Transcripts For CSPAN Fmr. 20240704 : vimarsana.com

CSPAN Fmr. July 4, 2024

Tools to be ready for anything. Comcast supports cspan, along with these television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. Rear admiral Mike Studeman former director of intelligence hosted a strategy session on chinese aggression, hosted by the Hudson Institute. This is just under an hour. Welcome to the Hudson Institute, i am brian clark. I am director of the Hudson Center for technology. We thank you for being here online and in person for a discussion about china and challenges facing us there. It is about the recent report we released, but also looking at new approaches for how to deter china, given the eroding nature of u. S. Military dominance and the challenges of emerging technology. Joining us, rear admiral Mike Studeman, former director of intelligence at indo Pacific Command and former commander of Naval Intelligence and long serving officer with many storied positions including being the first Senior Intelligence officer for china, as well as serving as a special assistant to the chief and the fleet forces command. Also with us, ezra cohen, former acting under secretary for defense in the trump administration. And also my colleague and coauthor who wrote the report with me. Thank you for being with me today. I am looking forward to this discussion about dealing with challenges posed by china. Mike, lets start with you. The study we just released talks about the eroding nature of u. S. Dominance, the challenges that china poses in terms of geographic and economic advantages. Where do we stand right now with our ability to deter chinese aggression. Using traditional approaches we have mounted the last 20 or 30 years, such as deterrence by denial . Admiral studeman we were in the same company in 1988. We were projecting ourselves forward, i do not think we would have found ourselves in these chairs. I trust bryan. We worked together on the navy staff and a lot of capacities. He has contributed some astounding intellectual thought, giving considerations for not only the navy, but the joint force. The challenges are legion with regards to our competitor, china. I agree we need to be looking at all forms of influence that will prevent a combat environment or crisis that could be devastating for the globe. Not just china or strategically owned positions, because if you go after taiwan ultimately what will ensue will lead to the downfall of the chairman and party secretary. And i think he understands underestimates this. If you take a look at the correlation of forces, what would ensue with multiple players, there is no real winner in any of this. Where we need to invest our time and energy is in prevention, the right kind of thoughts and clear understanding. Miscalculation can lead you down paths, spirals, that ultimately might tempt somebody to take a military solution to something that i think would be catastrophic. How do you prevent . You need capabilities to prevail. The dod has invested in longrange fires and things to ensure we maintain the right capabilities for any contingency. At the same time, a lot of our efforts need to go into the shaping of elements. I believe we have a number of things underway that way, but the challenging environments we face today means that you dont stop your adversary from doing something. You want to shape it so they dont take the most extreme action. What can you live with, tolerate, and what can you not tolerate . When do you need to move . What are the triggers for you to bring more capabilities forward or work with allies and partners to be able to handle any kind of situation . These are tough challenges and everybody is working through it. Chinas behavior has been the most destabilizing element in the west pacific so everybody is concerned and everybody west of International Dateline is highly attuned to ensuring china doesnt miscalculate. Mr. Clark in a lot of ways, we are talking about competing in this confrontation that is preceding war. A lot of the defense departments focus has been on, how do we deny before it starts . That approach leaves open a battlefield of confrontation that allows china to gain in that competition. Ezra, you had a lot of experience in your preundersecretary days and special operations and intelligence world, it seems like a lot of the opportunity is in the persistent confrontation we see that china has been acting on or initiating in a lot of cases. It seems that we should be in there as well in that fray. Mr. Cohen i think the department has made some positive moves toward institutionalizing irregular warfare. That is the lingo. I think more needs to be done. Right now, the chinese have engaged in quite sophisticated irregular Warfare Campaign in the pacific for the past 10 to 15 years. During that time, we were obviously forces that would normally conduct warfare operations, obviously focused on the global war on terror. Now that that has largely ended, it is an opportunity for us to refocus special Operations Forces on conducting regular warfare in the pacific. An advantage of irregular warfare, it allows us to have many off ramps to conflict and push the adversary toward an offramp, not just create an offramp but push them towards an offramp. Bryan, in your paper, you do a good job with how regular warfare which is much less expensive, we can create the environment that will keep things preconflict. That is what the objective is. Prevent activity from going to conflict and that is where the Department Needs to do more. Mr. Clark it seems to make a lot of sense, but that is not where effort has been. Dan, why is it the department seems to be guiding the entire Defense Budget to stopping china and why does that not work anymore as a deterrence option . Mr. Patt it is great to be here with unconventional thinkers. We can agree this is undesirable and the department has a role in preventing this. It is something we can agree on and it is natural the department goes there. How much do i buy . Seeing things through this kinetic lens. If we go back to how do we invest in prevention . One theme i am excited about is the role of technology. Not just in better weapons, but for deterrence itself, to support irregular warfare and support understanding of whether or not we are near an escalation threshold. These things are difficult to do forced planning around, fund in the budget. It is at the intersection of operations and intelligence. There are not obvious entities associated with them. There are not program and funding lines. It is cutting the other way the department is structured. We struggle to shift gears and we stay in our comfort zone where there is very clear scenario that is undesirable. Mr. Clark there is a lot of equity outside congress advocating for a more traditional approach. Something they can plan against and make money against. Mike, we should mention things they can do to prevent conflict in the intervening time. A lot of people have been raising alarm bells that china is imminently going to invade taiwan. Though there does not seem to be much evidence. Are we looking at imminence in terms of invasion of taiwan . If not, what can we do to forestall that possibility . Rear admiral studeman i think we need to back up and say, what motivates china to increase harassment . In beijing youre saying what amounts to walking away from our one china policy. There is more chatter than ever about solidifying taiwans du jour independence. People are talking about more and more visits to taiwan. The u. S. Is tone deaf, almost autistic in regard to whether their actions created other actions. They have this massive buildup of the Chinese Military deployed across the first island chain and beyond and doing many coercive things. The South China Sea and other places claiming strait, and stretches of territorial places in the sea. It has got everybody concerned. Therefore the natural reaction is to increase your defense defensive capacities. Get more realistic with your training, then work with your partners. This is what taiwan is doing, japan is doing the same, the philippines, the list goes on throughout southeast asia. China sees actions designed to contain them, encircle. There will be a new nato in asia and they push harder because they see they need to break out, have freedom of action and achieve the rejuvenation and dream they have set out for themselves. There is a weird perception element that gets to your point of, how do you shape those . Those are very sticky. A totalitarian government. You are dealing with you have a dictatorship. It used to be a oneparty dictatorship but under xi jinping it is now one man and it is very clear. Check your Political Science definitions. How information moves, who is going to speak truth to power, those things tend to be harder in those kinds of systems. You dont know what kind of information flows to who is the ultimate decisionmaker about what to do next. Do i increase my forces around taiwan to try to exhaust them to signal to the United States there is a penalty for apparently moving towards changing the status quo . The military is being used in a way that no other instrument has been effective in shaping matters in the chinese mind. Economics hasnt done it, a informationlly, warnings diplomacy hasnt done it. , so they are left with the military instrument and they are using that actively to say, if you do not hear my concern and see they are approaching a red line, i am going to use the military and do it in strengthened ways, including missiles flying over taiwan to demonstrate a political point that they want to arrest what they see is a negative trend toward increasing taiwans independence. Maybe de facto shifting to du jour. That is going in the wrong direction for the chinese, therefore, they are acting to bring that back in. This is a fundamental perception in thinking that requires you to look at yourself and say, what does american policy and state craft need to look like in this environment . Sometimes the best rule is not a big military platform moving it in different directions. That needs to be complementary to integrated assurance, not just focused on allies and partners, but sometimes your opponent whoever that may be. , we need to assure beijing we arent doing something that changes the status quo of taiwan. It is the fundamental kernel of insight you need before figuring out, what is my next move . Mr. Clark does this mean we need to lead open leave open the possibility that china could lead to a peaceful institution with taiwan . When we presented that concept to the dod and the government, there is resistance. The feeling is we cant let them get anymore influence or control over taiwan. That is unacceptable to the you are setting up the need for confrontation because beijing will see that as the path to their objective. Rear admiral studeman washington did not set out to put taiwan on the agenda. They worked with the middle east issues, ukraine, europe, russia invasion. Nobody said lets lift up the issue and solve the problem. In fact, our policy remains that the status quo with taiwan is where our ultimate objective lies. No change, except providing enough armaments to ensure the p. R. C. Doesnt think they can move quickly. You have a massive military and you need a little help with taiwan. To provide for its own defense. That is what it calls for in the taiwan relations act. That is what we are doing. The status quo is being changed by xi jinping, who has said that taiwan has to be recovered to be part of the rejuvenation by 2049. He has unilaterally set out to change the status quo and started to build the capability to do that. This is the fundamental issue at hand. It is not about our policy but beijings policy. Mr. Clark ezra, if this is about china having this perception that they are being pushed back by the u. S. And its allies and their behavior, how do you start to shape that in a way that makes them is concerned that makes them less concerned without backing down . The u. S. Can back down and be conciliatory, which seems like one path. Or convince allies for those to be conciliatory. How do we go about trying to assure china without undermining the assurance of our allies . Mr. Cohen i think the first thing and mike started to point at this, is this goes down to xi jinpings decisionmaking process. We need to improve our understanding of the decisionmaking process. You dont just do that through intelligence collection, but through what you talk about in the paper which is probing and doing things to elicit certain responses that would help us understand the decisionmaking process better but also for us to shape the decisionmaking process as well. I think that that needs to be step one. Right now there is talk in the u. S. About deterrence. But the problem is all the money we are spending is not deterring, it is actually increasing the hostility. One of the things we need to do and part of that also has to do with our understanding of what xis risk tolerance is. It is also understanding his risk tolerance. Once we have those two things , a better understanding of those, we can start drafting action that actually will create the off ramp and avoid conflict. A big part of this is the u. S. , there has been a lot of talk in circles for the past 20 years on this idea of regime change. Knocking off our major opponents. That of course is not if xi believes that is our aim, not just maintaining the status quo with taiwan, but if he believes we want to go farther than that, we can say goodbye the idea of keeping everything preconflict. That will almost certainly guarantee there will be a deadly war. I think that kind of gives you a few ideas. Again, sailing an Aircraft Carrier and putting these armaments right into their face, sure, it shows that we can project force. But we also need to be more mindful of what that might be doing to xis decisionmaking. And i dont think it is creating the effect that we actually want. Mr. Clark mike, you mentioned we are doing a lot of things today that are trying to shape the environment during this peace time or competition period and it seems like what beat what might be missing is that feedback loop of how these actions are defending affecting decisionmaking and risk tolerances and perceptions inside the chinese government. Do we try to implement that feedback loop . Are we trying to create the control theory model where we can see the impact of our actions and eventually be able to understand what might be happening . Rear admiral studeman it is the reason the Intelligence Community exists, to have a strategic intelligence and insights and have feedback loop where we can monitor and adjust our policy if they are not achieving the right effects. We have hard target countries that are closed societies, paranoid, operational security, and china is tough to truly understand. We have good insights because the money the taxpayers spend on the Intelligence Community that goes to amazing anxiety few new Amazing Things where if you knew what we were capable of in terms of learning these insights about others intentions, you would be very proud. At the same time, we dont have enough, and we need to have greater understanding so we can map out decisionmaking circles and who influences who and how choices are being made. We have seen evidence of the fact that information doesnt flow as quickly or as cleanly through the chinese system and we get the reactions tell us. They probably dont actually know what happened here or there. We are knowledgeable enough to know that that system is clunky and that there is no way to potentially guarantee that you can get the right sort of information at the right time. This is the scary thing with regard to the chinese view towards cutting off communication with the u. S. Military. Not having hotlines. Their belief is, first, the u. S. Attitude ought to be you have to respect china, not say bad things about china, and then, maybe if we can trust you, we will have a line open to you. They also believe if we have a hot line that we are prone to more risky behavior because that is the safety net. So dont give the americans a safety net to say they created a crisis and they want to negotiate their way out of it. Just dont give them a safety net and maybe they will be more conservative with their forces and behavior. All of this, whatever the logic is, leads to very little official communication. This is a very dangerous trend in terms of our ability as major powers to truly work out our issues. Mr. Clark right. So, dan, is there a way for us to employ technology to improve the ability to generate the feedback loop . In the absence of the official Communication Channels . Mr. Patt absolutely. Even if there are no phone calls and formal communications, there is signaling that happens every day. We may not be aware of how our actions are perceived. We may not be aware of all of the signals they are putting out and vice versa, as you have talked about. It is likely not aware of all of that. It is important to recognize there is that foundation of communication today. And second, of course we have a remarkable Intelligence Community. There is this frontier of being able to collect more data and and operationalize that and push that information to a broader force. More military commanders and others across the government who are able to form or shape their actions by it, working toward some model of Mission Command around this. This is where i think there is a real potential for technology. One of the things that happens all around us is as computers and Information Systems become ubiquitous, there are so many more signals than their used to be. A simple example, we can take commercial satellites and radar and we can process those images to get change. Was there something built here or not . But is from a commercial source. As we start to understand the ability to create new indicators and warnings that are appropriate and push them forward across the government to military commanders. I think it is really exciting to measure a baseline and help us understand it at a more granular and realtime level, how things that we are doing are affecting the baseline or how the baseline is moving. Mr. Clark ezra, it seems like one of the challenges is how do we orchestrate this on the u. S. Side to take a probe and evaluate the response, turn that into a recommendation for

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