Episode 734: Parades, Carriers, and China's Military Signaling, with Dean Cheng

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Welcome to mid rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an
Eagle one from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore. You're home
for a discussion of national security issues and all things
maritime and welcome board everybody. Glad you can join us today.
And if you are with us live, I always like
to roll out the invitation find the chat room. Pop
in there and that's where you find some of the

(00:51):
usual suspects there. If you have some you wanted to
share during the course of the show, that's the perfect
place to be. And if you have some questions you
would like for us to address, our topics to bring
up during the course of the next hour, pop it
right in there and we'll do our best to fold
it into the conversation. In today's conversation, we're going back
to one of our favorite topics of one of our

(01:11):
favorite folks. For those that have been tracking the news,
one of the more interesting parts of a Cold War,
and actually part of my opening question was the old
Soviet Victory Day parades. Well, the People's Republic of China
also does them. They're great spectacles and there were quite
a few things to take away from them this year.
And additionally, there's been some really interesting developments for those

(01:34):
that have been trying to ignore it with the People's
Liberation Army Navy as well, that we're going to talk
about for the next hour with Dean Chang. He is
a Senior advisor at the United States Institute for Peace
and a non resident Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute
for Policy Studies and George Washington University Space Policy Institute. Dean,

(01:55):
Welcome back to mid Rats.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
It's great to have you here. Towards the end of September,
and like I mentioned in the intro, when there were
some really good articles, I got a couple of questions
I'm going to based upon like Financial Times had a
nice little summary I think, and quoted some good people
that I've be hereshed to get your opinion on. But
it did cause me to grint a bit because I

(02:19):
know Mark and I we both are the last two generations.
They got to enjoy the yearly Criminology where there are
people who no kidding, got their PhDs, and simply looking
up on Lennon's tomb during the May Day and the
Victory Day parades and looking at who's there who got invited,

(02:40):
who wasn't invited? Are they smiling, are they waving? Are
they grinning? And you know, trying to read the tea
leaves for what is going on in the Soviet Union.
Now the people's in public of China, they're not that opaque,
but there there's still a lot to be to be
learned or at least data points to put when they
have these large military parades, and there was a really interesting,

(03:02):
a new bit of kit that our friends in Beijing
decided to share with the world to talk about. But
just you know, your initial thoughts, having seen the parade
and read some of the things about it, what are
your thoughts here in late twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
So great question. A couple of things come to mind.
The first is that this was a very different crowd
on top of the reviewing stand. Typically in the past
it's been dominated by domestic people, other members of Paula Buro,
the Central Military Commission, et cetera. You have to wonder,
given the most recent purges of senior military leaders, if

(03:41):
one of the reasons they decided to change things up
a bit was because that was just asking for a
lot of attention to be drawn to the fact that
very senior people, including Admiral Miaohua, head of the Political
Work Department, essentially the top political commissar, has now been removed.
That's a really interesting political development in a sense. That's
the dog that didn't bark. Instead, you had a number

(04:04):
of foreign leaders, which again is different from in the past,
and very prominent was Kim Jong Lun as well as
Vladimir Putin. Putin you kind of expect head of the
other major Eurasian power. The fact that the North Korean
leader was there is I think a reflection of a
couple of things, not least of which is the potentially
intensifying competition for influence over North Korea between the Russians

(04:29):
and the Chinese. The Russians, of course, are getting North
Korean troops go fight in Ukraine and are in turn
providing North Korea with fuel, food, and potentially spare parts
for their weapons, and that is a pretty zero sum
competition between Moscow and Beijing. North Korea managed to stay
out of the orbits of both the Soviet Union and

(04:49):
the PRC throughout the Cold War. Kim Il Sung, Kim
Jong LUN's grandfather, was very atroit at not becoming completely
tied to one or the other guards. The military stuff
to me one of the wash I mean a number
of interesting things. First, yeah, the DF sixty one, a
brand new ICBM to go presumably into at least some

(05:11):
of those brand new silos that they're building out west,
but also given that it was being pulled along on
a transport erector launcher, potentially being dispersed across all of China.
As always, I think it's very important to note that
in the flyby, places of prominence were held not simply
by cool new fighter planes, but by airborne electronic warfare

(05:34):
and electronic intelligence aircraft. Those are the secret sauces that
make American air power so frighteningly capable. If you are
a Chinese leadership or a Russian leadership, it's not just
the pilots of the combat aircraft. It is that array
of supporting systems. And to that end, the thing that

(05:57):
really struck me was actually the CCTV Chinese television not
close circuit TV programming for the parade, where they were
showing things before the parade began, and one of them
was a radar aircraft designed for the Chinese aircraft carrier,
the KJA six hundred, which notably has four vertical elements

(06:19):
to its tail, which makes it look a lot like
the E twoc Hawkeye. And it's a reminder the Chinese
carriers are going to have an airborne early warning component
which is essential for their long term survival, something that
one the British don't seem to have for their qes
the Queen Elizabeth class, but also is notably lacking for

(06:41):
our large deck anthems. And when people talk about, hey,
we can always use them as like carriers, my question
is always how are they going to know what's coming
at them if they don't have an airborne early dang.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
I hate it when you ask good questions like that.
One of the things that it struck me was that
they not only had all this fancy rocks and missiles
and unmanned vessels of various kinds, but they also demonstrate
for the first time the laser some laser things. They
say they had a mountain on truck, but they say

(07:11):
they're really meant for carrier air defense. You got any
thoughts on those?

Speaker 2 (07:16):
I noticed those as well. I think that it's on
a really important comment that the Chinese are not only
the world's foremost producer of drones, but therefore are almost
certainly going to be the foremost thinkers about drone defense.
And one of the nice things about lasers is, at
least on your power side, if you can keep supplying power,
they have an infinite magazine capacity. If you are firing,

(07:39):
whether shot gum pellets or amrams or anything else at drones,
a massive drone swarm is likely to overcome you simply
because you'll run out of bullets, lasers, or high powered
microwaves or anything like that. You don't do that. And
this is one of the interesting things about electric vehicles
that I'm not sure we've drawn the connection to. China is,

(07:59):
of course one of the world's largest manufacturers of electric vehicles,
and more to the point, they are I believe, the
largest provider of batteries. So even if you're making electric
vehicles in Europe, the battery may well be Chinese. That's
a lot of interesting r and D they've been doing.
It means longer battery life, more battery capacity, faster recharging,

(08:21):
and every one of those is potentially a benefit for
a tactically mobile laser system. Maybe a little less important
on board a ship, where you've got a lot of
hull capacity and therefore potentially a lot of space for generators.
If and when the Chinese produce a nuclear powered warship,
they'll definitely have a lot of that. But in the meantime,

(08:42):
since you're showing that you can move these on land,
you don't have to plug it into a nearby nuclear
power plant. You can, in theory at least have really
high capacity batteries that you could rapidly swap out. And
since I've got hot up and running battery plants, I
can probably keep many factoring.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Those through most of the year. One of my my
funny things I've kind of stumbled into is I'm in
a low key tickle fight with a lot of the
I really don't know how to describe them, because they're
really not pro nuclear. But there's a certain subset in
the American nuclear community that they that's that's all they

(09:24):
think about. It's it's nuclear, it's nuclear, it's nuclear. They
just they're really obsessed about it, and they have some
important years and a lot of the arguments I had
is and no reason to go into it here. Some
of the desire to get the US Navy back into
the sea launch nuclear cruise missles and stuff like that.
But one characteristics in the nuclear arena when you talk
with these people for a long time, have been the

(09:46):
People's Republic of China had made a concerted effort through
most of their rise to accept risk and savings by
having a nuclear program, but nothing that was out of
control like the Soviet slash Russians and the Americans did
very much along the lines that we see the British

(10:07):
and the French, and to a lesser extent, the other
minor powers, where you have enough to make a point
but not really worrying about it. And they in one
of the articles I read that PRC has about six
hundred nukes now and there's a little bit of heavy
breathing because they're going up to They say they're going
to get up to a thousand here and a lot
of what I see, and again with my own filter,

(10:30):
I just see a natural modernization, better capability. But it's
not that the Chinese are really trying to go into
that old cold wark nuclear threat, because a lot of
their investments are in those systems you just designed are
very practical conventional nuclear I mean crunching non nuclear missiles

(10:55):
and cruise missiles and aircraft, all your traditional stuff that
is most likely to be used in a conflict. So
I guess it's reassuring in two ways. One, we don't
have to worry about having counterforce against the PRC. What
we have is good enough if we need to do that.
But in a lessercs that, at least from my school,

(11:17):
it seems that they are very, very serious to have
a substantial capability to go conventional if they need be.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
So I think one of the things, you know, it's
good to be rich. When you're rich, you can buy everything.
And with the Chinese and the PLA, they have tended
in the past to focus on conventional I think that
that is changing now, and I think what we are
seeing is a major, significant expansion of their nuclear capabilities.

(11:47):
If you read the DoD or I guess now it's
the dow A report on China, the annual Report. What
we see is that the Chinese are talking about building
over three hundred ICBM side and building the new H
twenty strategic bomber and fielding a fleet of about five

(12:08):
to six ballistic missile submarines with a new SLBM that
was also paraded through Teneman Square. The JL three. So
we are seeing the Chinese becoming a full fledged triad,
something that even the Soviets and certainly the Russians have
not really tried to maintain. The Russian air breathing leg

(12:29):
in particular is not very substantial. The DoD report also
talks about some systems that we didn't see paraded through
an air launch ballistic missile, which becomes a real nightmare
in terms of tracking where it might be and how
it might deploy. I think one of the things to
consider here is that both we and the Soviets at

(12:50):
one point had our respective quote unquote new look conventional
military really not that important, let's depend on nuke's nineteen
fifties on both sides, and then that sort of went
away and we went more towards nuclear weapons as a
separate but related part of these strategic calculus, and the
Chinese were not part of any of that. Chinese, as

(13:12):
you say, developed essentially a minimum deterrent several dozen long
range warheads to hit the United States, several hundred warheads
that were probably on their IRBMs and MRBMs that would
be more than enough to hit the Soviet Union, but
very limited numbers now we're seeing the Chinese building that out,
and frankly, it's not clear why they're doing that. Theories

(13:36):
range from we have the money and we have the
resources to Golden Dome and earlier US discussions about strategic
missile defense and concerns that their systems might not be
able to penetrate to a desire to be able to
conduct limited nuclear options. This is where the Chinese are opaque,
and people sometimes say, oh, but look at the Chinese

(13:58):
nuclear no first use pol. When you look at Chinese
writings on their nuclear no first use policy, it's a
little bit like Pirates of the Caribbean. Think of it
more as a guideline. Really, there are a lot of
exceptions that the Chinese themselves say about nuclear no first
use that makes it no first use some of the time.
And what should really be disturbing to us is that

(14:22):
this large scale development of nuclear weapons across all three
legs is occurring even as they are building out their
commercial forces. And along these lines, it's notable, for example,
that up until recently, not only had they not built
out nuclear force, they hadn't built out their amphibious forces either,
And now we're seeing them also building the Typo SEVN
five landing docks, these fascinating mobile piers, all of the

(14:45):
things that you would need to do an amphibious invasion.
So they are moving Night Rook, Bishop Pawn, and Queen.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
I want to talk a little bit about their nuclear program,
because wasn't that many long ago China was complaining about
accused NATO of nuclear blackmail. And I'm sitting there thinking, well,
you know, if I'm China and I'm looking at the
way things have worked out, I'm gonna I'm gonna dig
three hundred new silos, and yes, they may all be full,
they may not all be full. It doesn't really matter.

(15:17):
I'm gonna build these submarine uh BA bblistic missile submarines.
I'm gonna do this air launch ballistic missiles. I know
I'm gonna keep people guessing that isn't I mean, isn't
that one of the in the in the world of
those games game theory. Isn't that one of those things
that the Chinese are pretty good at doing, is is
they've seen nuclear blackmail and now they've got a situation

(15:38):
where they could actually engage in it.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Absolutely, And in this regard, it's also useful to recognize
that the Chinese term, which we translate as to terrence,
the Chinese phrase is waste up. If you have read
your Shelling, and you've read your Brodie, and you've read
your Meerscheimer and all these other Snyder and all the others,
you know that when we the West talk about deterrence,
it is only about dissuasion. We are going to deter

(16:05):
an attack on West Berlin, we are going to deter
an attack on Taiwan. The Chinese term wasa is not
only about dissuasion. It's also about coercion. It's both. And
so that means that just conceptually, the Chinese nuclear force,
which is charged with deterrence or wasa they recognize, also

(16:27):
has a nuclear coersive capacity, and in that regard that applies.
And I would suggest that North Koreans are thinking the
same way that this is as much dissuasion as it
is coercion, and it is about coercing other countries or
dissuading them from participating in a military action that Chinese

(16:48):
involved in. So if the Chinese are going to go
after Taiwan, they will want to dissuade a variety of
countries namely the United States, but also potentially Japan and
NATO et cetera, from participating. At the same time, they
are going to want to coerce Taiwan into giving up
as quickly as possible. And having an array of nuclear

(17:14):
capabilities is something that facilitates that if when you have
very limited numbers of nukes, are you really going to
light one off for political purposes and to send a message? Now,
let me flip that also, though on its head a
little bit, the Chinese also are confronted by a somewhat
different strategic situation because they have to worry not only
about the United States obviously, and it's nuclear allies the

(17:37):
French and British who might join in a conflict, but
they also do have to worry about the Russians. Right now,
of course we have the unlimited friendship et cetera, et cetera,
but the reality is that Moscow and Beijing don't love
each other, and the Chinese also have to watch about
what happens in Delhi. India has fought a war, an
open war with China, and it has border clashes with

(18:00):
the Chinese, and at the end of the day, the
Chinese don't trust the Japanese, and with the South Koreans
now talking about developing possibly their own nuclear deterrent, that's
a debate, that's not a given. Nuclear deterrence for the
Chinese has to encompass far more than just a bilateral.
Let me deter the Americans and we're good. They have
quite a few other countries that they also have to

(18:20):
worry about. And the irony is they're not allied India,
Russias that are not allied with US, So deterring one
doesn't guarantee you deterred the others.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
I agree with you when the US looks at the world, obviously,
the PRC is the biggest challenge economically and from a
population size especially, and we have our little complic points.
It's a rounding error compared to these structural issues they
have with a much weaker Russia and a rising India.

(18:51):
So you're right, sometimes we may be a little bit
too much US focused. I want to roll back a bit, Kami.
You said you were talking about coercion, dissuasion, persuasion, and
you've got to give a lot of respect to the
people that are running strategy out of Beijing. Is they
have a lot of irons in the fire, and they
seem to be coordinating them pretty well. They've stepped on

(19:14):
a few rakes, they seem to be doing pretty well,
and a lot of the actions they take can really
be traced back to the fact that they are playing
catch up. And there was a hopefully I'm pronouncing the
name correctly, but Yuja, a senior research fellow on China
at Chathamhouse, had to quote in a Financial Times article

(19:37):
that I thought was really good and I want to
give you a chance to comment on it. And what
Yay said was, quote, China was a great power rooted
into developing world. She said. The absence of Western leaders
and prominence of Putin and Kim underlie that China was
seeking to send a very different but critical message. And
this is the juicy part right here. Quote. Eight decades

(20:00):
after the Second World War ended, China no longer views
itself as mere participant in history, but as the architect
of a new world order, one it intends to design
on its own terms, and it has its own power
to do it. Unquote. I think that parade was a
lot of underlining and bolding the power part of that.

(20:21):
On the military perspective.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Certainly from the military perspective, that's very true. One of
these days, I suspect the Chinese will hold a parade
through Tenement Square and it will be completely comprised of bankers,
an accountants and accountants, and they will be towing large
you know, mosl or safes filled with financial instruments. And

(20:46):
that's part of that power. I mean, that is a
fundamental difference between the Chinese and the Soviets. At the
end of the day, what the Soviets had was almost
entirely what they could roll through Red Square. What the
Chinese can roll through Rits through Tanneman Square is only
a piece of there. Because what the Chinese, what the CCP,

(21:07):
the Giant's Commons Party has is a whole of society
approach and a whole of society tool it knows. I
didn't say a whole of government. I say a whole
of society, because that is what the CCP is bringing
to the table. They are bringing financial instruments, they are
bringing loans. They are bringing construction companies that are state
owned and therefore don't have to pay attention necessarily to

(21:28):
the bottom line. They are bringing technology, they are bringing
potential investment. They are bringing a market. I mean, we
don't you know. Another part of the Chinese parade would
be consumers. And you know me, how often have we
heard you have every Chinese bought just one? Yeah? That
is also part of what is influencing people. But I

(21:51):
do think that one of the fascinating aspects is implicit
in the quote is that China shares with Russia, and
I would suggest also with Iran the perspective of being
a fallen empire. We were great once, we will be
great again. And that is true for the Soviet Union Russia.

(22:15):
Russia was great. Russia was even greater in the Soviet Union,
and Putin clearly is intent on rebuilding imperial Russia more
than the Soviet Union. China, of course, was taken down
during the Central of Humiliation, and Iran is the inheritor
of the Persian Empire which once dominated that region. And
the funny thing, of course, is that every one of
them was taken down by who. The West, Western democracy,

(22:38):
western capitalism, and their effort to establish a new world
order is not simply one of we want a seat,
a bigger seat at the table. It is revising the
impact of Western capitalism. We're going to have a new
financial set of rules is what every one of these
countries is saying. And there ain't gonna be your There.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
Was there was a meeting, a conference before this big
parade where a lot of a lot of countries, not
the US, not most of the West, not the not
the your EU came to and it appears that the
these things were again when you have a whole of country,
whole of society thing, you can you can do one
thing at this conference and then it just kind of

(23:23):
uh oozes into this parade because of the appeal to
I think what people called the global South, that the
the appeal that that China is making is that and
you've hit it. I mean, it's the Western way that
developed by the British and followed on by the Americans
is not the way. Our path is is different and better.

(23:43):
And then he said she said in that one of
his speeches that that the world has to choose between
peace or war, dialogue or confrontation when when or zero
s And this is kind of a it's a really
interesting uh series of events and what he's and what
he's actually doing, and the people that he had there
with the Kim from from South Korea and and then

(24:06):
they had a couple of the Middle Asian countries I
think Kazak Kazakistan and another one iromember of the top
of my head. But yeah, that the Iranians were there,
and a lot of other folks that that that you know,
as you said, are kind of uh unhappy with the
with the world that has would developed by the current world.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Well, I think so. On the one hand, the Chinese
are more appealing than we are. Why because they leave
well enough alone a lot of the time. They are
more than happy to trade with you, and they don't
have what's the term ESG environments, social and governance. Right,
if I'm going to invest in your country, not only
do you have to give me some tax credits and

(24:54):
let me repatriate my profits, but you have to do
things the right quote unquote way. The right way is
to be ron mentally conscious and socially responsible and have
good governance, etc. And by the way, if you oppress
your fill in the black minorities, women, religious groups, et cetera,
well then in that case we're going to feel entitled

(25:14):
to come in and tell you how to run the show,
which is not the way you're running the show, and
the Chinese attitude is, look, I want to buy your stuff.
Where I want to sell my stuff to you, I'm
willing to sell at market rates or buy at market rates.
My conditions are very simple. One, don't recognize Taiwan under
any circumstances, which for a lot of countries is like

(25:36):
not that big a deal. And you're going to sign
a contract. You're going to obey that contract, and that
contract is going to be for the long term, which
is pretty good. And when the Americans show up to
tell you how to do things with regards to me,
you're going to tell them to go take a hike.
After that. If you want to oppress your people, I'm
happy to sell you security equipment to help you oppressure people.

(25:57):
If you want to build universities and welfare centers, I've
got construction companies that can do that. That can be
very appealing. Now, of course, like your friendly neighborhood dope dealer,
the first case is free, as countries like Sri Lanka
and others have found out, as countries in the Central
Pacific have found out. Eventually, those investments by the Chinese

(26:22):
often come with strings that were very subtle. Initially and
aren't so subtle later on. I think it's Angola has
now had to basically commit to providing China with it's
most of its oil exports for the next five years
to pay back loans that they signed, and the Chinese

(26:42):
the basic point in terms of contract is said, we're
calling the note pay up. But because the Chinese, you know,
historically had a very different experience and different interactions with
places in Africa and South America, and at least it
gets away with saying we're totally different. And unfortunately, because

(27:07):
Americans are not well versed in history, we're not really
very good at providing counterpoint examples. People say China's never
invaded other countries. I think there's a whole lot of
Vietnamese who were different. And I'm not talking about just
Vietnamese memory of nineteen seventy nine, the last time they
went to war. There are the Sisters that are the

(27:27):
Vietnamese version of George Washington, who fought a ten year
war of resistance against the Chinese invaders, and I believe
that was around one thousand AD. So there are lots
of folks who will tell you no, the Chinese have
a long history of aggression. You just don't know about
it because frankly, you're badly educated.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
Part of it, too, is when people are trying to
educate themselves, you gotta be careful who you listen to.
And I wanted to find a voice that was kind
of the flip of what we've talked about, not just
today but before, where we're trying to take China and
the challenge they're posing quite seriously, and you know, there
are some well credentialed people they could be very well

(28:12):
be right and we're all wrong. That's okay, but there's
that school of China doves and those that continue here
in twenty twenty five to make excuses and copes. And
there was a quote in that Financial article from He's
a well known professor. He churns out like a book
a year, and I haven't read any of them, but
he does bounce up. There's a professor at King's College,

(28:35):
London called Kerry Brown, and I don't know if you're
familiar with him, but he kind of exemplifies what I
think is very very dangerous, and it ties into something
you just said where people kind of make excuses. You know, Oh,
don't worry about that. Is his take was. In response,

(28:55):
they asked him a few questions about the parade, and
Professor Brown said, quote a great assertion of China's prowess
and advancement and strength. So it's great for domestic propaganda.
But he said, although the parade would alarm Western nation,
China's military and much of its equipment had not been
tested in combat. Quote, it's all very performative. Brown said.

(29:18):
They can definitely march, they can put on a great parade,
but they have not fought for many decades. It's a
completely untested military. I mean, that's in my opinion, whether
you're talking about the Chinese, whether you're talking about the Russians,
whether you're talking about the Ukrainians, having somebody who is
a professor at his level that is doing the classic

(29:41):
underestimate and dismiss the capabilities of at least on paper,
it looks like a very capable opponent. We have a
few thousand years of people making that mistake, and we
do run into that mentality towards the PRC by a
lot of these people who their entire career has been

(30:01):
it's a friendly little panda, it's not a dragon.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, So all right, fine, You're absolutely right. Chinese military
hasn't fought to war since nineteen seventy nine. Therefore they're
nobody to worry about, right, good to know. I just
had a curiosity, though, what other Asian militaries have more
recent combat experience? The Ties, the Vietnamese, well, they're the

(30:26):
ones that fought the war with the Chinese. The Japanese,
the South Koreans, all those allies of ours that we
are saying they're NATO stand they don't have any combat
experience either. In fact, Japan and South Korea, if I
remember right, didn't even send troops to Afghanistan or Iraq.
So it's they might have said, I'm sorry. The South

(30:49):
Koreans did send engineering units to Afghanistan, but nobody sent
troops to Iraq, So what's their combat experience? So I
think when we start, oh, the Chinese have combat experience, Well, okay,
neither do our allies. Neither do the Taiwanese. At which
point was it Stalin who said want that he has?

(31:09):
I got a whole lot of Chinese troops. I got
a lot fier Taiwanese troops. If nobody has combat experience,
where does that fit in? Now? The one country that
now has lots of combat experience is North Korea, to
the tune of thousands of dead North Koreans. So by
that logic, then we should be very worried about the
Korean peninsula because we have a very large military that

(31:32):
now has actual combat experience squaring off against a numerically
smaller military that has lots of nice parade equipment. Remember
that's what the professor said, right, performative but no combat experience. Somehow,
I don't think that professor is going to be saying,
you know, the South Koreans should be very worried and
maybe should amp up their defense spending and rethink their

(31:53):
defense capabilities, et cetera. Instead, I'm sure we will find
out about how the North Koreans are all performative too,
unlike those South Koreans. This is the thing, right at least? Yeah,
I know that. You know, sometimes you need to have
double standards where you'll have no standards at all. But
I find that to be a rather non academic, inconsistent
with academic the spirit of academia. Well, do I sound

(32:18):
a little sarcastic? I apologize, We wouldn't have you any
other way.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah, no, I think you sound pretty realistic actually, which
reminds me. One of the other things that was going
on in that parade is there was a bunch of
new units that kind of showed up that the equivalent
of the US Space Command, the Chinese Space Force, the
Chinese Cyber Space Force, and there's another one I can't remember,
information supports information for US. Yeah, I mean, let's talk

(32:42):
about that. Let's talk about China and all that, because.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Man, you are a tug martstrings there. So if we
roll the clock back to the end of twenty fifteen,
the Chinese military underwent a massive reorganization and one of
the things that they did was create something called the
PLA Strategic Support Force, which drew together Chinese electronic warfare,
network warfare which includes cyber but is not limited to that,
and space warfare forces. It was really China's information warfare force,

(33:07):
the hardware, the software, and a key domain space where
information is gathered and flows through. And then in twenty
twenty four, less than ten years later, they looked at
that and said, yeah, this isn't working for us, and
they broke it up. And so now when you look
at what the PLA says, how it's military how it
is organized. It is organized into four services, the PLA

(33:31):
Ground Forces, PLA Navy, PLA Air Force, PLA Rocket Force,
and four were branches they're not services, the Military Eraspace Force,
the Network or cyber Space Force, the Information Support Force,
and the Joint Logistics Support Force. And those four forces

(33:52):
are outside the services directly reports to the CMC and
will provide additional expertise and capabilities and units to support
whichever theater is in the fight. So the three, the
Military Aerospace Force, information Support Force, and Cyber Support Force

(34:15):
all are the product of the breakup again of the
PLA Strategic Support Force, Military Aerospace Force in charge of
space related stuff, both the satellites and counterspace systems. Cyberspace
Force we think is going to do a lot of
the hacking and a lot of the penetrations, things like
vult Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, going after critical infrastructure. The Information

(34:38):
Support Forces is less well defined, at least in the
literature we've had available. Seems to be in charge of
things like the computers and information networking, but it's not well.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
While we're speaking space, I think that area of competition.
There's been a little articles here and there about the
Chinese looking at, you know, trying to catch up to
the US effort. The US has already announced its next crew.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
That going to the Moon.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
I think the goal is twenty twenty seven, maybe maybe
a little bit later. Anyway, we've already identified the crew,
three Americans, one Canadian. Of note two of the three
Americans are naval aviators. Very nice. But the PRC are
they really as focused on these high profile you know,

(35:30):
go to the Moon, colonize the moon routines or are
they looking more practical, you know, inside the lunar orbit
dominate or at least developed space capacity. It has a
more practical use vice that exploration and then you know
the high profile things like sending humans back to the Moon.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
I think the answer there is yes. I think the
Chinese are pushing both. So one, the Chinese have said
that they are going to land a human mission on
the Moon by twenty thirty. And the Chinese this comes
out from the State Council Information Office. It means that
it has the highest level endorsement. I would be willing
to bet a goodly amount of money, say a mortgage payment,

(36:16):
that they're going to do that. It's sobering to consider that.
Back in twenty nineteen or twenty twenty, Vice President Pence
declared that the United States would send a mission to
the Moon that would plant the American flag again by
twenty twenty four. Now, as you know, I've had some
time peace problems in the past with you folks, But

(36:39):
I believe that by my watch that we are now
in twenty twenty five and we have not sent another
crew to the Moon. We say we're going to this
time around. Maybe we will, maybe we won't. I'm not
sure what the consequences of failing last time were. I'm

(37:01):
kind of curious to see what the consequences of successful
failure would be this time around for us. It's pretty
clear if you're Chinese and you fail to meet something
that the highest leadership has said we're going to do,
there will be bad consequences period where this overlaps. So
it looks like it's a prestige thing. I would submit

(37:24):
that the Chinese, under the International Lunar Research Station Project,
which is the formal name for their human lunar effort,
are intent not simply on being one and done land
on the Moon plant a flag yay, that they intend
to stay there, not necessarily their first mission, but that
the goal is to establish a long term human presence

(37:44):
on the Now what does this get them? Honestly, in
terms of sheer economic capacity, it's not clear anymore than
what do space stations and things like that get us financially, industrially, etc.
But what I do think is going to happen very
quickly once the Chinese do establish a long term presence,

(38:06):
meaning a lunar colony, is that you're going to have
a very regular set of missions too and from the Moon,
whether it's for exploration to find water, to see what's
at the bottoms of these craters, to determine whether there
are in fact massive reserves of rare earth minerals aka
platinum group minerals on the Moon, which we think there
may be. Is that there will be a regular traffic

(38:28):
to the Moon by the Chinese. It's not clear whether
we are committed to doing the same, and that has
enormous implications because to put it in the bluntest terms,
what do you think the language of space traffic is
going to be If the Chinese do four missions a
year to the Moon and we do one, what makes

(38:50):
you think it will be English. The parallel here is
to air traffic control. If you take off from Barcelona
and fly to Bangkok, two countries where English is not
the native language, from takeoff to landing, in the cockpit
and at every air traffic control center as they hand
you off, the language is English, which means that if

(39:13):
you are a Thai pilot, a Spanish pilot, a Chinese pilot,
and you want to fly international, you must be fluent
in English. That is soft power in its most comprehensive form.
And the Chinese understand that. And this goes to what
we were talking about earlier about Yo. The Chinese no
longer simply a participant, but is going to determine a

(39:36):
new world order. The Chinese, I think, are pretty clear
in believing that it is important that once you leave
Earth's atmosphere, you better be fluent in Chinese, and by
the way, not simply fluent in Chinese a spoken language,
but using Chinese to determine data formats and data standards,
which is of course a huge market for Chinese software

(39:58):
and Chinese computers.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
Well, speaking of all the pleasures of that, I keep
seeing Chinese press releases, shall I say propaganda, but you
know they're talking about how well networked their systems are.
They have the advantage of not had the system before
when they weren't networked, and trying to fill in that that.
Like this, a lot of this relates to their space programs.

(40:23):
I mean, they don't need US GPS systems, they're there.
Let's talk a little bit of how this control of
certain areas of space are important to their war fighting
capabilities and the threat they pose.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
So the Chinese were the third nation to produce a
P and T position navigation and timing system. We were
the first GPS. I think it was a Navstar. Initially
it was called that, so I believe it was in
fact a navy program. The Soviets of course produced Glownass

(40:59):
and that the Chinese around nineteen ninety nine two thousand
we had to deploy was what is known as BEDO.
Their early system was an active one a GPS. Glonas
are passive. You pull out your phone, you ask where
am I. You don't have to signal anything. The initial
Chinese system was active. You had to push a button.

(41:19):
It bounced off satellites that went to a ground station China,
which then transmitted it back. And that was because the
Chinese could not produce small enough atomic clocks to go
on to satellites at the time. Now they have a
very comprehensive combination of both satellites in geosynchronous orbit, including
these more active ones, as well as a mid Earth

(41:42):
orbit array similar to GPS and GLONASS that is passive.
The BETO system, by the way, can also carry communications. Interestingly,
one hundred and forty Chinese characters. The difference is that
one hundred forty characters the former x Twitter capacity. One
hundred forty characters in English is two sentences maybe three.
One hundred and forty characters in Chinese is almost half

(42:03):
a page when you've translated into English. Chinese characters are
frankly just a denser information format. So by having their
own P and T network, two things happen. One they
can afford to jam GPS and not affect their own systems,
and two, their systems because of a combination both active
and passive in theory, gives them a more capacity. They

(42:27):
also have a very different constellation shape, so not only
do they have stuff out of GEO, they also have
some stuff in not simply geostationary orbit, but offset so
they actually have better coverage for some of the higher
latitudes than GPS does. So overall, what this does is
it gives them a indigenous missile guidance system, backup communication system,

(42:54):
one that presumably operates according you know, potentially different vulnerabilities
than is subject to GPS. And finally you hear this
a lot. Yeah, but the Chinese will wind up as
dependent on space as we are. And I always ask
what is the law of physics, because I'm not sure
it fits into any of Newton Maybe it's Einsteinian physics

(43:15):
that says that other countries have to develop space systems
and space dependencies that look like ours. I was floored
when I found out that a large VLC is a
very large crude carrier relies on GPS if it's American
Western owned to maintain stability. That yeah, these ships are huge,

(43:36):
and the GPS difference at balance, stern and elsewhere sort
of is used to sort of say, okay, we're going
to ship ballast to keep it stable. That ship is
now vulnerable to GPS jamming. I strongly suspect that China,
now one of the world's largest producers and merchant ships,
will be happy to make you GPS dependent if that's
what you want, but it's probably not BEDO dependent, for

(44:00):
fear of what happens if BEDO is jammed, And certainly
if you have BEDO n GPS, you might well be
able to survive if one of them is jammed to
the others.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
The electromagnetic spectrum challenges is something that sometimes overlooked because
it's hard. You can't see it. Unlike equipment, you can
look at it, you can compare it. But the code
and electronics and reliance to space communications, and I think
also at least from a Western perspective, we have just
been used to for decades having relatively unchallenged access to

(44:32):
near space and electromagnetic spectrum that if I was a
planner for the PRC, that would be a critical vulnerability
that I would be looking at all sorts of capabilities
to do that. Always like there's always contrast when you're
looking at what the PRC does, is you know what
you're just talking about there with code, I mean, that's

(44:53):
incredibly innovative. And of course there they've got one point
was a one point four billion, one point three billion
and rounding error a couple hundred one hundred billion here
or there. So just playing the math, you're going to
get a huge cadre of very very very smart people,
good engineers and uh retired Australia Major General Mick Ryan.

(45:18):
He's he's very active and he had an interesting quote
that is one side of a coin. And then I
want to bring us back to something we talked about
in the first quarter of the of the Hour and
his quote is here we go quote long gone of
the days when China was reliant on Russia or other
foreign systems. This level of indigenous capacity and first high

(45:42):
levels of sustainability in any future conflict unquote.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
And what he's talking.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
About there is it used to be back in the
day that they are Chinese copies of just former Russian stuff.
But they are producing some really good kit. However, when
we saw the the Chinese aircraft carrier, they're their latest
one that can do catapault launches and they've they've they've

(46:07):
got I think three or four wires conventional aircraft carrier,
not nuclear yet, but they're advancing much faster than the
China Dove School was. But to the big one, subtle one,
not so subtle. When you look at their two new
aircraft that they very publicly put out there. It's there.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
I give them credit for this.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
They're J thirty five, which is a how we can
put this kind of they've leveraged previous work that was
done on the five, it appears, but they also had
their kJ six hundred, which is very very very similar.
If you gave it an American paint job, you'd need
to look for a while to tell the difference. Looks

(46:50):
just like that E two delta, that airborne AEW that
really is what makes an aircraft carrier a global point
to contend with. So and we know they have a
very substantial espionage network in the US politically, in academia
and our research institutions and our major defense contractors. So

(47:14):
they're obviously they are leveraging what they can steal. But
where is that balance between they're doing a more sophisticated
version of copying the stuff they got from the old
Soviet Union, but they're just you know, making their own
version of the latest stuff they can steal. Are what
Mcryan was talking about. No, they have their own indigenous

(47:37):
capability that they can just run on their own with
their own designs if needed orre we kind of at
an inflection point.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
I think we need to break it down into fairly
specific technology areas, and you know, space is one of
the interesting areas because we've never faced since the end
of the Cold War an adversary who had a space capability,
whether it was our battles in the Balkans against the Serbs,
whether it was Afghanistan, whether it was Iraq one back

(48:06):
in nineteen ninety, were Iraq two and ninety two thousand
and three onwards al Qaeda. None of these folks had
space capabilities, and we got used to the idea that
we can see you all the time, that we have
unfettered communications, that our GPS systems will work, and our
jadams will go pretty much where we want them to.
That's not true with the Chinese, and they are rightfully

(48:27):
proud of the fact that much of their space capability
actually is homegrown, simply because it had to be. It
came about beginning of the nineteen sixties when the Chinese
weren't talking to the Soviets and weren't talking to us,
and you didn't have the ability to download all of
the plans for a Saturn five onto a thumb drive.
So that is one example. But what I think we
need to recognize is that on some things there's no

(48:50):
question that they are using extraction of whether it's stolen
or simply purchased, and in some case we just give
it to them, right. I mean, when Microsoft has Chinese
engineers doing coding on DoD work, you have to wonder
did they steal the stuff that they got or did

(49:11):
they get paid to develop it themselves for us and
then send a copy over to whichever design bureau in China.
I think that what we also need to recognize is
that there are different kinds of innovation. So we have
technology innovation, which as Americans, that's what we tend to
focus on, better mouse traps, really cool technology, the new

(49:33):
iPhone forty six or whatever's coming out. But the Chinese
one of the things that should be striking to us
is production innovation. Their ability to steal something is one thing.
Their ability to put it into mass production rapidly is
something else entirely, and that is not something they stole
from us. It is something that is a benefit of

(49:56):
not simply stayed on enterprises that don't have to pay
attend necessary to the bottom line. But when you look
at places like sins in it looks a lot like
Silicon Valley in the nineteen seventies. You have factories and
stuff next to each other, all competing on price and quality,
not based on central direction that can provide you with
motherboards and chips and things in whatever quantity you want

(50:19):
in very short order, so you can start churning stuff out.
I think it was the Army chief of staff who
was lamenting that he had to go through a multi
year process simply to get a new pistol that was
going to be largely the same design as what is
already in civilian hands. And you look at that, you
look at our drones, you look at other things, and

(50:39):
we insist on getting in our own way. And one
of the things that the Chinese have done is to get
out of their own way to basically say nope, if
I need this and I want a huge production. The
Chinese are one of the bigger fans of capitalism than
some American university campuses, because the Chinese themselves will tell
you there is no better way of allocating and getting

(51:01):
feedback on misallocation of resources then the market. Where the
Chinese remain socialists are we need the state to direct
where the market is headed now. All that being said,
there are still at least a few areas where they're
not catching up, or at least they're having some trouble.
One of the interesting ones is fighter turbofans that, as

(51:23):
far as I can tell, based on open source literature
and Aviation Week, in places like that, the Chinese are
still working very hard to figure out how to make
long life, high capability fighter engines. They are still importing
some of that from the Russians, who are in turn
not nearly as good as Rolls Royce and ge and

(51:45):
Snackman and the rest. So that still seems to be
an area of potentially we're able to fend off the
Chinese at least for a while. And I can only
hope that the manufacturers or turbofans have made sure that
their software their hardware is not being subcontracted out to
Chinese engineers in wherever in China. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
Well, as we end, then another excellent hour of Eugene.
If our listeners wanted to keep an eye on a
couple of things coming from China over the next six
months or year, what would you suggest they keep a
close watch on.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
I think that one of the interesting things is going
to be where the Chinese go with the Russians, and
in particular when it comes to drone technology. What do
we think they are learning from the Russian experience but
also from the Ukrainian experience, because remember, since China is
not an active participant in the conflict, they have ties
still to Ukraine and are likely to be getting information

(52:46):
from the Ukrainians as well. They may in some ways
have a better picture than anybody else does because they
get both Russian and Ukrainian information, obviously diluted, obviously slanted
by each side, but I mean simply being able to
compare how many did the Russians say they launched, how
many did the Ukrainians say they intercepted, and vice versa,
they may have a pretty good picture of what is

(53:08):
going on out there. I think a second thing always
to keep an eye on is what are the Chinese
doing all along the East Asian Littoral. I think that
the issues developing the South China Sea shaping up to
be quite ugly. I would certainly keep an eye on
Macclesfield Bank and Scarborough's shoal. And finally, there's just a
personal hobby horse. We do not pay enough attention to
what is going on between China and India, two nuclear

(53:30):
armed powers, and there has been tension. Supposedly things have
calmed down a little bit, particularly as Prime Minister Modi
tries to basically balance our preped maladroit foreign policy by
improving relations with China, but border issues remain outstanding. That
is an area which really does need a lot of

(53:50):
expertise to keep an eye on, and I fear we
just don't pay enough attention to it.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
And paying attention to it, that's a great way to
end a great hour. Dean, really appreciate you coming on
here and just personally, is there a topic you're working
on right now that we should look forward to.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Working on a paper on Chinese space defensive measures. And
I will be giving testimony to the House Space Science
Transportation Committee, I think that's what SSD stands for on
China space program in a couple of weeks. So if
folks need help with their insomnia, they can look up

(54:36):
my testimony once it's admitted excellent.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
Well, hey, yeah, send me a link and I'll make
sure and share that on my thread. That'll be especially
considering some of the conversation we had this hour. I
look forward to seeing that. So thanks again for coming
on Dean, It's been great as always, and look forward
to the next opportunity.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Thank you for having me. I look forward to coming
on again.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
Hopefully it's always a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
Thanks Dean, and thank you everybody for join us for
another edition of bed Rats and until next time, I
hope you have a great Navy day.

Speaker 4 (55:04):
Cheers my lonely one, to marry me and.

Speaker 5 (55:23):
Leave a friend of cordially for you being to blame
for love, fly on me, silly folding your the tame.

Speaker 6 (55:37):
It's a long way to differ. It's a long way.
It's a long way to differ.

Speaker 5 (55:48):
Any between God, be cordial, farewell, listen, notwell, it's.

Speaker 6 (56:02):
A long long way to differ. It's but my wife,
my

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