makes me wonder, are they, are they being built somewhere? That's the kind of thing that I worry about in conjunction with their improvements in amphibious capacity that indicates they really are making the preparations, the kind of things you would need to be able to, again, either defeat or ideally deter a US intervention.

John, you were about to say, please.

Yeah, I was curious. You know, we're talking a lot about the march toward conflict, and I wonder about the march away from conflict. I mean, in early, maybe let's say 15, 20 years ago, we allowed RIMPAC to have Chinese observers. We've allowed at other periods of time to have Chinese military folks interacting with us in exchanges and different things, kind of like trying to cool some tensions or at least bring each other closer for various diplomatic reasons. Um, what do you think that the way forward on that could be? If you were, if you were going to make, you know, a, an argument to say that's a good idea, what are some ways the government could actually do that that would be effective?

So I think the tricky part of, uh, those connections between the US military and China is that it's pretty consistently the US has tried to have those hotlines open and the lines of communications open because I think we see that as useful. And part of this based on our experience in the Cold War, you know, we set up a hotline with Moscow for a reason., and we found that to be useful, that from both sides, for both sides to prevent misunderstandings from turning into something bigger. The Chinese, I think, I think have, from what I've read, seem to see this very differently in that they see those, those lines of communication as something to reward us with when we're behaving the way they like us to behave, because they know that we seem to want that more than they do. They actually— there are accounts that they see some utility in the lack of those lines of communication causing us to be more cautious. They want us to be more uncertain about what might happen, and that therefore we'll be more cautious. So they see withdrawing those lines of communication in a crisis as a means of getting us to back down because we're too worried about, about a conflict breaking out.

So I think they see that in a very different way than we do. I, you know, I oftentimes see writers in the think tank space say, you know, we should have more, we should have more open lines of communication with China. And I think everybody agrees, but you talk to the Chinese about it. You know, you, if you want, if you want traction on that, on that argument, write the article in Chinese because they're the ones that really are the one, are that usually blocking that sort of thing.

We, uh, we interviewed an FBI league at, at the embassy in China years ago, and he had this incredible story about how everything with the Chinese is so transactional. And his example was they got word, unfortunately, of an American citizen at a Chinese school who was abusing children. And they went to the Chinese authorities and said, "Hey, this guy's a bad dude. You know, this is a criminal. He's hurting kids. You need to go and arrest him." And the Chinese were like, "Okay, you release a couple of our spies. We'll go get him." And the guy was like, "What? Like, this isn't like a trade.

Like, what are you talking about?" Wow. Yeah.

Just for our legal attaché, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just actually, yeah.

I want to jump back in, Tom. You're talking about the first and second island chain. Um, some years ago I was in the South China Sea doing some stuff for another, uh, partner we had and we were getting daily Chinese overflights of pairs of, uh, Chinese aircraft that basically violating the sovereign airspace of that country. Um, and I'm curious from where you sit and what you analyze, what do you think the role of that second island chain will play? For China if they were to go— if, you know, the main objective is Taiwan, what are they doing in those envelopes around those island chains to kind of enable that operation?

So China has— if you look at China's naval strategy over time, they've started with the idea of near-seas operations. So their first goal was to be able to gain sea control inside the first island chain, you know. So for those not familiar, first island chain is basically Japan down through Taiwan the Philippines, kind of the first set of island chains that encompass the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, South China Sea. Um, second island chain is further out. It's Guam, it's the Marianas, you know, it's down through maybe parts of Indonesia. Uh, I don't know if I— I don't know if you call Australia part of it, but, but their— the longer-term goal in Chinese naval strategy has been to, to between the first and second island chain. So in the Philippine Sea, for example, at least get to a point where they have sea denial, that they can prevent operations, uh, by others. And they call those far seas operations. But to be clear, they do have a goal to gain the— gain control of those far seas in the longer term too, to actually get sea control in the— in between the first and second island chains.

Um, so folks understand what we're talking about here, so you have— so sea denial and sea control, those are war— those are wartime concepts. It's the idea that during a war Sea denial is you preventing the other side from using a given area of water, not all the time, but in most times, most places. So right now, for example, Iran is essentially waging a sea denial campaign in the Strait of Hormuz. They're basically trying to deny the use of that, not all the time, but most time, most places. Whereas the US is attempting to gain sea control over the Strait of Hormuz, where most times in most places we can use that waterway for our use, and we seem to be having limited success there. China would be trying to basically, at the minimum, regain sea control inside the first island chain, sea denial out to the second island chain. Their longer-term goal is to gain sea control out to the second island chain as well. So in wartime, having gained sea control inside the first island chain allows China to keep its ports open, uh, to be able to get imports in and out of China.

I think there are a lot of folks that assume that we could shut off China's seaborne imports in wartime. And I think that's a dangerous assumption to make because we have to remember that trade out at sea is highly internationalized. Ships that are going to China don't necessarily have a big sign on the side of it that say that we're going— I mean, they may be broadcasting something on AIS, but it could be a lie. Cargoes get bought and sold en route. So you can't just sink ships in the middle of the Indian Ocean, for example, or maybe even at Malacca. You may not be able to reliably tell where something's going. Even as it goes through the Strait of Malacca. So the only way to really stop shipping from going into China is to threaten the actual entrances to Chinese ports. Well, if China gains sea control where they can effectively protect the approaches to their ports, then it becomes much more difficult to cut them off from seaborne trade. The perfect example I give of that, how difficult this can be, is the Ever Given. So many people may remember that that was the ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal a few years ago.

It was a ship that basically ran aground and was blocking the Suez Canal. That ship was, uh, let me see if I can remember, Japanese-built, Japanese-owned, chartered to a Taiwanese company with, uh, mostly Indian crew carrying goods from China to Europe. I mean, do you sink that ship in the, in the middle of the Indian Ocean? Do you stop it and board it at the Strait of Hormuz? But it is carrying trade from China. So I think that problem is much more difficult than people think it is. And that's where that first island chain, second island chain stuff really comes to the fore. I think it's worth remembering too, we've gotten a pretty good lesson here with the Strait of Hormuz that you can't make these shippers go through, right? If they think it's too risky, and that's been a bit of a surprise, I think, to a lot of people, myself included. Was that even if you say, hey, we'll convoy you, even if you say we're going to give you insurance, uh, they may still not go, right? If they, if they think the risk is too great. And these shipping companies don't owe any allegiance to the United States.

They don't owe any allegiance to our allies. They're flagged all kinds of places. They're owned all kinds of places. Um, so it may be very difficult to have shipping continue to our allies. China's not like that, right? China has an enormous merchant marine. It's Chinese flagged. It's Chinese-owned, it's crewed by Chinese. They can make those guys keep going. And that's where that— I think that physical control inside the first island chain really matters.

We've talked a lot about the conventional aspect just now, but also with the maritime aspect, the merchant marine kind of moving into the less conventional category or kind of quasi-gray zone, let's say. What about the actual unconventional warfare capability in Taiwan? If this thing was to go off, obviously we'd be having a very conventional confrontation, whether that's Taiwan or the US or both against China. What would the unconventional insurgency or other types of resistance that are non-conventional potentially look like?

That's a tough one for me. I, you know, I really am kind of a maritime air naval analyst for the most part. I mean, Chinese doctrine certainly talks about what they call sabotage operations, which would basically be special forces. You know, they're certainly a— we see plenty of stories of Taiwanese former officers and other, you know, Taiwanese citizens that have gotten afoul of the law in, in basically being bought out by the Chinese.

Yeah.

Um, so, so I think they're— whether it's money or ethnic cohesion or family ties or whatever, uh, there's certainly, I think, a much more risk of fifth column activities behind the lines than there is potentially with, you know, one nation-state versus another nation-state. And you don't have those connections or different, different ethnicities that, you know, they're different, they look different, you know. I think there's a lot more risk of that, uh, behind the lines in Taiwan. I think the Taiwanese should expect disruptions like that. They should expect some pretty significant, uh, fifth column activities. I do worry about, you know, there being elements of the Taiwanese society that kind of open the gates and let, you know, let the invaders in potentially. Um, I think that, that's why I think, I think the Taiwanese government has to be very, very careful about that stuff, and I think they are. Um, I think they're certainly working hard to try to eliminate that sort of thing, but it's definitely a risk. I think that the Chinese military talks about 3D island assault, three-dimensional island assault. So there's going to be a significant airborne angle to it. There's going to be a significant helicopter assault angle to it that could certainly result in a lot of folks being put down behind the lines.

I think you could see, you know, they've got their own special operations forces. You know, there's all kinds of things they're probably going to do with those folks. China has tens of thousands of fishing boats that they can use to transport small teams to do things. That's another asymmetric advantage they have that really doesn't exist anywhere else. So there's plenty of opportunity to have a bit of a Swiss cheese effect on, on the Taiwanese defenses in the manner that you're talking about. I think that's what you're— if that answers your question.

Yeah, it's really interesting.

Another subject I'd like to touch upon, I mean, maybe this is separate but related, is rare earth minerals on the seabed. And I've seen some papers about this, and I was wondering what you think about how those, if any of those deposits play into the sort of conflict we've been talking about, and if that relates to subsurface warfare as well.

I mean, China clearly has put us in a bit of a hammerlock with rare earth. I mean, we saw how things didn't go well with the trade war that the president initiated against China. They pretty quickly pull that lever on rare earths and force, force the US to back down. Um, how does that apply in a military conflict? Uh, I, I think it matters more for a protracted conflict than it does for a short-term one. You know, it's— that's really something that's going to speak to, um, longer-term industrial production and ability to supply munitions and replacement parts. Um, and that's part of their game plan. You know, when they, when they— their, their doctrine specifically says for a, uh, campaign against the powerful enemy— and again, that's us— um, that you have to specifically with that enemy, you have to consider the, the possibility of protracted conflict, which is then going to be driven in, in large part by industrial production and, and national resilience. So yeah, their ability to, to have more of a hammer, even more of a hammerlock, uh, on that area of industrial production is going to matter. Um, you know, does it matter as much in wartime I don't know.

I'm not sure if that kind of activity can, can continue on. I mean, many of the places that they're looking at to do that are in the Central Pacific. These are not close to China for the most part. So can they sustain that in wartime? I doubt it. Um, now, are there other angles to it? Sure. I mean, a lot of places where these things exist are areas where US vessels would be transiting back and forth, both in peacetime and wartime. Reporters have asked me, could they leave behind things that would be useful for them? Yeah, they could leave behind sensors potentially. If they've got industrial activity, We have to remember, like, anything the Chinese do, like, they have a very specific military-civil fusion strategy that leverages their civilian industry for military purposes. They're quite clear about it, although in recent years they have kind of talked a little less about it because it was so obvious what they were doing. So you should assume that if there's any industrial activity they're taking that could have military benefits, that those are being used for military purposes as well. So let's, let's say they are doing it, you know, mineral mining on the bottom of the ocean.

If there is a possibility that that activity could have military benefits by harvesting data, by looking at the bottom type, by leaving behind sensors, by whatever, I would assume they're doing it. I mean, there's no reason that they would— these are not— Chinese companies are not normal companies. They don't just operate for profit. They operate at the behest of the CCP. So if there's military utility to something they're doing, you should assume they're— you should assume that they're getting it.

I have a question, uh, talking about a protracted fight. What would it look like if we were in a protracted fight with China and like where our like status is in terms of shipbuilding is nowhere near— we don't have the capacity anywhere near China, what China does. So let's say a war does last a couple of years and we lose a couple of aircraft carriers or we lose a couple of destroyers. How do we replenish that?

I mean, I don't know at this point, I have a hard time imagining us keeping up. They've got such a head start in shipbuilding. I mean, could we improve from where we are? Yes, absolutely. You know, we could reopen shipyards that have been closed, but it takes time to train the people to do that. We have to remember the last time we were in a, you know, as I said, it's been a long time since we were in a peer naval war at sea. Well, the last time we did that was World War II. The last time the US fought a peer competitor at sea was the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. So what did that conflict look like from a protracted war perspective? Well, everybody knows, right, the Chinese— I'm sorry, Chinese— the Japanese executed an attack against Pearl Harbor and destroyed a significant portion of the US Pacific Fleet, and yet still lost the war because there was a tidal wave of American naval production that had begun in 1938 and 1940, you know, years before that point. The Two Ocean Navy Acts of 1938 and 1940 financed humongous increases in the size of the US Navy, so that large capital ship production was already happening at the time the war started.

It didn't really matter if the Japanese had won or lost the Battle of Midway. They still would have been overwhelmed by US carrier production. It didn't really matter what happened at the Battle of the Coral Sea. They still would have been overwhelmed by US, you know, capital ship production. So the thing that's scary to me about the Chinese at this point is they're the ones practicing executing the Pearl Harbor attack on the US in the form of a surprise attack using ballistic missiles and other weapons. But they also have the huge industrial production on their side. So it's like, well, I'm worried about a Pearl Harbor happening to us, and we're the ones that are going to get outproduced after the attack is over and after we've incurred those losses. So I am deeply worried about, about that capacity. I think it also, when you look at the ability to, to, to deal with battle damage, you know, China has the US Navy in peacetime without any battle damage is having a great deal of difficulty just completing its normal maintenance just from our ships getting used, not necessarily being, uh, you know, incurring battle damage.

The Chinese shipbuilding industry, it's again, it's dual purpose. The same shipyard pumps out warships, that pumps out commercial vessels, and they also do overhauls and refits on military vessels as well. So that's more capacity again, that in the event of a conflict could be used to repair battle damage as well. So yeah, I'm deeply worried about that asymmetry in shipyard capacity in the event of protracted war.

Speaking of asymmetries, especially in special operations world, a lot of times we heard about Unrestricted Warfare, the book that was written in 1999 by two PLA Kernels. This was kind of like the source document that we had a lot when especially talking about great power competition and like how does SOCOM fit into that and so on. That was like the doctrinal book we had from the other side. How much weight does that still actually hold from the other side if it ever did, if you know?

I, I tend to focus on the doctrinal texts that I look at are the Science of Campaigns from 2006, because those are more like the joint First of all, they're highly authoritative, so they, they're published by their National Defense University. Um, so 2006 Science of Campaigns, the 2013 Science of Military Strategy, and then a 2020 version. One problem we have is that a lot of that production has dropped off. Like, there's fewer of those texts that are now being released, uh, into the open source world. So it's hard to know. Obviously there's been a lot of changes and a lot of lessons that have been learned from the, the Russia-Ukraine war and, and drones. In the last few years. So I'm sure there have been changes to, to the way China is looking at, at combat like that, but it's difficult to know because they don't really replace the— they haven't really released those, the replacements for those techs. That being said, I think much of the, the larger, you know, bigger muscle movement military that we see being in production now is— I think it makes sense to see from a doctrine, from a document like that from 20 years ago That's kind of the timeline for this is how we're going to do this, this thing.

Okay, well, let's start working on the product, the weapon system development, and then the testing. And the 20-year timeline is kind of consistent with that. So it makes sense that we'd be seeing a Chinese military that in its kind of longer-term, larger capital investment areas like ballistic missiles, hypersonics, using merchant— because they talk in Science of Campaigns about using merchant, you know, merchant ships to supplement, you know, sea lift. We see the, um, the carriers being built. I mean, all that kind of stuff is, is on that timeline. So those tend to be documents that I'm using. There's some fantastic translations by, again, CASI— China Aerospace Studies Institute— has translated some of those documents. The trouble is, again, we're not seeing much in recent years. That's really dropped off a lot.

There's a book by Fravel called Active Defense. I don't know if you've read that. He's at Princeton. That talks about kind of the idea of luring the enemy in deep and then engulfing them., which is based off like earlier Maoist thought, but it has for some time remained. I don't know if it still remains. I'm curious, uh, you know, from that strategic perspective, is that still a valid concept for them?

Sure. I mean, active defense is, that is still something they've, at least again, in the documents we have, they still do talk about active defense. Um, but they also talk, you know, more recently of informationized warfare and then intelligentized warfare are the kind of the more recent, um, expansions to that. We got to remember too, active defense is China's way in some regard of saying that whatever they do is defensive, right? So, so like for example, if let's say Taiwan declares independence and they launch a humongous ballistic missile strike on Taiwan, they would say that was defensive, right? They were— China— Taiwan had insulted us, had caused us damage in the political you know, arena. And so we are defending ourselves politically by launching this huge ballistic missile strike. That is not something anybody else on the planet is going to be considered a defensive measure, but they will still call it active defense in that regard. Or let's say that, you know, they saw the US had turned on the OPLAN and was spinning up the TIPFID to start, you know, sending— getting all our forces out there, and then they launched a strike on our bases in Asia.

They would call that defensive. They would say, they would call that active defense. So it's kind of a convenient way politically for them to call whatever it is they're doing as a defensive thing.

What's OPLAN and TFIB?

OPLAN, OPLAN's operational plan. So the theater level operational plan for whatever it is you're doing, defense of Korea, defense of Taiwan. And then the TFIB is the TPFDD. Plan Force— I forget what it all stands for.

So I'm putting you on the spot.

It's basically the giant, the big, you know, gonculator plan of how to get all the stuff over there that we need to execute the OPLAN, essentially.

I'm just— for the, for the audience and me too, I didn't know what that meant.

Sure.

Um, talking a little bit more about the pro— like the protracted war that possibly that they're planning for, are you worried at all about like the DOD and it's like kind of slow procurement process and able— like the ability for it to adjust. Like we're seeing it a bit in Iran right now with our missile defense. Obviously we probably would have been in a better spot if we had some low-cost drones to be able to, you know, knock out the ballistic missiles and drones that are heading over to our bases. Um, are you worried about something like that? Let's say a conflict lasted, you know, years.

Our, our kind of inability to adjust and improvise I think that, well, so to some degree, you know, that necessity is the mother of invention, right? So, uh, where do we see the most aggressive innovation and action happening? A lot, you know, it's in Ukraine, it's in Russia, because they have to, right? There's nobody gets bent out of shape about, about the, you know, relatively small risks that you might be taking when the larger risk is that you're going to lose a war and, you know, get killed. So it's extremely difficult, I think, to cause change at the scale that it needs to happen at in a peacetime military. And yes, we're fighting a war against Iran and there is innovation happening there, but it's not an existential war for the United States. You still have bureaucratic imperatives that can override things. You can still have, you know, if you're building a runway somewhere, you know, environmental issues, you can have all kinds of rules that Congress has put in place about sourcing things, Buy American rules. A lot of that can get in the way of doing things. That's what we call red tape.

All of it, every little bit of red tape is somebody's good idea. Somebody says, hey, we should make sure we're not buying things that are Iranian sourced. Yeah, sounds great. So that's one more bureaucratic requirement because the bureaucrat is, there has to be some person that that verifies that yes, we are in fact not buying stuff from that Chinese source, or that's what we call a bureaucrat, right? It's some expert that makes sure you're actually doing what you said the rule. It seemed like a good idea at the time, you know, that when you combine all those things together, it makes it harder and harder and harder to do things. Ultimately, if you have a no-kidding existential war, you can say that is all off the table, all the requirements are waived, declare an emergency, and you can move forward faster. But it's difficult to do that in the absence of existential conflict.— So I do worry about our ability to move fast, and there are some good signs for sure. You see a lot of new defense startups that are doing interesting things, but what I worry about is that some of those, certainly in the event of an air and naval dominated conflict, aren't quite as transformational as people might think they are.

One of my sayings that I'm semi-famous for in Twitter circles is, there are no magic beans, right? There's no magic beans. There's no free lunches. Like drones, for example, at sea, I mean, they're not as new at sea as people think they are, right? The US, you know, during the Cold War, we worried about cruise missiles, right? Scary Russian cruise missiles, Mach 3. We worried about homing torpedoes, right? Those are basically drones. So when you say, hey, there's a one-way attack drone, that's going to attack ships at sea. Well, yeah, those are called cruise missiles, right? And quite honestly, a 100-mile-per-hour cruise missile that's propeller-powered is not as scary as what we've been dealing with now for decades. If you look at the ranges involved in some of those weapon systems, if you look at the huge blue Pacific, right, they're not— they just don't operate that far in many cases. So I think things may be a little less transformational than some folks think. So some of those defense startups that are kind of their shining light of hope,, may not be quite as transformational in a, in a high-end air and naval war as people might think.

Um, I do think so. One, if you look at the, on the shipbuilding question, you know, one thing I saw pointed out the other day that where the US actually does have an asymmetric advantage is in boat production. So if you look at, um, US boat production, the US is, I think, the world's largest producer of boats, not ships, but boats. So like, and a lot of it's driven by US boating, the boating community, right?

You want to go out on the lake and, you know, yeah, go out on the lake.

Well, guess what? You can take that same hull form and put a GPS— you know, it's already got a GPS on it. You know, you could put some sign of some sort of autonomous thing on it, load it full of TNT, and now you've got a, you've got a one-way attack drone. And we have plenty of the world's largest producers of that sort of thing. Personal watercraft, I mean, all these, all these Ukrainian USVs, a lot of them are basically modified jet skis. We're actually pretty well placed to do that. The problem is, how do you get something like that 6,000 miles across the Pacific? So unless we're fighting a war here, then we've really got a problem.

But that power projection problem, that brings up an excellent point about allies and partners, because you remember, you know, the 2021 NDS, for example, mentioned allies and partners like 128 times, something like that. So obviously we have allies and partners— Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, you know, you name it, they're there. We've been working shoulder to shoulder with them, not just Taiwan, but also obviously Japan with the SOFA. In a, you know, enhanced defense security cooperation agreement with Philippines. All this is like kind of designed just for that battle. So let's say that battle starts, whatever that looks like, not for our allies and partners. What about China's allies and partners? You know, they've got security cooperation agreements with Russia and Iran of varying degrees, you know, and other countries around, especially, you know, Solomon Islands, for example. What's— what are the Solomons going to do? What kind of basing access and overflight is China looking for? I'm curious from that kind of perspective.

That's a great question. And it's, it's, for one thing, they certainly don't have the same number as we do. I mean, you know, what's— I don't like— I have a hard time imagining Russia choosing to get into a kinetic war with the United States just to help China take Taiwan. But let's say the Russians just send the Pacific Fleet out, right? They don't, they don't— they're not sending them out to actually shoot at us, but they just send them out, and all of a sudden we have to worry about that. Like, we have to cover down on that.. So when we've already got our hands full with the Chinese Navy, now you've got this huge distraction of, let's say, a bunch of Russian submarines out roaming around the, the Central Pacific or Eastern Pacific. Um, you know, that could certainly make things much more complicated. Let's say the North Koreans are— start rattling their saber, and they, they've at least doing enough that the South Koreans decide, you know what, we don't really want you using our, our airfields, uh, in this conflict over Taiwan because we're, we're— we don't want to get North Korea into this.

They could certainly do things to make life much more complicated. I don't see them— I don't think I see those, you know, Russia, North Korea actively engaging in combat operations, but they could certainly make an already strapped US force and US and allied force have that much more to worry about, at least cover down on. The Central Pacific, I mean, you know, it's sensible that they would be building bridges there for the future. Because, you know, let's face it, a Chinese Navy that in 15 or 20 years is the equal of the US Pacific Fleet, that is not a Navy that has to fight the US Pacific Fleet in the Western Pacific. They can push out to the Central Pacific now at that point. And now those places start to matter a lot more for the basing and access, right? So the Chinese haven't built a lot of naval bases overseas, but Chinese contractors have built a lot of ports and airfields overseas that are ostensibly commercial.. And so seeing these kinds of things in development in places like that, that could someday be a Chinese base. And in some cases, maybe whether the locals want it to be or not, you have to remember that.

And actually, that Gwadar port in Pakistan that's run by China, I'm curious, what role might something like that far-flung— or Djibouti, for example, they have troops there as well— what role might those far-flung places play if the war like kicked off in Taiwan?

So I, I think where that matters is, you know, China's made quite clear in their defense white papers that maintaining their sea lines of communication is a huge priority, right? Would make sense, right? They are, they're the world's largest trading nation, uh, they're the world's largest exporter, they have the world's largest merchant marine, um, so that really matters to them. And if you look at the sources of raw materials that China has, like the— some of the key sources are across the Indian Ocean. So it's raw materials or whatnot from Africa and energy from the Middle East. So we should expect to see them, you know, create infrastructure over time that would allow them in conflict to be able to try to maintain those sea lines of communication. So Gwadar, that's an example that— where they've been trying to make inroads in the Maldives, Tanzania. There's plenty of places across those— across the Indian Ocean in particular that you see them in making investments in the kinds of places that you would imagine they would be interested in. You know, one thing I found kind of interesting in a lot of these places is they're— they tend to be a little bit out in the country.

Um, you know, Hambantota Port, for example, in Sri Lanka, water's kind of out there, uh, in, in the country. Um, why does that matter? Well, I mean, they will— people will say things like, well, the local host nation has said that this isn't for military use. Well, what if it doesn't matter what the locals think? I mean, In World War II, right, we fought our way across the Pacific. We built bases all over the place. Does anybody even know what the local communities thought about, about the bases that we used to fight our way across the Pacific? Do you think we asked? I mean, Xi Jinping is not going to let his own people decide whether he launches or wins or loses World War III. He certainly doesn't care what they're going to care what the Sri Lankans think. If he has a defensible base that he can use and put PLA and Marines around it and tell the locals, hey, we're going to use this for what we're going to use it for and just stay out of it, You know, that's how that I think potentially could work. So if they built the facility, if it's there, if it can be used in the event of a high-end conflict, I would expect it to be used regardless of any previous agreements or what anybody said about what it's for.

Jack, you got something?

I mean, I guess the last thing, and we touched on it briefly, is the subject of depletion of stockpiles of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and so on. And John and I have talked about this before. I mean, there was just over the weekend, I believe Mike Waltz was in the press talking about this, you know, blaming the last administration for it being depleted and then saying, actually, it's not depleted. But politics aside, I think that goes to your procurement and sustainment side of this conversation. Has what you're seeing in our fight with Iran and the depletion of weapons stockpiles is that concerning for you as we move into a theoretical conflict with China in the future?

So I have to say that, um, it may surprise people to hear me say that I'm not quite— I don't think the depletion of interceptor stockpiles makes quite as big of a difference for, um, you know, for China's calculus and deciding whether to pull off something, because I'm not sure those stockpiles are really going to matter much after the first salvo. Um, regardless of how deep the magazine is at, at US bases in, in Asia, I expect the interceptor batteries to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of Chinese missiles. I mean, I, I have a hard time imagining that our stockpiles are going to get so low that there isn't one set of missiles on the rails ready to go for that first shot. But I mean, Chinese doctrine is pretty straightforward that the— some of the first things they hit on in a firepower strike is ballistic missile defenses, right? They have, they have, you know, DF-27 hypersonic missiles that are probably very difficult to shoot down and appear to be pretty accurate. That's the kind of thing I would expect them to use to destroy BMD rather than deplete it. So, you know, how many sets of reloads we have in the magazine on base, I'm not sure it matters all that much, to be honest.

When the launcher's blown up.

If the launchers are destroyed and the runways are cratered, you can't fly anything in anyways. And the crews that operate them have been killed by anti-personnel airbursts. And I mean, I just—

Yeah, you're picturing sort of like our base in Bahrain that got just overwhelmed and evacuated.

Far beyond that. I mean, like, you know, people, I think people look at what the Iranian missiles have done and, oh, they shot 100 missiles at our carrier. None of them hit. Okay, Iran is not China, right? The PLA Rocket Force is not the IRGC Quds Force. They are not the same. Go look at Iran's version of a stealth fighter and compare it to China's actual version. Go look at Iran's version of a frigate and compare it to an actual Chinese frigate. I mean, they're just not the same thing. It's harder to tell those differences with missiles, I think, because they kind of all look the same to people, as opposed to the kind of look at cardboard-looking stealth fighters that the Iranians, you know, parade.. But I think the differences are just as deep. And I think any confidence we— and we've seen how challenging it was even with Iranian missiles to defend our bases. And yet we seem to not be refusing to harden anything in the Western Pacific. The Air Force isn't budgeting any money for it. Uh, I beat this drum over and over again. That is to say nothing of drones.

Like, let's remember, China is the world's largest drone producer. Um, there I worry deeply about drone strikes on, you know, people may recall Operation Spiderweb, right? The Ukrainian attack on Russian air bases. I worry a lot about that kind of thing happening to us. Um, that could make the Bahrain stuff look relatively tame, uh, in a lot of ways.

Tom, we got to get you back, man. This was great, great episode. Um, I mean, I don't feel great about it, obviously.

Everybody says that when they talk to me, like, uh, so much fun to talk to you. We're screwed.

Hopefully not. I mean, I want everyone to go and check out Tom. If you have something to plug, man, feel free that I didn't hit.

I'll provide links to you guys for some of the things that I mentioned, and you can feel free to put those in there if you want.

Yeah, the links will be down in the description and in the show notes if you're listening on audio. And Tom is a great Twitter follow if you're interested in this. He is. He's got his ear to the ground. He knows what's going on. Of course, Jonathan Hackett, Jack, all their links are in the description as well. Tom, a pleasure.

We got to do it.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Yeah, thank you.

It was great.

Thank you. Thanks, Tom.

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