Policy Currents | The newsletter for policy people
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** Jan. 30, 2025
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Why China's Military May Not Be Ready for Combat
China's military--the People's Liberation Army, or PLA--is one of the largest and most modern fighting forces in the world. It has more warships than the U.S. Navy and might soon have more combat aircraft than the U.S. Air Force. The quality of China's stealth aircraft, warships, submarines, and aircraft carriers lags behind only that of the U.S. military. And in some areas, such as hypersonic missiles, China has surpassed the United States.
China's large and impressive suite of weapons and equipment is undeniable. But according to a new paper by RAND's Timothy Heath, its ability to translate that materiel power into combat power is far from proven. That's because the PLA "remains fundamentally focused on upholding Chinese Communist Party rule rather than preparing for war," he writes.
What might China's prioritization of regime survival mean for the United States? For one, this focus reduces, but does not eliminate, the likelihood of a large-scale, high-intensity U.S.-China conflict. So, rather than focusing exclusively on the dangers of a potential great-power war, U.S. defense planning may be better served by rethinking how it handles what Heath calls a "crowded threat picture." This means considering how the remote conventional military threat from China competes with equally urgent and far more proximate dangers, such as pandemics, transnational terror groups, and intrastate conflict.
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The Rise of DeepSeek: What the Headlines Miss
This week, a new chatbot by the Chinese AI firm DeepSeek made waves, moving markets and shaking public confidence in U.S. dominance in AI. But as RAND's Lennart Heim explains, the headlines fail to capture many important nuances. For example, it's not surprising that DeepSeek's new model was trained more efficiently; machine learning algorithms have always become cheaper over time. It's also premature to point to this news as proof that recent export restrictions on AI chips are ineffective; those only started last October. Moreover, it will always be difficult for such interventions to completely prevent proliferation, says Heim. "Controls buy valuable time, but they need to be complemented with policies that ensure democracies stay in the lead and are resilient to adversaries."
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What the 988 Crisis Hotline Needs to Succeed
Established in July 2022, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline provides an easy-to-remember phone number that connects people to emergency mental health services. A new RAND study finds that the launch of 988 did not coincide with significant and equitable growth in the availability of most types of mental health crisis services, except for a small increase in peer support services. What could help address this problem and ensure the hotline's long-term success? The authors recommend pursuing strategies that boost the financing and availability of crisis services offered at mental health treatment facilities, including psychiatric walk-in services and suicide prevention services.
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Policy Lab: AI Risks and Benefits in Clinical Care
Wednesday, February 26, 2025 (Online)
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