The Pentagon will need to more swiftly integrate commercial technologies with military applications if it is to deter China’s communist regime from invading Taiwan, according to two experts.
The rapid pace at which modern technologies are advancing means that traditional defense acquisition processes, which can take decades to develop new systems, are too slow, according to Michael Brown, the former director of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit.
“We may need to be a little more scrappy than we are being in using technology available today,” Brown said during an Oct. 13 talk at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank.
“Now, technology diffuses globally so rapidly that there’s probably not going to be a technology that we have that the Chinese don’t have. So the premium is on agility.”
Brown said that the United States would need to demonstrate more speed in deploying systems for deterrence, following the nation’s failure to deter Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine.
By focusing less on slow-to-develop military systems and more on emergent commercial technologies, he said, the military may be able to augment its existing capabilities to prevent another war, such as an invasion of Taiwan by communist China.
Quickly acquiring and deploying cutting-edge commercial technologies using a so-called “fast follower strategy,” he said, could assist the United States in maintaining a competitive advantage over China.
Former Under Secretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy, who spoke at the same event, said that developing more agility in such matters was vital, as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping could order an invasion of Taiwan between 2024 and 2027, while the U.S. military is still building its next generation of weapons platforms.
“What worries me is he [Xi] has specifically instructed the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] to be ready by 2027,” Flournoy said. “He has clearly communicated it again and again that he sees this as a legacy issue.”
“My worry is he could decide to move more quickly.”
One reason for that worry, Flournoy said, is that the CCP’s military is at a historic peak in terms of capacity and capabilities. The U.S. military, meanwhile, is quickly shrinking while investing in new ships and weapons that will not be deployed until the 2030s.
Therefore, Xi might opt to strike while China is at a peak.
“Xi Jinping may perceive a window of opportunity before then,” Flournoy said.
“We have to figure out ways of causing ... Xi to doubt whether he can pull it off.”
To that end, Flournoy said that the United States should build a societal apparatus to learn about, adapt to, and counter China by encouraging better integration between the public and private spheres.
“Back in the Cold War, we had a whole cottage industry of people who were trying to understand the Soviet calculus,” Flournoy said. “We are in the early, early days of really trying to understand Xi and the Chinese calculus.”
