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Weekend Reads
China launches millions of cyberattacks against Taiwan each month, and in an invasion scenario, Beijing would likely rely heavily on cyber warfare. Jason Hsu and Joseph Saunders lay out a strategy to deter and defend against these attacks in a recent Hudson policy memo.
And on Thursday, Congressman Rob Wittman (R-VA) joined Hudson to discuss how the United States and Taiwan can leverage artificial intelligence, commercial data, and other systems to increase the island’s cyber resilience. Key takeaways from the event are below.
Watch the event, listen to the podcast, or read the transcript here.
Key Insights
1. Offensive cyber capabilities are essential to establishing deterrence.
“If you’re going to be an effective boxer, what do you do? You not only block, but you punch. And we have to, as nations, not just block, but we have to have a very effective punch. In fact, I would argue, for whatever punch the Chinese give to us, we need to have a punch that’s twice as powerful to create deterrence. Remember, the most powerful deterrence is not necessarily good defense, but a good offense.”
— Rep. Rob Wittman
2. Military and cyber operations depend heavily on the ability to parse large amounts of data at operational speeds.
“The United States collects more data than anybody on the face of the earth. The challenge is [that the Department of Defense] is the biggest collector of the data, and much of it is stored. We have to use data in real time. So we have to be able to enable systems to take that data and say, okay, we can use that today for situational awareness, for capability, for capacity. And we have to do more there.”
— Rep. Rob Wittman
3. Commercial systems are essential to improving US targeting in both the cyber and kinetic domains.
“The only way to solve that problem is through commercial data . . . which is already targeting us all through selling ads. And targeting people and targeting ads is not very different. So that piece is very, very important in artificial intelligence. I think there is a need for academia, research institutions, and industry to actually work together because it’ll take a lot of intentional, thoughtful modeling in order to anticipate a country as formidable as China.”
— Dr. Anshu Roy
Quotes may be edited for clarity and length.
Go Deeper
China is on track to rival the US as a nuclear power by the mid-2030s. In The Australian, John Lee and Lavina Lee explain the real purpose of this build-up: to win without fighting by convincing the United States and its allies that Chinese victory is inevitable.
Using unmanned systems, Ukraine has destroyed a significant portion of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and strategic airpower. General David Petraeus joined Jason Hsu and Kenneth Weinstein to discuss how the US and Taiwan can deter China by applying lessons from this war.
Watch the event, listen to the podcast, or read the transcript here.
In First Breakfast, Shyam Sankar identifies a crucial step in restoring deterrence that Hudson has recommended and the DoD recently moved to implement: eliminating the cumbersome joint requirements process.
