Examining China’s multipronged threat

The United States needs to act more robustly and more quickly in more ways and in more areas.

That was the key takeaway from a panel discussion focused on addressing China’s threat. Titled "The New Ways of War," the event in Denver was hosted by the Washington Examiner and the Colorado Thirty Group on Tuesday. The panel included retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Bradford Shwedo and Brig. Gen. David Stilwell, who now instruct at the Air Force Academy, the Washington Examiner’s senior defense writer Jamie McIntyre, and the American Foreign Policy Council’s Michael Sobolik. I moderated the discussion.

One major focus was the need to grapple with the Chinese Communist Party’s political warfare against the U.S. better. Sobolik, whose book Countering China’s Great Game emphasizes this concern, noted how the TikTok social media platform is manipulating its more than 150 million American users to adopt viewpoints favorable to Beijing. This includes promoting antipathy toward Israel and disinterest in viewpoints contrary to those of the Communist Party on matters such as the Uyghur genocide and Taiwan and attempting to expand cultural fissures in U.S. society. The employment of TikTok by both the Harris and Trump presidential campaigns underlines just how powerful the tool is as a means of influencing American opinion in China’s favor. Indeed, former President Donald Trump has reversed his position on the app and now says he would not ban it if reelected president. The panel also touched on the absurdity of TikTok’s suggestion that it will protect American user data from Chinese government access.

Panelists also discussed China’s cyber-infiltration of U.S. utility networks. These intrusions are designed to give Chinese hackers the means of shutting down critical civilian services, such as water and electricity supplies, in the event of war. The intent would be to leverage these shutdowns in an effort to persuade Americans that the costs of going to war over Taiwan are outweighed by any prospective benefits.

The complexity of confronting China's military buildup provided another major part of the discussion.

The panel noted the People's Liberation Army's very significant ramping up of capabilities, such as warships and munitions. While attention was given to the reciprocal American need to improve the U.S. military's standing, the panelists made the point that the U.S. should use its own advantages in interoperability and technical capability to prepare for any future war with China.

Panelists called for planning and resourcing that would allow the U.S. military to confront Chinese forces with simultaneous effects across the cyber, space, air, land, and sea domains. A point of consideration here focused on whether traditional prestige military platforms such as aircraft carriers would have as much utility in a China conflict as thousands of expendable sensor-combat drones. The U.S. military's "Replicator" program is designed to provide just such a drone force. The concern with aircraft carriers is that China’s large arsenal of long-range anti-ship ballistic missiles might be able to force the carriers so far away from the Chinese mainland that they would struggle to have an impact.

The challenge of confronting China in space was also highlighted with reference to the Air Force Academy and Space Command presence in Colorado Springs. Shwedo expressed confidence that Air Force cadets increasingly see the Space Force as a positive career choice. That matters because China and Russia are taking aggressive action toward being able to destroy U.S. command-and-control satellites in space. That threatens not just America’s ability to fight but also the viability of the U.S. economy.

The panel's consensus was that the U.S. faces a major challenge from China. But there was also optimism about areas where the U.S. could do far more to exert its own pressure on Chinese President Xi Jinping's regime.

The panel recommended putting greater emphasis on drawing global and regional pressure on China’s expansive territorial claims against nearly all of its neighbors, for example. It observed, correctly, that China has very few true friends in the Pacific region. The U.S. may not be perfect, but unlike China, it values respectful diplomatic interchange.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

As an extension, the panel argued that in the event of a looming war with China, the U.S. should offer debt relief to those nations China has previously dominated with high debt loads. Beijing uses these debt loads to extract resources and political obedience from impoverished nations. But this strategy has sparked growing popular ire and the associated opportunity for the U.S. to isolate Beijing as it moves toward conflict.

The panel might thus be summed up with the following: China presents a challenge to U.S. security and the rule-of-law-based democratic international order the likes of which hasn’t been seen since 1945. But courageous leadership and bold choices can right the American ship before a Dongfeng ballistic missile sinks it.