The National Defense Strategy is Not

[flagg]

Flagg



The network operating system is part of a greater competition that ultimately focuses on who will be primary in shaping the international order. I think your description of Geo-digital strategy will likely be one of the most crucial areas in this overall competition. The winner as you state will be determined by who provides the best value proposition. We must offer more than saying don't buy into Huawei. I have yet to see our value proposition?

Agreed.

Pressuring our coalition allies to ban Huawei is not a strategy.

Creating an alternative that our coalition allies and their respective citizens want, is.

Don't get over-enamored with Clausewitz on strategy, too many people shut their mind down to new ideas by focusing on one strategist. Obvious to most people, the world has changed significantly since the early 19th Century. I still recommend reading "On War," but study it with a critical eye.

Agreed. I needed to understand Clausewitz for when it is the default reference.

However, I have found an adaptation of friction to be relevant.

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend reading NSC-68. It is close to 70 years old, but some relevant strategic themes can be modified and brought forward into the 21st Century.

https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistl...s/pdf/10-1.pdf

Thanks for that. On first pass I’m finding the most relevant part in applying it to today being a bit of role reversal.

We are currently a very rough analog to the Soviet Union’s excessively heavy military economy, China is a very rough analog to the US economy with considerable scope for economic warfare.

Please explain bullets 1) and 2) above.

1)

Alibaba’s Singles Day generated more revenue that Amazon Prime Day(China’s and US’s respective artificial e-commerce holidays).........in just 10 minutes

China’s mobile payments in 2018 were $12.8 trillion, US equivalent was $50 billion so a comparative 256x differential

2)

US Marshall Plan, as well as being the last industrial/financial power standing post WWII, is widely regarded as a significant success worthy of a Nobel Prize for it’s architect/proponent beyond the influence and economic/financial integration that could be monetised thru US Dollar exorbitant privilege.

At an estimated price in 2018 dollars of $100 billion

One Belt One Road looks to have an estimated price tag of $5-9 Trillion over a decade+( 50-90x differential)

Even if the former is the greatest ROI of all time, and the latter is the worst, we have a significant problem in terms of economic competition for relative global influence.

Throw in the digital domain with Zipf’s Law and we are increasingly seeing the likelihood of a decisive winner and an increasingly distant second place network competitor.

3) Huawei has double the combined revenue of Cisco/Juniper, and far more than double R&D spend(hence 5G superiority).


Disrupting adversary commercial networks is potentially a dangerous path to go down.

Completely agree.

And it could become the next mutually assured destruction(MAD) option.

We already over leverage trade as a weapon, which in my opinion sets a bad precedent for an international order that should focus on promoting prosperity. We risk pushing allies and partners away from us with this approach, and perhaps into China's camp if we're not careful.

Exactly, hence competitive value proposition perspective.

There are already increasing calls to replace the dollar as the global currency. If that happens, then we may have to live with the norm we imposed being imposed upon us. American strategists have never been particularly good at thinking about effects over time.

Do we run the risk of reacting too late, and being viewed as the ruling Alawites, then as Tutsis?

The best way to disrupt adversary commercial networks is to offer a better product/service.

Absolutely. Build something citizens and sovereigns want..

If the commercial networks are illicit, then that is another matter.


This war, or hyper-competition, over the international order is being waged non-lethally currently. Having the world's most powerful military accomplishes little in addressing the competitive space below armed conflict. At best it denies an adversary an overt military option (deterrence), but if our adversaries are achieving war-like objectives without overt military aggression how do we achieve our aims? That is the strategic question our nation and allies must wrestle with now.

I think the threshold of detectability matters.

Do citizens and governments detect the non kinetic jockeying for strategic position? But do they care beyond immediate needs and the next election cycle?

Are we able to shift away from “deter, disrupt, and destroy” and incorporate “attract, build, create”?

[davidbfpo]

Citing one line by Kevin23:

China’s mobile payments in 2018 were $12.8 trillion, US equivalent was $50 billion so a comparative 256x differential

Whilst China may not have a street crime problem like many Western nations have, it does have a problem with dishonesty - which is seen in everyday theft of property e.g. electric motorcycle batteries. Let alone the widespread corruption within officialdom; one spin-off is the neglect of industrial health & safety procedures, which can be lethal.

The Chinese economy as Kevin23 pointed out uses mobile payments on a scale not seen in the USA and I expect elsewhere too. Quietly in international crime-fighting forums acknowledges that fraud poses a big problem. Even only for example 0.5% is stolen, that is a lot of money.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Flagg

I think the threshold of detectability matters.

Do citizens and governments detect the non kinetic jockeying for strategic position? But do they care beyond immediate needs and the next election cycle?

Are we able to shift away from “deter, disrupt, and destroy” and incorporate “attract, build, create”?

It is the job of the government to educate its citizens. The problem we must overcome is the engrained naïve view since the Bush senior administration that China will conform to international norms and become a valuable partner. It wasn't until recently that the West woke to up to the fact that China and the West are ideologically non-compatible, yet economically entangled. It wouldn't matter at all, or at least matter much less, if China displaced the U.S. as a global leader if they were generally ideologically aligned. That is the conclusion the UK came to when the U.S. surpassed them a world power. There was no need to undermine us, or worse go to to war, because we shared mutual interests.

Are we able to shift away from “deter, disrupt, and destroy” and incorporate “attract, build, create”?

'

The leadership to promote this change will not come from the military or the current administration. It will take a leader of the likes of JFK or Reagan to pull the country in this direction.

[flagg]

Posted by Flagg



It is the job of the government to educate its citizens. The problem we must overcome is the engrained naïve view since the Bush senior administration that China will conform to international norms and become a valuable partner. It wasn't until recently that the West woke to up to the fact that China and the West are ideologically non-compatible, yet economically entangled. It wouldn't matter at all, or at least matter much less, if China displaced the U.S. as a global leader if they were generally ideologically aligned. That is the conclusion the UK came to when the U.S. surpassed them a world power. There was no need to undermine us, or worse go to to war, because we shared mutual interests.

'

The leadership to promote this change will not come from the military or the current administration. It will take a leader of the likes of JFK or Reagan to pull the country in this direction.

Agreed on the leadership required.

However, if an effective alternative array is to be built to counter China's it is going to have to require a dramatic increase in trust.

Trust in government, trust in government institutions, trust in private superplatform partners, and trust in coalition/array/network partners.

The last polls I viewed displayed dangerously low levels of trust in government and the narrative on both the wealth divide and data privacy are decidedly anti superplatform in the west.

I'm a pretty optimistic guy, but I don't see us at square 1, I see it as more like square negative 4.

Extremely pessimistic at the macro level.

But at the micro level, a key indicator remains the consistent flow of people moving.

The wealthiest are still flowing consistently from China to US led 5 Eyes.

[flagg]

Further to the superplatform and geodigital strategy narrative I’ve been trying to build, attempts to ban Huawei have made it into the news cycle recently, but my old employer Amazon abandoning China is receiving little attention:

https://pandaily.com/amazon-quits-ch...ling-in-china/

It would appear to be an example of Amazon simply not keeping pace with Chinese competitors’ value proposition as well as user expectations.

What role do multi trillion dollar superplatforms play in national geodigital strategy over the next decade?

Open conflict between superplatform and sovereigns? (US)

Laissez-faire?

Public-private Partnership?

Complete integration? (China)

[flagg]

Citing one line by Kevin23:

Whilst China may not have a street crime problem like many Western nations have, it does have a problem with dishonesty - which is seen in everyday theft of property e.g. electric motorcycle batteries. Let alone the widespread corruption within officialdom; one spin-off is the neglect of industrial health & safety procedures, which can be lethal.

The Chinese economy as Kevin23 pointed out uses mobile payments on a scale not seen in the USA and I expect elsewhere too. Quietly in international crime-fighting forums acknowledges that fraud poses a big problem. Even only for example 0.5% is stolen, that is a lot of money.

Great post David.

I'm constantly torn between the contradictions of digital authoritarianism combined with market access totalitarianism mixed with the Wild West cowboy entrepreneurialism from both legit entrepreneurs and illicit networks.