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Center for Security Studies
STRATEGIC
TRENDS 2019
Key Developments in Global Affairs
Editors: Jack Thompson, Oliver Thränert
Series Editor: Andreas Wenger
Authors: Michael Haas, Jeronim Perović,
Jack Thompson, Lisa Watanabe
CSS
ETH ZurichSTRATEGIC TRENDS 2019 is also electronically available at: www.css.ethz.ch/publications/strategic-trends Editors STRATEGIC TRENDS 2019: Jack Thompson, Oliver Thränert Series Editor STRATEGIC TRENDS: Andreas Wenger Contact: Center for Security Studies ETH Zurich Haldeneggsteig 4, IFW CH-8092 Zurich Switzerland This publication covers events up to 1 March 2019. © 2019, Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich Images © by Reuters ISSN 1664-0667 ISBN 978-3-905696-66-0
CHAPTER 2
The Eclipse of Western
Military-Technological Superiority
Michael Haas
Ever since they grasped the promise of the information revolution in the late
1970s, the United States and its allies have enjoyed a sizeable military-tech-
nological advantage over any plausible adversary. Now, as new technologies
enter the limelight and competitors become more adept at appropriating
or offsetting Western strengths, this qualitative superiority in armaments
is eroding. With the underlying trends gathering steam and policy interven-
tions already falling short, Western armed forces will increasingly face a
choice of confronting revisionist challengers on even terms – or not at all.
A US Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter jet performs ahead of the International Air and Space Fair at
Santiago International Airport, March 28, 2016. Ivan Alvarado / Reuters
27ST RAT EG I C T R EN DS 2 0 1 9
Even though they may sometimes ap- that resulted from late Cold War
pear to operate in a world unto itself, defense programs have facilitated a
military organizations tend to reflect US-centric distribution of power,
important properties of the societies buttressed existing alliances, and en-
that build and sustain them. Hence, abled wars of choice. They have also
it should not come as a surprise that set a standard of military moderniza-
Western approaches to conventional tion to which other countries aspire
deterrence and military conflict, as – and spurred counter-innovation
they have evolved in the late 20th and among those who feared that they
early 21st centuries, have taken a pro- might find themselves at the receiving
foundly techno-centric turn. While end of Western interventionism.
the search for engineering solutions to
national security problems appears to In both regards, Operation Desert
be a persistent feature of the US cul- Storm – the eviction of Iraqi forces
tural setting, in particular, other liber- from Kuwait – constituted a water-
al democracies have exhibited a similar shed event. When President George
tendency.1 In parallel with a deep-seat- H.W. Bush declared the end of ma-
ed belief in the transformative power jor combat operations against Iraq on
of technology in the civilian sphere, February 27, 1991, it became evident
the recourse to high-tech solutions that US and allied forces had crushed
across a broad spectrum of military one of the world’s largest armies at
problem sets has become an essential astonishingly low cost to themselves.
feature of force development and de- To other military powers, especially
fense procurement in Western-style those organized according to Soviet
armed forces. or other non-Western principles, the
Gulf War appeared to serve notice of
The considerable success the West a new era in military affairs, in which
has enjoyed in establishing and – for Western force projection would be
a time – upholding this paradigm of extremely difficult to resist by any
military-technological pre-eminence means currently available to them,
has had important consequences for short of nuclear weapons.
the international order. During the
1980s, the financial impact of the in- The West’s adoption of a paradigm of
tensifying competition in advanced guided weapons, signature-reduced
conventional forces arguably hastened platforms like stealth aircraft, so-
the fall of the Soviet Union. In the de- phisticated intelligence, surveillance
cades since, the Western capabilities and reconnaissance (ISR) assets and
28E C L I P S E O F W E ST E R N M I L I TA RY T E C H N O LO GY
pervasive battlefield networking was, set in motion during the 1980s and
as yet, in its early stages. But the mili- 1990s continue to bolster the capa-
tary foundations of the United States’ bilities of Western-style armed forces,
preeminent position in the interna- the so-called guided weapons revolu-
tional system seemed assured for de- tion has entered the stage of global
cades to come. While the promise of diffusion. And while some of the
a more collaborative, US-led world greatest triumphs of late-Cold War
order that the Gulf War coalition had engineering – such as long-range,
appeared to foreshadow soon proved very-high-precision cruise missiles or
illusory, the reality of Western mili- stealth aircraft – remain inaccessible
tary superiority was inescapable. Ac- to all but the wealthiest and most
cording to a 2011 Rand study, the technologically advanced countries,
Chinese People’s Liberation Army they are no longer the exclusive do-
(PLA) was particularly impressed by main of the United States and its
what it had witnessed: “The 1991 closest allies.
Persian Gulf War sent shockwaves
throughout China’s military commu- Although this would in itself con-
nity and accelerated the PLA’s mod- stitute a significant development,
ernization and shifts in strategy. The it is the underlying shift in the pat-
United States’ overwhelming dom- terns of innovation that should give
inance in that conflict led Chinese pause to Western decision-makers.
military leaders to push for advanced Whereas the late-Cold War advances
military technologies.”2 The armed in military technology were critically
forces of the newly formed Russian dependent on government-funded
Federation also took notice, although research and development (R&D) to
their ability to react was curtailed by a come to fruition, ongoing innovation
chronic lack of resources. processes in fields such as biotech-
nology, nanotechnology, quantum
Almost three decades later, the so- computing, robotics, artificial intel-
called Revolution in Military Affairs ligence (AI), augmented reality, and
(RMA) touted by American theorists additive manufacturing are far more
during the 1990s is following the fa- reliant on open knowledge econo-
miliar trajectory of earlier spells of mies populated by private actors.
military-technological innovation, in Because this knowledge ecosystem is
that it has produced advantages of far more transparent and accessible
limited extent and durability.3 While by design, the challengers of Western
many of the innovation processes military preeminence find themselves
29ST RAT EG I C T R EN DS 2 0 1 9
operating in an environment from another watershed will be reached
which cutting-edge technologies can in the 2020s, with long-term impli-
be extracted with relative ease. Foreign cations not just for Western military
acquisitions, joint ventures, multina- policies and force development prior-
tional research programs, and interna- ities, but for the international order
tional student exchanges are all part of at large. In the following we will look
the same toolbox in this regard, as are into the root causes of this dynamic,
industrial espionage and other forms assess Western policy initiatives de-
of intellectual property theft. signed to offset it, and consider the
way forward.
As a result, the odds that non-Western
actors will not only catch up, but ac- The Crumbling Foundations of
tually pull ahead of the United States Western Advantage
and its allies in some areas of technol- To understand why the military su-
ogy development are set to increase periority of Western democracies can
dramatically. As a result of its striking no longer be taken for granted, as it
economic growth over the last 20 – 30 long had been after 1991, one must
years, this is true of the People’s Re- ultimately look beyond the field of
public of China (PRC) in particular. defense innovation and reckon with
Given that the Western advantage in two economic megatrends that are
military forces is itself derived from a altering the underlying parameters
limited portfolio of key technologies, of military technology development.
the formation of pockets of Chinese The first has been the rapid growth
advantage would amount to an im- of many non-Western economies,
portant break with a pattern of incre- and the spectacular expansion of the
mental progress in military technolo- Chinese economy in particular. The
gy development that has marked the second concerns the ways in which
past two to three decades. At the same new technologies are developed and
time, the ability of other actors to shared within a globalized economic
cancel out existing Western strengths environment.
by combining less advanced technol-
ogies and asymmetric doctrines has The rise of the non-Western econo-
also increased, and this is a function mies constitutes, without a doubt,
of raw economic power to a much the most consequential global trans-
lesser extent. While advantages in formation of the early 21st century.
military technology have never been In 1991, China’s share of the world
static, it seems increasingly likely that economy was 4 percent. The United
30E C L I P S E O F W E ST E R N M I L I TA RY T E C H N O LO GY
States’ share was 21 percent. Today, observe significant knock-on effects
China’s illiberal capitalist model ac- in the military sphere. Although the
counts for close to 19 percent of the mechanisms that underpin this ex-
global economy, whereas the US share pectation are complex, advances in
has dropped to 15 percent – a trend military technology primarily depend
which looks set to continue. Equally on two factors: A state’s capacity to
impressively, the advanced economies extract financial resources from the
of 1991 – most of them Western-style domestic economy and funnel them
liberal democracies – collectively ac- into military modernization, and its
counted for 63 percent of the gross competency in harnessing new tech-
world product, while developing na- nologies through indigenous R&D or
tions created the remaining 37 per- by acquiring them from abroad, and
cent. Five years from now, according fielding them in a timely manner.
to projections from the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), these propor- The second overarching trend that
tions will likewise have been reversed. is contributing to the relative mili-
tary decline of the West is a radical
While the relationship between eco- shift in the patterns of technological
nomic potential and military capabil- innovation itself, which is likely to
ity is not straightforward, they have further undermine existing relative
usually been strongly correlated in advantages in the medium- to long-
the long term. As Paul M. Kennedy term. During the 1970s, when the
famously argued, “economic prosper- technological foundations of the so-
ity does not always and immediately called Revolution in Military Affairs
translate into military effectiveness, took form, cutting-edge R&D was
for that depends on many other fac- preponderantly state-funded and ter-
tors, from geography and national ritorially confined. More than half of
morale to generalship and tactical all R&D funding in the United States
competence. Nevertheless, the fact typically came out of the federal bud-
remains that all of the major shifts get, and no less than 50 percent of ev-
in the world’s military-power bal- ery federal R&D dollar went directly
ances have followed alterations in into defense projects. As of 2018, the
the productive balances.”4 Given the US federal government accounts for
profound reversal of the global eco- less than a quarter of national R&D
nomic balance of power that has been funding, and civilian applications
underway for the last thirty years, it have overtaken defense projects in the
would not be surprising to eventually public spending category.5
31ST RAT EG I C T R EN DS 2 0 1 9
Over the last decade, the trend to- Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D
wards private funding has only be- In constant 2005 billion USD (PPP)
come more distinct. In the United
400 USA
States, the overall financial intensity
China
of R&D as a percentage of the GDP
300
has remained about the same, at ap-
proximately 2.6 percent, but the share
200
of public funding has declined from
1.2 to 0.7 percent.6 In other words,
100
even though military R&D spending
remains a well-funded aspect of the
0
US defense effort, the likelihood that
00
05
10
15
a cutting-edge technology will be de-
20
20
20
20
veloped using private rather than pub- Source: UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
lic money – and, therefore, privately
owned – is now much higher than it
was forty years ago. Given that the US centered on manufacturing sites and
federal tax base will be strained by es- service providers in China or other
calating health care and other entitle- emerging economies. In many cases,
ment costs, this downward trend is set these dependencies have resulted in
to continue or even accelerate in the the transfer of proprietary knowledge
2020s. Predictably, similar patterns are as well as significant know-how, be it
already asserting themselves in other surreptitiously or by design. During
Western democracies. that same period, Chinese foreign
direct investment (FDI), in the form
At the same time, the private technol- of acquisitions of US companies or
ogy companies that have taken on the assets, has increased from less than
mantle of primary R&D funders have 50 million USD per year to a record
become key players in a global eco- 44.2 billion in 2016 alone. While the
nomic model that is based on open ex- largest influx of Chinese FDI has been
change and non-discriminatory treat- into the real estate sector, investments
ment. As part of deliberate offshoring in information and communications
and outsourcing strategies pursued technology have come second.7
over the last three decades, many of
these same companies have become Aside from economic activities, nar-
dependent on complex and highly rowly defined, the transfer of spe-
specialized global supply chains, often cialized knowledge from advanced,
32E C L I P S E O F W E ST E R N M I L I TA RY T E C H N O LO GY
Western-style economies to emerging academics and businessmen. These
countries has been further accelerated intrusions have frequently been aid-
by other forms of legitimate interna- ed by a naïve approach to informa-
tional exchange, especially in tertiary tion security on the part of Western
education and the applied sciences. entities, and a corresponding lack of
While the net impact of the steady stringent precautionary measures,
rise in the number of foreign students even among military organizations
and researchers is difficult to quantify, and defense contractors.8 Although
there is no doubt that government-run a small number of high-profile hacks
initiatives such as China’s Thousand and human intelligence activities have
Talents Plan have been designed to si- received most of the public attention,
phon off high-value research findings the impact of economic espionage
from abroad. Even without such care- goes far beyond these high-profile in-
fully orchestrated activities, however, cidents. The boundaries between such
the repatriation of Western-trained state-sanctioned theft and various
scientists and engineers at the rate of non-state criminal undertakings are
tens of thousands per year constitutes often fluid, and likely to remain so.
one of the most impressive instances
of global knowledge transfer ever un- These factors are rendering the idea
dertaken. Because most cutting-edge of tightly controlled – let alone exclu-
technologies are now ostensibly com- sive – government ownership of cut-
mercial in nature, state tools such as ting-edge technologies obsolete and
classification and export control are enabling far broader access to the bas-
often inapplicable and the recourse es of future military innovation. By
to effective restrictions difficult to the same token, they are contributing
legitimize. to the emergence of potent indige-
nous innovation hubs in a number of
Lastly, Western government bureau- emerging economies, among which
cracies, private companies, universi- China has profited the most. Even
ties, and other entities are being sub- though other actors – India, Malaysia,
jected to a panoply of intelligence and Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand,
criminal activities. This includes mas- Vietnam, and Brazil, to name a few
sive cyber incursions as well as other – have also made significant gains,
technical collection efforts, along with Beijing’s efficacious exploitation of
more traditional approaches to indus- the open technology ecosystem’s op-
trial espionage using trained agents or portunities and vulnerabilities is in a
“non-traditional collectors,” such as category of its own.
33ST RAT EG I C T R EN DS 2 0 1 9
International Students at US Universities
1,000,000
African
European
800,000 Middle Eastern
Other Americas
Other Asian
600,000 Indian
Chinese
400,000
200,000
0
20 /00
20 /01
20 /02
20 /03
20 /04
20 /05
20 /06
20 /07
20 /08
8
20 /09
20 /10
20 /11
20 /12
20 /13
20 /14
20 /15
20 /16
20 /17
/1
99
00
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
17
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
19
Source: Institute of International Education
While concerns about relative gains The Limits of Policy
have long been muted in the com- Interventionism
mercial sphere and the efficiency of The trends sketched out above are
the globalized model of technology structural and long-term in nature.
development and high-tech manufac- If this were not the case, a solution
turing remains widely accepted, West- to the problem of relative military
ern democracies are being reminded decline might entail a selective accel-
that the same set of principles may eration of Western technological ad-
not be equally applicable to matters vances in the defense sector, without
of national security. From the perspec- impinging on the civilian economy.
tive of the long-term defense planner, This would mean that the attempts of
the triumph of open, networked sup- strategic rivals to nullify or leapfrog
ply chains and the prevalence of pri- current advantages would be rendered
vate-sector R&D in promising fields ineffectual simply by outperforming
such as artificial intelligence, biotech them in the defense segment, without
or quantum computing take on a causing any undue collateral damage.
different complexion. Unfortunately, Regrettably, such a straightforward
the resulting dilemmas are not easily solution is not in the cards. To under-
resolved. stand why, we must first explore the
34E C L I P S E O F W E ST E R N M I L I TA RY T E C H N O LO GY
relationship between commercial and internal components of the aircraft, is
military technology development in a version of Apple’s civilian FireWire
somewhat greater detail. standard.
While contributions to the current de- What is of interest here, though, is
bate sometimes seem to suggest other- not that the basic technologies un-
wise, the dependence on commercial derpinning the F-22’s advanced data
technology in defense innovation is processing were commercial in na-
not a new phenomenon, although its ture. Rather, it is the extreme lengths
full scale and consequences are only to which the prime contractor and
now becoming apparent. In fact, ad- various subcontractors had to go to
vanced weapon systems of the current fully embed these technologies and
generation – generally fielded during make them suitable for combat-crit-
the late 1990s and 2000s – have long ical military use.9 While it is tempt-
relied on commercial products in key ing to assume that these intricate and
areas. The backbone of the US advan- time-consuming requirements will
tage in air-to-air warfare, the F-22A apply to a lesser extent to current
Raptor air superiority fighter, is a case commercially-driven technologies in
in point. The heart of the F-22’s ad- fields like computer vision and ma-
vanced combat capabilities – its com- chine learning, the opposite is bound
puting architecture – was originally to be true: as the level of complexity
based on a microprocessor developed of embedded commercial technol-
in the early 1980s and never released to ogies continues to rise, the need for
the civilian market: the Intel i960MX. extensive adaptation, systems integra-
However, this changed after the air- tion, and testing will further increase.
craft became operational in the early Because the systems architectures of
2000s, with an upgrade of the entire advanced military platforms are at the
architecture to the PowerPC standard. heart of their cutting-edge capabili-
Launched by Apple, IBM, and Mo- ties, this work will be highly classified
torola in the early 1990s, this was a and performed by specialized defense
commercial technology, intended not contractors, as it has been in the past.
for military use, but for the growing In other words, there is every reason
personal computer market. PowerPC to believe that leading tech firms will
microprocessors were used in iMacs continue to provide the technology
and iBooks until 2006. Similarly, the base and the defense industry will
F-22’s high-speed serial bus, which continue to provide the capabili-
transfers data between the various ty. Whereas the former will spread
35ST RAT EG I C T R EN DS 2 0 1 9
around the globe with ease, develop- bases may both be inefficient, but
ment of the higher tiers of future com- Beijing’s tight grip on providers of
bat systems will still require the costly strategic goods and services within a
services of capable systems integrators framework of “civil-military fusion”10
and other specialized contractors that means that inefficiencies barely matter
are available only to a select few in the once political priorities get in the way
international system. of market mechanisms. Skyrocketing
cost, in other words, may not function
Although this may sound like good as an effective restraint on a system like
news, it raises serious questions for China’s. Overall, state capitalism may
the West’s attempt to prolong its mil- not be better at fostering innovation
itary superiority. Even though many but it would appear to be more ef-
Western observers assume that liberal fective at distorting specific segments
democracies will continue to outper- of the economy in line with current
form any strategic rival where the in- strategic priorities. While the net eco-
tegration of commercial and military nomic impact of such distortions may
technologies is concerned, this is not well be negative, in the context of this
inevitable. Given that their econom- discussion, it is beside the point.
ic model is based on free enterprise,
limited state interference and the rule This should lead us to rethink West-
of law, the ability of the Western de- ern policy interventions designed to
mocracies to co-opt or coerce private arrest the ongoing slide in military
corporations headquartered on their capability. The most obvious exam-
territory to do their strategic bidding ple of such an initiative is the Penta-
generally comes in the form of stan- gon’s so-called Third Offset Strategy.
dard financial incentives. The same is Launched in 2014 by then-Secretary
mostly true of their relationship with of Defense Chuck Hagel, it was de-
major defense contractors. scribed as a “department-wide effort
to identify and invest in innovative
Unfortunately, this does not necessar- ways to sustain and advance America’s
ily apply to rivals that may be able to military dominance for the 21st cen-
combine the advantages of the market tury.”11 Modeled on two Cold War-
in fostering innovation and allocating era offset strategies, which sought to
resources with state interference to balance the numerical superiority of
further a particular conception of the the Warsaw Pact, first with a broad
national interest. Hence, the US and variety of nuclear weapons and later
Chinese defense-relevant industrial with guided munitions, long-range
36E C L I P S E O F W E ST E R N M I L I TA RY T E C H N O LO GY
sensors and battle networks, this was able to mobilize, the ability of the US
primarily intended to address growing defense bureaucracy to shape techno-
US-China competition in the Western logical innovation in the commercial
Pacific. sector appears limited. The controver-
sy surrounding Google’s participation
In 2015, the architect of the Third in the now infamous Project Maven –
Offset, Deputy Secretary of Defense a machine learning initiative that was
Robert O. Work, set out a number of publically linked to the United States’
technological priorities clustered in targeted killing programs – illustrates
the fields of artificial intelligence, ma- the point.13
chine autonomy, learning systems, and
human-machine interfacing. These Hence, those who had placed their
were expected to play a central role, hopes in the technological deus ex
especially during the first phase of the machina of a Third Offset have largely
initiative. To gain direct access to the fallen silent. As Robert Work noted,
commercial actors at the forefront of there is reason to believe that it is, in
this anticipated revolution, the De- fact, still the United States that is be-
partment of Defense set up a Defense ing offset in the Western Pacific.14 To
Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) the extent that similar techno-centric
in Silicon Valley. As of 2016, the De- efforts are under way in other Western
partment expected to spend only 18 nations, their chances of success in-
billion USD on Third Offset priorities spire even lower levels of confidence.
over a five-year time frame. There is a chance, of course, that the
Third Offset may be revitalized or
As some observers have since noted, that more circumscribed initiatives
the strategy appears to have shed its will succeed.
primarily techno-centric approach in
favor of nearer-term operational con- That said, the underlying issue may
cerns, in accordance with the broader be more fundamental in nature than
defense priorities of the Trump ad- many observers – in particular in the
ministration.12 While it is not yet clear Euro-Atlantic sphere – acknowledge.
in which direction the next Secretary Western-style market economies may
of Defense will take the United States’ be capable of unsurpassed efficiency
defense innovation efforts, four years in creating the conditions for rapid
into the initiative its bureaucratic mo- commercial innovation. But when it
mentum appears to have stalled. Given comes to mobilizing the commercial
the limited resources it has so far been sector to advance the state’s strategic
37ST RAT EG I C T R EN DS 2 0 1 9
priorities, the dirigiste measures avail- undergird a determined territorial
able within the state capitalist frame- defense. This has included air-to-air
work may prove more effective from missiles (AAMs) and surface-to-air
the standpoint of medium-term ad- missiles (SAMs), but also convention-
vances in military technology. ally armed ballistic and cruise missiles
designed for attacks against enemy air
The Future of the Military Balance bases, ports of entry, and command
How will these trends impact the mil- and control facilities.
itary correlation of forces and shape
major combat operations? In this re- Though Russia has long been held
gard, two aspects deserve particular at- back by its weak economy, late-Soviet
tention: The first is the growing ability and Russian technology has played a
of actors like China, Russia, and India key role in offsetting the Western ad-
to press for parity in some established vantage in the air and at sea. Long-
areas of Western advantage, such as air range, “double-digit” SAMs like the
and missile power. The second con- SA-10 Grumble (S-300P) and SA-20
cerns the question of whether – and Gargoyle (S-300 PMU-1/2) form the
to what extent – longer-term trends in backbone of the air defenses of many
technology development can be offset non-Western military powers. The
by effective force employment and su- newer SA-21 Growler (S-400) com-
perior fighting skill. plex is now also being offered up for
export. Similarly, Russian technol-
The technological advantage of West- ogy has played a significant role in
ern military forces has long been re- non-Western AAM development, in-
flected in operational, if not always cluding the new Chinese PL-10 and
in strategic, outcomes. As we have PL-15 missiles.15 Meanwhile, Russian
seen, the Persian Gulf War was a cooperation with India has resulted
landmark event in this regard. Nota- in the high-supersonic Brahmos an-
ble operational successes have forced ti-ship missile and similar collabora-
non-Western actors to come to terms tive armaments programs may enable
with the realities of Western military the move towards hypersonic muni-
dominance and to seek long-term tions in the coming decade.16
options to offset it that go beyond
cheap, asymmetric fixes. One option Meanwhile, in the field of conven-
has been to aim for an advantage or tionally armed ballistic missiles,
for rough parity in at least some cat- China has made the most impressive
egories of guided munitions that can advances. The PLA now fields a large
38E C L I P S E O F W E ST E R N M I L I TA RY T E C H N O LO GY
and diversified arsenal for potential the PLA’s capability level has evolved
use against Taiwan as well against in line with the 750 percent increase
US and allied air fields in the region. in its defense budget. According
While many of these developments to one study, the US would still be
have been discussed under the mon- able to wrest air superiority from the
iker of anti-access/area denial (A2/ PLA Air Force, but as early as 2010
AD), China’s focus, in the event of a the forces required to do so had in-
conflict, appears to have shifted from creased tenfold and the vulnerability
raising the cost of any US intervention of US bases in the region had grown
to defeating it outright.17 China also exponentially. By 2017, according to
appears to have pulled ahead of Russia one RAND study, “continuous im-
in stealth and counter-stealth technol- provements to Chinese air capabilities
ogies. While the problems China has [made] it increasingly difficult for the
encountered in pursuing these capa- United States to achieve air superior-
bilities have long been touted as a sign ity within a politically and operation-
of its inability to catch up, the innova- ally effective time frame, especially in
tion dynamics of the past should not a scenario close to the Chinese main-
be automatically extrapolated into the land. These developments also raise
future. The recent advances the China the probable cost of a war in terms
Electronics Technology Group Corpo- of lives and equipment.”19 Given that
ration claims to have made in the field the PLA could achieve this shift while
of quantum radar, which would ren- still relying on limited technological
der current approaches in low-observ- means, most of which belonged to
able aircraft design largely ineffectual, the era of the highly successful Sec-
should serve as a wake-up call in this ond Offset Strategy, there is little
regard.18 doubt that the relative standing of the
United States in such a scenario will
To get a sense of the past dynamic of continue to deteriorate.
military capability development, the
“pacing” Taiwan scenario continues to In this regard, it is useful to con-
offer an excellent benchmark for the sider the United States’ reliance on
growth of China’s regional military stealthy aircraft like the F-22 and the
power. The shifting tone of Western semi-stealthy F-35, which is believed
analyses of such a conflict over the past to have been compromised by PLA
three decades is instructive. While the cyber espionage. While neither the
Taiwan crisis of 1996 reinforced Chi- indigenous Chinese J-20 and J-31
nese vulnerability, two decades later, semi-stealth aircraft, nor the Russian
39ST RAT EG I C T R EN DS 2 0 1 9
Su-57 are fully operational or avail- projected massive investments in the
able in significant numbers, the US coming years, it has been argued that
philosophy of “first look, first shot, China’s advances in a broad range
first kill” is already being undermined of artificial intelligence technologies
by improved air defense search radars should constitute a “Sputnik mo-
operating outside the frequency range ment”21 for the United States, with
that is effectively countered by current implications far beyond the defense
stealth technology.20 Further increases field. Although their economic bases
in processing power, long-range in- are less impressive, other non-West-
frared sensors, passive radar, and im- ern actors are likely to follow suit.
proved missile seekers are going to fur- While the use of long-range weapons,
ther exacerbate this situation – even if unmanned and autonomous systems,
the promise of quantum radar, which and improved electronic warfare and
would rely on entangled photons for cyber support can all serve to lower
unambiguous detection at longer costs and casualties, the upshot is that
ranges, fails to materialize. similar options will likely be available
to capable opponents. Moreover, a
Given that air-to-air combat and military such as the PLA may be in a
strike warfare have long been areas of position to employ the same technol-
Western strength, it seems likely that ogies, with many fewer constraints,
the overall exchange rates between than Western-style armed forces.
Western and non-Western forces in fu-
ture conflict scenarios would be more Technology-focused approaches may
balanced than at any time since World not constitute the best solution to
War II. Due to the growing lethality this dilemma. Given the high levels
of opposing forces, Western militar- of education, technical competency,
ies may become more likely to avoid and relatively high tolerance for in-
costly confrontations and correspond- dependent decision-making that are
ingly less likely to heed their alliance often seen as characteristic traits of
commitments. Western democracies, an emphasis on
superior combat training, distribut-
Nor is the prospective decline of the ed command authority, and creative
Western margin of superiority limit- force employment may represent a
ed to these specific fields. Russia and more promising avenue for a new
China are highly capable in the cyber offset strategy. Insofar as techno-cen-
domain, and continue to invest in tric initiatives can contribute to such
anti-satellite capabilities. Given the a shift, human-machine teaming has
40E C L I P S E O F W E ST E R N M I L I TA RY T E C H N O LO GY
Initiators and Defenders in Major Cyber Theft Incidents, 2000 – 2018
Initiations Defenses
South
Korea
Ukraine India 9 6
North 4 Germany
Korea 5
France 10 Japan 10
2 Iran 9
Russia 41
Israel China 9
South 6 Pakistan
Korea 2 Russia
3 5
Australia
3
Vietnam Iran
2 6
USA 87
China 63 USA 12
Sources: CSIS; DCID
the potential to amplify any pre-ex- are worth mentioning in this regard.
isting skill differentials. That said, it For one, an increased application
should not be taken for granted that of national security instruments to
liberal societies will enjoy inherent ad- knowledge-intensive industries is al-
vantages in the utilization of this par- ready taking shape, especially in the
ticular cluster of technologies in the United States. Hence, the Trump
future – nor should any one family of administration has taken a hard line
emerging technologies be unduly em- on Chinese property theft and in-
phasized over others. troduced measures to ensure a high-
er level of protection for a so-called
Protecting the Defense National Security Innovation Base.22
Knowledge Base The Trump approach is instructive, in
While an exclusive focus on techno- that it has both increased the United
logical solutions is unlikely to accom- States’ freedom of action in counter-
plish the aim of maintaining Western ing Chinese intrusions and stoked a
military superiority, the question of debate about the abuse of national
whether an advantage in key areas can security instruments for commercial
be retained in the long run remains advantage, or even to tactically shape
relevant. Several recent developments the domestic political discourse.
41ST RAT EG I C T R EN DS 2 0 1 9
A limited and targeted application longer term. Any further steps will be
of additional protections designed to much more difficult to negotiate, in
avoid the transfer of sensitive knowl- part due to increasingly effective for-
edge to potentially hostile actors will eign lobbying efforts.
be unavoidable if some level of eco-
nomic and military advantage is to be It is likely that knowledge-based ad-
retained in the long run. That said, the vantages in the defense field will
danger that such instruments will be continue to decline, even though
inappropriately applied to other, less the West retains options to minimize
sensitive sectors of the economy clearly them. The combination of targeted
cannot be discounted. A broad-based research in more tightly controlled
recourse to state interference would environments, limited interven-
almost certainly have a stifling effect tions in the market, and expanded
on the civilian economy. The dilemma counterintelligence programs could
of balancing national security and eco- contribute to the maintenance of
nomic liberty is thus likely to remain narrower, but nonetheless meaning-
with us for the foreseeable future. ful, advantages for the foreseeable
future. Whether such programs can
The ability of Western democracies be successfully implemented remains
other than the United States to fol- to be seen, especially in the highly
low suit and impose controls on their fragmented European context. Bal-
knowledge ecosystems will be limited ancing state interventions in the free
by pragmatic economic interests and exchange of knowledge with legiti-
concerns about economic freedom. mate civilian imperatives will remain
Nonetheless, the pressure to act will a delicate matter. Finally, while many
continue to build. Following domes- in the West appear impervious to the
tic initiatives in a number of member historical record in this regard, broad-
states, the European Union has already based technological superiority is not
resolved to implement additional a necessary precondition for main-
measures to ensure better screening of taining highly capable armed forces.
FDI. Since national security concerns
remain for the individual member Although the danger should not be
states to sort out, the impact of any overstated, a failure to arrest the on-
such regulations will remain uneven. going slide towards conventional mil-
While investment screening is a step itary parity could further weaken US
forward, it appears unlikely that the alliance commitments and security
proposed measures will suffice in the assurances in the face of revisionist
42E C L I P S E O F W E ST E R N M I L I TA RY T E C H N O LO GY
challengers. This may be true even in 4 Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great
Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict
the absence of any major crises or mil- form 1500 to 2000 (London: William Collins,
itary conflict. While the effects on the 2017), 762.
international order would be primarily 5 American Association for the Advancement of
indirect and difficult to fathom, grow- Science, “National R&D by Funder;” “Trends
in Federal R&D, FY 1976 – 2018.”
ing pressure for US military retrench-
ment is difficult to reconcile with the 6 American Association for the Advancement
of Science, “Federal R&D as a Percentage of
maintenance of an alliance system GDP.”
based on a presumption of indivisible
7 Rhodium Group et al., The US-China FDI
security. A focus on the mechanisms Project.
of technology diffusion will be nec-
8 National Counterintelligence and Security
essary to minimize further losses in Center, Foreign Economic Espionage in Cyber-
comparative military advantage. At space, Washington, DC: Office of the Director
of National Intelligence, 2018.
the same time, a techno-centric ap-
proach may no longer be sufficient to 9 Carlo Kopp, “Lockheed-Martin / Boeing F-22
Raptor: Assessing the F-22A Raptor,” Air Power
arrest this dynamic. How best to draw Australia.
on non-material advantages in an age
10 Meia Nouwens and Helena Legarda, “China’s
of intense technological competition, Pursuit of Advanced Dual-Use Technologies,”
and how to emphasize them as a vi- IISS, December 18, 2018.
able foundation for deterrence vis-à- 11 Chuck Hagel, “Reagan National Defense
vis future peer competitors, should be Forum Keynote,” November 15, 2014.
major concerns for strategic and oper- 12 Daniel Fiott, “America First, Third Offset
ational-level theorists. Second?” in: RUSI Journal 163:4 (2018), 48.
13 Lee Fang, “Google Is Quietly Providing AI
Technology for Drone Strike Targeting Proj-
1 Dima Adamsky, The Culture of Military Inno- ect,” in: The Intercept, March 6, 2018.
vation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the
Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, 14 Robert O. Work, “So, This Is What It Feels
and Israel (Standford, CA: Stanford University Like To Be Offset,” Presentation at the 2018
Press, 2010), 81 – 87. CNAS Annual Conference, June 21, 2018.
2 Roger Cliff et al., Shaking the Heavens and 15 “Chinese and Russian Air-launched Weapons:
Splitting the Earth: Chinese Air Force Employment A Test for Western Air Dominance,” in: The
Concepts in the 21st Century (Santa Monica, CA: Military Balance 2018 (London: Routledge/
RAND, 2011), 35. IISS), 7 – 9.
3 See, e.g. Michael O’Hanlon, A Retrospective 16 Richard H. Speier et al., Hypersonic Missile
on the So-called Revolution in Military Affairs, Nonproliferation: Hindering the Spread of a New
2000 – 2020 (Washington, DC: Brookings, Class of Weapons (Santa Monica, CA: RAND,
2018). 2017).
43ST RAT EG I C T R EN DS 2 0 1 9 17 Scott W. Harold, Defeat, Not Merely Compete: China’s View of Its Military Aerospace Goals and Requirements in Relation to the United States (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2018). 18 Martin Giles, “The US and China are in a Quantum Arms Race that Will Transform Warfare,” in: MIT Technology Review, January 3, 2019. 19 Eric Heginbotham et al, U.S. and Chinese Air Superiority Capabilities: An Assessment of Relative Advantage, 1996 – 2017 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2015), 2 – 3. 20 Carlo Kopp, “Evolving Technological Strategy in Advanced Air Defense Systems,” in: Joint Forces Quarterly 57:2 (2010), 86 – 93. 21 David Ignatius, “China’s Application of AI Should be a Sputnik Moment for the U.S. But will it be?” in: Washington Post, November 6, 2018. 22 The White House, National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington, DC: The White House), December 2017, 21 – 22. 44
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