On this week’s episode, the Hudson Institute’s Bryan Clark joins She Thinks to discuss America’s #1 threat—the People’s Republic of China (PRC)—and how utilizing the latest technology is the best way to deter their imperialist plans. We look at how China has modernized their military, why emerging technologies including AI are key, and whether increasing our defense budget is necessary.
Bryan Clark is a senior fellow and director at the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute. He’s an expert in naval operations, electronic warfare, autonomous systems, military competitions, and wargaming. In addition, Clark is a former Navy submariner and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), where he led studies for the DoD Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and Defense Advanced Research Products Agency on new technologies and the future of warfare.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg. And on today’s episode we focus on the United States’ number one rival, the People’s Republic of China, also known as the PRC and how utilizing the latest technology is the best way to dissuade their imperialist plans. We’re going to look at how China has modernized their military while emerging technologies, including utilizing artificial intelligence is key and whether or not it all means a larger defense budget is needed. And joining us to break it all down is Bryan Clark.
Bryan Clark is a Senior Fellow and Director at the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute. He’s a former Navy submariner and Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments where he led studies for the DOD Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on the New Technologies and the Future of Warfare. Bryan, a pleasure to have you on She Thinks today.
Bryan Clark:
Great to be here, Beverly.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so I want to let everybody know that you do have a new report out. It’s entitled, Campaigning to Dissuade, Applying Emerging Technologies to Engage and Succeed in the Information Age Security Competition. People can find that on hudson.org. It’s in depth, but important research. And you do make this case for using new technologies in warfare. We’re going to get to that, but I want to start with some of the specifics which led to this report to begin with and that is where China is specifically. You say in this report that they are the most comprehensive economic and security rivals since Great Britain during the 19th century. I realize this is a big topic, but can you expand on that?
Bryan Clark:
You bet. I think what we need to start to acknowledge in the United States is that China is a peer of the United States, so it economically is nearly as large as the United States. Obviously its population, is much larger than the United States. It has a larger military than the United States. It may not be as capable in certain respects, but it’s certainly larger than the US military. And I think there’s a lot of technology development in China that certainly is on par with or exceeds what’s available in the United States. So in a lot of ways, China is a peer and I think that US policymakers need to embrace that idea, start to acknowledge it and digest it and get used to it and start rethinking how they approach deterrents and persuasion given that state of affairs.
I think we’ve gotten used to, since the Cold War ended, being the big dog. So the US has had a foreign policy. It’s largely prime assist, is what we in the world of strategy, talk about where the US tries to retain its dominant position, militarily, economically, diplomatically against its rivals. And that’s just not possible today given where China’s trajectory is going. I think some people still want to hold on to that idea that the US can be dominant, but we’re kind of at the end of dominance and we need to rethink how we approach deterrence given that we now need to think that we’re fighting a peer competitor.
Beverly Hallberg:
And with that mentality, how hard is that to bring that to let’s say lawmakers or even to the average person to talk about the rise of China and its ability to compete as a peer? Do a lot of people just sit in this land of wanting to be comfortable and thinking of the United States as dominant?
Bryan Clark:
Yeah, there’s a lot of people, they got very comfortable with that idea after the Cold War ended. A lot of national security experts sort of embrace that idea and it’s hard for them to come off of that. Part of it is, it just requires a completely different way of approaching problems such as deterring aggression, military operational concepts, because you have to think about yourself fighting somebody who is really on par with your own forces. So you can’t just overwhelm them with your technological or numerical advantage, which is what we’ve been used to doing. And I think in the general public, though, I think there’s actually more of a realization of this. People out on the street kind of recognize that China is a pretty large power, pretty capable power. Obviously, China is something that’s a concern for lots of people in terms of how their business fairs in the international competitive environment.
So I think, actually, the civilian population is much more ready to embrace this idea than in a lot of ways the national security experts who are supposedly more versed in it. So I think we’ve had an easier time making this case outside of the Pentagon, if you will, than inside. But some of that’s changing. So Rand just after our report came out, came out with a report that talked about how the US is sort of losing its dominant position militarily and now needs to think differently about how it approaches deterrents and defeating aggression. So I think we’re seeing the think tank world come around to this idea. And I think within the Pentagon, the folks that work these issues are realizing it as well. So we’re having a groundswell of support for the idea that dominance has ended. We need to come up with some new ideas for how we’re going to deter aggression.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I think we have some real life examples as well. Obviously, there’s a situation with Hong Kong where you had China taking over Hong Kong. That, of course, the conversation now is about Taiwan. And so there’s a huge focus there. There’s been a lot of back and forth among the Biden administration on what our actual posture is in reference to Taiwan. From your expert opinion, what is the proper diplomacy for Taiwan and a way to deter China from doing anything?
Bryan Clark:
Yeah, so there’s kind of two approaches you could take to defending Taiwan. So one is this idea of denial. So the kind of predominant US strategy is we’re going to deny China the ability to successfully invade Taiwan. And what that means is, we are going to show China that we have the ability to intervene, stop an invasion, make it unsuccessful. That worked for a long time, especially back in the nineties and 2000s when we really were dominant as a military power. Now as we’ve entered the 2010s and now the 2020s, that dominant position is fading. Our ability to tell China that we could deny them the ability to invade Taiwan is losing credibility. And so we need to start shifting to some other approach that focuses instead of trying to drive the uncertainty of the Chinese leadership.
So instead of saying, we’re going to deny this invasion, we want you to be certain of that. We’re trying to drive certainty into the minds of the Chinese leadership. We need to pivot now and focus on driving uncertainty into their decision making so they don’t feel comfortable with the likelihood of success if they were to invade Taiwan. Which, it seems like a subtlety, but it’s very different to try to make your opponent certain he will fail versus making your opponent uncertain regarding whether he’ll succeed or not. And if you’re driving uncertainty, then what’s really important is understanding what is your opponent’s concerns, what are the things that are going to make them more uncertain, and also what is your estimate of how uncertain they need to be to not choose to act?
So in the old days, we were dominant, we didn’t have to worry about what China thought, really. We could just show them that we would dominate them and win. Now, we have to actually worry about what the Chinese think and focus instead on shaping their thinking, understanding their thinking, and driving the uncertainty, which requires us to be much more interactive with the Chinese and have a way of measuring and understanding what their perceptions might be, which is a much more interactive mode than we’ve had in the past.
Beverly Hallberg:
And you said warfare, obviously the state of warfare has changed, technology has changed so much of this. We’ve even seen that with Ukraine. We see this with use of drones. When we look at what China has developed, what the United States has developed, what type of technology is most important in warfare, and I think you said at the start of this that China hasn’t necessarily superseded us and the technological aspect of this, but they’ve gained a lot. So what is technology, emerging technologies look like in warfare?
Bryan Clark:
Yeah, so especially when you think about deterrence, the technologies we’re talking about here are technologies that give us the ability to attack China’s strategy rather than attacking their forces. So the old way we would’ve fought this is to say, well, we’re going to bring in capabilities that are going to demonstrate to the Chinese that we’ll be able to sink a bunch of their amphibious ships, kill a bunch of their troops as they hit the shore, or before they even leave China, and then that’s going to show that they’re going to fail. We’re going to make them certain they’ll fail. Now that we’re focusing instead on driving uncertainty, well, the way you drive uncertainty is you have to start demonstrating that maybe they don’t understand exactly how you’re going to operate, how you’re going to fight. So you have to have a force that’s much more adaptable, agile, recomposable.
So our forces need the ability to posture and operate in a lot of different ways. So by increasing the adaptability of our force, we increase their uncertainty with regard to how we’re going to fight. Which is different than saying we’re going to go out there and demonstrate exactly how we’re going to win and make them certain that they know that. And so that need for a more agile force requires you to have unmanned systems that are going to be available in much larger numbers. So this idea of moving to a force that’s, a much larger proportion of it’s un-crewed, so you’ve got cheaper, more expendable, more numerous un-crewed vehicles out there that you could compose in lots of different combinations that you can use in lots of different tactics. That creates a lot of uncertainty for the Chinese.
The other thing is creating the ability to affect Chinese, what we call sensing and sense making. So can you confuse China’s ability to see and understand what’s going on around Taiwan, for example, that involves space capabilities, it involves electronic warfare, it involves counter-sensing capabilities and it also involves cyber. So being able to attack some of their command and control systems to inject confusion signals that might make them distrust their own sensors or distrust what their understanding of the situation is. So you’re attacking their ability to understand and make sense of what they’re seeing both in terms of the sensors and the technologies they use, and then also in terms of the forces that we use and how they’re operated. So it creates a very confusing picture. If we can do that in peace time, we start to make the Chinese second guess whether they’re really in a position to successfully invade at an acceptable cost.
The other area technology comes into play is in protraction. So we highlight the fact that in the strategy we lay out that if we can demonstrate the ability to stretch out a fight with China into months or even years, and that we can continue to maintain the efforts, sustain Taiwan, sustain our military forces out there, it turns what China wants to be a very short, sharp war into a protracted slog. So like Ukraine. Russia was prepared and positioned to do this very lightning strike, take over Ukraine, it’s over before the west can really react. And then they present us with this fait accompli, we have to respond to now the fact that Ukraine is part of Russia and then negotiate for some kind of settlement. Well, that didn’t work out. And so now we’ve got this protracted conflict that the US and other western countries are supporting Ukraine in.
We could do the same thing in Taiwan. Can we demonstrate the ability with technologies like modular weapons or the ability to preposition materials forward with the ability to use additive manufacturing to build new weapons and systems? Can we leverage allies in their manufacturing capacity to support that war effort in the Pacific just like we’ve been doing in Europe? Those things would help to demonstrate to China that not only is there an uncertain likelihood of success, that uncertainty is going to grow because there’s a likelihood for protraction and that China and its government are probably not in a position to manage a protracted conflict like we’re seeing in Ukraine.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so with the technology, you even mentioned unmanned systems, this leads to ethics questions. People often will go to this and say, well, what does that mean ethically when you’re thinking about not just deterrence but also fighting wars with unmanned machines? Is this machine against machines? How do you factor in the ethics to this, especially utilizing artificial intelligence and the fear that some people have that the machines are going to take over?
Bryan Clark:
Right, right. So the machines won’t take over. Part of the problem is that the machines are dependent upon us still to be able to provide guidance, provide thinking, looking forward into the future, and also to provide them direction. So the machines still have a lot of limitations in terms of how they’re able to fight effectively, but how they can be used is by using un-crewed systems that you can get in volume that are more expendable, that you’re willing to put into a very dangerous situation and potentially have them get lost or destroyed. You can create this problem for the Chinese of mass and this problem of uncertainty regarding how those unmanned systems are going to fight. And you can use artificial intelligence to help those un-crewed systems find the targets that they’re looking for while still having a person in the loop, as we say.
So you can use artificial intelligence to allow the computer vision systems of a un-crewed surface vessel, for example, a little unmanned boat to allow it to be able to see a ship and understand is that a ship that’s carrying troops as an amphibious transport or is that a ferry that might be on a civilian pleasure cruise or something? Unlikely that there’s any civilians in this war-time environment. But AI can help you to train these computer vision systems to do a pretty good job of understanding exactly what the target might be that they’re looking at. And then a person can get involved at the point where then we have to determine, okay, we think this is what the target is, do we go after that target? Yes, no. And then a person makes that decision.
Now, in a lot of ways that person doesn’t have any more information than the computer does, but at least the person’s accountable. So the person will have to stand up and argue or justify their decision or be accountable for that decision if it goes wrong. And that’s the main thing that US military leaders are focused on is can we have a human that’s accountable for the actions of these machines because they were able to look at what the machine saw and make a determination as to whether that was a target that they needed to engage, which is really not that much different than how things are today with our non-AI force. You have a video picture that comes on your screen in the cockpit of an airplane that’s generated by a computer. You make a determination as to whether to shoot that target or not. So it’s really not that much different than how you would do it if you had an AI-enabled computer making that recommendation to you.
The other way that AI comes into it is in building the plans themselves. So this is something we’ve seen a lot in Ukraine where artificial intelligence, computer decision aids are being used to formulate a plan that’s going to be effective in taking out a target that an enemy is trying to defend. So we could use AI to do this command and control function, so we could manage large numbers of unmanned systems that maybe are going after an amphibious fleet that might be trying to attack Taiwan. So artificial intelligence comes into play at that command and control level as well as down at that tactical level where we’re trying to actually attack a target.
Beverly Hallberg:
I think when we hear about these emerging technologies, a lot of times people think of dollar signs, it’s going to cost so much. We spend so much on defense, we see Congress debate, the National Defense Authorization Act on a regular basis, this summer being included. What does this mean when it comes to cost?
Bryan Clark:
Yeah, so un-crewed systems, obviously, the new technology, it’s additive. So this is something new that we don’t already do, but in lot of ways we could start to trade our traditional systems for these un-crewed systems. It’s not something that the traditional military folks like to hear, but you could trade one Virginia-class attack submarine that costs three and a half billion for hundreds, if not thousands, but at least hundreds of un-crewed vehicles that could be probably more effective in stopping an invasion of Taiwan. So if that’s the thing we’re really worried about, do we want to make that trade or do we want to trade one guided missile destroyer for hundreds of un-crewed vehicles that would be more effective in stopping an invasion of Taiwan. Those are the trades that are available.
I would argue that even if we don’t make the trade quite so stark in terms of crewed versus un-crewed, these un-crewed systems are much more affordable going forward. So maybe we reduce the number of new crewed vehicles we get and increase the number of un-crewed. The reason that they’re cheaper though is obviously they’re individually cheaper because they’re smaller, there’s no people on board. They’re less sophisticated, they do less functions. A Reaper, un-crewed air vehicle performs fewer functions than like an F-16 does. But that’s partly because no people in it, so it doesn’t have to defend itself necessarily.
But also that un-crewed vehicle, if you’re not using it, you can put it in a warehouse, you can box it up, put it in a warehouse, and it just sits there. The un-crewed aircraft, the F-16, you have to maintain it, you have to fly it around periodically. It costs money even if it’s just sitting on the flight line, unless you send it to the bone yard, in which case it will not be available to you. So you don’t have the same option with crewed vessels or vehicles to just park it because you have to maintain them. They’re delicate, high-end machines.
The other thing is to train people. You don’t need a training organization with a bunch of vehicles and people associated with it. So for our air forces, you’ve got squadrons of airplanes and people whose only job is to train new pilots. So about 20% of our air fleet is devoted to training the pilots for the rest of the air fleet. So you have this huge demand for airplanes, people, money getting spent on that. With these un-crewed vehicles, you don’t have that because the un-crewed vehicle operator gets trained on a simulator because they don’t actually deal with the real vehicle at all. So they just train on the simulator and get qualified and then you don’t need to buy extra vehicles for the training pipeline.
So you save money kind of on both ends in terms of the un-crewed vehicles. Procurement cost itself is lower, its sustainment cost is lower. You can park them and put them in a box if you don’t need them for now, and you break them out when you do need them. So you get that flexibility from them. Obviously, you can’t replace your entire military with un-crewed vehicles, but you could replace a portion of it and yield major benefits for specific situations like Ukraine in the Black Sea and they’re using them pretty effectively there. Or China attacking Taiwan and Taiwan Strait. Again, a pretty confined body of water where un-crewed vehicles could be pretty effective.
Beverly Hallberg:
And when I hear all of this, it obviously sounds like it’s a good plan, but it requires a lot of strategy, a lot of moving parts, a lot of people making decisions, a lot of approval, Congress signing off on it. When you propose these types of changes or approaches to our military, especially when it comes to emerging technologies, do you find that many lawmakers are on board or is this a tough climb?
Bryan Clark:
It’s not a tough climb in terms of making the point that we need to bring on more un-crewed systems to expand the size of our force, give us more options, enable some more flexibility in terms of how we fight. Where it breaks down is the question is, okay, how do you actually use them to deter and then how do you use them to fight? I think they have an idea in general kind of how you might use them to fight. But the question comes in, well, how do these un-crewed systems help us to deter aggression? Because do we just have them floating around all the time like we do with our manned ships or our driving around like our manned aircraft, or do we have to do something different? And that’s where our study really focused was on what’s the strategy or the concept that you use to employ this more adaptable force for the purpose of deterrence. And the way that we do that is we propose that we start to create surprises for the Chinese.
So like I said, part of this or really the central part of this strategy is to create uncertainty for the Chinese leadership regarding their likelihood of success in scenarios that we don’t want them to pursue, like an invasion of Taiwan. So creating that uncertainty might mean we start using these un-crewed systems and they’re crewed counterparts in new demonstrations, operational concepts, exercises where we demonstrate different ways they might fight or operate. We demonstrate new capabilities or new mission systems like new radars, new jammers, new sensors that we put onto these un-crewed vehicles and just put them out there and start creating these surprises. So by creating these unexpected events or these unexpected force compositions, we create for the Chinese uncertainty with regard to how we’re actually going to fight, we also then create observable events.
So when we surprise Chinese intelligence gathering, we should see a response in terms of, did they care about that or they not care about that? And that response is actually very revealing with regard to what their areas are of neuralgia, what are the things they’re actually really concerned about or it creates ways that we can understand things that maybe they aren’t that concerned about. So we show some dramatically different way of doing ship attack in the Taiwan Strait and there’s like no reaction from the Chinese. That would suggest, well, maybe they weren’t that fixated on an invasion of Taiwan anyway. Maybe that seemed to be a lower priority scenario. Maybe there’s other things they’re thinking are more likely and we can dig into that, but we can use this process of probing and response from the Chinese to better understand their perceptions and help us to shape our future efforts. And that gets to this idea of campaigning. So this probe response and continued action as part of a campaigning effort. And so that’s something that the Department of Defense has said is one of the three main lines of their strategy is campaigning.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so much of this is about evolving to the times and where warfare is. Before you go, I do have one question for you. It’s a little bit of a curve ball, but I think because of your experience, I wanted to ask. And by the way, thank you for your service. You did serve our country for years in the Navy. What is it like to be a submariner? I’m curious how long you were down under, what was the longest time you were underwater and what is it like being in those close quarters for an extended amount of time?
Bryan Clark:
So about the longest time we were under water at one time was like three months during one deployment. So normally, even on a six month deployment, you’ll come up to the surface either in the open ocean just to get up on the surface and see some sun and fresh air, or you’ll pull into port. Generally, you pull into port somewhere so you get some opportunities to get off the ship. But yeah, three months is about the max that I think normally that’s what you’d see. If you go longer than that, that’s a big deal. And then you just get used to being in close quarters like that because it’s just like any other job, you get kind of wrapped up in the work you have to do and the tasks that have to get completed.
It’s busy, there’s a lot to do. It’s a small crew on a really complicated ship. So there’s a lot of work that has to get done. So you kind of lose track of the fact that you’re all jammed into this one little tube and instead you kind of focus on getting the work done. And only rarely do you think about where you are and how claustrophobic it might be.
Beverly Hallberg:
And last question for you. Do you think of warfare on the seas as something that still is a likely thing, especially when we look at China and their activity in the South China Sea, and of course, where Taiwan is. Do you think this is a place where we need to beef up our military?
Bryan Clark:
I think it is likely. You see what the war in Ukraine, obviously most of the actions happening on the ground, but there’s been naval warfare there. There’s been several, Ukraine lost a lot of ships early in the war. Ukraine’s been attacking Russian ships. Obviously the Mosque, the flagship with the Black Sea fleet was killed early on or sunk very early on. So warfare still happens at sea, and I think in a non-European context, again, then most of the war would happen at sea. I think even though an invasion of Taiwan is unlikely, in my mind, what is likely is China trying to do some more actions that’ll coerce Taiwan. So a blockade, a quarantine, kind of like we did during the Cuban missile crisis. They could take some islands that sort of are outlying islands of Taiwan. There’s a lot of ways they can put pressure on Taiwan from the sea that don’t involve an invasion, and that would get into some kind of small scale confrontations with US or other allied forces.
So I think we will see conflict on the sea over the next decade. I just think it’s not going to take the form of an invasion counter-invasion. It’ll take more of the form of blockade running and trying to push people off of islands and that kind of thing.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, the way we think about warfare, especially with emerging technologies, is so important. I invite people to go to hudson.org to look at this report you put out. Campaigning to Dissuade is what it’s called. So I encourage people to go there. But Bryan, thank you so much for your service and also for joining us on She Thinks.
Bryan Clark:
Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.
Beverly Hallberg:
And thank you all for joining us. Before you go, IWF wants you to know that we rely on the generosity of supporters like you. An investment in IWF fuels our efforts to enhance freedom, opportunity, and well-being for all Americans. So please consider making a small donation to IWF by visiting iwf.org/donate. That’s iwf.org/donate. Last, if you enjoyed this episode as She Thinks, do leave us a rating or review. It does help, and we’d love it if you shared this episode so your friends can know where they can find more She Thinks. From all of us here at IWF, thanks for watching.
