CSF 2026, Day 1, Panel 1: International Strategic Environment and Challenges

Okay, and then to lead off our panel our staff this morning is Professor John Maurer and I'm sure every one of our students here recognize and know John very well. He's the former he is the Alfred Thayer the Alfred Thayer Mahan Professor of Seapower and Grand Strategy. He's the former chair of the strategy and policy department and I can tell you he spent the majority of his lifetime and career committed to the education and leader development of our future joint force leaders. So it's to me I point that out because it's commendable. If anybody you know, I was a student here some 20 plus years ago and I still remember his lectures in Spruance Hall today. So he's a treasure here for the college. John, over to you. >> Thank you, Mike. We have a distinguished panel here today. I'm going to give just a brief introduction of each person on the panel. A fuller biography is in the program for the current strategy forum. On the far right is Michael Doran. He is a senior fellow and director of the center for peace and security in Middle East on the Middle East at the Hudson Institute. He has served in government in the White House as senior director in the National Security Council, in the State Department as a senior advisor, in the Pentagon as a deputy assistant secretary of state. His book Ike's Gamble is an outstanding account of American foreign policy in the Middle East during the Eisenhower presidency. His policy articles and commentary are eagerly sought after especially with the ongoing fighting in the Middle East for the timely analysis that he gives of conflicts in the Middle East. Next to him is Ike Freiman is a Hoover fellow at Stanford University. His books, he's the author of acclaimed books One Belt One Road about the Belt and Road Initiative. The Arsenal Democracy and recently published book Defending Taiwan a strategy to prevent war with China. That book is getting considerable attention nowadays. We're fortunate too that he serves as a non-resident research fellow at the Naval War College as our own China Maritime Studies Institute. Here in Newport. Next to Ike is Emily Goldman. She serves as a strategist at the US Cyber Command and a thought leader in cyber policy. She served as cyber advisor to the director of policy planning at the Department of State. Directed the US Cyber Command National Security Agency Combined Action Group. And led wrote the 2018 US Cyber Command Vision Achieve and Maintain Cyberspace Security. She's published a considerable number of articles and books. Dealing with a wide variety of topics on strategy international relations cyber security including an important book Cyber Persistence Theory Redefining National Security in Cyberspace. She told me that she has a new book in the works, right Emily? Coming out on the topic as well. I must also add that she served here on the faculty of the Naval War College as a Secretary of the Navy fellow. And finally to my right is Stephen Rosen. He is the Kennaeb F. Emeritus of National Security and Military Affairs at Harvard University and a member of the Board of Directors of the American Academy for Strategic Education. Uh in government, he served in the Office of Net Assessment where he wrote the first East Asian Net Assessment and as Director of Political-Military Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council, uh he authored NSDD 166, now declassified, the United States government strategy document for the Afghan covert war back in the 1980s. Uh is the author of a classic study about military innovation, Winning the Next War, and also path-breaking studies, Societies and Military Power and War and Human Nature. Uh highly recommend uh that book. Uh he also served here as a SecNav Fellow and was uh in the on the faculty here in the Strategy and Policy uh Department here in Newport. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Michael Doran. >> Thank you much uh thank you very much. What uh a great honor and pleasure it is to be here with uh such distinguished thinkers and uh with all of you who are doing so much uh to shape American national security strategy. Um I am coming to you uh from the Hudson Institute, but I'm also coming from a very very small island which none of you have ever seen before. Uh that's the island of people who actually think the war against Iran is going well. Uh >> [laughter] >> There There are about uh by my count, there are about three of us on that island uh right now. Uh but it's it's a very exclusive group and I'm going to I'm going to help you join me on the on the island if you're If you're if you're not already there. I have to warn you, there's at least one person on this panel. Um I won't name Steve Rosen. He's the guy next to the John Mara there. He scoffed at me last night when I suggested that this island should become bigger. I thought he would be there with me. So anyway, get ready. He's going to He's going to say nasty things about everything that I'm going to tell you. But pay no attention to him. So first of all, why why do I think it is going well? I I am a a firm believer in the power of negative thinking. And I I thought it was going very, very badly on October 6th. 2023 When October 7th hit, I thought it was going even worse. And since then, I am getting more and more encouraged as I see things as I see things improving. But my baseline is the assumption that things were really much worse than most people understood. And I think Donald Trump understood had a pretty good idea of how bad things were. Donald Trump and Marco Rubio and they've made it clear if you if you listen to them. The issue was that Iran was putting its nuclear program behind a conventional missile shield putting it in into a zone that Marco Rubio called the zone of immunity. And if left alone, we were going to have an Iranian nuclear program that was pretty much impossible to take to take out militarily without suffering catastrophic damage from the ballistic missile shield. Now, that's not gone, but it's been severely degraded. One of the things that was been troubling me for years now about the growth of this of this shield is that it has not been recognized. I think it's starting to be recognized now that this is not an Iranian that is not simply an Iranian asset. It's a coalition asset used by the Chinese, the Russians, and the North Korea to to weaken to to weaken us. So, I had in my mind a kind of nightmare scenario which I thought was becoming more and more realistic where two things were were converging to to cause us catastrophic damage. One of them was the arrival of the Davidson window or the worst moment of the Davidson window when it would be like when it when it would be um more and more possible for China to think about attacking Taiwan. And secondly, Iran would be able to close the Strait of Hormuz and deny not only pull all considerable American assets out of East Asia, but also deny energy to all of China's adversaries in East Asia, the Indians, the the Koreans, the Japanese, the Taiwanese, the Australians, and so on who are dependent on oil and energy that comes from the Middle East or transits or or transits through it. There's a pronounced tendency in the United States, even in even in the Pentagon today in some elements in the the Pentagon today, but also in the much in the wider debate to think of the East Asia, the Middle East, and Europe as as totally separate theaters with no connection between them. Our adversaries, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, see one playing field, one one chessboard. The idea that we can sort of ignore what goes on in one one quadrant of the chessboard and focus our attentions on the other one is is simply a strategic fallacy. I better watch the clock here. I I joked with John that I was my 15 minutes was not going to last more than 25. But he if I'm not careful What time did I start, John? 11:06? Is it on? No. 11:02. Do we Do we believe him? Okay, I'll live with that anyway. So anyway, we This is This is what we were This is what we were looking at and the war has disrupted this possibility considerably. There are a number of achievements in the war that I think we should all be aware of. We've all heard it from the administration. We have set back the nuclear program significantly, many months if not if not years. And we have put the Iranians in a position where if they try to move forward on the nuclear weapons program, we will likely be able to detect it and take action against it if if we want. That's as opposed to what was happening in the that it was moving underground and moving into an arena in which we couldn't track what they were doing at all. We have degraded their ballistic missile production capability and we have degraded their We have degraded their arsenal. Not gone. I don't I I don't suggest for a second that it's not gone. We have um We have caused enormous We have We have inflicted enormous economic pain on them. Conservatively speaking, they've lost over 150 billion dollars in in assets. They're going to They are going to suffer because of we we took out key elements in their production chain for their ballistic missiles including their steel industry and we took out aspects of their petrochemical industry. They're going to have they're going to have millions of young men unemployed. That's that's on top of all the problems they had they had before. Yes, they ride roughshod over their own population, but we have given them much much more to worry about in that in in that regard. We have developed a coalition we have developed a an an allied partnership in Israel that didn't exist before which greatly increases our ability to strike against them when when we want. Now, we have not eliminated their ballistic missile and drone capability. That was the second element. I said there were two things converging to create the nightmare scenario that I had in my mind. The two things were the Davidson window and what I call overmatch. I'm not sure if I'm using the military you guys will know if I'm using the military term correctly or not, but basically the capacity the capability of the Iranians to overwhelm our air and missile and defenses by by saturating them. It's a very serious capability. It is not one that we can that we can eliminate quickly. It's the product of a lot of miscalculations by us over the years including defense industrial miscalculations and it can't be rectified in a day. So, we were we were looking at a point this the overmatch capabilities of the Iranians these disruptive military capabilities create an offense dominant military balance which favors offensive action by them especially when we put restrictions on countermeasures that we might take. It's it's a very serious capability and it was growing and we have not eliminated it but we have set it back and we should not minimize that achievement. Now there are two things that I think we should not do when assessing how we're doing in this conflict. The first one is we should not listen to all of the voices out there who are saying that the JCPOA was a great thing. There was a negotiation to be had which Donald Trump which Donald Trump ignored and we have to go back to the Obama Biden way of doing business with the Iranians. This is a long discussion but since John's only giving me 30 minutes to talk here I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to be very very quick about it and say the Iranian defense is built on a triad of nuclear its nuclear weapons program, its proxies and its ballistic missiles, drones and cruise and cruise missiles. So drones and missiles, proxies, nuclear. The JCPOA was built on the idea that if they temporarily they put temporary and reversible restrictions on their stockpiles of enriched uranium and on the levels of enrichment we will give them massive sanctions relief which then allowed them to build up their ballistic missiles, drones and and cruise missiles and their proxies completely in in a completely uninhibited way. That is a that's a that's a strategic mistake of grand proportions because it created that system that was that we were facing, that process that we were facing where they were going to be able to put their nuclear program behind this zone of immunity. We have to treat all aspects of their defense of their defense posture simultaneously and that's what Donald Trump has done and that's why it's a very good thing. Second, the second mistake. So a lot a lot of people are out there relitigating the JCPOA saying, "Ah, you didn't eliminate the missiles and drones. So so therefore we should cut a deal with them." Wrong way to think about it, completely wrong way to think about it. Secondly, don't accept Iran's theory of victory as ours. Their theory of victory is if we survive, if we are the if our entire economy, our entire society is turned into rubble like it was in Syria, but we're still the lords of the rubble and we can shoot off ballistic missiles and drones, then we won. We've survived and we can still hit you with ballistic missiles and drones. That's their theory of victory and a lot of people in our on our side are saying, "Ah, well, that's it, you know, they they can live on jihad and air and ballistic missiles and so and so we have lost." That is their theory of victory, they do believe it, we have to take it seriously, but it doesn't have to be our theory our theory of victory. There's still gravity, there's still economy, there's still political problems and they are suffering badly and we shouldn't allow their front to confuse us about about that. The So let me then just end here with a couple of thoughts. What we did with this war and it maybe starting again. I don't know, looks like that if we had to bet today, I'd bet that we're we're starting again. But what we have done is we bought time. We disrupted the coalition, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. We disrupted them. We become more aware of the magnitude of the problem that we face. And so I think we need to focus on on a few things. We need to write a few mistakes that we made and I'll just run through them quickly and then I'll be done. Number one, we have to see the whole playing field. We can't I'm willing to bet I don't have security clearances and some of you would know better than me. I bet the planners of this war weren't thinking about what Chinese satellites, what benefits Chinese satellites were going to going to give to the Iranians in their in their in their target acquisition. So we need to have better intelligence preparation of the battlefield. They took out the Iranians took out and nobody's talking about this much but it's the most shocking thing that happened this war from my perspective was they took out this early warning radar in Qatar that cost over a billion over a billion dollars. And so so many of our assets were at risk and we didn't realize it. That's we need to we need to do something about that. Secondly, we need to think about supply chains. They the if you look open up a Shahed drone a Shahed drone is 50% of it comes from American made components. The old we we're dealing with the export export controls and arms control systems from the 20th century that don't work today. This means greater sharing of intelligence with our private sector about end users and and things such as that. I think I'm running out of time. The last thing I want to just tell you is that is that I'm going to say one more thing, counter value targeting. We we're not they're beating us up the escalation ladder because they will threaten desalinization plants, energy production plants and so on And we don't want to we have not wanted to do that to them. I think we need to make it clear. Donald Trump keeps tweeting out, "I'm going to take out the bridges and the power plants." But if you're going to shoot, shoot. If you're going to talk, talk. And they they they can tell when he makes these threats that he's not really going to do it. Last thing, the Shahed drone, the ballistic missiles, they look like they these are battlefield weapons. These are defense economic These are instruments of defense economic warfare. And we need to we need to we need to to change our thinking and our strategic thinking accordingly. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mike. Um >> [applause] >> Thank you. I I expect to hear boos when Steve Rosen talks, okay? Uh welcome to the island. >> Next speaker is Ike Friemann. >> Well, thank you, Dr. Mearsheimer, the honor of the invitation. Thank you to all of you for being here today. And to those of you who are about to graduate, congratulations. I'm here to talk about a another island. Uh one that's slightly more populous than three. They've got 23 million. And they're going strong. And that island is Taiwan. The place where the uneasy peace between the United States and China will be tested and possibly broken. And in 15 minutes or less, I'm going to try to do three things. First, to explain why Taiwan matters to us and to China. Second, to share some thoughts on China's strategy for accomplishing its goals in Taiwan, which I think are not properly understood. And then third, to offer some reflections about what this means for all of you, the United States Navy and allied and partner navies. So, why does Taiwan matter? Well, if hypothetically, you had a president without much attention to detail, and you needed to answer, "Mr. President, it's the fill in the blank, sir." What would you say? Now, over the last few months promoting my book, I've had the opportunity to do a lot of radio shows around the country, and I've tried out all of the different lines. Turns out the best answer is, "It's the chips, sir." Semiconductors, obviously, are the engine of our modern digital civilization. They make our smartphones go. They power AI. You may have heard that there's seven giant tech firms, which are now 42% of the S&P 500. All seven of them are customers of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. So, 90% of the world's advanced semiconductors are made in Taiwan. That's a number that's often bandied about. 99% of the most advanced Nvidia GPUs that are trading, the cutting-edge models, come from Taiwan. And despite some efforts to build these things in Arizona, we will be very dependent on Taiwan for semiconductors for the foreseeable future, and arguably, uh Taiwan is actually pulling ahead of us. We are not catching up. But, chips are not the only reason or even the most important reason, because we cared about Taiwan, and so did China, long before they made chips. For China, Taiwan has always been fundamental to the question of the Communist Party's legitimacy, and it has been bound up in military competition with the United States. For the Chinese Communist Party, Taiwan is the unfinished business of the Civil War. Remember, Mao failed to defeat Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist. They moved to Taiwan. They continue an unbroken government with a constitution that was signed on the mainland. And the very existence of Taiwan as a thriving democracy that is richer and freer and more technologically advanced than the mainland is living proof that there is another way. That the Chinese Communist Party is not the end of history for the Chinese people. They are not the only path to Chinese modernity. In fact, there is a much more attractive alternative right across the street. And for China, the fact that the United States has had this relationship with Taiwan is an additional irritant. >> [snorts] >> Uh because Taiwan, as you all know from your strategy lessons here and your service, uh is a key note in the first island chain, the archipelago that confines China's navy largely to the seas right off of its coast and complicates China's efforts to project air and naval power globally. China is building a fleet, including aircraft carriers that it would hope to deploy around the world the same way that we do. That gets much more complex, particularly in crisis scenarios, uh if Taiwan is closely partnered with the United States as opposed to a forward base for China's navy. And the third reason, which is the hardest one to explain on a radio show in Phoenix, but is, I think, the most important, is that the way Taiwan's fate is decided will determine the character of regional economic order in the Indo-Pacific for decades. When people use this term free and open Indo-Pacific, it sounds a little fuzzy. It sounds a little bit like rules-based international order. That's old-fashioned, right? Maybe it's even woke. Well, it's not. Because in the Indo-Pacific, when we are talking about countries which are by [snorts] and large not energy depend independent, not food independent, and deeply, deeply interwoven with supply chains that require transit through international waters and airspace, the question of whether everyone can use the commons without fear or favor is a survival question. And that is why the Japanese government and our other partners and friends around the region look at the situation in the Taiwan Strait with trepidation because if the United States is unable to deter a move against Taiwan, and if [snorts] the United States is unable to secure those sea lanes and air lanes, how can Japan ensure that its people can be fed, that its lights can stay on? It's the same situation for Australia, for South Korea, for the Philippines, and others. This is why China would like to overturn this regional order. And they can do it by degrees by holding at risk those sea lanes. They don't have to cut them all at once. They just have to expose them to intensifying gray zone pressure. And to transition into the second part of my talk, I want to emphasize this point. The fate of Taiwan is more likely to be decided by a crisis than by a war. And the key feature of that crisis is not actually the naval balance. It is the question of do the supply chains continue to run, and if they break, who breaks them? I mentioned before seven companies, 40-something percent of the American stock market, all of them completely dependent for their valuations on Taiwan. I advise large asset managers on this. What happens tomorrow if you can no longer buy TSMC chips? We're talking about Nvidia down more than 20% possibly more than 30% possibly more than 40% We're talking about Apple down a similar amount. This is global financial crisis territory. And it happens instantaneously, speed of light, as soon as these supply chains are cut. And that introduces an interesting element to the deterrence calculations that we are playing with when we and China go toe-to-toe in the Western Pacific. Because it's not just a question of whose navy could defeat the others. Although that does matter. That does shape perceptions of risk and comfort with escalation. Whoever breaks the supply chains and triggers the global financial crisis that follows is the bad guy. I'm going to say that again. Because this is what it is all about. Whoever breaks the supply chains is the bad guy. If we lose access to TSMC, the US and the global economy falls into recession if not depression. And we have a financial crisis on our hands. And that is even setting aside the risk of possible escalation to follow, kinetic escalation with China, sanctions, export controls, other nasty stuff we could do to China and China could do to us. But whoever initiates it is going to have to deal with a domestic backlash, is going to have to have an answer to everyone else in the world who says, "Why did you do this to us?" And when this stuff is modeled uh we have really only a vague idea of the magnitudes. But we do know that our regional allies I mean, set aside Taiwan. South Korea, Japan these countries which are completely embedded in supply chains with China, would suffer several times the hit to employment, to GDP, and so forth that we would have. So, the question that we face, if we are actually going to the brink with China, is if we go over, how long can we actually hold our coalition together at home, across the region? We are a coalition of democracies, after all. I think for this reason, China's best approach, and all of the evidence to me suggests their strategy is not to surprise us with a war out of the blue. Historically speaking, great power wars don't typically fall out of the clear blue sky. Uh but to slowly encroach upon these supply chains, and the companies, and the shipping the shippers, and the airlines that carry people and goods in and out of Taiwan to see what we do. Because if China can establish a new set of norms where these companies just do what Beijing says, they don't have to invade Taiwan. They don't have to blockade Taiwan. They can then squeeze Taiwan in every possible way, and turn the dial all the way up, and Taiwan will submit. And this is why I think Xi Jinping has been happy to engage with detente with the United States, even as we do everything that the Under Secretary was describing to get our defense industrial base in shape, to harness AI, to encourage our allies to do more burden sharing, China is playing a different game. It is not fundamentally a military competition, although it is shaped by the possibility of escalation. Uh to me, this means deterring China is an interagency problem. It is a whole-of-government problem, and it fundamentally comes down to whether we are prepared, if we must, to absorb the shock of being the bad guys, to break the supply chains, and if we do what responsibilities we might have to our own people and to the rest of the world. So, what does this mean for the US Navy and for allied and partner navies? This is a difficult question because if this is not in fact just a military problem, then this department alone cannot solve it. Uh I have a couple of suggestions. The first is continue to do the good work you are doing to modernize the force, to emphasize readiness, lethality, allied and partner cooperation, contested logistics. Uh all of this does deter in a sense because it reminds China that if they miscalculate, if they push us to a crisis and we do go over the edge, that it could have catastrophic consequences for them. That will shape their thinking. We just don't know how much. The second thing is think hard about what we are actually prepared and unprepared to do with respect to convoys, escorts, and civilian resupply. Because if these if these supply chains are broken, this is a humanitarian crisis in the region, not just an economic crisis. There will be pressure from people who do not understand our force structure to say, "Well, why can't we just do escorts for every shipping container in the Taiwan Strait?" And it has to be explained to them that our fleet would have to be orders of magnitude larger than it is to make that possible. And the third is in so far as we can in the current political climate, continue to reach out to other departments and to the private sector to engage in conversations about what the economic features of this crisis would be like. This is a problem set too complicated for any of us to solve alone. So, I hope that I've given you some stuff to chew on and maybe we can get into it in Q&A, but I think I'm at time. So, thank you very much. >> [applause] >> Uh thank you very much, Ike, uh for that presentation. Now, Dr. Emily Goldman. >> So, um um thanks, John, for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. Before I get started, I just want to be clear that I'm speaking from my own personal views. My comments do not represent the official um perspective or official position of any US government agency. Nobody else had to say that up here. Um so, actually, this is this is great cuz I'm sitting here listening to Frank's to talk this morning, and I'm listening to the the secretaries and thinking, "How's this all going to fit together?" But actually, it's a really nice flow. Um and so, what my my bottom line is this, and this is to all of the the members of the joint force and our allies and partners out there. I don't think I'm going to say you. I don't think we understand cyberspace. I don't think we under- We certainly know about cyber capabilities, but we don't understand the fact that cyberspace is a strategic environment. I'm going to define that for you. It's a set of technologies um that has its own logic about how you create security. Okay? We have three strategic environments. The nuclear environment, offense dominant. That is why the only way to be secure in that world is to deter war, the absence of war. That is really the the the logic about deterrence. The conventional strategic environment is something that we're all talking about here. We've been talking about it and acting on it and learning from it um for for centuries. Um that's really a question of being able to win war, understanding the technologies and how to win it. Cyberspace is a third strategic environment, and the United States must be able to operate across all of these. It is a deeply interconnected environment. It is macro um vulnerable. Um it's micro vulnerable, but it's macro resilient. Um and the only way to secure yourself, you can read our book, um is to be active in the space. Okay? It's not about deterring. You can't deter in that space. I looked at a lot of the questions that you all asked, and it was interesting. I commented to John that um they all kind of had like this deterrence frame. Deterrence is a strategy to solve particular problems. It is not synonymous with strategy, and it is not synonymous with security. And all of you, I'm going to try to explain to you why you need to understand the nature of the cyber strategic environment. It's the Department of War's um primary responsibility to think about war. But what if armed conflict is not the sole realm of strategic decision? Supply chain, for example. So, we need to be able to deter conflict and win if it occurs. We need to also be able to manage the balance of competition below the level of armed conflict, because that is where you can also have strategic decision without war, which is sort of like what I hear you saying about China's thinking about Taiwan. We can win without the risk of conflict. Why wouldn't we perhaps do that? Um so, cyberspace is an essential is essential to understanding all of these challenges. Um all instruments of national power, everything we've talked about, depends on cyberspace. Okay? Political, economic, diplomatic, military, intelligence, it all depends on networks that move data. At the same time, it is a vector that can be a key source of vulnerability for attacking all those sources of power. So, it is incumbent upon us and incumbent upon the military to understand this third strategic environment. Even if you're not a cyber professional, we all need to understand this. Let me tick off a few ways to sort of make the the case for you. If we just confine ourselves to the war fight, right? America's military cannot win a major war without its ability to convey, secure, collect, and exploit networks. The joint force expects to be able to do that and all of that is built into all of our war plans. Okay. The mission assurance of every weapon system, um every platform, um the military critical infrastructure, all of the nodes, the ports, uh the defense industrial base, um that is all riding on cyberspace. Moreover, there is not going to be a way that we can fight with partners if we can't share intelligence with them. So, those coalition networks are just as important as well. Um So, that's like, you know, foundational to war fighting. But once again, you know, cyber is not one-size-fits-all. I want to recommend to all of you um the uh Naval Postgraduate School essay contest, the first prize winner, Lieutenant Mary Rokesky, I probably pronounced her wrong her name wrong, "Sprinkle Some Cyber On It." And what she basically argues is that it's not about cyber war games and cyber exercises. It's joint force war games and it's joint force exercises. And they do not include this critical element, um and as a result, our leaders and commanders often come out not um it's not that they don't understand, but they're misinformed about the nature of the cyber environment. Um cyber we talked a lot about deterrence. Cyber is it Cyber does not deter, but it is essential to deterrence because it ensures that all of those war fighting capabilities that do deter are credible. Okay. That is the role of cyber capabilities in deterrence. And then my own um you know, really where I think we missed the boat. I mean, we understand and the and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs after um that the recent operations, Venezuela ongoing operations in Iran called out the role of cyberspace and capabilities in the command in really being critical to to that to those operations. So this notion of being able to integrate it into all domain operations right in the fight. I actually think we're we've done pretty well a former senior leader said you know ask the rest of the combatant commanders if they're satisfied where has cyber command not delivered right and so I think we've we've shown that what we haven't leveraged sufficiently but China is now is the ability to operate operate in and through cyberspace to set conditions to prevail in crisis in war to deny the adversary their desired crisis and war fighting conditions. You can do that in cyberspace because all that activity occurs below the threshold of armed conflict so it's not going to be escalatory and yet it can be incredibly powerful. Think of what China is doing now prepositioning in our critical infrastructure and prepositioning in energy companies and energy sites that are near US military bases in order to prevent our ability to mobilize for for warfare okay and to deploy our forces right so that is a way about operating [snorts] in and through the cyber strategic environment to actually shape the conditions so that the war unfolds on our terms and not theirs and in fact Ukraine did this tremendously before Russia's invasion. So I I think you know we're all fond of saying that you know we will not see the initiative in air land sea and space. We cannot see it in cyberspace either. It's critically important. If we look at below armed conflict and this is what our first book was about it really is the the point that that China, for example, has reached immense um made immense progress in its economic capabilities, its strength, its relative power, not through warfare, but through exploiting US technology and IP theft, right? You can shift the distribution of power without armed conflict. Okay, is this something that the Department of War should be concerned about? If you ask the Dep- DepSecWar, uh absolutely. He stood up an economic defense unit um very, very clear that economic security is national security. Um certainly our our adversaries see it that way. We need to begin to think that way. And I'll conclude with uh the last point um is one of the new more current areas um is looking at techno-economic advantage, okay? And and the point there is that um it may never come to armed conflict, and the critical balance now is what is the balance in techno-economic competition. Things Think high-performance computing, quantum, AI, microelectronics, 6G. These are all the technologies that underpin economic prosperity and military superiority, right? So, um I would sort of pose the question to you um that you know, one could argue that knowing the state of China's quantum science, their vectors of AI, and their machine learning R&D, their proprietary chip design, their improvements in supercomputing, um maybe more strategically consequential than the status of their short-range ship missiles. All right, leave that for you to think strategically. Let me just close out. I hope I'm Oh, I'm actually under time, aren't I? All right, so now I'll take a leisurely close out. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, if I can. How well is the US national security enterprise, the Department of War, and the intelligence community postured to take this on. Um So, we have to ask ourselves if we have an adversary that's preparing to fight and win, but also preparing to win without fighting, should we be focusing only on one particular war-fighting scenario? Okay. Um we need to look at the gaps in our exercises. I really really encourage you all to read this article um because we are not training our forces how to think about this critical strategic environment that underpins everything you do every day, and you don't even think about it. It becomes so natural. I think Frank talked about that in terms of your iPhone. The information is there. We depend on that, but it may not be there. Um intelligence gaps. Uh um Intelligence community typically hasn't really focused on economic targets, right? Um to the extent that there may be a connection um to national security, but not economic targets per se. This is a huge huge thing that we need to think about. If the techno-economic competition is where this is going to play out, this is going to be the who's defining that world order, um we need to have an intelligence community that can provide information on that. Um private sector, okay, once again, everyone talks about, you know, that technology emerges from our private sector. Um In China, the private sector is private in name only, and everybody is talking about the need to integrate, operate with the private sector. Um a lot of people talking about it. I don't really see a lot of movement on this, but this is fundamentally critical. Um and um finally, my my last point, which is just just going to be a comment about artificial intelligence because actually people haven't spoken about it too much. We have to We have to be aware of how we're approaching this and how China is approaching it. And if you look at what um many in the in the national security enterprise are doing, they're very focused on the frontier models, top seven or eight firms. We want artificial general intelligence. We want the latest and the greatest. The models are one part of a system that also includes the infrastructure, includes the data, and most importantly, it includes the operations that deploy those into military system. You can have the greatest model in the world. If it's not deployed and diffused into your systems, that's irrelevant. You can have a mediocre model, but if it is deployed and diffused, it can be much more effective. So, I think that, you know, we need to think much more holistically and strategically about where do we put our emphasis in this area? How does the military, you know, it's not about just throwing it at everything, but how does we strategically think, what are the most important missions we need to do, and where do we need artificial intelligence and autonomy and machine learning to do that? Um so, my challenge, my, you know, task to the joint force is to be able to integrate cyber in land, air, sea, and space, so that you can fight and win, um to be able to what we call campaign in cyberspace to set the conditions so that perhaps war never occurs, and if it does, it's on our own terms. And finally, to be incredibly mindful about the fact that it's in cyberspace that our adversaries are seeking strategic decision without war. They figured that out about a decade before the United States did, and I think they're continuing ahead of us to think about that. >> [applause] >> Thank you very much, Emily. Uh now to Steve Rosen. >> Thank you, John. Uh thank you all for listening to us at the end of a long morning. Uh I first spoke to the blue bedroom in 1986, uh which I think is before many of you, if not most of you, were born. I welcomed John Mauer to the Strategy and Policy Department when both of us had darker hair, slimmer waistlines, and smaller prostates. Uh so, it's good to be here. Uh it's good to be anywhere, as they say at my age. Uh [laughter] Uh A- and and finally, from Mike Duran, Michael, I'm going to do that which I know will bother you the most, which is not talk about you. Uh >> [laughter] >> Uh Uh Earlier today, Frank talked to us about economic trends, demographic trends, technological trends, ideational trends. I will not be so bold and brave uh Frank as as you to go into all of these, uh but I will go into uh three statements or observations about the nature of the security environment, which is the topic that this panel was given, to point out the way in which the world has changed fundamentally, uh but we have not really taken that that those changes into account. Uh first, the economic foundations of America's global posture, the fact that we must defend the um the important economic areas of the world because they're so important, that has changed radically. Second, the the the survivability of our overseas military base structure can no longer be taken for granted, and in fact, probably won't be able to continue. And third, and most profoundly, uh the United States has lost uh the continental United States and space as a secure rear area of fundamental premise of most post World War and Cold War defense planning and afterwards was that we were able to prepare and exercise military power from the United States using space in a way that would not be contested and that is simply not the case anymore. So these three factors which we can argue about I think forces to step back and ask us is it enough for us to do our current business but do it better? My suggestion to you is in some cases we may be in the wrong business. We may need to be in the business of Western Hemispheric defense more than we are in the business of global power projection. This will be a matter of degree and nuance. You can't it won't be one or the other it'll be the balance between the two. But in our daily professional activities we focus in almost entirely what are we doing can I do it better? My suggestion to this group is we may not be in the right businesses anymore. So let's see how how how far I get with this. The easiest case to make is that the economic basis of containment and post war policies is gone. Why did George Kennan argue that the United States must defend West Europe and Japan? He says so in it in in the famous containment memo. There are five industrial centers of the world the United States Soviet Union Great Britain West Europe and Japan. In his era West Europe and Japan sorry in 1930s and again after the recovery of West Europe and Japan West Europe and Japan had GDPs that were about 30 to 35% of the world's GDPs. In 1990 the EU plus Japan had a share of world GDP of 34%. You can go to the World Bank website and look it up. You don't have to take my word for it. By 2025, the share of the EU's GDP at plus that of Japan as a share of the world is about half that, about 17%. So, when Ike says we have to defend Japan, we have to defend Taiwan cuz we have to maintain the economy of Japan, that's really an argument. The economy of Japan is very important to us. And we must defend it. And the economy of Japan is important to us as is the economy of West Europe. But it's half as important as it used to be. That That That is That is Go to the World Bank. Now, you could say, "Well, their share of world manufacturing may be higher." Uh and that is true because South Korea and Japan are both well Well, but uh warfare is not simply a matter of manufacturing. I'd be happy to be proven wrong in this, but in the in the year and a half since I published the Foreign Affairs article, I have received no uh challenge on that point. >> [gasps] >> The Under Secretary of Defense pointed out correctly that our allies retain important industrial capabilities. Shipbuilding is one of them. That's true. Ike has pointed out that there are industrial important fab chip fabrication capabilities. That's true. But taken as a whole, the economies of our traditional allies are not as important as they used to be. And that we should think therefore about what we might what we are willing to do to defend those centers of economic power. First point. Second point. The American base structure by means of which we defend those areas of the world by maintaining American force presence to deter attack on those countries and by exercising military capabilities to defeat adversaries in a warfare if necessary, that base structure is not survivable. And I don't need to kind of say this is hypothetically. What is has been going on by the activities of Iran, which is a kind of small to medium-sized military power, which is not technologically advanced, to do a great deal of damage to our base structure in the Middle East, it speaks for itself. It's not that these bases can't survive, it's just that you have to spend a lot of money to defend them. You probably have to think rethink how you build them. Our CENTCOM commander has said, "We need to think our deep strike capabilities because our adversaries are all going deep underground." Which is true. But he did not say the corollary, which is our our base structure is just as vulnerable. So, if you want to maintain the American current overseas force posture, which is based overseas, which operates effectively from overseas to defend overseas assets, you're defending something that matters less to the United States economically, and it's going to be more difficult to defend, cost more. Can't Not that you can't do it. It's going to be very very hard to do it. It's going to take a lot of money and political capital, both in the United States and in the host countries. So, then you come to the third point, which is the United States has to defend its base its overseas force posture and base structure, if you if you wish, but it must defend the United States base structure that in the continental United States, uh Hawaii, and uh and in space. We can't do anything if that's attacked and and does not survive. That base structure was vulnerable during the Cold War. It was vulnerable to nuclear attack. Nuclear deterrence, we hoped, would preserve the uh the invulnerability of our domestic rear area. But several things have happened. First, it has been demonstrated that owning nuclear weapons does not guarantee homeland sanctuaries. It's just true. Look at what has been done to Israel. Look at what Ukraine is doing Russia. Ukraine has been destroying TU-95 bombers on their bases inside Russia, even though Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons. It has been uh Ukraine has been attacking and destroying ballistic missile factories in Russia, even though Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons. Forget about what Hezbollah uh and Iran has been doing to Israel, even though everyone assumes Israel has nuclear weapons. Cyber attacks are conducted on our countries, even though they have nuclear weapons. So, it it has been demonstrated that in the case of Ukrainian attacks on Russia, uh Hezbollah and Iranian attacks on Israel, owning nuclear weapons does not give you a homeland sanctuary. Well, Professor Rosen, that's kind of hypothetical. The United States is different. The United States is observably today not able to enjoy a secure rear area for its military installations. In the summer of 2023, there was a sustained, sophisticated, massive drone incursion in Langley Air Force Base, where our F-22s are stationed. In March of this year, there was a massive, sustained, sophisticated drone penetration of Barksdale Air Force Base, where our B-52s are based. It's happening. These are not hobbyists operating drones over American military installations. There have been cyber and other probes of the security personnel services that protect our military personnel that operate the ICBM base at Minot Air Force Base. This is in the unclassified domain. The cyber intrusions that Emily has mentioned with regard to Salt and Volt Typhoon, uh are affecting uh our domestic cyber infrastructure, which would support the generation of military power. So, our adversaries, I would say observably, are preparing and exercising a combined arms campaign, the purpose of which is to deprive the United States of the ability or reduce the ability of the United States to generate and project military power from the United States. Cyber attacks will degrade the civilian infrastructure which supports our military. There will be selective drone attacks on infrastructure. There will will be attacks on the personnel on the families of personnel operating from those bases. You all know that the Office of Personnel Management State of Base was hacked. People They It used to be I think it still is the case you can go online and see the graduation ceremony of officers graduating from US submarine schools. And with modern facial recognition technology, it's not that difficult to reconstruct the identity of those people. Go on Google Earth. Go look at the the American B-2 base in in Missouri. The daycare center for that base is located next to the fence perimeter, which is next to a big major road. Schriever Air Force Base was originally built in a kind of an isolated location. The city has grown up around Schriever Air Force Base such that the approaches and its surrounding environments are not controlled by the military and can be exploited. This is a concern of the base commanders there. I So, providing for the security of American military installations and supporting infrastructure in the United States is not impossible, it's just hard. You have to spend money on it. Protecting the defense industrial infrastructure is something people don't think about at all. If Ukraine is attacking Russian ICBM factories, why can't other people think about doing that to us? Well, we have nuclear weapons. Well, so does the Soviet Union. Sorry, Russia. Cold War reflex. Okay. And finally, space, which has been neglected mostly in discussions morning, is an environment within which our adversaries are constantly today trying and exercising the ability to monitor, approach, and threaten our our space infrastructure. Emily's 100% correct. We can't the American military can't do anything without cyber, and we sure as hell can't do anything without space. Boca Chica, the SpaceX headquarters, is a few odd miles from the Mexican border. There have been drone incursions from Mexico into the United States. Vandenberg Air Force Base is about 500 km from the Mexican border, well within the reach of drones that that have been operated from Ukraine into Russia and or from Iran into the Middle East. So, it's not just protecting assets in space, it's protecting the infrastructure that generates our ability to get things into the space. All right, let me pull it all together and then let you all have at it at me. The overseas economies, which containment and post-containment post-Cold War policies were designed to defend, are economically less important. They're not unimportant, they're just less important. They will be much more difficult to defend and costly, whereas and and the cost of defending the United States itself and our assets in space is going up. So, we may be in the wrong business. We may be in the business of protecting our overseas force structure and posture. We need to be in the business of defending the United States. Not because we don't care about Now, this is not an isolationist pitch. This is not because I want to give up on our commitments abroad. But, we can't project power abroad unless we defend the continental United States and and which is the source of all of our power. And if we have to make choices about how how to allocate scarce resources, uh there's going to have to be trade-offs made. And I think we need to start thinking about them. That's it. Let me turn back to you. >> [applause] >> Thank you, Steve, for that provocative presentation. Uh we have uh come to the end of the time allotted to us. I hate to play the role of heavy and close down this uh panel that has been such a very good panel. So, please join me in thanking the panelists for their presentations. >> [applause]