Determined to subjugate Taiwan under Chinese Communist Party rule, China is building warships and weapons at a vast pace and scale. Our military — and economy — simply is not ready.
If Taiwan falls, the American alliance structure in the Pacific will suffer a potentially deadly blow. China will be able to compel the political obedience of Japan and the Philippines by holding their trade flows at risk. Both those countries are U.S. treaty defense allies. Taiwan's fall will mean the destruction of the world's most advanced semiconductor chip manufacturer, TSMC, or, even worse, China's assumed control over that manufacturing behemoth and the critical international export industry it provides.
It's clear that Chinese President Xi Jinping is deeply serious about securing Taiwan sooner rather than later. He has told the People's Liberation Army to be ready to effect a successful invasion of the island democracy by 2030. Xi views that objective as the most critical test of his leadership and a matter of destiny for the CCP.
The United States is not prepared for this fight. Too few are willing to admit this truth and prepare for it. But others, such as the Marine Corps and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, have greater courage.
Speaking last September, Kendall posited , "If we were asked tomorrow to go to war against a great power, either Russia or China, would we be really ready to do that? And I think the answer is not as much as we could be, by a significant margin. And we’ve got to start spending a lot of time thinking about that and figuring out what we’re going to do about it."
The inadequacy of the defense industrial base looms large. The problem here isn't simply America's present incapacity to build enough of what is needed but an incapacity to do so efficiently and on budget. Any serious agenda to restore America's economic strength and prosperity must address this industry's failures.
Take shipbuilding. In 2024, the U.S. Navy's combatant surface and submarine forces are too small. And with China in mind, the problem is getting worse. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes , "The [People's Liberation Army Navy] operates 23 destroyers launched in the past 10 years compared with 11 operational U.S. destroyers. ... China’s productive advantage is reflected in the relative ages of active Chinese and U.S. ships. About 70% of Chinese warships were launched after 2010, while only about 25% of the U.S. Navy’s were."
Some of these PLA warships, such as the Type 055 air defense cruiser, are highly capable and able to rival their U.S. counterparts. Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile platforms are also highly advanced, able to force U.S. carrier strike groups to operate far further from Taiwan than would be ideal. Put simply, the U.S. needs more destroyers, submarines, and long-range anti-ship/land attack missiles — and it needs them now.
The central U.S. challenge in fixing this growing imbalance is the need to bolster the defense industrial base. Today, just about every surface warship and submarine under construction is delayed. Costs are also exceeding estimates, sometimes very significantly. In addition, a shortage of construction facilities and skilled workers means that certain vessels are having to be prioritized to the detrimental delivery time frame of others. But there are also insufficient penalties imposed upon defense manufacturers that exceed budgets while failing to deliver on time. All of this must be addressed.
For starters, Congress should appropriate funds to construct new shipyards. Congress should also authorize grant programs providing college/education tuition relief to engineers and machinists who work in the defense industrial space for at least five years. The president and Congress should also provide legal cover to allow for nonunion labor in shipbuilding construction. These reforms would help to address the shortage of skilled workers and the incapacity to build more ships.
The Biden administration or a second Trump administration should also ramp up bulk purchases of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range and Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles and Powered Joint Direct Attack Munition bombs. Current inventories of these crucially valuable weapons would likely last only one week of war with China.
Finally, the U.S. should entertain naval construction contracts from close allies such as Japan and South Korea, which have shown themselves able to do what we cannot and build excellent warships on time and on budget.
Accountability also matters. Where admirals and generals in charge of procurement decisions and construction efforts fail to deliver, they should be relieved. Too often, these officers and civilian Pentagon officials are reluctant to impose consequences on powerful defense contractors for their cost overruns and delays . Sometimes this reluctance is informed by a desire to take up lucrative positions with those same companies on retirement. Other times it is a result of congressional cronyism. But the importance of organizations such as Naval Sea Systems Command (responsible for overseeing warship construction) cannot be overstated.
So also must political leaders be held accountable by the media and voters. We need far less legislation of the kind offered by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), for example, which makes it harder and more expensive for the Navy to buy critical shipbuilding materials at lower costs.
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We also need less cronyism in defense procurement decisions. Too many otherwise defense-knowledgeable members of Congress such as Reps. Rob Wittman (R-VA) and Kay Granger (R-TX) support the retention of worse-than-useless warships because doing so helps their local economies. This prevents the military from diverting resources to programs that might actually help defeat China in any future war.
Top line: If America wants to be ready to fight and win a war with China over Taiwan, we better start acting in that pursuit. If not, we better mentally prepare ourselves to lose the most politically defining war of the 21st century.
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