interest in afghanistan and the women there. >> hello, i'm here at the center for new american security. a washington dc based nonpartisan and bipartisan think tank. i have the most profound strategic challenges confronting the united states is managing the rise of increasingly assertive and powerful china. how to deal with the military power is the reason for today's special event. the 11th and newest book by peter navarro is entitled "crouching tiger: what china's militarism means for the world". distinguished scholars from china, toshi yoshihara and benjamin goldberg team. first, let me say a few words to frame the china debate in the context of today's events. this is december 7, a reminder of both strategic surprise and how a rising asia power might seek expansion of control throughout asia. the concern today is a re-emerged nationalistic and increasingly provisional list china is bent on establishing a larger sphere of influence. seeking to restore china to greatness simultaneously seeking to rejuvenate the nation and preserve the party. in addition to comprehensive reforms at home there is a reassertion of territorial claims and in effect militarily pushing back the us which and you areenjoyed a long-standing preponderance of power in the asia region. it seems to gain control and the south china sea. although china is riddled with myriads of challenges, whether the trajectory will lead to a great power war, while experts disagree on the inevitability of conflict we cannot avoid the potential impact. before pearl harbor many thought the idea of work between japan and the united states unimaginable which is by the book by peter navarro is so important. uniquely fashioned a career out of multimedia enterprises, and he is published ten previous books, including several related to china. peter navarro is here to tell us more about "crouching tiger: what china's militarism means for the world". peter. >> thank you. the pleasure and honor to be here. i appreciate the center for a new american security sponsoring this. patrick was kind enough to put up with us. we get stranded beyond the beltway my got here two hours late. horrible weather. he let us go into his office and redecorate the whole thing. we put everything back. but the interview was even better than his hospitality. my mission today really is to talk about an issue which i think is one of the most pressing of our times and one which i hope will become front and center in the 2016 presidential election. the mission here is to use the crouching tiger book to discuss these things against the backdrop of what is today in american history, a serious and somber day celebrating the anniversary of the pearl harbor attack. i am going to leave together the themes of the book itself and show you a number of historical parallels. that has to do with the fact that china is the world's manufacturing floor, and as we recall quantity is a quality of its own. never face the ability to produce so prodigiously as china can today. that is what i will do for you today. i want to talk about how the book came about. as patrick indicated, my mo is to, when i do a serious policy book, one of the most important things is to go out and talk to experts. as preparation for this book i interviewed close to 40 of the top experts in the world. it reflects a broad spectrum of opinion. people from the us institute of piece and the naval war college and everyone in between. just amazed at how they were willing to do this, but we would sit for an hour or two getting footage, and the book reflects the wisdom. it is an interesting experience. policy walks. analysts. trying to reach the public about this issue. i wrote it as a geopolitical detective story. the best testimonial is the one that toshi ishihara said, it is a fun read. it is a dark subject, but it is actually very acceptable. but i'm going to do for you today, when you talk with people outside your expertise to try to convince them whether it is congress people or staff people, whoever it is, thinking about this problem in a way that is acceptable and understandable. the framework is one that is straight out of the international relations. are they also possibly bad, trying to take territory from the neighbors and if there is bad intentions have to turn to the capability question. if china is week we don't have to worry, but china is strong we have to look at the strategies that china is adopting in order to fight what it sees as the warhead which gets into the realm of words you have heard, the jargon access aerial denial and asymmetric warfare. once i get to that point there is an issue we have to focus on. i go through the flashpoints for war whether itwhether is south china sea, east china sea, taiwan, north korea, and finally to try to cut throuw you present with seems to be an eventual conflict with china which is where we'll talk about the pathways to piece. i am going to move through this fairly briskly. let's begin with the intentions question. we start with, there is absolutely no question, china needs to have a strong military. no question about that. the british took the port, the opium wars is doing the same thing today, using coercion to take territory from people. germans and french were absolutely brutal us was right there as the junior imperialist at the time and of course we know the history of which appended. the chinese attitude is never again. i have written a wonderful book, red star over the pacific which basically is a look at china's emergence as a naval power through the lens of the father of the american navy and his counterpart in china who basically saw the early on in china was opened back in the 70s, saw the need for a globalized navy. the whole idea and i think it is absolutely correct, in order for a global power like the us or china to prosper you need to have some commanding control of the sea lanes. there is no question that china would build their navy. so let's give the dragon it's too. that is okay. we should not fear that. the problem comes about as dean chang from the heritage institute says, it is one thing to -- to build densive weapons and quite another to build offense of weapons aimed at basically intimidating neighbors and pushing the us. it was fascinating. a romance should -- revisionist power. they sought to take territory from their neighbors. there's not a lot of difference between imperial japan and china's vision. they control taiwan, much of indochina. their armies and military and navy are poised to drive them out so if you look at china china has made it clear. the film talks about how preposterous that is. but that is a revanchist claim that they are pursuing. they even claim the continental shelf. there is no question that china has the intention of taking territory from its neighbors. they share a fear of the us intervening. the barrier is set up a perimeter so you can see the parallel. there is no question that there should be concerned. and so we have to go to the question of capabilities, and i think there is a hubris year within the beltway let me count the ways. the interview with him the largest arsenal of muscles in the world. the anti- ship ballistic missile and the hypersonic cruise missile. that is what tells -- what ashley tellis calls the tip of their spear. but then you move on. commander call had an interesting talk about mine warfare. that's her grandfather's mind. walk me through how they let a hundred ships go by 70 miles an hour through the water it is a mission killed. applicable in the islands. we come back to an interesting parallel. restoration japan, that this produced by the british and french that you china is doing the same thing. is the fastest growing fleet in the world. then you got the exotic stuff, one of my favorite interviews was with chang at the heritage institute. and he made the delicate distinction between satellite weapons, hard kill versus soft kill. when china created the largest amount of space debris in world history per knocking out one of their weather satellites, but he talks about how difficult it is to do soft kill. aegis nudge. the reason why is they understand we control the strategic high ground. they think in order to deal with that, but it is destabilizing. but the chinese don't think like that. we had deals with the soviets. china sees it as another front. lastly on the kinetic warfare front there is cyber warfare which as we speak their hitting the pentagon, businesses, and have stolen virtually every major weapon system we have. you name it. just go down the list. that gets back to the hubris of the united states policing we will maintain superiority. if they are stealing weapon systems and have superior manufacturing capabilities, you do the math. and finally, there is what they call three warfare's. kind enough to have me to his house and sit with me and talk about them. what i remember the most was, it is not the best weapons that when, it is the best narrative. and it's something the chinese take seriously. the capabilities that are growing rapidly, but then there's talk about strategy. even if china never approaches us in terms of technology, that still does not matter if they practice asymmetric warfare. there's a wonderful segment in the film, in the interview talking about how an anti- ship ballistic missile, $10 million able to hit a $10 billion aircraft carrier, and what he said was, theywas, they can build more muscles then we can aircraft carriers. again, talking about parallels, the long last torpedo was the predecessor of the anti- ship ballistic missile. the japanese new they needed technology to win and that was a way of our ranging the opponent just by. bad intentions, strong capabilities. a strategy which is unabashedly aimed at pushing us out. one of the fascinating things -- and this is relevant to where we are right now in washington because with the statement said is the idea is to not put up a heart shielded push us out. simply to create uncertainty. and then we have a white house that hands and hawes and is indecisive. so, let's turn now to the flashpoint. china get shut down the wildcard because they provide 40 percent of the food and fuel. something michael o'hanlon shared with me the bush administration was actually aware, but that was over. and in 2003 while the bush administration was preparing to invade iraq what did north korea do? they spirited eight hundred thousand spent fuel rods, centrifuge that and got that material to places we can know -- now no longer find. that was the day that became a nuclear power. it has taken over ten years for them to get to where they are. they will get further. one of the most chilling interviews was a gentleman from johns hopkins university. there going to get good in seattle. he said, yeah. nothing we can do about it. north korea is very much a trigger point. if you swing around the yard , yes, it is 1.3 square miles of territory. well, it is also 200 miles of an exclusive economic zone and a concentric circle , resources and also on the southern flank of taiwan. if china is able to grab that and turn it into a fortress garrison, it would create vulnerabilities for japan. so that probably have already seen what happened in 2010 and 2012 over that. they announced riots. nationalists going crazy. it basically is called the cows time. we are there now. they are there now circling some of these fortress garrison's. you have the issue of taiwan china calls it the renegade province. depressed and afraid for two reasons. they see china slowly encircling them in ca us which may no longer have the resolve the stand with taiwan. they proposed a grand bargain. fortunately everyone else i talked to do not think i was a good idea, but it does reflect the fact that if push comes to shove we might not have american forces standing up for taiwan like bill clinton in 1996 or eisenhower in the 50s. and taiwan, there are a lot of reasons, but it is not just about the morality or ethics or commitment to democracy. that is the center of the 1st island chain. you give that away, give that aircraft carrier way and that will open the whole pacific to a chinese navy which is now very much bottled up. so there are even issues with india. it is fascinating. china claims it holds. estate of india. where to china go? southern tibet. the biggest issue is the actual water. china controls the water supply. the entire southeast asia. building dams and doing all sorts of things, making the river run dry. you have india and china, 40 pes population water constrained. so those are the flash points. i will walk you through the pathways to piece. there are three that we cannot depend on. they are the ones that i think we are depending on now because the neo- isolationist argument, just walked back. john mesh armor talked eloquently about how attractive that is ideology but was real about why it should not be done, the strategic reasons, economic reasons, that is the most vibrant area that, 50 percent of the population michael green points off correctly pacific ocean is not a barrier. there is a reason why they are forward based. and just continental ballistic missile goes off in north korea or china, is attracting stations in japan and asia and elsewhere. so feel isolationism will be attractive to american people had to deal with afghanistan, iraq, syria, but we have to be there, and sheila smith is right dead in the center of things. now, the two i think of the most serious are the economic engagement argument and the nuclear deterrent argument. the economic engagement argument is trade trumps invade idea. he simply go back and see the same rhetoric about how trade between kaiser germany and great britain and france would prevent the great war from happening, but one of my funniest interview these was texas ham. for those of you who know him, you will understand what i'm saying. in a great line about don't underestimate the ability to do stupid stuff when operating groups. there is a more subtle argument as to why trade does not always trump invade if you have a country like china heavily dependent upon natural resources, that actually increases the prospect of work. one of the reasons causing germany went to war was great britain was going to possibly embargo food, took oil and france tried to take some of the iron ore. so trade is not always trump invade, and we should not depend upon it. the other one is the highest want to think about. schooled me on the stability instability paradox. which is the idea if you have stability at the nuclear level, if china has the ability to launch a 2nd strike against seattle or san francisco know they need to do is hit one, that deters us from watching a 1st strike should they going to taiwan or somewhere else. and both tell us that nuclear strike capability that china has now developed more fully actually opens the door for conventional war in asia. and i think that is exactly right. you can debated, but it should give you pause. so the last thing, what do we do. the interesting thing is, the unifying thought here comes from the chinese himself and it was brought to me to people who could not have more different outlooks, and if you know them you will know what, i mean. johns hopkins university and michael pillsbury who does work for the pentagon and a fine book for himself. both of them brought up this whole notion of comprehensive national power. the idea that if you're going to deter china from its aggression and be able to maintain a presence in the western pacific this country has to have comprehensive national power. it is not just about building weapons. so what does that mean? it begins, us china commission, he is an expert on this. the idea that it all starts with a strong economy. you have to have a strong economy to generate growth, wage increases, tax base in order to afford whatever military and harbor defense you need. what is killing us now, not so ironically enough is china's unfair trade practice. you can't say join the world trade organization in 2001, millions unemployed. going at 2 percent set of three and a half. and if you are growing at three and a half percent it would not be having this conversation. that would be life on easy street. but it is not just that we must deal with economics on the trade issues but the other parts of the comprehensive national power that matter, strong education which creates the innovation the tribes the economy. that is really so critical, and in the business climate which allows innovation and growth. you can't have a tax system which drives our companies offshore andin the last technology to be shipped off store -- offshore. we need a stable political system that can make decisions in real time about competing needs. we don't have that now. we have our elections in their muddling through, but we are not making any tough decisions, and the political system is dominated by big money that benefits and by some ideological splits in the party system which basically leads to a congress marked the extremes. so this is why -- this is what i will end with here. ultimately this presidential election is so important because my view is if we don't deal with china and understand the need for comprehensive national power and continue this fight between the left which may be focuses on trade and jobs in the right which focuses on military hardware, we will not have the meanings of the mind that we really need. think through what i have tried to share with you today. this is a dialogue that we are having. nothing i said today was technical. it is just logical. that is kind of what we do. with that i will turn it back to patrick cronin and my colleagues here. >> thank you very much. [applause] and masterful synthesis. the book is full of chapters that crystallize key issues. let's turn 1st to toshi yoshihara, professor of strategy at the us naval war college. also affiliated with several institutions and the current author of the aforementioned volume. >> thank you, patrick. thank you for having me here to talk about peter's excellent book. what i would like to do is use the various chapters as a jumping off point to make my observations about chinese military, strategy, and interactions with the us and a potential breakout war , which is the issue that this book is about. so i am going to talk about three things. capabilities, interactions, and implications. first of all, with regard to capabilities, peters book covers a great deal on capabilities. there is an entire section on this topic. what it underscores is a rapid pace of technological change that is occurring in chinese military and is at a pace that has consistently befuddled, surprised watchers here in the states and elsewhere. one data point is the unveiling of the medium-range ballistic missile. this was paraded before the chinese public during a military parade in september. i wanted to highlight the capability by talking about a recent article and what is surprising is how blunt end of labor about why they felt they needed to develop the missile. and it is all about operational flexibility. the article talks about the fact the missile has added range, and we think it has the range to hit guam. capable of hitting six targets. it is also capable of hitting moving targets at sea, including the carrier. it is also, they reveal quite clearly, dual capable, for conducting conventional and nuclear strikes. it can use multiple types of conventional warheads and finally, the missile launch on the move. they can launch any.in transit depending upon the operational circumstances. with this highlights is the fact that not only is china enjoying a growing military arsenal, but it is increasingly sophisticated. i am not saying we should pivot our attention but highlight that it is an additional tool. so that is my 1st observation about capabilities. i want to spend most of my time on the concept of interaction and the potential of a great power war. i am not going to make a judgment about the likelihood but to highlight the things we should be thinking about. war is an interaction of two or more living forces meaning neither side is a potted plan. each side has an agency of its own and will try to do their best to outsmart or outmaneuver the adversary. we should expect that will take place. what i would like to do is highlight interactions that are worth thinking about. the 1st is china needs to extend its defensive perimeter. leaders in beijing recognize china is vulnerable to long-range precision strikes of the united states, especially along china's long coastline. so the chinese hope to extend the defensive perimeter to keep the united states at arms length, to create a keep out zone that would prevent the united states from getting within range to conduct potentially devastating strikes. recent literature suggests china wants to reach into the heart of the pacific as well as indian ocean. the united states needs to fight effectively inside this expanded zone. you can imagine the defensive perimeter going out. and at the same time, the united states must develop capability that enables it to launch attacks in strikes beyond the range of enemy firepower. that is one set. this is the competition. the 2nd is the sanctuaries it has become increasingly clear the us cannot take access to bases on foreign soil particularly along the 1st island chain for granted. .. >> that's another set of interactis about whose sang chew wars are more vulnerable to the other. the third and final is the tension that peter identifies in his book between short wars versus long wars. i think what we're seeing is, i think, a quest, a mutual quest for a quick, decisive victory on both sides. now, this is understandable because, as we all know, nobody volunteers for a bloody, protracted war. nobody signs up for a long and bloody war. but the likely hood of protraction, it seems to me, is quite high. i tend to agree that protraction, both sides finding themselves in a long war is actually quite a possibility. and i think the historical record on greek power wars, i think, backs up this proposition. from an operational perspective, for example, we could see during the initial stages of a conflict a massive expenditure of munitions and firepower on both sides. but that both sides fail to achieve a knockout blow, right? they're searching for the quick, decisive victory, but all they do is temporarily stun each other in the western pacific. so thinking about what comes next, whether each side should seek to increase pressure to escalate vertically in order to impose one's will on the other, or to decide that they need to find an offramp to deescalate, i think, are things that we should be thinking about, we should be devoting a lot of intellectual energy into thinking about what happens after the first move. it's easier to get into a conflict relatively speaking, it's much harder to get out of it. what are the conditions that one can satisfactorily terminate, i would argue, such a tragic and potentially bloody great power war. the third are implications, so what does this mean for the united states. here i would go back to some of the research that i've done and some of the arguments that i've made in recent years which is that we need to think asymmetrically by pitting our strengths against chinese vulnerabilities and weaknesses. vulnerabilities and weaknesses that the chinese cannot repair without tremendous amounts of resources dedicated to restoring some of those vulnerabilities or to fixing those vulnerabilities. and so there are, again, three things that we should think about. one asymmetrical response is, of course, the operational one, and i'm sure all of you are very familiar with this which is something that patrick has been work on for quite a few years, the notion of imposing costs on china. essentially, turning the tables on china, threatening to deny chinese access to the global commons, the very commons we would need to operate to achieve our objectives, the very same commons they would need to achieve their strategic objectives. but there are two others that are not necessarily material in nature. the second asymmetry, i see it as a comparative advantage, is the presence of allies and friends in the western pacific. we have many, and many of them are high quality friends. by contrast, and this is something that the chinese themselves lament, is that they don't have very many high quality friends. in fact, they have many low quality friends. and that they do not have reliable allies that they can count on effectively when things go south. thirdly, here's another intangible, i think, asymmetry, and that's the role of -- [inaudible] i think the idea of an open commons, the fact that the united states and its friends and allies are stakeholders in defending access to the global commons is a very powerful one. it's a very powerful idea, it's a very attractive idea. by contrast, the idea of historic rights that china uses to make excessive maritime claims or the notion that smaller states in asia should pay due deference to china's strategic prerogativeses, i think, frankly, is a turnoff. it's alarming. it's anathema to many of china's smaller neighbors. so i think these are the three kinds, three examples of asymmetries that the united states can play up. these are all advantages. but these are not fixed or permanent conditions. they may be up for grabs, and that's why the united states needs to maintain or widen its lead in these three areas and perhaps more in order to sustain deterrence. >> toshi, thank you very much for those comments. let's turn now to dr. stefan halper, research professor at the university of cambridge in the united kingdom. distinguished career includes both scholarly and policy achievement including work for four different u.s. presidents. noticeably, the book "the beijing consensus." stef? >> thank you very much. thanks, patrick, and thanks for having me. peter, congratulations on an excellent book. peter's insightful book, "crouching tiger," clarifies and guides our understanding of china's current military, trade and geostrategic policies and china's perception of its relations with the united states. what's at stake in the evolving u.s./china relationship? well, on this side of the pond american jobs, businesses, quality of life. in asia, east asian stability, u.s. alliances, friendships with japan, philippines, australia, korea, indonesia and others, freedom of navigation, of course, in the south china sea and the rights pertaining to the maritime commons. but perhaps most importantly, china has put the rule of law in play. this book covers a wild range of policy questions. it assesses china's military capabilities, its r&d, its geopolitical advantages and limitations. it considers approaches to peace and how we might manage this volatile relationship going forward. it comes at a time when the kissinger narrative emphasizing accommodation or economic engagement has run its course. it turns out that a mild, cooperateoff diplomacy -- cooperative diplomacy will not make china like us. the data on trade, jobs, cyber theft tells a sad story. for example, in september 2015, the important trade gap numbers adjusted for inflation and exchange rates were the largest since the department of commerce started collecting trade data with china in the early '70s. in october, for example, the monthly u.s. trade balance with china stood at a -32.9 billion. as we pivot to east asia, we pivot to a new realism. we see that beijing, feeding a domestic nationalism, has embraced policies that project its values and influence across east asia. and the south china sea. the cutting edge of this process is three warfares. peter navarro has emphasized china's three warfares, so allow me to expand a little bit on it. the three warfares combine psychological warfare, media warfare and the use of bogus law to form a dynamic, three-dimensional war-fighting process. it uses false histories, bogus law and aggressive intimidation to create a cutting edge force multiplier. if the object of war is to acquire resources, influence and territory and to project national will, china's three warfares is war by other means. approved in 2003, the three warfares reflects china's strategic culture, extending back to the warring states period, 475-221 b.c.. just as china sought to win without fighting some 2,000 years ago, so it uses the three warfares to do the same today. when china looks out across the oceans, what does it see? it sees the united states. these days china's three warfares are used to counter u.s. and western power projection as part of china's broader military strategy or anti-access area denial in the south china sea. a point very welch developed -- well developed in peter navarro's book. the u.s. depends upon access to the maritime commons and japan to anchor its strategic position in asia. china seeks to curtail u.s. power projection by setting the terms of u.s. access. the three warfares is the mechanism china uses to structure the campaign environment to its advantage. china's objective is to alter regional expectations and preferences while raising doubts about the legitimacy of the u.s. presence. the objective is to conclude a confrontation before it begins, an objective beijing has reached so far on mischief reef, scarborough shoal and a number of others. the three warfares play a crucial war in insuring china can press ahead with its claims by continuously altering the facts on the ground and supporting the enforcement of this new reality. over the past two years, china's land reclamation program in the south china sea, dredging the seabed and using the stand to build artificial land features and attempting to assert greater control over the disputed islands, has created over 2,000 acres of artificial land mass on chinese-occupied reefs. china has invested heavily in infrastructure including airstrips on four of the five reefs it controls. on fiery cross reef in the sprattlys, china built a 10,000-foot militarily-capable runway designed to enhance sovereignty claims. one might posit that this is where the three warfares begins to connect with hybrid warfare; namely, the fortification of defenses and the strengthening of assets and boundary control, providing the option of kinetic engagement if necessary. law fare -- that is, the use of the law -- plays a crucial role here. to support the transformation of facts on the ground, china manipulates legal conventions, primarily the 1982 u.n. convention to law of the sea, to which it is a con signatory nation. here it argues that it has the right to regulate foreign military activities in the economic zones, the ezs, that are supposedly created by these artificial land masses. such an assertion directly contravenes article 89 of the treaty which stipulates, and i quote: no state may validly purport to subject any part of the high seas to its sovereignty, end quote. furthermore, while a state may construct artificial islands, quote: it may not subject such islands to its sovereignty which would preclude it from interfering with the right of freedom of navigation and overflight, end quote. plus there's far more at play in the south china sea than minor disputes over the ownership of reefs and islands. beyond challenging the rule of law, these claims and seizures threaten to upend the regional order. even more, they place u.s. treaties and friendships in play. and it doesn't end there. china's stated aim, as peter, i believe, mentioned earlier, is to force the u.s. navy back to hawaii by mid century. success, or even the appearance of progress in this, would alter american status in global affairs. meanwhile, the south china sea chapter is far from closed. while the u.s. now moves to take steps, it is critical for the administration to develop a concerted response to the three warfares, effective countermeasures if we're able to proceed with that, should include the following elements. number one, forceful legal action. in established international venues to force china to defend its claims in an established court. two, strengthen u.s. and allied public diplomacy programs to combat the influence of china's information warfare. and both on publics at home and abroad. and i would say on that that the u.s. has been woefully lacking in dealing with or generating a powerful public diplomacy program that actually presents our viewpoint and our values in the region. and this is so critically important. it's hard to know why we haven't done it, but we're -- we simply haven't. regular briefings on the south china sea and china's tactics are needed to provide reliable, unbiased commentaries to counter the chinese narrative along with the continuous publication of satellite imagery such as, for example, the asia maritime transparency initiatives' island tracker. i'm sure many of you are familiar with that. xi jinping's statement at the close of the u.s./china summit that beijing has no intention of militarizing its outposts in the south china sea and those islands, that must be tested continuously and the results made public. fourth, there must be an ongoing, high profile public reaffirmation of u.s. security commitments as was the case with the u.s.' renewed commitment to the japan/u.s. security treaty in the aftermath of china's behavior. fifth, the u.s. must proceed with targeted development and assistance efforts to decrease the impact of china's economic inducements. and in this vein, the u.s. has to move quickly to conclude arrangements for the tpp. finally, the u.s. must coordinate continued and regular reconnaissance missions and freedom of navigation exercises within the eezs. this should also be coupled with increased tempo for joint naval exercises to train and boost the confidence of u.s. allies in the region. these, thish shy of the -- the issue of the three warfares is really only one of the many nuggets you'll find in "crouching tiger," and the implications extend beyond the technology of aggression. to geo-strategy he addresses a range of issues, what he calls the dark strategic beauty of the non-kinetic three warfares to offshore control, to the question of whether economic independence will prevent war. it's a remarkable book, and it's a great read. thanks. >> thank you very much. [applause] and thank you, toshi. we have a room full of experts, so i want to open it up to that. from a policy perspective for the u.s. administration that will come after the obama administration, it's a luxury to be able to focus on one country or one big issue. in reality, the united states remains a global power, and we'll be having to deal with russia's revisionism, we'll be having to deal with the islamic state, middle east turmoil, iran, north korea and china, no doubt. so all of this approach to countering china, to managing china, to dealing with a rising china will come under context of a global policy. the center for new american security is focused on all of those policies, and we will be hoping to explain our own approaches to what we think the next administration should take. but let's not take this time now to do that. let's move to the audience and some of the experts around the room to either interject with a question or comment or both. and let me start with pauly yara. >> thank you, patrick. wonderful presentation, the videos are really terrific. i can understand going into this project and trying to ascertain where china is in this emergence and what it means for us. but yesterday you wrote an article that asked whether or not china was on the, let me see. it says, would china launch a pearl harbor-style strike on america. so that means to me that you've learned something in this process. maybe you brought it to the process, i don't know. maybe war hawks like toshi -- no, i'm just kidding. you know i'm teasing. [laughter] have opened your eyes. i don't know what the process was, but this article tells me that you're quite far along in thinking that we are in serious trouble. what was it about this process that got you to that point? >> yeah, that's a great question, paul. and let me welcome honorable dan slane here of the u.s./china commission. i just want to acknowledge his presence here, because he's been a great inspiration to me over the years. i think that i tried to write a book and do a film which was bipartisan in nature and across the ideological spectrum. and it is a geopolitical detective story which i allow and offer and encourage readers to draw their own conclusions about whether or not there will be conflict with china and how, more importantly, we might be able to avoid that. so that's kind of the objective landscape. but when i go through that process, i'm convinced that there's a convergence and a confusion between china's defensive needs and its offensive goals, its territorial goals. i'm more than convinced that the capabilities that it is building are going to lead it to a point where if it's not every bit as powerful and technologically advanced as the u.s., its asymmetric warfare strategies will level the playing field. so bad intentions plus that. and then just going over the various flashpoints. i mean, the fact that china would claim 80% of the south china sea and then build forth its garrisons and then it would, that it would put out -- we didn't even get into a topic that's dear or to stef halper's heart, the fishing vessels and the paramilitary mixed in with the gray hulls going out there and imposing their will on other people. to me, it's a crisis that has been a long time in the making that we have, as a country, totally been distracted from. and i'm totally convinced that there can be peace with china, but i'm also totally convinced that if we let events unfold as they are, there will be conflict. so it's simply me as an academic looking at the chessboard saying unless we start making some different moves, we're going to be turning over the king. >> thank you very much. let's go back here. please. >> dana marshall, thank you -- >> how are you, dana? >> nice to see you again. congratulations on this new addition to your work. my focus, my question is on the intersection of economic leverage that we have. i mean, we sort of made point, you say that the peace is possible but that we need to do some interventions to be able to sort of -- [inaudible] the curve. i think this gentleman, dr. halper, put out a few ideas. i've heard a few things involving finishing tpp, a more vigorous public diplomacy program. some of those may help, but i think if we're really, if we're going to create tools that are commensurate with what we're trying to achieve, i don't know if that, if those are going to be enough. what i wanted to focus your anticipation on, peter, and get your thoughts on it is on the question you also raised which is the enormous and growing trade deficit not only that we have, but that our allies have. i mean, we must not forget there's a trans-atlantic dimension to this not just on the trade deficit problem and the problems that that causes for their unemployment, but also technology theft which is a problem in both places. so i depress the question for you -- i guess the question for you is how do we more effectively use economic leverage that we have? really move the needle and get their attention? >> that's a great question. and pat mulloy here has proposed a policy, a balanced trade for this country rather than run a $300 billion plus deficit with china every year and offshore our jobs and our productive capacity. somehow we need to bring that back here. so i think that's a really important part. and then i think one of the -- i'm a business professor, right? and an economist. so, like, what am i doing looking at military? well, the answer is pretty simple. it's like once you understand the relationship between a strong economy and national defense, it's an easy thing. now dan slane, i want to put him on the spot here because this guy, he won the award in my last film, "death by china," for the shortest interview time but the most clips in the film. [laughter] dan, if you could just comment on dana's question, because you can say it more eloquent than i. what is this relationship between the trade deficit in there or inability to defend ourselves? >> okay. i'd be happy to, although pat's more of an expert on this than i am. but, you know, when you are consuming more than you're producing, you continue to run this trade deficit which results not only in our national debt going up, but in the loss of jobs. and the chinese published strategy is to become dominant economic force in the world by 2049 which is their 100th year anniversary. and to do that, they feel like they have to weaken us and -- economically. because they believe that we cannot have a strong defense without a strong economy. is and so they are -- and so they are systematically trying to bring our, extract our manufacturing jobs over to china and steal our technology and all the things we all know about. the ultimate game plan for the chinese is they see the united states as supplying them with raw materials; corn, grain, iron ore, etc. and being the consumer of their products, especially their high-tech products. and by dominating us economically, they can control us. that's the long-range plan. and, pat, i'll -- you may want to add to the that. >> well, i would just say that there are two professors at the harvard business school that have written this great article in the harvard business review that america, people here say, well, we're going to be the great innovators. let the chinese make the stuff, but we'll be the innovators. in their article they point out that when you're weakening and offshoring your manufacturing and your technological capabilities, that your ability to innovate, you're weakening what they call the industrial commons. and the idea that you're going to be the key innovators is myth. the key innovators are going to be the guys who make the stuff. and the chinese have a particular policy of incentivizing our corporations to transfer our technologies to them to be considered friends of china. to do that on the chinese market, you've got to be a friend of china. we want more r&d here, we want more technological transfers here. that's not the way trade is supposed to work, but that's the way it's working here. our companies where it's focused solely on shareholder value, increasing the value for the shareholders, and the ceos have tied their own compensation to shareholder value so they get a lot of money short term, that's what's going on. and we have no counterstrategy in this country to deal with that problem. why don't we have a tax system that if you are an american company and you're producing jobs and technology here, then you get a low tax rate. if you want to make all your money in china and ship stuff back here -- maybe like apple does -- then you should have a higher tax rate. we've got to re-incentivize this game, or we're transferring our wealth and our power, and we're strengthening china's capabilities at a very rapid pace. so that's my take -- >> and one of the things i'm really trying to do with the "crouching tiger" book is to break down the silo, okay? many of you in this room are military experts, foreign policy experts. and, you know, i talked to folks, and it's like if you're military folks, they don't want to hear about the economics. if they're economic folks, they don't want to hear about the military. what i'm saying to all of you is that time's over. you need -- we need as a country to understand that. that's why i'm hoping that in this presidential election we'll have somebody emerge as an eloquent voice that ties this together. >> peter, i totally agree. this is not a time we can afford to live with those silos. we have to break them down. but whether policy can be made with that agility is a huge challenge, and i hope it can. we're going to take leadership -- it's going to take leadership to kind of do that, and we'll have to see. other questions or comments about this book? yes, sir, in the back, and then ben self here in the front. >> i just wanted to make two quick comments. you started out or you talked earlier about stability and the stability paradox and you alluded to the possibility -- [inaudible] somehow or another would result in instability at the conventional level. it's important to kind of unpack that a little bit. you know, the idea follows really cold war thinking. it's an interesting logic. the idea was that u.s./soviet relationship was based on strategic stability which was really code for mutual assured destruction and mutual vulnerability. and the idea being we would be both deterred at the strategic level. and beneath that level, you would possibly see adventurism by one party or the other if they had a greater stake or were more accepted than the other actor. so that's not a new problem, it's an old problem. we solved it during the cold war. so think about that a little bit in the asia-pacific context, we have allies, we have things we do with them in the asia-pacific. and then the second point, you launched a range of interesting facts, none of which i would dispute, and certainly we all work on these things today. but it is a view on china, sounds to me -- i haven't read your book yet -- but not necessarily looking at sort of a whole, really an order of battle type approach to the challenge. so, in other words, blue teeth capabilities and what we're doing, and we're not standing still, right? so you talked about the third offset, secretary carter's defense innovation, navy concepts like -- [inaudible] or the marine corps' approach to the asia-pacific as it has evolved in the last five years. we're not standing still. there's things you point out about chinese modernization. it's concerning, but it's not the 800-pound gorilla. we are also, obviously, changing our concepts and changing our approach to meet that challenge. and then for dr. halper i'd just ask, he talked about public diplomacy -- >> what's do this in order. let me respond, maybe toshi wants to, and then ask your question for stef. i think all that's fair. and when i talk to ashley telles, for example, he said exactly what you did, it goes back to cold war thinking. but his ultimate conclusion on that whole idea was that we don't know, we don't know. but if you think there's the possibility that there could be instability at the conventional level. this other thing, i'll ask this just rhetorically and let toshi make a comment. would you like 300 ships? you're going for the 600 down to 200. i see a lot of talk, but i also see budget e she questions take. i mean, pat had a beautiful part in the film about how we need balanced force. he proceeded to list a long list of, you know, attack subs, virginia-class attack submarines, more this, more that, more this, more that, more high-tech this. well, my concern is that no matter how smart we might think we are, we don't have the money to do what we need to do because of what pat mulloy and dan slane are saying. do you have any comments on the instability? >> i would only add that it just behooves us to study deeply on chinese nuclear doctrine. they have a peculiar way of thinking about deterrence. so, i mean, i think the df-26 is kind of a microcosm of this motion, they talk about dual -- notion, they talk about dual deterrence. finish that's a very different way of thinking about how you mix the conventional with the nuclear. so, again, it's not to go against stability versus instability paradox, but it's simply to urge us to think about it from china's perspective about nuclear stability. >> i would also just add in the book although it is not a net assessment, so a net assessment is needed, obviously, when you think about these issues, and your point is valid. this is a contribution that includes views of people who are very much aware of the assessments with u.s. and china, with red/blue. so it's assumed in part in the analysis, but it is not a net assessment book. that's another book and another study. >> i'm certainly aware of all that. >> i know. >> that information as well. but i point that out. my question for dr. halper was simply is your concern about public diplomacy that our message is the wrong message, or do we need to be louder with our message and more consistent? >> we don't have a message. >> [inaudible] >> yes, i know that. and i think that's a wonderful step in the right direction. and he's been there several times. i think, you know, two or three times. and the president's been out there twice. but that's not adequate. what we need to be thinking about is developing programming that canning be provided -- that can be provided to local networks so that it's moving constantly, you know, in bangkok, hanoi, manila. we ought to be working together with the bbc, work with the press, cnn. and what i'd like to see the usia doing is developing programming on a regular basis that is relevant to unfolding event as the region sees them. put our spin on the events as they unfold. put our values forward and our concerns. i mean, you said earlier that one of the greatest strengths we have are the values that we project. they're very different from china. and they would be embraced more quickly than china. >> and let me just add, i mean, secretary of defense ashton carter's been a very effective spokesman for the american narrative, but there are so many chinese narratives that permeate. i just came back from china and ya japan, and there are many more out there. have we gotten out of the business of strategic communications, that's a legitimate question that probably deserves to be part of another discussion not here today. >> wait a second. remember what eisenhower did in the '50s with u.s. ia. he actually used that organization to project an entire line, a concept of global affairs. in the case of china, he emphasized buddhism as a way of blocking the move of communism into southeast asia. we have done it before. but we're not focused now. >> tim self, are you next in and then -- [inaudible] yes, sir. >> thank you. i enjoyed that, thank you. i discovered that what we all take for granted, that everybody's paying attention to the china problem, is not true. and you're trying to reach an audience that the thousands of us in d.c. and tokyo that are talking about china and the security balance constantly aren't quite as aware. but i feel you do a disservice to the u.s. government by claiming that we're not doing a lot of the things that you've recommended we do or that we not be aware of. i'm not governmental. so i'm standing outside looking at the state department, the white house and the defense department. i feel like they're already, they've already thought through most of the things that were discussed. i mean, no offense intended, but i feel like they're very smart people, they're very aware of these problems and that you're, you set up a strawman, basically, of this lazy, ignorant u.s. government that's only chasing chinese money. i don't think that's fair at all. but my question was about the path to peace. because i, i mean, that's what we all want. and i think deterrence is probably the safest, wildest, smoothest path -- widest, smoothest path to peace. so preventing deterrence is all the way across to the right. i don't quite understand what your suggestion is in that regard. when you talk about comprehensive national power, are you talking about maintaining deterrence through u.s. strength alone, or are you talking about allies and friends of the united states china's pushing into our arms countries that might have been more neutral before or becoming more pro-west because of china's aggression? and so i don't quite see what the link between the emphasis on comprehensive national power and the maintenance of deterrence is. >> sure. first of all, i love your comment at the beginning. i understand what you're saying. and i, i have tremendous respect for the people who have been studying this for decades who are entrenched in the pentagon and in other agencies of the government who understand this certainly as well as i do, okay? my role is not to teach them. my role is to act as a vessel for the wisdom of folks like you and toshi and stef and pat, pat mulloy and dan slane as a vessel to the american people, okay? just lay this thing out there. and as for whether the government's been doing enough, look, you don't have the resources you need to do enough. i don't care how much you might agree with the existence of a problem, there's simply not must have resources that are being devoted or, more importantly, attention. we are distracted. we announced the pivot to asia and, forgive me, but we have not pivoted to asia. personally, jim owens goes through some great pivot math, seth does the same thing. if we continue our trajectory right now, pivoting to asia with 60% of our ships there by 2020, we'll have fewer ships! that's the math of the pivot as our ships go down. so i don't, i don't mean to criticize people who understand this issue in the pentagon, i'm just trying to help here, okay? that's my mission, okay? now, in terms of the solutions, as pat said, i went through this in 35 minutes. there's a whole book, and there's 11 episodes, 45 minutes each in the miniseries that deal at a fine-grain level with what we need to do. and the comprehensive national power apropos of pat's remarks about how we're fighting issues in iran, syria, russia, the comprehensive national power is a policy for all of the national security issues we're facing, okay? it's like -- so what does it mean? well, yeah, of course we need to take care of our alliances. i mean, the japanese government right now, the taiwan government, they're wondering if we're going to be there, right? and if we're not going to be there, is japan going to bandwagon with china? create an economic china and keep us out, or are they going to go nuclear? they could go nuclear in a heartbeat. so we need to take care of our alliances. we're not doing that. we need, as we said, to take care of our economy, we need to balance our trade deficit, we need to have a tax policy that keeps our companies here, doesn't push them offshore. but these -- we need to deal with our education system so that the people coming out of that system have the brain power, basically, to store us with innovation. and politically, i mean, you can defend all you want the pentagon and the smart people in our bureaucracy, okay? but that's the long-term government, right? you've got to deal with the short-term people coming in every two years into the house and every six years into the senate. and that ain't working. that's broke. okay? that's broke. dan, do you have a comment? >> i think in answer to your question is that i think what makes our military so superior is our technology. and we have such advanced technology in our weapons systems. and since 2008 we've cut our r&d, our military and defense r&d by 40%. that's a failure of the u.s. government, okay? inand the chinese believe that e next war will be fought in space, and they are developing satellites to dislodge our gps satellites from their orbits which our weapons systems are operated off of. and i think that we're shooting ourselves in the foot when we start severely cutting our r&d budget, because the commercial world of private companies are not going to do it. and i think to answer your question about peace, i think the only thing that the chinese understand is strength. and if we want peace, the only way we're going to get it is if we have a strong defense and they perceive the united states in relative decline. and that's why you're seeing a lot of activity in the east and south china sea. >> thank you. peter, i think your book is already sparking the debate you want here. why don't we just keep moving forward, if we can -- >> [inaudible] >> isaac stonefish is next. >> yes, sir, thank you for coming today. >> i have a question about sourcing. in the chinese system, the people who really make policy and really know what they're talking about are the ones who don't say anything to western media, politburo, pla. we rarely hear anything from them that is not very to pick or dressed up for our consumption. so how do you weigh the voices that we're not hearing but are much more important with the voices from other parts of the chinese system who sometimes say things that are much more radical but don't necessarily represent policy or even mainstream policy? >> yeah, that's a great question, textured/subtle. i think one of the beauties of writing this book was access to people like toshi,stef, david can. these people do have access to those people. and so, yeah, i probably heard this second and thirdhand from those experts, but there are ways to hear from those people. i mean, a number of the folks that i interviewed regularly read the memos from, that are circulated in china and in the native language and things like that. so i'm confident we're hearing it, we're just not getting crazy kernels saying they're going to nuke us. i think the policy's clear, but, toshi, i think you'd be ideal to make some comment. how hard is it to get information from the people that matter in there? >> yeah. i think it is important to recognize the limits of the sources, and this is one of the challenges for pla and china watchers in general which is an ongoing debate about the authoritativeness of the sources. but what i have found is that if you read widely and deeply enough, i think you can make common sense judgments as to which articles to discard and which articles -- even if their institutional affiliation is not clear -- seems to make sense, seems to fit into china's larger strategy. one would be making common sense judgments, but also being very transparent about the sources, saying that, you know, this publication came from the academy of military science from, you know, a professional scholar, military officer, right? because they spend, you know, they basically spent their career being academics, not being a staff officer or, you know, somebody in an operational position. but as long as you, you know, keep your eyes wide open about the sources that you're using, understanding the limits of the sources and being transparent about the origins of those sources, i think you can make a fairly responsible story about what they're trying to argue and how it dovetails with what you think is china's strategy. but, i mean, i would also argue that chinese, what i call the military intellectual complex is surprisingly open. i mean, this is a complex composed of senior military officers, academics, former policymakers, etc., that have openly spoken out for certain things that they believe china should do. and, you know, if you think about the open source literature on china's anti-ship ballistic missiles, i keep coming back to this, but, i mean, they've been writing about this since at least the late 1990s that are open to the public, and we've seen the progression. we don't know whether it works or not, but we've seen the progression of this technical capability, and it is in line with the availability of open sources available to, you know, outside observers. so i think, again, having a balanced view, again, understanding the limits but also acknowledging that there's all kinds of stuff out there that you can dig into that can provide some really very interesting and policy-relevant insights about china. >> maybe a two-fingered intervention here from ben goldberg. >> it's not an intervention. >> oh. >> appreciate your very interesting comments. i guess my quick question, trying to make it quick. in this book, which i have not read yet, and -- [inaudible] do you talk about the other countries? we've mentioned allies, japan and taiwan of but i have to wonder if china -- i don't know if it's fair to say -- [inaudible] i feel like they've scored a lot of own goals, we would say in england. [laughter] in japan you had more i don't want to say pro-china, there's others who would know better than me, but the government reached out to china and was basically kicked in the teeth in 2009, 2010. you had the election in taiwan in -- [inaudible] where teams more wary of, cautious towards china's government elected. vietnam, while the chinese leadership is visiting, had the japanese -- [inaudible] at the same time. so i wonder if you could just talk briefly about the other countries in east asia and how you see this growing chinese assertiveness, aggression and their responses. and i think somebody, i don't know if it was toshi, i think somebody mentioned them moving closer to the u.s. i think that's a fair assessment. oh, and india. >> i think, i think that china has shot itself in the foot. i think that because i was told that by a number of the experts i interviewed. i think they made a miscalculation in 2008. 2008. >> absolutely. >> up until that time, it was hide your capabilities, bide your time, peaceful rise. and it worked. it was a surprisingly effective form of soft power diplomacy. and people were buying into that. but when that financial crisis hit, for some reason i seem to think that they thought that was the end of america as they knew it. michael -- [inaudible] both said the same thing about china's view of history. they don't try to do what we do in the west as we see something, we take it, and we try to make things happen. they wait and they nudge history and they act op or por tunistically. and at that point i think they saw an opportunity which really wasn't there, okay? and they began -- so that would be one reason, okay? the other is the tenuousness of the chinese communist party and the rise of nationalism within their domestic borders. i just loved interviewing secretary albright. she had this kind of madisonian special interest faction view of how the chinese government works and that it's not this top-down kind of thing, but it's being propelled along by all these special interests which would get you to the same result, which is more aggression in the south china sea and so on, okay? so i think they made a mistake. and there's, i mean, i think i say this in the book, and if i haven't, i've said it elsewhere. shin toe abe is basically created by china. there's no way that abe becomes prime minister of japan without what china has done to japan. and what is china thinking? now they've got a japan, third largest economy which is suddenly re-militarizing. i mean, so they pushed them in the wrong direction. they've got vietnam thinking about whether we should be in the bay, they've got the philippines wanting us back, they've got singapore wanting us to do whatever we want in singapore. they got burma just totally upset with being in a colony, maybe rethinking their priorities. and i'll tell you what, i mean, to a lesser extent -- [inaudible] has probably got a little bit of lift from the chinese in india because of china's shenanigans because they frequently, you know, they sometimes make border incursions. and i think stef was exactly right when he said -- i think patrick might have said this. i forget, forgive me. but one of our strengths in asia is that we have more friends than enemies -- it was toshi. [laughter] yes. and he got it exactly right. whereas all china has is, you know, a couple of -- you know, laos, cambodia which screw around every time they have an aipac meeting, they try to shift that around into the three warfares format. so they mucked it up, okay? but that doesn't give me any comfort, okay? because one of my worst case scenarios is a continued decline in the chinese economy, rising nationalism, and there's a whole chapter in "crouching tiger" on wag the dog. so all i -- everyone in this room, it's like i had some strong opinions, but the book itself is, i think, a fairly objective presentation of the chessboard, okay? and it is a detective story. i give you clues in each chapter, i give you the evidence as i see it, and you make your own conclusionings. conclusions. so i'm thick to all point -- sympathetic to all points of view here. and next time around i'll interview you and you. >> stef, do you want to make a comment? >> i was just going to add to the point you were making. there -- the point that you make about 2008 and the reversal of chinese diplomacy which had been very successful and then bounced sour and isolated them in the region is a very important point. but what we haven't mentioned are two other points having to do with china which are quite negative. china's gdp growth is dropping, but it's likely to drop a lot more. it is, imf is projecting in the 3-4% range in 2020. you have world bank projections which are quite low. they say at the moment they're at 5.2. i mean, that's what seems to be coming out. but, you know, it's a dramatic reduction in ging dp. and -- in gdp. and the other thing that's worth looking at is demographickings. the demographic growth in china is such that in 2040 they start losing population. they level off in the 2030s. so there's never been a nation in the history of the world that has managed to achieve global influence and power with a declining population. i'd just make those two points. >> well, and it comes back to if we keep a strong foundation and a strong economy, we have a positive vision and avoid the worst, we should do well for the long time. but, sir. patrick mulloy. >> i just want to -- the whole idea of the comprehensive national power, china had a bad 200 years. they were taken apart. they want back. if i were chinese, i'd be doing what the chinese are doing, but i'm not, i'm an american. and what i see is happening, and the china mission -- which is a bipartisan commission, half republicans, half democrats -- they've issued about 14 reports now to the congress, one each year. almost all of them have been unanimous because when you get baa this and you -- into this and you see what's happening, we're like joe friday in dragnet. the facts tell you what's happening. so when you see a transfer of wealth of $4 trillion since china joined the wto and you see the detriment that's done to the american economy -- and a lot of people saying well, we're getting cheap consumer goods. yeah, that doesn't do you a lot of good when you don't have the money to buy them or your job is being dumbed down, this is an enormous impact on the american economy x. the commission each year points out in a bipartisan manner how this is affecting the united states and helping china grow its military strength at our expense. and i just think the military guys and the economic guys have to get together and figure out a national strategy for the united states and how to deal with this issue. and a key part of it would be to me instead of running a $360 billion trade deficit with china which we're going to run this year, how to balance our trade with that country. what are we doing transferring all this wealth and power to china is at such a rapid pace? i think these are issues we have to focus on. >> thank you. and a comment from dana marshall. >> thank you. what you just said, pat, one interesting question -- and, peter, i couldn't approve more that we need to get rid of these silos. we can't afford to have them any longer. but here's a question that kind of connects it which is let's say if we are able to achieve a balanced trade or a lot heads than a $360 billion deficit with china which means, after all, that they're not going to get that kind of capital -- >> [inaudible] >> $4 trillion of reserves now. what is our best estimate about what impact would that have on their military and their weapons systems? i mean, they can't do everything, you know? if that money were not available, what would it mean? that's a question that i think is well worth looking at. >> good. let's go to two other people who have been waiting patiently, paul giarra and again hironaka who's with the center for new american security. >> no, thank you very much. wonderful comments. i have one question. maybe i'm asking that to dr. toshi yoshihara. [inaudible] how do you assess the future, the relationship between the communist party and -- [inaudible] >> i'm not an expert by any means on kind of the pla as an organization or the civil-military dimensions of the pla. but just a couple of broad observations. first is just how relative autonomous the pla is relative to other state institutions of the chinese government. and you can, you can hear this from anecdotes about how the china ministry of foreign affairs feel increasingly marginalized in an era in which the so-called nativist and the hawks have gotten an upper hand in the internal policy debates over china. i think that's certainly one thing. the other piece of it that's related to sort of the military operational dimension is to what extent there is a proper civil-military dialogue within china about the military plans or the military operations that the chinese are thinking about. because i think the doctrinal writings that i've had access to suggests operational plans that are highly offensively-oriented, that are in some ways highly destabilizing that may make sense operationally but may be, potentially, disastrous for china from a strategic or political perspective. me question -- and this is more of a question, i don't really have an answer -- to what extent do china's political masters have a grip on what is actually being thought about inside of the pla which, again, i emphasize is a much more autonomous institution compared to other institutions in the chinese government. and my worry is that in times of crisis when the military hands the balloons over to chi -- plans over to china's political masters, will they have the authority, the knowledge, the confidence to say this is a terrible plan, give me another plan, or do they get pressured into saying yes for a variety of reasons? and we know that there's historical precedent for that when the civil-military relationship breaks down. so that would with my concern particularly in times of crisis. >> okay. and, pauly yara. >> that's exactly what i wanted to mention. not only are there all sorts of sort of conventional or familiar ways that the chinese can get themselves into that trouble, but with space and cyber now on the table, these are potentially -- certainly cyber, and i think space too -- are literally, if i'm not mistaken, could be civilizational-ending trusts and blows. ..