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PRISM Vol. 8, No. 4
No full textAs the National Security and National Defense Strategies state, the world has entered a phase of great power competition in which the United States is confronted by a rising China and a resurgent Russia. PRISM V.8,N.4 offers perspective on this competition with articles by Sir Lawrence Freedman, the Honorable Joseph Nye, and the Honorable Andrew Natsios.https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/prism-full-issue/1032/thumbnail.jp
PRISM Vol. 9, No. 1
No full textThough Great Power Competition (or GPC) dominates the current national security discourse, the United States is a global power with global interests. In addition to GPC, PRISM V.9,N.1 offers insight on the future of NATO, on U.S. engagement in Africa, and on emerging technology domains of competition such as quantum computing, 5G technology, and influence operations. Read American and South East Asian perspectives on competition with China, as well as Huawei’s rejoinder to The Worst Possible Day: U.S. Telecommunications and Huawei, from PRISM V.8,N.3.https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/prism-full-issue/1033/thumbnail.jp
Joint Force Quarterly 98 (3rd Quarter, July 2020)
No full texthttps://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/jfq-full-issue/1015/thumbnail.jp
The PLA Beyond Asia: China’s Growing Military Presence in the Red Sea Region
No full textChina’s establishment of a military base in Djibouti in 2017 was an important “first” for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which had never operated a base on foreign territory. It was also a milestone in a gradually expanding PLA presence in the Red Sea region. Over the previous decade, China deployed peacekeepers to conflicts in the oil-producing states of Sudan and South Sudan, conducted anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, and increased its military diplomacy throughout the area. By the time the Djibouti base opened, the PLA was already maintaining a presence of more than 2,000 personnel in the region—far more than in any other area outside the Indo-Pacific. While PLA capabilities have remained largely concentrated in Asia, its Red Sea presence showcased an increasing ability to project power to other regions and suggested that additional deployments may occur as China seeks to defend its overseas interests.1 The PLA role in the region has also entered the Chinese popular imagination: the navy’s evacuation of Chinese and foreign citizens from Yemen in 2015 was the basis of Operation Red Sea, one of China’s top grossing films of 2018.https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/strategic-forums/1008/thumbnail.jp
Contemporary Great Power Technological Competitive Factors in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
No full textIn this chapter, we do not attempt to deal with all the technologies driving the fourth industrial revolution; instead, we focus only on those that will most directly impact GPC, economic potential, and international trade in the short term: robotics, AI, 3D printing, energy, and biotechnology. The chapter also considers two important factors essential to U.S. efforts to exploit new technologies: current immigration policy and research and development (R&D) investments.
Although we discuss each of these technologies individually, it is the combination of them in new ways that will revolutionize the global economy. For instance, the first industrial revolution is often referred to as steam driven, but steam had to be combined with improved steel production, new manufacturing techniques, the telegraph, and other technologies both new and old to create the railroads that revolutionized trade and production. While space limitations forced us to select only a few of the technologies driving today’s revolution, readers should keep in mind that the others are essential to enabling the chosen technologies (for instance, advances in material science are essential to advances in the chosen technologies).https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/wmdcenter-books/1015/thumbnail.jp
The Micromanagement Myth and Mission Command: Making the Case for Oversight of Military Operations
No full textThis paper argues that leaders, historians, and pundits have grossly exaggerated civilian micromanagement of the U.S. military, resulting in less effective civilian and military oversight of military operations and a reduced likelihood that military operations will achieve strategic results. Exaggerating the frequency and impact of civilian micromanagement encourages military leaders to distance themselves from oversight and disinclines Presidents from exercising it. There is also evidence that within the military chain of command, an exaggerated concern with civilian micromanagement has distorted understanding of good leadership and the Joint Staff’s “mission command” doctrine, encouraging the military to ignore its own time-honored leadership principles.https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/inss-strategic-perspectives/1001/thumbnail.jp
The rise of the futurists: The perils of predicting with futurethink
No full textPolicymakers, facing increasingly uncertain contemporary and future security and technology environments, are engaging in futurethink — using fictional scenarios to make predictions about the results of introducing artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies into these environments. Futurists engage in this process by providing scenarios to ameliorate uncertainty, drawing on a suite of tools that include simulations, worst-case planning, war-gaming, and even science fiction narratives.
A common futurethink tactic is to switch from risk-based probabilistic thinking, which is vulnerable to various decisionmaking pathologies, to possibilistic thinking — creatively generating scenarios outside of expected outcomes with a focus on impacts rather than probabilities. This move avoids some pathologies but is still subject to many biases and must be implemented judiciously.
It can be usefully harnessed if futurists and policymakers avoid: rounding off probabilities, using heuristics as knowledge, and only exploring known outcomes. engaging in excessive deviations from reality and exotic or emotionally fraught scenarios. anchoring on specific scenarios, allowing embedded assumptions, and making hasty generalizations.
While still: being creative enough to spark new ideas. making explicit ideas inspired by fiction and embedding them in specific scenarios. seeking out expert contributions and integrating existing threats into scenarios
Strategic Assessment 2020: Into a New Era of Great Power Competition
No full textIn retrospect, it seems clear that the new era of Great Power competition that is the subject of the chapters in this volume began to take shape almost as soon as the last era had drawn to a close. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the sudden end of the Cold War, the United States found itself in a position of unchallenged (and seemingly unchallengeable) global preponderance.https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/books-and-book-chapters/1002/thumbnail.jp
Latin America 2020: Challenges to U.S. National Security Interests
No full textU.S. national security interests in Latin America are undermined by three key threats: transnational criminal organizations, which exploit weak levels of governance across the majority of countries in the region; extra-regional actors, which fill the vacuum created by U.S. distraction and inattention to its neighborhood; and finally, a number of regional political actors embracing ideological positions opposed to open political systems and free markets, which undermine progress toward democratic governance and stability.https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/strategic-monographs/1005/thumbnail.jp
Social Media Weaponization: The Biohazard of Russian Disinformation Campaigns
No full textIn a renewed era of Great Power competition, the United States is faced with adversaries engaging across multiple domains without the traditional distinctions of war and peace. America’s competitors are regularly operating below the threshold that would warrant a military response, including on the information battlefield. The blurred red lines that result from covert information operations waged by foreign actors on the Internet will force a change in how the United States operates and how its society consumes information. Russia used tactics of influence and coercion long before social media allowed for nearly ubiquitous access to its targets and a prolific capability for controlling a narrative and manipulating the hearts and minds of a population on a range of sensitive societal issues, including public health.
Russia has a long history of seeking to project power and influence while playing with a technological and geopolitical handicap. Given its history and a geographic location with many bordering nations, it sees itself as constantly besieged from all sides, but particularly by the West. Since the nadir of Soviet dissolution, Russia has fought to rebalance power and contemporaneously reduce American influence. But without equivalent conventional military might, Russia has turned to other asymmetric advantages to compensate in its competition with the United States. Social media has provided a unique tool kit to manipulate narratives and amplify societal divisions in an effort to weaken the United States in ways previously unimaginable. While Russian weaponization of information is not new the intersection of Russian disinformation, public health crises, and vulnerability to bioevents presents new and troubling homeland and national security threats for the United States