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Re: Building Defense | Competing with China from Supply Chains to Kill Chains

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Re: Building Defense is a limited series that highlights Hudson鈥檚 policy recommendations for revitalizing the US defense industrial base for great power competition. Subscribe here.

 

Beijing is a pacing threat to the United States largely thanks to its interlinked industrial base. While Capitol Hill works to secure US supply chains for economic competition, the Pentagon needs to leverage America鈥檚 remaining advantages to maintain deterrence.

How Do We Get There?

1. Use America鈥檚 free-market advantage to defeat China on tech.

2. Support domestic critical industries like rare earth minerals.

3. Build a more cost-effective military that mitigates China鈥檚 advantages.

Sketching Out the Details

1. Recognize the dangers of Chinese high-tech dominance and build a free-market coalition to defeat it.

America and its allies have the tools to build a shared software-defined manufacturing ecosystem backed by a free-world technology stack [the technologies that make up a system]. This is the cornerstone of a safer and more prosperous US-led coalition, one that geopolitical swing states will want to join. If we fail, China鈥檚 totalitarian technology stack will flourish, ushering in a more fractured and hostile world. In that case, Americans may view their iPhones and car batteries the way Hezbollah operatives now see their pagers.

Read Mike Gallagher鈥檚 op-ed 鈥淓xploding Pagers and the Tech Race with China.鈥�

2. James Litinsky: Rebuild American critical industries to prevent Chinese supply chain dominance.

We need to have a supply chain for these industries from non鈥揻oreign entities of concern, or allied nations, or whatever the right nomenclature is so that this supply chain is forced from the beginning to develop. To develop and be broad. We cannot lose this supply chain. And right now, I think 90 plus percent of the drones . . . are made in China. Or the stuff for our military is made in China. Why wouldn鈥檛 we solve this problem now? Especially when right now it鈥檚 just an acute national security issue. As it becomes a bigger, broader, commercial national security issue, it becomes virtually impossible to solve. But again, if we do it now, there鈥檚 a higher likelihood that we will have the downstream trillions of dollars of market cap here as opposed to dominating there.

Watch the event, read the transcript, or listen to Mike Gallagher鈥檚 conversation with Litinsky, 鈥淐ompeting with China on Critical Minerals.鈥�

3. Overcome insufficient defense budgets and China鈥檚 geographical advantages to restore deterrence.

The Air Force鈥檚 diminished fighter force now lacks the ability to sustain operations at scale over the vast dimensions of the Indo-Pacific and is increasingly out-sticked by China鈥檚 long-range air-to-air kill chains. And since the same kill chains will force the Air Force鈥檚 aerial refueling tankers to operate further from the fight, the fighter aircraft they support may not be able to reach engagement areas that are located around the Taiwan Strait or spend much time once there. Extending the reach and mission endurance of the Air Force鈥檚 fighters will be a key to resolving these shortfalls and creating the affordable mass that is needed to deter, and if necessary, defeat Chinese aggression. This will require the service to acquire cost-effective crewed and uncrewed combat systems and weapons鈥攁nd do so in a time of compressed budgets.

Read Timothy A. Walton鈥檚 op-ed 鈥淔our Solutions for Addressing the Air Force鈥檚 Distance Anxiety.鈥�