Most the opinion that matters the most is your own. Cspan, power by cable. A discussion on u. S. Strategies to deter chinese aggression, hosted by the Hudson Institute. This is just over an hour. , with us for this discussion are rear admiral mike to the men, former rector of intelligence, most recently the former commander of the office of intelligence and long serving people positions, including being the first Senior Intelligence officer for china as well as serving as the chief and the fleet also with us is the former acting under secretary of defense for intelligence in the trumpet mensuration. And my colleague who wrote the report with me. Thank you for all being here today. Im looking forward to this discussion about new approaches for dealing with the challenges posed by china. Where do we stand with ability e aggression. We were projecting ourselves and would not have found ourselves sitting in the news chair. I trust brian and we worked together on the navy staff. Brian has been working these issues and computing compounding intellectual thought and giving considerations for not only the navy but forces. The challenges with our competitor china and i agree that we need to be looking at all forms of influence that will prevent combat environment and crisis that will affect the devastation for the globe, not just for china and xi jinpings own position. I think if he wanted to go after taiwan what would ensue is the downfall of the chairman and party secretary. I think he underestimates this. We know that if you take a look at the correlation forces and 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. Misunderstanding can lead to downed paths that can lead to spirals that ultimately might tempt somebody to take a military solution to something that i think would be catastrophic. So how the actually prevent . You need to have capabilities to prevail. Longrange fires, in number of things are designed to ensure we have the right capabilities needed for any contingency. At the same time, a lot of our efforts need to go into the shaping elements. I do believe have a number of things that are 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 every west of the dateline is highly attuned to ensuring china doesnt miscalculate. In a lot of ways, we are talking about this confrontation that is preceding war. A lot of the defense partners focus in how do we deny it if it starts . That leaves open this whole battlefield, if you will, of confrontation in the meantime that allows china to gain in that competition. You have 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. I think the department has made some positive moves toward institutionalized irregular into the institutionalizing irregular warfare. Right now, the chinese have engaged in quite sophisticated irregular Warfare Campaign against 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 eternity for us to refocus special operations for kisses on conducting regular warfare irregular warfare in the pacific. Regular warfare in the pacific. Regular warfare allows us to have many off ramps for warfare and allows us to push the adversary toward an offramp, not just create an offramp but push them towards an offramp. I think brian, in your paper, you do a very good job how regular warfare which is much less expensive, we can create the environment that will keep things preconflict. As with the objective is, all of the activity prevented from going to conflict that is really where the Department Needs to do more. It seemed seems to make a lot of sense but that has not and where the effort is. Dan, why is it that they seem to be guiding the entire Defense Budget on stopping china and white doesnt it work anymore as a deterrent option that is what we have done against previous proponents. Dan is rate to be here with unconventional thinkers. We can all agree this is undesirable and the department has a role in preventing this. It is something we can agree on. It is natural that the department go there. Viewing 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. It supports regular warfare. It supports understanding of whether or not we are near an escalation threshold. These things are difficult to do planning around, funds in the budget because it is right at the intersection of operations and intelligence. There arent program and funding lines. So it is cutting the other way and we struggle to shift gears and we stay in our comfort zone where there is very clear scenario that is undesirable. There is a loss of a lot of equity outside that are advocating for a more traditional approach. It is the they can plant 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 going to invade taiwan. Are we in fact looking at an imminent in terms of the invasion of taiwan . If not, what can we do to forestall that possibility . We need to step back and say what motivates china to increase motivation and your and the others in our beijing, you are seeing what amounts to walking away from the one china policy. There is more chatter than ever to solidifying taiwans does your independence. People are talking du jour. Independence. They have a massive buildup of the Chinese Military employed across and doing many coercive things in the South China Sea and other places claiming the taiwan straight and claiming vast stretches of territorial places in the sea. It has got everybody concerned. Therefore the natural reaction is to increase your defense capacities you beget more realistic with your training, and then work with partners capabilities, and get more realistic with your training, and then work with your partners. China just sees all these actions that are designed to contain them in a circle there is going to be a new nato in asia and the push harder, because they see the need to break out at the freedom of action and to achieve the rejuvenation and dreams have set out for themselves. So this weird sort of perception element that gets to your point of, how do you shape those . It is very sticky because they are dealing with a totalitarian government. It is to be a oneparty dictatorship but under xi jinping it is now one man dictatorship 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 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 it. The military is being used that no other instrument has been effective in shaping matters in the chinese mind. Economics hasnt done it, information, diplomacy hasnt done it. So they are left with the military instrument and they are using that tactfully to say if you dont hear my concern and see they are approaching a red line that i am going to use the military and i am going to have to 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 jo ur. They are acting to bring that back in. This is the fundamental thinking that requires you to look at yourself and say, what does american policy 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, metairie two things that needs to be complementary to insurance integrated and that doesnt just get focused on your allies and partners but sometimes has to be focused on your opponent, whoever that may be. We need to assure beijing we arent doing something that changes the status of taiwan. That is a starting point before you figure out whats my. Next move. Whats my next move . Does this lead to the possibility that china could lead to a peaceful institution with taiwan . When we have presented that the folks 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 United States, which seems like you are setting up the need for confrontation because beijing will see that as the path to their objective. They worked with middle east issues, ukraine, europe, russia invasion. Nobody said lests lift up the issue and solve the problem. The power is the status quo of 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. 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, has said that taiwan has to be recovered to be part of the rejuvenation by 2049. The unilaterally set out to change the status quote 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. If this is about china heaven this perception that they are being pushed back by the u. S. And its allies in their behavior, how do you start to shape that in a way that makes them is concerned without backing down . U. S. Backing on and being conciliatory seems like one path traded convince allies for those to be conciliatory. How do we go about trying to assure china without undermining the assurance of our allies . I think the first thing and mike started to point at this, is this goes down to xi jinpings 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. That needs to be step one. Right now there is talk in the u. S. About deterrence but all of the money we are spending is it deterring but increasing the hostility. One of the things we need to do part of that also has to do with our understanding of what the risk tolerance is. It is also understanding his risk tolerance. Once we have those two things and 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 regime change. That, if xi believes that is 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. That kind of gives you a few ideas. Sailing in 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. You mentioned we are doing a lot of things that are trying to shape the environment during this piece time or competition period and it seems like what beat missing might be the feed left feedback loop how those decisions are affecting decisionmaking and risk tolerances and perceptions inside the chinese government. We try to implement that feedback loop and try 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 . 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 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 incision making 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 can see the reactions that tell us that in fact they probably dont actually know what happens here or there. We are not well enough to know 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. Their belief is first 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 that they created conflict and then they can get out so dont give them the 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. As a very dangerous trend in terms of our ability as major powers to truly work out our issues. So, dan, is there a way for us to employ technology to improve the ability to generate the feedback loop . Dan absolutely. Even if there are no phone calls and formal munications, there is signaling that happens every day. We may not be aware of how our actions are perceived. It is important to recognize there is that foundation of communication and second, of course we have the ability and we need to collect more data and operationalize that and push that. More military commanders and others in the government who are able to form or shape their actions by it, working toward some Mission Command around them. This is where i think there is a real potential for technology. One thing that happens all around us is as computers and Information Systems become ubiquitous, there are so many more signals than their used to be. We can take commercial satellites and radar and we can process those images to see whether there was something built here or not. That is from a commercial source as we understand the ability to create new indicators that are appropriate and push them forward across the government to military commanders. It is very exciting to understand and work granule and realtime level how things that we are doing our affecting the baseline or how the baseline is moving. 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 internet into a recommendation for another probe. To get to mikes point of how do we understand the decisionmaking process, you need actions and reactions. Ezra we need to do it faster and we cant wait 30 days unless that delay is intentional. An unintentional delay is where we seem to be stuck right now. The biggest thing right now is there is no question if there is a conflict there will be a global commander for china. There will be one person who is clearly in charge of the effort. The problem is we dont want to get there and we want to avoid that. We need today is i think we need somebody whos singularly responsible for countering and engaging in this preconflict activity with china for commanding thats on our side. That is one thing. The reason for that is simply to be successful in this preconfig state preconflict stage is it is about what the entire power of the u. S. Government is going to do. Being able to change together a u. S. Military action with a doj action or an action from the treasury department, being able to do those things in concert is extremely important to be successful in the regular warfare stage. That cannot be done under the current construct in the government. The other thing is there is the fundamental authority problem, which is that all of our legal analysis and how we conduct Analysis Centers around this idea of what is the likelihood of escalation . If our understanding of excavation is completely off escalation is completely off, and we will always get the answer that new thing is not permitted. We find ourselves with this loop that is stalling us out because of that. I think that one step toward breaking out could be a singular person in charge and we are missing that today. I do think all roads lead to the National Security staff and president and how they want to conduct their relationship with china and what they want to have veto rights on and what they want to have Mission Command be and do. You find the sensitivities are so high today that i think there is deep concern about not holding very closely everything significant with regard to china. And to focus on, as part of our major strategy, to work with our allies and partners and work with the good guys and build up capacity and relationships and be able to create an environment which demonstrates the fact that there are a number of partners that would be willing to allow violence or intimidation to rule the day anywhere, for the particularly sensitive area in asia. The problem is that there is so much that our society is unaware of with regard to china, and there are many allies and partners that are unaware of many of the chinese activities. If you have overly tight controls in the information domain, the insights you learn may feed into, i want to adjust my ability to