[Senate Hearing 118-682]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 118-682
GLOBAL SECURITY CHALLENGES AND
UNITED STATES STRATEGY
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 12, 2024
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Armed Services
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via: http: //www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
60-822 PDF WASHINGTON : 2025
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
JACK REED, Rhode Island, Chairman
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York DEB FISCHER, Nebraska
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut TOM COTTON, Arkansas
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota
TIM KAINE, Virginia JONI ERNST, Iowa
ANGUS S. KING, Jr., Maine DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska
ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota
GARY C. PETERS, Michigan RICK SCOTT, Florida
JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia TOMMY TUBERVILLE, Alabama
TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada TED BUDD, North Carolina
MARK KELLY, Arizona ERIC SCHMITT, Missouri
Elizabeth L. King, Staff Director
John P. Keast, Minority Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
_________________________________________________________________
March 12, 2024
Page
Global Security Challenges and United States Strategy............ 1
Members Statements
Statement of Senator Jack Reed................................... 1
Statement of Senator Roger Wicker................................ 3
Witness Statements
Scharre, Paul, Ph.D., Executive Vice President and Director of 4
Studies Center for A New American Security.
Brands, Hal, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise 10
Institute, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global
Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International
Studies.
Questions for the Record......................................... 36
(iii)
GLOBAL SECURITY CHALLENGES AND UNITED STATES STRATEGY
----------
TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 2024
United States Senate,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m. in room
SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, Senator Jack Reed
(Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
Committee Members present: Senators Reed, Gillibrand,
Blumenthal, Hirono, Kaine, King, Peters, Kelly, Wicker,
Fischer, Cotton, Ernst, Scott, and Schmitt.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED
Chairman Reed. Good morning. The Committee meets today to
discuss a range of global security challenges to the United
States. As the Biden administration's National Defense Strategy
(NDS) has made clear, we are in a long-term strategic
competition with China and Russia. Ultimately, this competition
is not just a rivalry of military or economic power but also a
competition of ideas. This requires us to develop an
understanding of our potential adversaries' strengths,
weaknesses, philosophies, and objectives. This is where the
knowledge and insights of the experts before us today are so
valuable.
Dr. Paul Scharre is the Executive Vice President and
Director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security.
He is an expert on the future of technology and warfare,
particularly with regard to artificial intelligence (AI) and
autonomous weaponry, and has authored several influential books
on these issues. Dr. Scharre worked previously as a policy
expert in the Department of Defense (DOD) and served as an Army
Ranger with multiple combat tours. Thank you.
Dr. Hal Brands is a Senior Fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute and serves as the Henry Kissinger
Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies. He worked previously
as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Strategic
Planning and was a lead writer for the 2018 National Defense
Strategy Commission. He has authored several books on U.S.
grand strategy and statecraft.
Thank you both for joining us today and for your long
careers of service to the Nation.
Our objective today is to examine the national security
issues that this Committee should consider as we prepare the
Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act. There is a
common understanding on the Committee that the future of
America's national security is tied to our competition with
China. To keep pace and maintain America's edge, the Department
of Defense must understand China's competitive tactics, develop
new competitive tools of its own, and integrate with our allies
and partners.
For several decades, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has
studied America's way of war and focused its efforts on
covering our advantages. China has invested in offsetting
technologies like anti-access and aerial denial systems,
artificial intelligence, unmanned vehicles, hypersonics, and
nuclear weapons. Further, Beijing has leveraged a combination
of military and civil power against its neighbors, include
statecraft, economic pressure, coercion, and deception. China
has sought ways to achieve its national objectives while
avoiding a direct military confrontation with the United States
military. As the Defense Department's new Joint Concept for
Competing states, China seeks to win without fighting. The
strategy warns that if we do not adapt our approach, compete
more effectively, the United States risks ceding strategic
influence, advantage, and leverage while preparing for war that
never occurs. Indeed, the document warns that the United States
could lose without fighting.
Just as Chinese leaders have studied America's way of war,
we need to study theirs. With that in mind I would ask our
witnesses for your assessment of how China is evolving its
competitive strategies and objectives. I would also appreciate
your views on what military and non-military factors are mostly
likely to impact Chinese decisionmaking with respect to
potential action against Taiwan and other regional partners.
Even as we chart this long-term competition with China, we
must recognize the current threat Russia poses. Let's be clear.
Russia's war against Ukraine is an active threat to our
national security. Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that if
he succeeds in Ukraine he intends to reunify former Soviet
states. This will almost certainly involve direct military
conflict with a NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization]
country, requiring the United States to send our own men and
women into harm's way. We must continue our support for Ukraine
so we can defeat Putin and cripple his ability to wage war
elsewhere.
As we are seeing in Ukraine and the Middle East, the nature
of conflict and deterrence is evolving quickly. Cyber
information and space operations can shape the battlefield as
fundamentally as air, land, and sea power. The interconnected
nature of these activities must drive the way we develop and
field new technologies.
The Defense Department continues to develop the Combined
Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), concept, which
would be a force multiplier in this regard. JADC2 will enable
the Joint Force to detect, analyze, and act on information
across the battle space quickly using automation, artificial
intelligence, and predictive analysis.
If we can field these technologies and mass these
techniques then we must quickly include our allies and partners
in the system. Indeed, forging and maintaining strong
international partnerships is likely to be the decisive factor
in any future conflict. We have seen this through Ukraine's
remarkable performance against Russia, and it will hold true in
the Indo-Pacific.
I look forward to our witnesses' testimoneys, and I thank
them again for their participation.
Let me now recognize the Ranking Member, Senator Wicker.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROGER WICKER
Senator Wicker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Our Chairman has
just delivered a rather sobering opening statement.
Today's witnesses are here to help this Committee take
stock of changing threats to American interests. They will help
us reflect on our progress in mitigating and combating those
threats over the past year or so.
The scorecard does not look good.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) shows no sign of stopping
its military modernization project. In fact, China added 30
ships last year compared to our overall reduction of 2. In
fact, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) also continues to
improve its force readiness with complex exercises focused on
the so-called reunification of China with Taiwan.
The CCP also continues its regional aggression on other
countries' sovereign rights. For example, they have repeatedly
harassed the Philippines' resupply ships in the Second Thomas
Shoal. Although the San Francisco summit between Presidents
Biden and Xi produced some feel-good headlines, Xi concluded
the summit by reminding the United States that he intends to
control Taiwan, peacefully or not.
A year ago, we all hoped for significant progress in
Ukraine's much-awaited offensive. That progress fell short. We
failed to capitalize on temporary Russian weakness, and now
face a Vladimir Putin increasingly convinced he can win in
Ukraine, or at least outlast us and outlast everyone else.
China, Iran, and North Korea are all contributing to Russia's
war effort.
Much has also changed in the past year with Iran. Tehran
has used the chaos following Hamas' October 7th massacre as an
opportunity to have its proxies attack United States Forces
more than 160 times, including with deadly consequences in
Jordan and in the Red Sea. Iranian-armed Houthis also continue
to attack critical global maritime commerce in the Red Sea.
Not to be outdone, North Korea seems to have moved into an
offensive war preparation mode. This shift from a long-held
defensive posture is a significant development which further
complicates the picture in East Asia.
Worse yet, all four of these adversaries drastically
deepened their military and economic cooperation over the past
year, even as we implement a National Defense Strategy that
largely considers each adversary individually. I struggled to
use the word ``implement'' because it seems to me that we have
a strategy that is not being fully attempted.
I would like to hear from the witnesses how they assess the
current threats from all of these adversaries.
The year 2023 was a discouraging year for U.S. national
security, and 2024 will be worse without substantial investment
in our military forces. This Committee recently heard about
challenges across maritime, air, and space domains, as well as
challenges with insufficient inventories of long-range
munitions in the Indo-Pacific theater. If we have any hope of
deterring threats from China, we need to act immediately to
enhance our capabilities.
Our needs across the combatant commands and within the
services are much too long to list here. We need more
submarines. We need more amphibious ships. We need to give our
servicemembers more visibility through intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance tools. We need more torpedoes.
We need more of the SM-6 multi-role missiles, more of the
Tomahawk strike missiles our ships and submarines carry, and
more of the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles that allow us to hit
enemy ships precisely from a safe distance. We need all of
these things now.
I welcome our witnesses' suggestions on how to improve the
Pentagon's ossified planning, contracting, and budgeting
processes, which continue to prevent us from producing cost-
effective programs on time and at scale.
I would also be interested in our witnesses' perspective
about the sufficiency of the overall topline defense budget.
The budget proposed yesterday by President Biden requests yet
another significant cut in defense. He proposed this even as
the Chinese Communist Party announced a 7.2 percent defense
budget increase just last week. Is it too much to ask that we
return to the generous portion of GDP [gross domestic product]
that gave us more than a decade of peace during the Reagan era?
We continue to ask our military to do too much with too
little, and that needs to change. I hope this Committee, Mr.
Chairman, on a bipartisan basis, is prepared to act this year
to ensure we address this looming national security crisis.
Thank you, sir.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much, Senator Wicker. Dr.
Scharre, please.
STATEMENT OF PAUL SCHARRE, Ph.D., EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND
DIRECTOR OF STUDIES CENTER FOR A NEW AMERICAN SECURITY
Dr. Scharre. Thank you, Chairman Reed, Ranking Member
Wicker, and distinguished Senators. Thank you for having me
here today.
We live in a period of tremendous technological change.
This creates opportunities for the United States but also for
our adversaries. The U.S. military must adopt technology faster
than its competitors. The bulk of technological innovation is
occurring outside DOD, and DOD must prioritize spinning-in
commercial technologies and harnessing them for military
advantage. This contest to rapidly adopt commercial
technologies is an all-too-level playing field with our
competitors.
China also has access to world-class technology companies,
and the PLA is working to ``intelligentize'' its forces. DOD
needs significant institutional change to keep pace with the
speed of technological innovation. Without these changes, we
risk falling behind competitors and the U.S. military being
unprepared in a future conflict.
DOD cannot lead in 21st century technologies with a 20th
century bureaucracy. The tech innovation landscape has changed
dramatically in the past half century, but DOD institutions
have not kept up. It is not merely that the technology itself
has advanced. That alone would be manageable. The problem is
that the role that DOD plays in tech innovation has changed,
but DOD has not yet sufficiently adapted to this new reality.
The Defense Department used to be the main driver of global
innovation, but not anymore. In 1960, DOD alone controlled 36
percent of global R&D (research and development) spending. DOD
could single-handedly drive the shape of technological
evolution around the world. DOD could make bets that others had
to respond to.
Now today this dynamic has reversed. DOD controls only 3
percent of global R&D. Two trends have caused this shift.
First, the Federal Government's share of U.S. domestic R&D has
fallen, with the private sector picking up the slack. Second,
the U.S. share of global R&D has dropped from nearly 70 percent
in 1960 to 30 percent today.
A combination of these trends in the commercialization and
globalization of research and development has dramatically
changed the role that DOD plays in technology development.
Instead of being a trend-setter, DOD is forced to react to
technology trends exogenous to the defense industry.
The dominant trend in global technology innovation today is
the information revolution. Network connectivity and bandwidth,
big data, AI [artificial intelligence] and machine learning,
genomics, Internet of Things devices, and computing hardware
are all advancing at literal exponential rates. To give just
one example, the amount of computing hardware used to train
cutting-edge machine learning systems, such as large language
models like ChatGPT, has grown 10 billionfold since 2010, and
is doubling every 6 months. This is much faster than the
historical 24-month doubling in chip performance associated
with Moore's Law. This has dramatic implications for the
military. Few other technologies are advancing this quickly.
Missiles are not 10 billion times faster than they were in
2010.
Yet information technologies (IT) are advancing at a
breathtaking pace, creating new opportunities for military
applications, and these technologies are so widely available,
coming out of a highly globalized, commercially driven R&D
ecosystem, that our competitors have similar opportunities.
DOD should prioritize investment in digital capabilities
that are riding these exponential curves--autonomy, robotics,
sensors, communication networks, data, cloud computing, cyber,
and electronic warfare, for example.
We can already see evidence of this dynamic in the war in
Ukraine, with the proliferation of small, commercially
available drones and counter-drone electronic warfare and
jamming systems. Our adversaries will capitalize on these
technologies. The only question is whether the United States
also competes or falls behind.
In recent years, DOD has created a slew of new innovation
organizations such as DIU [Defense Innovation Unit], AFWERX
[Air Force Work Project], SOFWERX [Special Operations Forces
Works], CDAO [Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence
Office], and others, and many of these have yielded tangible
successes. Yet DOD has often struggled to innovate quickly at
scale.
The Defense Department must move beyond bespoke solutions
to one-off problems are scale commercial tech adoption across
the $800 billion enterprise. DOD will need Congress' support to
move fast, be flexible, experiment with new technologies,
engage non-traditional companies, and take risks. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Scharre follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much, Dr. Scharre.
Dr. Brands, please.
STATEMENT OF HAL BRANDS, Ph.D., SENIOR FELLOW AT THE AMERICAN
ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, HENRY A. KISSINGER DISTINGUISHED
PROFESSOR OF GLOBAL AFFAIRS AT THE JOHNS HOPKINS SCHOOL OF
ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Dr. Brands. Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Wicker,
distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting
me. Let me just make three brief points at the outset here.
First, it is a perennial cliche to say that the
international landscape is more threatening and complex than it
has been at any time in decades. Today that cliche actually
happens to be true. All three key regions of Eurasia are
experiencing severe conflict or the threat of conflict. Today
we have Russia's war in Ukraine, the war between Israel, Hamas,
and all of the violent spillover it has produced across much of
the Middle East, as well as the growing threat of conflict with
China in the Western Pacific.
When you add in the other persistent threats the United
States must contend with from an increasingly belligerent North
Korea to a nuclearizing Iran to the persistent threat of
violent extremism, I think it is fair to say that the United
States faces more and more severe security challenges than at
any time since the end of the cold war, and perhaps even going
back farther than that.
Second, to Senator Wicker's point, the connections between
the threats the United States faces are growing, as is the
threat of conflict that spans multiple regions. Ties between
Russia and China, Russia and Iran, Russia and North Korea, and
China and Iran are all becoming strongly and more tightly
interwoven, which means that the conflicts in which these
various actors are engaged, or could engage in, are becoming
more tightly interconnected, as well.
I go into this issue in greater detail in my written
statement, but let me just say that my gravest concern about
the international security environment right now is not that
United States adversaries will mount a comprehensive, highly
coordinated assault on the international order. It is that the
regional conflicts in which they are engaged will fuel and feed
on each other, creating an atmosphere of growing global
disorder.
As I mentioned, the United States right now already faces
hot wars in two of the three key Eurasian theaters. If China
were to attack Taiwan or otherwise violently upend the status
quo in the Western Pacific, all three key theaters of Eurasia
would be engulfed in violent conflicts simultaneously, a
situation the world really has not seen since the run-up to
World War II.
Third, the U.S. is not adequately prepared for the world it
presently faces. For much of the past decade, the U.S. has been
transitioning toward a one-war defense strategy in a world
where it could easily face conflict in two or three theaters
simultaneously. As we have seen since Russia invaded Ukraine,
the United States defense industrial base would struggle
enormously if the United States were engaged in a major
conflict. U.S. defense spending is about as low, give or take,
as a percentage of GDP, as it has been at any time since the
late 1940's.
In other words, there is a growing gap between the
challenges the U.S. faces and the resources with which it can
face them. The longer that gap persists and the larger it
grows, the greater the likelihood it will be revealed by our
adversaries, at a time and place of their choosing, and at a
tremendous cost to global stability and our own security. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Brands follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your
very insightful testimony.
Dr. Scharre, with regard to technology, could you briefly
describe the strategy of today and what you see as its
strengths and weaknesses.
Dr. Scharre. Yes, of course, Senator. So I think that when
you look at the DOD's national defense S&T strategy, I think
one of the things that they have done very well is list a
number of different critical technologies. DOD, of course, has
been doing this for the last several years and then updating
them. The most recent one has a couple different bins that they
have put these in, which I think is somewhat helpful to
organize them.
I think there might be two things that I would suggest
would be helpful to the Department to do to add onto this. One
would be a sense of prioritization among these, that can drive
actually spending and investments. The problem is 14 things is
not really a list of priorities. It is a shopping list. It is
just a lot of things. It is all the things.
To their credit, past DOD leaders, some of them have made
very clear priorities. When he was Deputy Secretary of Defense,
Bob Work said robotics, AI, autonomy, his number one priority.
When he was Under Secretary, Michael Griffin said hypersonics,
directed energy, his top priorities.
The concern that I have in looking at this is, you know,
both things cannot be the number one thing, right? I think it
would be helpful for the Department to have a repeatable
process internally, a rubric, for prioritizing technologies
that they could come then to excellent audiences, to the Hill,
to industry, to others to say here is our process. These are
the questions that we ask, looking at where the technology is
coming from, its operational effects, its rate of growth. Based
on those factors we have decided these are the ones that are
the most important. This is the way it is going to drive our
decisions. A process that everyone else could look at and
understand it would be transparent. Instead of just kind of
individual leaders saying, well, I think this is more
important.
I think the other factor that I do not see included too
often is looking at the rate of growth of these technologies,
which I think matters quite a bit in sort of what do you think
is going to be most impactful in maybe the relatively near
future. You need to look at that differential rate of growth.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much.
Dr. Brands, before the 2023 Ukraine counteroffensive you
were urging more rapid support of the Ukrainian Forces. Now we
find ourselves in a position where we are deadlocked over this
supplemental. What is your view on the importance of the
supplemental and the timing of getting it done?
Dr. Brands. I think it absolutely crucial in the sense
that, one way or another, 2024 is going to be a difficult year
for Ukraine, where they will largely be on the defensive. The
question is whether 2024 can be a year in which Ukraine can
resist Russian advances and prepare itself for another
counteroffensive, perhaps in 2025, and the supplemental is
absolutely vital on both of those counts. Without additional
United States aid there just will not be the wherewithal to
mount another offensive, and as we are seeing right now,
without United States aid Ukraine will start to run critically
short of capability that it needs just to hold the line where
it is.
The Ukrainian withdrawal from Avdiivka was occasioned
largely by the fact that Ukrainian Forces simply did not have
the ammunition to hold very strong defensive positions that
they held there. When you take into account that most Ukrainian
defensive lines are not as well developed or strong as the ones
that they had to leave in Avdiivka, the reality is that if they
do not get this aid from the United States they are going to
find it very difficult just to keep the line in place over the
course of this year, which will further complicate the question
of how the war ends on terms successful for Ukraine.
Chairman Reed. Following that up, you have made the point
that the danger might not be a concerned axis of enemies that
come after us together but one exploiting the fighting in one
region, et cetera. This raises the question of China's kind of
observation of what is going on in Ukraine. So Dr. Brands, your
views on that.
Dr. Brands. I think one of the most constructive influences
on China's calculus relative to Taiwan over the past couple of
years has been the degree to which Russia has struggled in
Ukraine and the degree to which a coalition of countries,
mainly advanced democracies, has rallied to help support
Ukraine in its fight for survival.
I think it would be extremely damaging if the United States
were essentially to throw in the towel in Ukraine and to allow
Ukraine to be defeated, because the message that would send to
Xi Jinping and other people who are observing United States
behavior very closely is that the West may talk tough but
ultimately you can outlast the United States and get your way
in the end.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, and I will let the Ranger get the
last word. Do you concur, Dr. Scharre?
Dr. Scharre. I do, absolutely, and I do think that, as Dr.
Brands points out, our threats would worsen in Europe if we
were to not continue to support Ukraine. In the end we would
have an emboldened, stronger Russia as a result, which would be
a much larger burden for us in terms of defending our allies in
Europe, and the effects would be felt around the world,
including most acutely with China, and impact their calculus.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much. Senator Wicker, please.
Senator Wicker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Brands, let me
ask you about the National Defense Strategy (NDS). The law
requires the Secretary of Defense to review the adequacy of the
strategy and update it if circumstances have changed.
Now we got the latest strategy in October 2022, 17 months
ago or so. Do you think events have changed? Do you think this
situation has changed enough over that time that the Secretary
needs to review the adequacy of the strategy and make changes?
Dr. Brands. I think two critical things have changed since
the strategy was finalized and released in 2022. The first is
that the assumption that Russia would emerge from the Ukraine
war significantly weakened and ultimately defeated is no longer
as tenable as it once was. We are seeing a Russia that is doing
fairly well on the battlefield right now, and furthermore, is
aggressively mobilizing economically and militarily in a way
that will allow it to present a continuing threat to the
eastern front of NATO for many years to come after this war
ends.
The second thing that has changed, obviously, is that the
Middle East has erupted once again. This was not a calculation
that was foremost in the crafting of the National Defense
Strategy. We are seeing increased persistent demands on United
States military power in the Red Sea, in the Gulf of Aden, in
Iraq and Syria, and in a variety of other places where the
United States is trying to push back against Iran and its
proxies.
So when you put those two things together I think it
indicates that we are living in a rather different world than
was expected when the strategy was released.
Senator Wicker. Do we ever adequately fund the National
Defense Strategy?
Dr. Brands. Well, ``ever'' is a strong statement. I guess I
would say that the gap between our requirements and our
resources is bigger at times and smaller at times, and I worry
that it has gotten bigger in recent years. If you just think
about defense spending as a percentage of GDP, during the cold
war the United States spent, on average, about 7.5 percent of
GDP on defense. During the 1980's, during the period of the
Reagan buildup, it was about 6 percent, 6.5 percent, on
average. We are at about half of that today, just north of 3
percent.
When you compare that at the threat landscape that the
United States faces to historical trends of defense spending, I
think indicates that the gap between resources and commitments
is getting larger.
Senator Wicker. Well, sir, in a recent Foreign Affairs
essay, you mentioned that it is going to be hard to
dramatically ramp up military spending until it is politically
expedient, and you mentioned the possibility of Americans being
convinced only in the case of a jarring geopolitical shock.
But let me ask you to comment on that. we had a jarring
political shock in Pearl Harbor, because we were not ready.
During that time you mentioned that we were spending 6, 7
percent of GDP the cold war. We never really had a jarring
shock, did we?
Dr. Brands. We had shocks that were lesser than Pearl
Harbor but that did catalyze significant growth in U.S. defense
spending. So the Korean War, for instance, that led to a
massive expansion of United States defense spending from I
believe somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 or 4 percent of GDP
up to about 14 percent of GDP, at the height of that conflict.
Senator Wicker. Okay, and let's move ahead to the Carter
administration, the end of the Carter administration, and then
the beginning of the buildup in GDP under Reagan. What were
those numbers?
Dr. Brands. I believe at its peak under the Reagan
administration the U.S. was spending north of 6 percent of GDP
on defense.
Senator Wicker. We avoided during that time a jarring
geopolitical shock, did we not?
Dr. Brands. Yes.
Senator Wicker. Dr. Scharre, just real quickly, the
technologies are important. In my opening statement I said we
need more submarines, we need more amphibs, we need more
missiles. The fact that we need to gain the lead in DOD in
technologies does not take away from the fact that we need more
tools, more ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance], more missiles, more ships. Is that correct?
Dr. Scharre. Yes, I think that is true. I mean, we
obviously need physical platforms. We need ships. We need
submarines. I also think it is true--and I think, actually, the
Department understands this--that what is on those platforms
matters more than just the raw numbers. But we do need numbers,
and that is a major problem right now for the Department.
Senator Wicker. Lack of numbers is a major problem.
Dr. Scharre. Absolutely.
Senator Wicker. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Wicker. Senator Hirono,
please.
Senator Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So we already
spend north of $800 billion for defense. Dr. Brands, you are
suggesting that we double this to over a trillion. So it is not
just how much we are spending, it is what we are spending on,
is it not? So are we spending defense dollars in the kind of
priorities that you would expect us to be spending this money
on?
Dr. Brands. I think there are many constructive initiatives
underway within the Department to try to prepare the U.S. for
some of the conflicts that it might face. So I think a lot of
the operational concepts that are being devised by the services
that are geared toward conflict in the Western Pacific are
promising.
I think, though, that ultimately all of those concepts
require munitions, they require platforms, they require a
number of things, where quantity really does matter, and so I
think that while it is very important that we have the thrust
of our defense program right. It is very important that we
resource it adequately, as well.
Senator Hirono. Well, when you said quantity does matter,
because at some point the fact that China has so many more
quantities of planes and ships and everything else. Our
country, we could meet the challenge of China, for example,
through innovation. Both of you are now saying that we are
falling behind in our technological innovation. You say, Dr.
Brands, that the NDS, which came out sometime in late 2022, is
already not accurate with regard to Russia's powers and also
what is happening in the Middle East.
What do we need to do to make sure that we are actually, we
have the capacity to assess the needs that we have militarily
based on what is going on in the world. Not to mention, by the
way, how important are the alliances that we have at a time
like this when we are facing the conflicts in the Middle East
and in Russia and Ukraine? Either one of you.
Dr. Brands. I can talk about alliances and perhaps the
assessment issue. We have been fortunate over the past couple
of years in that we have gotten a real-time education in
demands that modern war and major war would present for the
U.S. Defense Department. We have seen in Ukraine the enormous
quantities of munitions and platforms that would be consumed by
a war between the United States and Russia, let alone the
United States and China. So I think we have gotten a greater
education in sort of the order of magnitude of what a major
conflict would demand.
On the question of alliances, just briefly I would say that
alliances are perhaps our greatest force multiplier in
international affairs. They give us access and influence in key
regions. They allow us to advocate the capabilities of other
countries to our own. They give us the ability to influence the
calculations of adversaries in an important way. In those and
other ways, I think they add dramatically to the influence the
U.S. can observe on the international stage.
Senator Hirono. I agree with you, and recently we have the
Quad Alliance, the AUKUS [Australia, United Kingdom, and United
States] agreements, trilateral relationship with the Republic
of Korea, Japan, and us, the renegotiation of funding of the
compact nations. So those are all very critical to our ability
to be ready in meeting, I think, the demands of the near-peer
people in China and Russia.
I am just curious. You both talk about how we are falling
behind in terms of our technological decisionmaking. We
recently got the report of the National Defense Industrial
Strategy. So do we need some kind of a national defense that
focuses on technological advancement?
Dr. Scharre. Yes, I think the new strategy and the defense
industrial base was excellent, and I think actually the big
challenge there is resourcing it. Because, in particular, the
Ukraine conflict has highlighted for us these particular
problems that we have seen in the defense industrial base,
especially in munitions procurement. It has given us, in many
ways, a golden opportunity to address those problems now, ahead
of a potential conflict with China, both to increase munitions
capacity and then scale production, and then look elsewhere in
the defense industrial base where we probably have similar
problems.
Senator Hirono. Well, but you both highlighted that we are
falling behind in terms of our technological capabilities. So
do we need to have a special group, within an entity, or the
development of a strategy that focuses on DOD capabilities in
the technology area? Do we need a specific group that is paying
attention to that need within DOD?
Dr. Scharre. I think so. I think maybe there are two maybe
challenges I would see. One would be some improvements to how
DOD thinks about S&T [science & technology] investments itself
in terms of the prioritization and the trends. But also at a
national level we are now competing with China at a national
level in technology competition, and we do not really have
anyone at the national level looking at that holistically. We
have seen not just DOD but Commerce and other elements of
national power come into form. I think we need to think more
strategically about how to use those elements of national
power.
Senator Hirono. Do you agree, Dr. Brands? I am running out
of time, but maybe you can respond briefly.
Dr. Brands. Yes.
Senator Hirono. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Hirono. Senator Fisher,
please.
Senator Fischer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Brands, many
analysts today, they seem to be relatively confident that the
risk of Chinese aggression is overblown. Do you think that
confidence is misplaced?
Dr. Brands. I would not hold a great degree of confidence
in our ability to predict that China will not use force in the
Western Pacific over the next several years, in part because
even if it is not to China's advantage to do so, we have seen
from the Ukraine war and many other cases in history that the
leaders often make bad decisions. They often make bad decisions
when they sit atop authoritarian regimes where information flow
is very restricted and there is a lot of incentive to tell the
person at the top what he or she wants to hear.
I worry also because the reality is that the military
balance in the Western Pacific is changing dramatically, and it
is changing in real time. The United States has done a variety
of important and constructive things over the past several
years to try to arrest the erosion of deterrence. Everything
from the coalition-building efforts that have been discussed to
some of the operational concepts that are being put in place
today. But the reality is that the scale of the PLA buildup is
just such that I worry we are losing rather than gaining
ground.
The one statistic that always stands out to me is that
between 2022 and 2023, the PLAAF [People's Liberation Army Air
Force] added 400 fourth-generation fighters, so basically F-16
equivalents, to its inventory. When you start getting into
numbers like that, even a qualitatively superior military,
which the United States clearly has, may struggle to defend
Taiwan or otherwise uphold its commitments in the region.
So as this decade goes on, if the balance continues to
shift I would become more worried about the PRC's [People's
Republic of China] propensity for aggression.
Senator Fischer. Dr. Brands, the United States has relied
heavily on sanctions against Russia. When we watch the
aftermath now of that in Ukraine it has failed to destroy.
Russia's economy was initially anticipated, you spoke to that
earlier, that the Russians are moving ahead with that. Do you
think that China would be more susceptible or less so to those
sanctions than Russia, and why?
Dr. Brands. I think it is complicated, Senator. On the one
hand, China is a harder sanctions target than Russia because
its economy is bigger, it is more diversified, and I think the
financial implications of going after the Chinese economy in
the way that the United States and its allies went after the
Russian economy would be more globally severe than they have
been in the Russian case. So for all of those reasons it might
be more difficult to inflict even the level of pain on China
that the United States and its allies have done to Russia.
The flip side of it, however, is that China is also,
because it is more globally integrated it is more dependent on
the global economy than Russia is. So the threat of having
access to Western markets severed would, I think, be more
impactful for China than it would for Russia, because I do not
see how China can accomplish its objectives without access to
the global economy over time.
Senator Fischer. Dr. Scharre, do you have any comments on
the sanctions on China, what we would see there?
Dr. Scharre. Yes, thank you, Senator. Actually, a colleague
of mine, Emily Kilcrease, at the Center for a New American
Security, recently released a very detailed analysis of this,
and I am happy to share it with you all afterwards. Looking at
different elements of China's economy and their exposure to
potential sanctions. There are a lot of areas, particularly in
the defense sector, that are fairly insulated because they are
not tied into the global economy, but their banking sector, in
particular, is one that does have some vulnerabilities.
I think those are places where we want to think
strategically about how do you leverage that? How do you
sustain those vulnerabilities, because China is certainly aware
of them, and they are looking to shore up their defenses and be
less vulnerable. How do you sustain those? Then in the run-up
to a potential conflict, how would you think about
strategically leveraging them, potentially as a means of
deterrence, which is a new way of thinking about sanctions than
we have necessarily done in the past, but I think there is a
lot of value there.
Senator Fischer. How would you both characterize the
relationship between Beijing and Tehran?
Dr. Brands. I think that China has been investing in this
relationship over the past few years in hopes of strengthening
its ties to a key player in the region. I think that China,
however, has to balance its relationship with Iran with its
efforts to deepen its relationship with Saudi Arabia and other
key states in the gulf. So there may be a Governor on how far
the China-Iran relationship can go that is less present in
other cases where you have autocratic countries coming
together.
Senator Fischer. Thank you very much.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Fisher. Senator Kaine,
please.
Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the
witnesses.
Dr. Brands, you talked about China's perception of the slow
pace of Russia in Ukraine, and that that has affected their
thinking about their own military ambitions. In particular you
cited China's observation that when the democracies link arms
it is pretty formidable. We do not have NATO in the Indo-
Pacific, but we do have sort of a latticework of alliances--the
Quad, the improved relationship between Korea and Japan, an
improving relationship with the Philippines, and AUKUS.
I would like you to each talk about--this Committee has
done a lot of work on AUKUS, as has the Foreign Relations
Committee. There is funding for some parts of AUKUS in the
supplemental bill pending in the House right now. I would like
you to talk about how you view the AUKUS framework Pillars 1
and 2 in terms of our security posture in the Indo-Pacific.
Dr. Brands. I think it is incredibly important in a handful
of different respects. In one respect, simply the geography of
AUKUS is very important because it is proof of concept of how
the United States can leverage individual alliances in order to
bring countries together into a larger network of actors that
are committed to pushing back against Chinese power, even when
those countries span regional boundaries.
Obviously, the piece of AUKUS that gets a lot of attention,
and rightly so, is the submarines piece of it, and that is
important because undersea warfare is, I think, one of the few
areas where the United States still enjoys unquestioned
superiority over China, even at the vast distances of the
Western Pacific.
Because it will take some time for the submarine dimension
of AUKUS to really bear fruit, I think the other pieces of it,
whether it is the advanced capabilities piece or sort of the
accompanying piece, which is increased access and presence in
northern Australia, are particularly important in terms of
developing the ability to bring power to bear in a conflict in
the Western Pacific and affecting China's calculations in terms
of how a conflict would go over the next 5 to 10 years.
As important as that is in its own right it is also a
critical bridge to the point where you can start to bring some
of the undersea capabilities to bear.
Senator Kaine. Dr. Scharre, other thoughts?
Dr. Scharre. I think given the timing dimension I might
prioritize things that involve joint exercises, things that
demonstrate to China that jointness in our ability to operate
with our allies in the region, things that involve basing
posture kind of things. I would, in particular, emphasize
things that are not physical capabilities but institutional
elements of collaboration. So things like joint planning
together, which we already obviously have deep ties with
Australia and the U.K., but things like bringing them on board
in terms of planning to actually, in the event of a conflict,
enable us to be able to fight effectively together.
Senator Kaine. Australian sailors are already going through
the training program at the nuclear power school with United
States Navy and in South Carolina Australian shipbuilders are
already here training at a manufacturing excellence facility in
Danville, Virginia. So we are moving out before the sub
transfers in the 2030's, which I am impressed by.
Let me conclude with an area where I am not happy with
alliances and that is the Red Sea. I am worried about the lack
of a real strategy in the Red Sea with the Houthis trying to
defend shipping, I think, makes some strategic sense. But
President Biden and others have acknowledged they do not think
firing more missiles at the Houthis is going to lead the
Houthis to fire fewer missiles. In fact, it seems like the pace
might be escalating.
In particular I am concerned that the burden of defending
commercial shipping in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea is
pretty heavily on the U.S.'s shoulders. I think it is just the
United States and the U.K. that are engaged in any kinetic
activity to knock down Houthi drones and missiles. I believe
the Italian navy might have engaged in one kinetic activity to
protect an Italian-flagged vessel.
Why are not more nations engaging in this defense in the
Red Sea when their probably commerce and trade is more affected
by the Houthi attacks than is the United States economy?
Dr. Brands. Senator, I think the basic problem is that many
of them do not have the capability to do so. Even in cases
where our allies might be included to help out in providing
this critical public good they are running short of the
resources. So Australia had their debate about whether they
would contribute to Operation Prosperity Guardian and
ultimately decided they would not, because I believe Australia
has a total of three ships that could be useful in this sort of
context, and they have decided that they are needed closer to
home.
So the lack of resources relative to challenges
unfortunately is not a distinctly American problem. It is a
larger free world problem at this moment.
Senator Kaine. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much, Senator Kaine. Senator
Schmitt, please.
Senator Schmitt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you both
for being here. Dr. Brands, in your book I am really interested
in the Danger Zone book, and how you balance, in trying to
understand the Chinese perspective, they certainly view
themselves as a 5,000-year-old civilization, the middle
kingdom, who, the last 200 years, has been an aberration, a
humiliation, in their view. They are not going to let that
happen again, they have a longer view, all those sorts of
things that are sort of baked into the understanding of their
mentality and how they are on the march now, in a very real
way, and probably more than people think. Their shipbuilding
capacity alone is striking, and I am not sure many people in
the general public understand that. They have a bigger navy--
not a better navy, but a bigger navy.
So that longer view, and you write about the 2020's being
absolutely critical, which is a very short-term issue in
setting the stage for this longer, great powers competition.
You have got the demographic cliff that they are facing. They
are no longer publishing a lot of economic data. Their youth
unemployment, which I think drives--GDP is really important to
us. I think unemployment for the Chinese is most important, for
a variety of reasons. When you are an authoritarian regime a
lot of young men not working is a real problem.
So how do you balance this, in your view of how they view
where they are at right now--and, of course, you have got this
big Taiwan question--where they are at right now. Do they view
that as, in your estimation, as a reason to go quicker, or do
they fall back to the traditional view of the longer-term
strategy?
Dr. Brands. Senator, my view--and this is by no means a
unanimous view among China watchers, I should add--but my view
is that China is being motivated by a dangerous mixture of
weakness, strength, and personalization at this point. The
weakness comes from the demographic and economic problems that
you noted, which are already having a pronounced effect on
Chinese growth, and that effect will only become more
pronounced over time. At the same time, the military
modernization program is still going gangbusters, if you look
at the increases in military spending.
You have a country whose long-term economic prospects are
dimming as its near-term military position becomes stronger.
Historically, that has been a recipe for trouble, because that
is exactly the sort of combination that tempts countries to use
force sooner rather than later to lock in advantages while they
still can. It is reinforced, in this case, because China's
fortunes have become increasingly entangled with Xi Jinping's
fortunes, as he personalizes the political system and does away
with this system of something closer to collective rule that
China had for a couple of generations after Mao Tse-Tung.
You sometimes hear Xi Jinping say things like, ``The
question of Taiwan cannot be passed down from generation to
generation.'' That is sometimes read as him saying, ``It cannot
be passed down to the next generation of Chinese leaders.''
When you put all those things together it makes me worry
that we may be dealing with a China that is in a bit of a hurry
by the time we get to the latter part of this decade.
Senator Schmitt. He is already in an unprecedented third
term.
Dr. Brands. With no indication that he is planning on
stepping down any time soon.
Senator Schmitt. Correct, and so if you were a betting man,
if you had to place a wager, red he goes, black he does not go,
where are you betting?
Dr. Brands. I think an operation against Taiwan would be
sufficiently daunting that there are lots of things that the
United States, Taiwan, and other countries in the region can do
to drive down the chances of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. But on
the current trajectory I am very worried about where we will
end up.
Senator Schmitt. Then one last question about the CCP and
China. So there has always been this sort of natural distrust
between them and Russia, or the USSR [Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics], or the Russian Empire, whatever phase Russia is in.
How do you view that? Even though they seem to be working more
collaboratively than they have in recent memory, there is still
this natural tension. They share a border. How do you gauge the
reality of that relationship right now?
Dr. Brands. The historic mistrust is still there. In fact,
China will occasionally print maps that show it controlling
parts of Russia, as it is currently constituted. Certainly I
think the Russians, in particular, know that if China comes
anywhere close to achieving its ambitions in Eurasia that is
going to be a very challenging situation for Russia itself.
Those concerns are rather distant at the moment.
Ideologically, these are two countries. They are both
autocratic powers trying to make it in a world dominated by a
democratic superpower. They both view the United States and its
allies as their primary enemies, and by all indications, Xi and
Putin seem to have similar world views and get along fairly
well.
So those historic tensions may reassert themselves, but
perhaps not on a timeline that would help us in this decade or
a little bit beyond.
Senator Schmitt. So maybe the United States exploiting some
of those traditional differences as opposed to driving them
together probably makes the most sense for us, right?
Dr. Brands. It could. I will spare you a long excursion
into history, but if you look back at the prior Sino-Soviet
relationship, the United States actually pursued a strategy in
the 1950's of trying to drive them closer together as a way of
exploiting those frictions within the relationship. I would
argue that it worked fairly well at the time.
Senator Schmitt. Okay. Thank you.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Schmitt. Senator King,
please.
Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to
thank both of you for very thoughtful and insightful testimony.
Talking about some of the issues that we have already touched
upon, in 1962, as you have testified, our defense was something
like 8 or 9 percent of GDP. Today it is under 3 percent. The
projection I just saw was 2.7 for 2024.
The cornerstone of our national security policy is
deterrence. I would argue that this dramatic decline, by two-
thirds, is a chink in the armor of deterrence. Would you
concur? In other words, the Chinese and the Russians and others
look at that number as part of measuring how fearful they
should be of our ability to respond.
Dr. Brands. I think it is certainly unhelpful, Senator, and
I think that whether it is the number they look at or the speed
at which the U.S. would exhaust its munitions inventory in a
particular conflict, those are precisely the sort of issues
that would worry me about whether deterrence was eroding.
Senator King. The second question along those lines is our
failure to continue to support Ukraine, how would that affect
Xi's calculus in terms of Taiwan and his analysis of our
staying power?
Dr. Brands. I think Xi is predisposed to think that the
United States and its allies lack the endurance and the stamina
to hold the line against China and its partners over the long
term. If the United States were to terminate support for
Ukraine or would allow Ukraine to be defeated, I think it would
simply reinforce that perception. Which would be unhelpful, as
Dr. Scharre had pointed out, not just in Europe but in the Asia
Pacific as well.
Senator King. Dr. Scharre, do you agree?
Dr. Scharre. Absolutely. I mean, Xi already believes that
America is in decline. That we do not have staying power, and
it would certainly reinforce that assumption that even in the
event of a conflict, if the United States were to be directly
engaged in defending Taiwan, that we simply would not be able
to go the distance and China could outlast us.
Senator King. My impression from the initiation of the
Ukraine war was that Xi was somewhat surprised by the reaction
of the West, the unification, expansion of NATO, and that
surprise and concern would be dissipated if we indeed abandoned
Ukraine.
Dr. Scharre. Right. Precisely.
Senator King. I like it when witnesses say precisely in
answer to a question.
I want to go back to the very beginning, and also I want to
associate myself with the questions of Senator Wicker in terms
of the GDP percentage. The American public does not realize, we
hear this big number, $800 billion, and at ten times other
countries, but in terms of the percentage of our economy
devoted to defense it has fallen by almost two-thirds in the
last 60 years.
R&D, real problem. New technologies win wars. Genghis Khan
conquered the world because of the invention of the metal
stirrup. The longbow turned the tide. The British had 5,000 at
the Battle of Agincourt, the French 20,000. The use of the
longbow was generally considered by historians to be crucial in
turning that battle, and indeed, the 100 Years War.
I worry, it is obviously that there are new technologies
that we have been slow. Directed energy and hypersonics are the
two that strike me as most obvious. How do we get the Pentagon
to understand the role of new technology? Dr. Scharre, what is
your view?
Dr. Scharre. I think that the Defense Department, basically
in its DNA, understands the value of technology. I actually
think what is missing right now is a sense of where the
priorities ought to lie, because I think the DOD is still stuck
in a mindset from the 1960's where DOD believes that it has to
invent all the technologies itself. But there is so much
technological innovation happening outside the Defense
Department that I think that is going to matter more.
I would say that it is true that technology is absolutely
critical to winning wars, but what matters most is finding the
best ways of using the technology. That is clear looking at
history. So having institutional processes that can figure out
how do we capitalize on this. Because in many ways----
Senator King. One of the problems--we have had testimony to
this Committee that smaller companies in Silicon Valley do not
even bother applying for contracts to the Department of Defense
because it is so cumbersome, slow, and we are losing access to
innovation.
Dr. Scharre. I would actually, so even worse, we are
building barriers to access, right. Those barriers are self-
constructed by us, red tape that makes it hard for companies
that would like to work with DOD to work with us. So we need to
find ways to tear down those barriers.
Senator King. In the meantime, we are spending $5 million a
missile to knock down $200,000 to $300,000 drone out of the
Houthis, when directed energy could do it for about 50 cents a
shot. We have just got to break down this barrier, both in
terms of working with smaller and innovative companies but
also, as you say, taking advantage of technologies developed in
the private sector and then transferring them into our arsenal,
if you will.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I yield.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator King. Senator Gillibrand,
please.
Senator Gillibrand. Hi. Thank you so much for your
testimony today. I want to ask some larger questions.
The United States has always had a theory that mutually
assured destruction and deterrence would restrict an adversary
from taking the United States on domestically anywhere in our
country. We have an assumption that we would never have to
defend a war here in the United States. Well, that assumption
does not play out when you are looking at the arena of cyber or
AI or other types of disruption that could be lethal.
We have seen cyberattacks over the last 5 years in an array
of places--solar winds, shutting down our supply chain for
food, affecting oil production and delivery. We have seen
cyberattacks in every industry, whether it is in health care
most recently, or in banking, or in any domain within the
United States.
Yesterday I sat on the Intel hearing, and asked each of the
witnesses, from Director Burns to Director Haines and other
military personnel doing intelligence for DIA and other
entities. I asked them the question of--I gave one example,
let's say an adversary decides to use AI and different kinds of
generated content to spew out false information from an elected
leader or a candidate to such a degree that it misleads the
American public in a U.S. election. What are you doing to
prevent that or to respond to that efficiently, and who here is
responsible for telling the American people the facts of any
given incident? None of them had a plan, and none of them took
responsibility for the protection of the United States.
I would like to get your assessment of how do we protect
the United States? Let's just say China, in its effort to
invade Taiwan, uses the first 2 or 3 months to just do as many
cyberattacks as possible in our critical infrastructure, around
our bases, around our ability to launch from, let's say Guam,
which they just tested a few months ago. Takes our electric
grid, takes out our capacity, creates chaos, undermines the
economy significantly. We have no plan to defend against that.
I think the response is, well, you have got the FBI [Federal
Bureau of Investigation], which is a response organization, you
have got CISA [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security
Agency], which can offer best practices but has no mandate, but
you have no one who is in charge of protecting anything in
CONUS [Continental United States].
I would like you to talk about how should we realign our
assessment of what the role of the Department of Defense, NSA
[National Security Agency], CIA [Central Intelligence Agency],
National Security Operations and Forces, what is the
responsibility to protect America from an attack from an
adversary in the United States, whether it is cyber, to create
chaos and death and destruction, or any other type of attack,
from, you know, drones attacking our bases, or spy balloons
hovering over our most secret assets. What should the United
States be doing?
Dr. Scharre. Well, thank you, Senator. I would look at both
of these, the cyber dimension and the disinformation one, as
warning shots that we are getting now, none of which have been
critical yet to the U.S. but we have an imperative to respond
to these, to shore up our defenses.
I think on the cyber front there is clearly a lot more we
could do. We continue to have challenges. As you point out,
just recently in the health care system, and putting the onus
on industry putting in place government standards for
cybersecurity across a wide range of sectors that has been
critical to be shoring up our defenses here.
On the disinformation, too, there are a wide range of
things that we could be doing. For example, requiring that AI-
generated content is watermarked and is labeled appropriately
when it is online. Something like a bot disclosure law, that if
someone is using AI--California has this--they have to share
that it is AI generated, and then cracking down on foreign
efforts to message, whether using AI or elsewhere, and spread
disinformation here in the United States, are all things that I
think we should be doing now.
Dr. Brands. Senator, I would not add anything substantial.
I would just say that when the United States war games
potential Taiwan conflicts or things like that, the Homeland
dimension is often the piece that gets short shrift, in large
part because, you know, war-gaming is traditionally a DOD
competency so it focuses heavily on that aspect of the
response. But the more that you can get relevant stakeholders
together to really game through what the domestic disruptions
would be in this sort of conflict, the more I think you can get
them talking about the ways in which their responsibilities
might overlap or where they might need to develop new
competencies in order to defend the U.S.
Senator Gillibrand. Thank you.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Gillibrand.
Gentlemen, thank you for your excellent testimony. I have
one questions which was frequently overlooked today, and that
is we are emerging into a new world of nuclear competition
between three powers. Not bipolar competition which shaped the
whole theory of deterrence, and then, of course, we have the
other nuclear entities--North Korea, Pakistan, and other
countries.
So what is your take on how we should address this nuclear
issue?
One other point I would make is it used to be the custom of
every presidency to seek out at least one agreement with the
Russians, even if it was a minor one. But we have not had much
discussion about Russia, and China, I do not think, will talk
to us until they get up to our level of missiles. But this is
an issue that is overlooked often, and since I have two
extremely intelligent gentlemen here, your view. I will start
with Dr. Scharre, please.
Dr. Scharre. Thank you, Senator. I would actually argue
that we have three interlocking problems. There are others that
complicate what you are describing. There is certainly the fact
that we are moving into a tripolar nuclear era, with China's
nuclear buildup. We have emerging technologies that are
complicating a lot of the strategic dimensions, maybe outside
of nuclear weapons, but in space and elsewhere, of nuclear
deterrence. Then also, of course, we have seen with Russia an
increased salience of nuclear weapons, and a risk that we may
actually see them used in ways that maybe are heightened from
what we might have thought a couple of years ago.
I think it is clear that we need increased investments in
this space, that if we are going to maintain a deterrent
against two adversaries simultaneously we are going to need
more dimensions here. The simultaneity problem is, I would
argue, most acute in the nuclear dimension because of this
issue, more so than in the conventional space.
I think we are also going to need a lot of new thinking.
The reality is that sort of among the defense intellectuals
that work on these topics, the sort of nuclear community has,
over many years, atrophied because nuclear weapons have not
been as salient until more recently. So I think increased war-
gaming and studies and investments to buildup that intellectual
capital and to get senior leaders thinking about these
challenges. Okay, if an adversary uses a nuclear weapon in a
conflict to try to maybe terminate on their terms, how do we
respond accordingly?
Chairman Reed. Thank you. Dr. Brands, please.
Dr. Brands. Just three things, very briefly. One, the
scenarios that we worry about nuclear use now I think are very
different than they were during the cold war. Now what we worry
most about is sort of limited nuclear use or coercive use to
back up limited conventional aggression as opposed to in a
conflict that would engulf Europe as a whole. Which indicates
to me that the United States is probably going to need more
investment in limited nuclear capability of its own to close
the gap between the conventional arsenal and the strategic
deterrent.
The second is that the force sizing issue becomes
particularly complicated in a tripolar nuclear environment.
Because having enough to assure a second strike capability
against one adversary, that may not do you much good if you
then find yourself in a position of inferiority against
another. So I am not convinced that we have given that the
attention that it deserves.
The third is that, unfortunately, I think bilateral United
States-Russia arms control is probably dead for the foreseeable
future. The good news is that that gives us a chance to rethink
what sort of arms control agreements might be to United States
advantage in an environment where most of them may need to be
trilateral rather than bilateral to begin with.
Chairman Reed. Just a final point before I recognize
Senator Kelly, it may have been that China, for their own
benefit, gave us a little help in Ukraine. Because I think they
were very, very much opposed to Putin's threats to use nuclear
weapons. Not because of Ukraine but because they do not want to
see South Korea, Japan, et cetera, become nuclear powers.
It is a complicated world, and it is a new world for us
now, and I think we have to approach it that way. But thank
you.
Senator Kelly, please.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to
both of you for being here today.
As a Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I see
firsthand the importance of intelligence gathering to our
national security and also to strengthening our international
partnerships. Building these relationships is vital to advance
our shared goals and protect the American people.
As you said recently, Dr. Brands, quote, ``strategy is the
art of balancing power without subverting democratic purpose,''
unquote, and there is clearly an art to successful intelligence
partnerships. Can you speak to how intelligence partnerships
are vital to the art of national strategy?
Dr. Brands. Senator, I have looked at this mostly in a
historical context during the cold war. I guess I would say
that just as alliances are a force multiplier in general, they
are certainly a force multiplier when it comes to intelligence.
One of the things we found historically is that through our
intelligence liaison programs with allies we may gain access to
expertise on particular countries or regions that we have not
invested in heavily ourselves. If we look at the way that
Australia, for instance, can be helpful in understanding events
in the South Pacific.
We may also gain access to particular sources, human
sources, that the U.S. intelligence system may not have access
to itself, and so we end up being in a stronger national
position by dint of the relationships that we have with other
countries in this realm.
Senator Kelly. One concern I have had lately is our ability
to gather intelligence in North Korea. We have got an
unpredictable actor with an arsenal, and without the
intelligence flowing in our direction it is just really hard to
make predictions on what he is going to do.
A little bit more on Ukraine. Dr. Brands, you have also
written extensively on our need to provide support to Ukraine.
I agree that this is one of our top priorities. You know, Putin
is not going to stop with Ukraine if we do not stop him in
Ukraine.
In addition to supporting them militarily, can you give
your perspective on building an intelligence partnership to
support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia?
Dr. Brands. From what I read in the news, United States
intelligence support to Ukraine has been absolutely vital in
everything from helping the Ukrainian Government understand the
nature of the threat that was coming at it in February 2022 and
after, to providing more actionable insights in the months and
years that have followed.
But I would also, Senator, encourage people to think about
it, the other way around, where the United States will gain
enormous benefits from an intelligence partnership with
Ukraine. Because just to put it very bluntly, Ukraine has
fought Russia and we have not. Ukraine has gained insights into
the way that modern war works in a high-intensity environment,
that even the United States military, with all of its
experience over the last 20-plus years does not have.
So I would prefer to think of it as a two-way partnership
in the sense that the U.S. itself will benefit tremendously.
Senator Kelly. Yes, and not just with intelligence. I have
made a couple of trips to Ukraine in the last 18 month or so,
and I made this point with the Ukrainians. At the beginning of
this conflict. We had much better intel on the Russians and
experience, combat experience. Fast forward 2 years later, They
are the ones that have been--they are on the ground here
fighting every single day and fighting for their lives bravely.
Now they have that experience, and we have a lot to learn from
them.
Dr. Scharre, you have written extensively about the
importance of AI in military operations. I also noted your
recent House testimony on the Replicator initiative, which
intends to field thousands of autonomous systems in about 2
years. Can Replicators successfully make long-term, fundamental
changes to the DOD acquisition process?
Dr. Scharre. I hope so. We will see. I think that DOD set a
very ambitious goal for itself. I think that is good. They are
going to need congressional support to make that happen. I
would like to see them succeed. I think it is too early to
tell, but hopefully.
Senator Kelly. In my last minute could you comment a little
bit about how AI should be integrated into our national
strategy?
Dr. Scharre. I guess on a couple of levels. I think
certainly in the military space we need to be moving forward
very quickly to bring in AI technology, putting in place the
infrastructure on data and on computing hardware, cloud
computing, inside the DOD to make DOD ready for AI, to use it
effectively. But also nationally we need to protect our
advantages in AI. The best AI companies in the world are here
in the United States, and right now the reality is we are
giving a lot of those advantages for free to China. That a lot
of the technology proliferates very quickly to China, within 18
to 24 months. Those best AI models have gone open source, they
have proliferated to China. I think we also need to look at
protecting the crown jewels of United States AI advantage.
Senator Kelly. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thanks, Senator Kelly. Senator Cotton,
please.
Senator Cotton. Gentleman, welcome. Dr. Brands, last
Thursday night we had the President yelling at us for an hour,
sounding like it was 1941, with threats to democracy around the
world. Yesterday we got his budget. He seemed more like Harry
Truman in the 1940's or Bill Clinton in 1993, drawing down our
military after the wars. It only had a 1 percent increase in
defense spending compared to last year's request. Given
continued high inflation, that amounts to a real cut. China
recently announced that it was going to increase its defense
budget by 7.2 percent.
Do you think the President's Budget Request accurately and
soundly addresses the severity of the threats that we face
today?
Dr. Brands. No. I worry both about the topline, and then
from what I can tell from a quick skim of the budget
submission, particularly what it will mean for procurement in
the coming years, where I think we are looking at an absolute
cut, which would be, even in relative, inflation-adjusted
terms, more severe still.
Senator Cotton. Could you tell us a little bit more about
the specific concerns you have on procurement, going forward in
the future?
Dr. Brands. Well, one of the major challenges we face at
this point is generating and procuring the number of munitions
we would need for particular contingencies as well as simply
some of the platforms that would be used to deliver them. It is
helpful to have investment in R&D, in modernization and things
that look forward down the future. But you are not going to be
able to get there unless you have the money to actually buy
things once they become available.
Moreover, procurement spending at this point provides a
double benefit, because the only way you can really strengthen
the defense industrial base is by providing guarantees that
money to buy things will actually be there. If you are looking
for firms to expand or ramp up new production lines, invest in
a new workforce. That is the sort of money you need to be
spending now that would make possible further investments down
the road.
Senator Cotton. A kind of multi-year procurement authority,
that some in Congress have resisted.
Dr. Brands. Yes, I think that is going to be critical.
Senator Cotton. Yes. That is because you cannot expect
those companies, or more to the point, the companies' owners in
the form of their shareholders, to lay out significant capital
up front if they do not have confidence of a return down the
road?
Dr. Brands. If the business case is there, then they will
make the investments. But for the business case to be there
they have to be persuaded that this is not just a 1-year bump
in, say, procurement of 155 mm artillery ammunition, or
whatever the capability is. Because otherwise they cannot
justify all the new investments that will be necessary to get
to that point.
Senator Cotton. Dr. Scharre, you are nodding your head. Do
you have anything to add to that?
Dr. Scharre. I do, and I guess I would add, Senator, that,
you know, we have heard from lots of experts in Government,
outside of Government I have talked to, Dr. Brands, of course,
has written extensively on this, that we are entering this
dangerous window at the end of the decade with China.
It seems to me that if we believed that we would be putting
our Defense Department, our defense industry on a wartime
footing. We would be expanding capacity. We would be increasing
our defense industrial base capacity, building our munitions
stockpiles, building our ability to surge. We have a few years
of critical warning now, and we need to seize that opportunity,
or I think there is a very real risk that we look back on this
moment and realize that we missed the opportunity to be ready.
Senator Cotton. Yes. So you make those outlays now, and you
want to ensure companies will get a reasonable rate of return
on their investments now. Is there any reason to think the
world is going to be safer in 3 or 5 or 10 years than it is
now, and we will not need all that stuff we are investing in?
Dr. Brands, do you want to take that?
Dr. Brands. No, there is no reason to believe that. We are
going to be dealing with a hyper-revisionist and perhaps hyper-
mobilized Russia for some time to come. We are going to be
dealing with a China whose military buildup continues at a very
alarming rate. We are going to be dealing with a North Korea
whose nuclear arsenal and missile arsenal is going to outpace
United States missile defenses at some point this decade, as
well as all the challenges in Iran and from terrorist groups.
So no, there is no reason to think the threat environment will
become less severe.
Senator Cotton. Dr. Scharre?
Dr. Scharre. I might just add that the best thing that we
could do to buy down the risk of a conflict with China is to
make investments now that increase deterrence.
Senator Cotton. It is always costly, investment of
resources and national effort, to preserve the peace, but more
costly, I presume, to win a war when the peace is not
preserved.
Thank you, gentleman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much, Senator Cotton.
Gentleman, thank you for excellent testimony, and I hope that
this will not be the last time we have you before the Committee
and reach out for advice, and I encourage you to feel free,
please, to let us know what your thoughts are and what we
should be thinking about.
We are hopeful that having passed the last batch of
appropriations bills will get the defense bill done next week,
but if not then we have problems, immediate problems.
But again, let me thank you all for excellent testimony and
for your continued wise insights into the national security of
the United States.
With that I will adjourn the hearing.
[Whereupon, at 10:47 a.m., the Committee adjourned.]
[Questions for the record with answers supplied follow:]
Questions Submitted by Senator Elizabeth Warren
blast overpressure and blast exposure
1. Senator Warren. Dr. Scharre, you published a Center for New
American Security report in 2018 on the impact of blast overpressure on
servicemembers. What steps do you think the Department of Defense (DOD)
should take now to improve how it is protecting servicemembers from
blast overpressure and blast exposure?
Dr. Scharre. DOD has taken some steps to improve its understanding
of the effects of blast overpressure on the brain but significant work
remains.\1\ Most notably, DOD has yet to implement a comprehensive
blast surveillance program that would collect blast exposure data for
all servicemembers at risk of blast exposure in training and combat.
The basic technology to collect this data in a quantitative, automated,
and cost-effective manner has existed since 2011 and have been deployed
on servicemembers in combat zones. DOD has undertaken a pilot program
(Blast Overpressure Studies--Pilot) but has not yet implemented a
comprehensive blast surveillance program that would cover all troops
who are at risk of blast exposure in training and combat.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ See also Samantha McBirney, ``Repeated Exposure to Low-Level
Military Occupational Blasts: An Overview of the Research, Critical
Gaps, and Recommendations,'' Testimony presented before the U.S. Senate
Armed Services Committee, Military Personnel Subcommittee on February
28, 2024, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/testimoneys/
CTA3200/CTA3250-1/RAND_CTA3250-1.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This failure has significant consequences for troops today and over
the long term. In the immediate term, U.S. troops are denied the
opportunity to change their firing tactics based on feedback from blast
gauges that report their amount of blast exposure. The DOD CONQUER
program found that that troops were able to reduce blast pressure
exposure by 30 to 90 percent by modifying firing tactics, but they
cannot do so without the feedback that blast gauges provide.\2\ In long
term, without blast exposure data in their service records, troops may
be denied care for traumatic brain injury by the DOD and VA. Finally, a
failure to collect comprehensive data on blast exposure makes it more
difficult for DOD to gain the necessary information to understand the
relationship between blast exposure and potential brain injury. The
first step toward better understanding and mitigating potential harm
from blast exposure is to collect the data.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Suthee Wiri et al., ``Significant Mitigation of Blast
Overpressure Exposure During Training by Adjustment of Body Position as
Demonstrated With Field Data,'' Military Medicine, November 7, 2023,
https://academic.oup.com/milmed/advance-article/doi/10.1093/milmed/
usad429/7422180.
2. Senator Warren. Dr. Scharre, which military occupational
specialties are at highest risk for blast overpressure and blast
exposure?
Dr. Scharre. The unfortunate reality is that we do not have good,
quantitative data to assess which military occupational specialties are
most at risk from blast exposure because DOD has not collected this
data. The 4 November 2022 memo from Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Readiness Shawn G. Skelly, ``Interim Guidance for Managing Brain Health
Risk from Blast Overpressure,'' identified several weapon systems whose
blast overpressure exceeds 4 pounds per square inch (psi). Troops
exposed to blast overpressure in excess of 4 psi have demonstrated
degradation in neurocognitive performance. Weapon systems identified in
the memorandum include breaching explosives, shoulder-fired anti-tank
weapons, 0.50 caliber sniper rifles and machine guns, howitzers, and
mortars. Troops who regularly use these weapon systems, such as those
in breaching, artillery, mortars, anti-tank, or sniper duty positions,
may be at heightened risk. However, to more fully understand the risk
profile of troops in various roles, DOD must take several additional
steps:
Undertake additional weapons testing using blast pressure
monitoring devices (blast gauges) to better characterize the blast
effects of these weapons.
Conduct computer simulations of how the blast waves
travel to estimate the actual amount of blast overpressure exposure to
the brain.
Conduct neurocognitive testing of troops before and after
firing to understand the immediate neurocognitive effects from blast
exposure when firing weapons.
Conduct a longitudinal medical study of troops in high-
risk occupations or duty positions to better understand the cumulative
effects of repeated exposures over the course of a servicemember's
career.
Institute a blast surveillance program to comprehensively
monitor and record blast exposures across the force to better
understand how many exposures, of what intensity and over what
duration, troops are experiencing in training and combat.
DOD has taken some of these actions but has not pursued all of them
comprehensively. For example, the DOD CONQUER program was a pilot blast
monitoring program to better characterize training-related blast
exposure for servicemembers using breaching explosives, shoulder-fired
anti-tank weapons, artillery, mortars, and .50 caliber machine guns and
sniper rifles. This data has helped improve understanding of the type
of blast exposure caused by firing various weapon systems. Similarly,
DOD has conducted a pilot blast surveillance program (Blast
Overpressure Studies--Pilot). However, there is much more that needs to
be learned about the effects of repetitive blast exposure on the brain.
Gaining this information will help DOD better understand which duty
positions are most at risk and ultimately establish training safety
standards that will reduce risk to servicemembers while preserving
readiness.
3. Senator Warren. Dr. Scharre, what would be the benefits of the
Department of Defense updating and disseminating thresholds for blast
exposure safety, including on the basis of brain injury risk and over
longer periods of time such as 72 to 96 hours, yearly, and annual
limits?
Dr. Scharre. The benefit would be to improve safety standards,
adjust training practices, and ultimately reduce the amount of
potentially harmful exposure that U.S. troops have to blasts, including
from firing their own weapons. The long-term effect of reducing blast
exposure to safer levels would be reduced incidents and severity of
traumatic brain injury among the force, increasing long-term health,
reducing cognitive impairments, and improving readiness.
4. Senator Warren. Dr. Scharre, what would be the benefits of the
Department of Defense developing strategies to mitigate blast exposure
and blast overpressure to the military occupational specialties most at
risk?
Dr. Scharre. There are several potential strategies that DOD could
employ to reduce potentially harmful blast exposure to safer limits.
One of the easiest ways to do so is to provide blast gauges to troops
when firing heavy weapons or conducting breaching, which provides
immediate feedback on blast overpressure exposure. In prior tests using
blast gauges during training, the feedback from blast gauges allowed
units to identify flaws in firing positions that cause individuals to
receive excessive amounts of exposure, such as standing in the wrong
location or having the wrong body position when firing the weapon.
Feedback from blast gauges allows troops to immediately modify their
firing techniques to reduce exposure. The DOD CONQUER program found
that that troops were able to reduce blast pressure exposure by 30 to
90 percent by modifying firing tactics.\3\ Other strategies to reduce
blast exposure could include reducing the number of rounds that
servicemembers are exposed to during training, requiring mandatory rest
periods after exposures to allow the brain to heal, mandating greater
standoff for non-firing troops on firing ranges, increasing protection
such as through improved helmet designs that could reduce blast
exposure, limiting the total amount of time in their career that
servicemembers can spend in high-risk duty positions, such as anti-tank
roles that involve firing shoulder-fired heavy weapons, and potentially
modifying certain weapons to reduce the amount of blast overpressure
exposure when firing. The benefit of these and potentially other
strategies would be to reduce potentially harmful blast exposure and,
as a result, reduce incidents of brain injury while minimizing the
impact to training and operational effectiveness.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Wiri et al., ``Significant Mitigation of Blast Overpressure
Exposure During Training by Adjustment of Body Position as Demonstrated
With Field Data.''
5. Senator Warren. Dr. Scharre, how would servicemembers benefit if
the Department of Defense establishes blast exposure and traumatic
brain injury logs to track their exposure over their career?
Dr. Scharre. I have personally spoken with multiple servicemembers
who were exposed to excessive amounts of blasts from firing their own
weapons during training well beyond approved limits, particularly the
Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle, and now suffer traumatic brain injury as
a result. However, since this exposure is not documented in their
service records and the VA and DOD have been slow to acknowledge the
link between blast exposure and brain injury, these servicemembers have
struggled to receive care through the VA for their injuries.
6. Senator Warren. Dr. Scharre, what would be the benefits of
requiring DOD to consider blast exposure in the weapons acquisition
process and for companies to provide blast overpressure and blast
exposure safety data under their contract requirements?
Dr. Scharre. DOD currently lacks good data on the amount of blast
overpressure that certain weapons may expose troops to when firing.
Collecting this data is essential to understanding the relationship
between blast exposure and brain injury and establishing safe limits
and blast exposure reduction strategies. DOD will not be able to fully
understand and mitigate potentially harmful blast exposure--or even
understand what levels and types of blast exposure are potentially
harmful--without first collecting the data.
7. Senator Warren. Dr. Scharre, what steps should the Department
take to mitigate the higher risk levels to blast exposure and blast
overpressure that training instructors face?
Dr. Scharre. DOD should take several steps to mitigate blast
exposure for training instructors:
Issue blast gauges to instructors so that they can modify
their positions on the range to minimize their blast exposure based on
immediate, quantitative feedback on blast exposure.
Enroll instructors in a blast surveillance program to
record their cumulative blast exposures over time.
Conduct regular neurocognitive assessments of training
instructors, including pre-and post-training events, to identify and
document any changes in performance.
Continue to update range safety standards based on the
best available data from ongoing DOD studies on blast exposure.
8. Senator Warren. Dr. Scharre, New York Times reporting from
November 2023 revealed that despite DOD taking some steps to improve
safety for blast overpressure, ``things have hardly changed on the
ground.'' Instead, ``[t]raining continues largely as it did before''
and ``[t]roops say they see little being done to limit or track blast
exposure.'' What are the biggest challenges to implementing safety
measures for mitigating exposure on the ground?
Dr. Scharre. The biggest obstacle to improving safety measures for
mitigating blast exposure is the failure of DOD leaders to prioritize
understanding and mitigating harm from blast exposure. DOD has
generated presentations, briefings, documents, and some modest pilot
programs but taken few meaningful steps since our CNAS report was
published in 2018. DOD has not implemented a comprehensive blast
surveillance program that would track and monitor blast exposure among
servicemembers in training and combat. DOD has not actually implemented
a longitudinal medical study that would collect data on blast
exposures, neurocognitive performance, and potential biomarkers on
high-risk servicemembers who are exposed to blasts over the course of
their career so that DOD can better understand the effects of
cumulative blast exposures over time.
These failures cannot be chalked up to merely a slow-moving
bureaucracy. They represent a failure of DOD leaders to prioritize this
issue and take meaningful and urgent action to mitigate the potential
harm to servicemembers from blast exposure.
9. Senator Warren. Dr. Scharre, what steps should the Department
take to improve training and education for servicemembers on the
dangers of this exposure and safety measure to address these concerns,
and ensure that servicemembers are following through on implementation
of these safety measures?
Dr. Scharre. DOD has ample mechanisms to ensure that troops comply
with safety standards and conduct hazardous training in a safe manner.
For example, DOD regularly conducts training on airborne operations and
has extensive procedures in place to ensure that troops successfully
train on high-risk activities in a safe manner. DOD is more than
capable of enforcing training safety standards for firing heavy
weapons, such as firing limits, if it prioritizes doing so.
__________
Questions Submitted by Senator Jacky Rosen
technological edge
10. Senator Rosen. Dr. Scharre, history shows us that harnessing
new technologies creates a significant advantage on the battlefield.
The country that manages to use these technologies effectively and
efficiently will have the upper hand in any future wars. What do you
predict will be the defining weapons of the next war and how can the
United States ensure it uses these weapons effectively and responsibly?
Dr. Scharre. Technology is critical to modern warfighting, and
disruptive technologies have often led to profound changes in the
character of warfare, necessitating changes in tactics, doctrine, and
military organization. In recent years, the Defense Department has
identified priority technology areas for investment that may have a
significant effect on U.S. and adversary warfighting capabilities. What
is often missing from DOD lists of technology areas is prioritization
among these technologies and a sense of the relative speed at which
these technologies are advancing. Technologies are advancing at
dramatically different rates of progress. In particular, information
technologies are currently growing at literal exponential rates. This
creates opportunities for significant disruptions in warfare from
military capabilities that leverage information technologies.
A few examples of the current exponential growth trends in
information technology:
Global communications networks are growing exponentially in speed
and size. From 2018 to 2023, broadband speeds grew 20 percent annually
and wireless network speeds 27 percent annually. During that same time,
the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices grew 20 percent per year
and the number of global public Wi-Fi hotspots 30 percent annually. As
of 2023, two-thirds of the world's population was online and there were
nearly 30 billion connected devices.\4\ While militaries will operate
military-specific networks on the battlefield, the same underlying
technological advancements that enable exponential growth in civilian
network bandwidth and connectivity also enable military networks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Cisco, Cisco Annual Internet Report, 2020, https://
www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/executive-perspectives/
annual-internet-report/white-paper-c11-741490.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Artificial intelligence capabilities are similarly growing
exponentially. The amount of data and computational power applied to
cutting-edge machine learning systems is growing at a breathtaking
pace. Between 2010 and 2022, the amount of computational power used to
train cutting-edge machine learning models increased ten
billionfold.\5\ The amount of computing power used to train the largest
and most capable AI models is currently doubling every 7 months.\6\
Chip performance is doubling approximately every 2 years.\7\ And
algorithms are also improving, doubling in performance approximately
every 9 months.\8\ The combined effect of these exponential growth
trends is such that by 2030, the most capable AI models could be
trained on one million times more effective computing power than
today.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Jaime Sevilla et al., Compute Trends Across Three Eras of
Machine Learning, arXiv.org, March 9, 2022, https://arxiv.org/abs/
2202.05924.
\6\ Epoch, ML Inputs Visualization, https://epochai.org/mlinputs/
visualization'startDate=2015-9-1&startLargeScaleEra=2015-9-
1&largeScaleAction=isolate&preset=Large percent20'scale
percent20modelspercent20-
percent20compute&labelEras=false&labelPoints=true, accessed on 11/11/
23.
\7\ Marius Hobbhahn et al., ``Trends in Machine Learning
Hardware,'' (Epoch, November 9, 2023), https://epochai.org/blog/trends-
in-machine-learning-hardware.
\8\ Danny Hernandez and Tom B. Brown, Measuring the Algorithmic
Efficiency of Neural Networks, arXiv.org, May 8, 2020, https://
arxiv.org/abs/2005.04305; Florian E. Dorner, Measuring Progress in Deep
Reinforcement Learning Sample Efficiency, arXiv.org, February 9, 2021,
https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.04881; Ege Erdil and Tamay Besiroglu,
Algorithmic progress in computer vision, arXiv.org, December 16, 2022,
https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.05153; and Anson Ho et al., Algorithmic
Progress in Language Modeling, forthcoming.
\9\ Paul Scharre, ``Future-Proofing Frontier AI Regulation:
Projecting Future Compute for Frontier AI Models,'' (Center for a New
American Security, March, 2024), https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/
files.cnas.org/documents/CNAS-Report_AI-Trends_FinalC.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
With the digitization of biology, genomics is also benefiting from
exponential growth in information technology. It cost $300 million to
sequence the first human genome, which was completed in 2000.\10\ By
2023, the cost to sequence a human genome had dropped to $200, over a
million times cheaper,\11\ allowing scientists to build massive genomic
data bases.\12\ AI models can predict biochemical interactions, such as
how proteins fold,\13\ enabling scientists to computationally explore
hundreds of millions of possibilities, including those not found in
nature.\14\ The price of DNA synthesis machines, which allow scientists
to manufacture artificial proteins, is dramatically dropping.\15\ And
automated labs use information technology to accelerate the speed and
scale of physical experimentation in biology.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ National Human Genome Research Institute, ``The Cost of
Sequencing a Human Genome,'' November 1, 2021, https://www.genome.gov/
about-genomics/fact-sheets/Sequencing-Human-Genome-cost.
\11\ Illumina, ``Illumina's revolutionary NovaSeq X exceeds 200th
order milestone in first quarter 2023,'' press release, April 4, 2023,
https://www.illumina.com/company/news-center/press-releases/2023/
4b48580b-42d4-419b-8512-5adcbb069836.html.
\12\ Broad Institute, ``Human Genome Sequencing Dashboard,'' n.d.,
https://broad institute.github.io/gp-dashboard/
\13\ AlphaFold Protein Structure Data base, https://
alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/.
\14\ B.I.M Wicky et. al, ``Hallucinating symmetric protein
assemblies,'' Science, September 15, 2022, https://www.science.org/doi/
10.1126/science.add1964.
\15\ David Baker and George Church, ``Protein design meets
biosecurity,'' Science, January 25, 2024, https://www.science.org/doi/
10.1126/science.ado1671.
\16\ Strateos, ``Cloud Lab Automation-as-a-Service,'' n.d., https:/
/strateos.com/; Emerald Cloud Lab, ``Transcend the Lab,'' n.d., https:/
/www.emeraldcloudlab.com/; Carnegie Mellon University Cloud Lab, ``The
Future of Automated Science is at CMU,'' n.d., https://
cloudlab.cmu.edu/; Chase Armer, Florent Letronne, and Erika
DeBenedictis, ``Support academic access to automated cloud labs to
improve reproducibility,'' PLOS Biology, January 3, 2023, https://
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article'id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001919.
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Military capabilities enabled by information technology riding
these exponential curves are the most likely to see dramatic changes in
the coming decades. These include capabilities relying on autonomy,
robotics, advanced sensors, communications networks, data processing,
automated decision aids, AI and machine learning, computing hardware,
cloud computing, electronic warfare, cyber operations, synthetic
biology, and genomics. While other non-digital military capabilities
will continue to be valuable, they are often not growing at the same
pace, and are therefore unlikely to see the same degree of change.
Missiles are not ten billion times faster than they were in 2010.
Stealth aircraft are not ten billion times stealthier. Yet information
technologies are advancing at a breathtaking pace, creating new
opportunities for military applications.
The war in Ukraine provides an example of this dynamic. The
conflict is a blend of War War I style trench and artillery warfare,
combined with 21st century drones and social media. Yet the most
dramatic changes are happening in the evolution of drone technology and
tactics. Drones are increasingly adopting AI tools to identify targets
and autonomous capabilities to carry out attacks in the face of
electronic warfare countermeasures and jamming. Counter-drone systems
have led to a rapid cycle of innovation in drones and countermeasures.
This pace of adaptation is not matched, for example, in trench
construction.
If the United States is to be prepared for future conflicts, it
must remain at the forefront of rapidly evolving digital technologies
or risk falling behind competitors. In addition to their rapid growth,
many information technologies come from the commercial sector and are
highly globalized, making them widely available, including to State and
non-State competitors.
11. Senator Rosen. Dr. Scharre, new technologies depend on a
fragile and global supply chain--from critical minerals to
semiconductors. Access to raw and refined critical minerals will have a
role to play in these technologies, but only if we make a concerted
effort to strategically leverage our resource advantages to overcome
global supply chain challenges. What specific strategies can the United
States employ to mitigate such vulnerabilities, invest in domestic
industry, and help strengthen our supply chain resilience?
Dr. Scharre. For many years, China has held an advantage in both
the mining of rare earth minerals and their processing. Thanks to
discoveries of large deposits off the coast of Japan,\17\ in
Sweden,\18\ and in Wyoming, \19\ the United States and its allies have
an opportunity loosen China's stranglehold on mining. The United States
and its allies should also work to reduce their reliance on China for
rare earth mineral processing. The United States should invest in
storage capacity for processed versions of these minerals and maintain
a strategic reserve to reduce the ability for China to use rare earth
minerals as leverage as it did to Japan in 2010.\20\ The United States
should work with its allies to develop the deposits that have been
discovered in the United States and partner nations to reduce reliance
on Chinese mining. Reducing China's advantage in processing will be
more difficult due to both their edge in the technology \21\ and their
lax environmental standards.\22\ The United States needs to build on
its funding of new processing plants through the Defense Production Act
\23\ and create additional incentives for companies to invest in and
open processing facilities.
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\17\ Yen Nee Lee, ``A massive, `semi-infinite' trove of rare-earth
metals has been found in Japan,'' CNBC, April 12, 2018, https://
www.cnbc.com/2018/04/12/japan-rare-earths-huge-deposit-of-metals-found-
in-pacific.html.
\18\ Jackie Northam, ``It's a journey to the center of the rare
earths discovered in Sweden,'' National Public Radio, July 18, 2023,
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/18/1187075988/europe-rare-earth-sweden.
\19\ Michael Auslin, ``Wyoming Hits the Rare-Earth Mother Lode,''
Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2024, https://www.wsj.com/articles/
wyoming-hits-the-rare-earth-mother-lode-natural-resources-policy-china-
mining-8e559cec.
\20\ Simon Evenett and Johannes Fritz, ``Revisiting the China-Japan
Rare Earths dispute of 2010,'' (Centre for Economic Policy Research,
July 19, 2023), https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/revisiting-china-japan-
rare-earths-dispute-2010.
\21\ Siyi Liu and Dominique Patton, ``China bans export of rare
earths processing tech over national security,'' Reuters, December 22,
2023, https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/china-bans-export-
rare-earths-processing-technologies-2023-12-21/.
\22\ Jaya Nayar, ``Not So ``Green'' Technology: The Complicated
Legacy of Rare Earth Mining,'' Harvard International Review, August 12,
2021, https://hir.harvard.edu/not-so-green-technology-the-complicated-
legacy-of-rare-earth-mining/.
\23\ Gracelin Baskaran, ``What China's Ban on Rare Earths
Processing Technology Exports Means,'' (Center for Strategic and
International Studies, January 8, 2024), https://www.csis.org/analysis/
what-chinas-ban-rare-earths-processing-technology-exports-means.
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staying ahead
12. Senator Rosen. Dr. Scharre, what are the competitive advantages
of the United States in comparison to China when it comes to artificial
intelligence (AI)? How can the United States ensure that our public and
private institutions stay ahead of the curve in this critically
important field?
Dr. Scharre. The United States has two asymmetric advantages over
China in AI: chips and human talent.
U.S. companies occupy critical chokepoints in the supply chain for
manufacturing high-end chips, especially in the electronic design
automation software used to manufacture advanced chips. Collectively,
the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands control 90 percent of the
global market for semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The United
States has used this leverage, in concert with Japan and the
Netherlands, to deny China access to leading-edge AI chips by
prohibiting the export to China of any advanced chips made using United
States technology. Given the dominance of U.S. companies in
semiconductor manufacturing equipment chokepoints, United States export
controls have, in the near term, successfully denied China access to
the cutting-edge AI chips used to train the largest and most capable AI
models. To fully capitalize on this advantage, however, the United
States must take several additional steps.
First, in the near term, the United States must extend protections
on high-end chips to include other aspects of the supply chain for the
computation used to train cutting-edge AI models. This includes
regulations on cloud providers and trained AI models with certain dual-
use capabilities, such as the ability to aid in cyber, chemical, or
biological attacks. Restrictions on cloud computing infrastructure and
trained AI models need not be as broad as the current chip export
controls. Cloud computing infrastructure, for example, provides the
opportunity for more tailored and fine-grained restrictions, since the
chips themselves remain in the United States.\24\ Similarly, the
overwhelming majority of AI models are safe to release open source.
However, a small set of the most computationally intensive AI models,
which can only be trained using the most advanced, export-controlled AI
chips, may need to be export controlled.\25\ Without additional
controls on cloud computing infrastructure and trained AI models, U.S.
chip export controls will not be effective. China can simply access
chips through the cloud. Or Chinese AI labs can download trained United
States AI models for free, such as Meta's Llama 2 model, negating the
need to train their own large models from scratch, effectively
circumventing United States export controls.
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\24\ Tim Fist and Paul Scharre, ``The Could Can Solve America's AI
Problems,'' Foreign Policy, October 7, 2023, https://foreignpolicy.com/
2023/10/07/cloud-computing-artificial-intelligence-chips-sanctions-us-
china/.
\25\ Caleb Withers, ``Response to NTIA Request for Comment: ``Dual
Use Foundation Artificial Intelligence Models with Widely Available
Model Weights,'' (Center for a New American Security, April 4, 2024),
https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/response-to-ntia-request-
for-comment-dual-use-foundation-artificial-intelligence-models-with-
widely available-model-weights.
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Second, the United States must take steps now to preserve its
control over key chokepoints in semiconductor manufacturing equipment,
so that the United States retains the ability to deny China access to
advanced chips in the future. United States leverage over China's
access to advanced AI chips stems from the dominant role that United
States companies play in semiconductor manufacturing equipment,
especially in the electronic design automation software used to design
the most advanced chips. A major focus for the CHIPS Act should be
ensuring that U.S. companies remain in a dominant position in these key
chokepoints for the next generation of chip manufacturing technology.
The United States can help achieve this by supporting research and
development in next-generation semiconductor manufacturing technology.
Additionally, building leading-edge fabs in the United States can help
create a vibrant ecosystem of chip manufacturers, designers, and
equipment suppliers--and the human talent that supports those
innovations--in the United States.
The United States also has significant advantages over China in
human talent. China produces more of the world's top AI scientists than
any other country, but they don't stay in China--they come to the
United States.\26\ Over half of China's top undergraduates studying AI
come to the United States for their graduate studies.\27\ And 90
percent of Chinese undergraduates who gain a PhD in AI in the United
States stay in the United States after graduation.\28\ China's brain
drain is a brain gain for the United States. China has engaged in a
massive campaign of intellectual property theft and academic espionage,
including by tapping into the global diaspora of Chinese scientists and
engineers. The United States must improve research security, visa
screening, and investigations to crack down on academic espionage. But
the United States Government should not cutoff the flow of Chinese
talent to the United States, which overwhelmingly benefits the United
States over China.
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\26\ MacroPolo, ``The Global AI Talent Tracker 2.0,'' n.d., https:/
/macropolo.org/digital-projects/the-global-ai-talent-tracker/.
\27\ Paul Mozur and Cade Metz, ``A U.S. Secret Weapon in A.I.:
Chinese Talent,'' New York Times, June 9, 2020, updated April 13, 2021,
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/technology/china-ai-research-
education.html.
\28\ Remco Zwetsloot, Keeping Top AI Talent in the United States
(Center for Security and Emerging Technology, December 2019), 22,
https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Keeping-Top-AI-Talent-
in-the-United-States.pdf.
13. Senator Rosen. Dr. Scharre, over 66 years ago, in response to
the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik, Congress passed the
National Defense Education Act, which became a successful legislative
investment in higher education. You have argued that ``talent'' is
going to be one of the important cornerstones to dominate the future,
but it seems like it may take a Sputnik-like moment to motivate us to
make such large changes. With the speed at which technology evolves,
will we be too late when that moment comes, and how do we attract the
right people today to prepare for tomorrow?
Dr. Scharre. Our Sputnik moment for AI is here. ChatGPT and
subsequent breakthroughs set off a wave of excitement, investment, and
government attention on AI in the United States, China, and around the
world. The question is whether we choose to rise to this moment.
The United States has many advantages in the competition for
talent. Seven of the top ten institutions publishing deep learning
research are American universities or corporate research labs. Only two
are Chinese.\29\ Yet these advantages will not be enough to secure
continued American leadership in AI. The United States must reinvest in
human talent through improved STEM education and high-skilled
immigration if it is to remain a global technology leader. \30\
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\29\ ``The Global AI Talent Tracker 2.0,'' Macro Polo, n.d.,
https://macropolo.org/digital-projects/the-global-ai-talent-tracker/.
\30\ Portions of this answer are adapted from Paul Scharre,
``America Can Win the AI Race,'' Foreign Affairs, April 4, 2023,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/ai-america-can-win-race,
and Paul Scharre, Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial
Intelligence (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2023), pp. 30-34.
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The congressionally mandated National Security Commission on AI
(NSCAI) recommended in 2021 that Congress pass a ``National Defense
Education Act II'' to strengthen ``digital skills, like mathematics,
computer science, information science, data science, and statistics.''
The NSCAI recommended that the new National Defense Education Act cover
talent development across the spectrum of educational programs,
including K-12, community college, university, graduate, PhD, and
reskilling programs. \31\
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\31\ National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, Final
Report, 2021, https://reports.nscai.gov/final-report/, 175.
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Educators and students also need the resources to leverage AI tools
effectively. The National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource
(NAIRR), if fully funded by Congress, will be able to provide much-
needed data and computing resources for under-resourced STEM
departments. \32\ Additionally, recent changes to STEM education should
be expanded to improve STEM teacher fluency, increase programs for
underserved communities, and increase science-themed organizations for
children. \33\
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\32\ U.S. National Science Foundation, ``National Artificial
Intelligence Research Resource Pilot,'' n.d., https://new.nsf.gov/
focus-areas/artificial-intelligence/nairr.
\33\ U.S. Department of Education, ``U.S. Department of Education
Launches New Initiative to Enhance STEM Education for All Students,''
December 7, 2022, https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-
education-launches-new-initiative-enhance-stem-education-all-students.
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Improvements in domestic STEM education, while necessary to sustain
America's long-term competitive edge in science and technology, will
also take time to fully come to fruition. The foundations for science
and technology education begin early, and it will take a generation to
fully reap the benefits of reformed STEM education. This places a
premium on improving STEM education now. But these steps will also not
be enough.
High-skilled immigration, by contrast, can bring skilled scientists
and engineers immediately into the United States, injecting much-needed
talent into America's workforce. More fundamentally, as a nation of 330
million people, the United States will always be at a disadvantage
competing against China's 1.4 billion if the United States restricts
itself to home-grown talent.\34\ Yet America has an asymmetric
advantage over China in the talent competition: American universities
and companies are a major draw for AI researchers from around the
world. Indeed, American leadership in AI is already heavily powered by
foreign talent. Two-thirds of the top AI researchers in the United
States did their undergraduate studies overseas, with the top sending
regions China, India, and Europe.\35\ If the United States draws on the
best and brightest of the world's 8 billion people, the United States
will be able to maintain a leadership position over China in AI talent.
Yet America's biggest barrier to AI talent is its own immigration
policies.
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\34\ Remco Zwetsloot, ``China's Approach to Tech Talent
Competition: Policies, Results, and the Developing Global Response,''
(Brookings Institution, April 2020), https://www.brookings.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2020/04/FP_20200427_china_talent_policy_zwetsloot.pdf;
Remco Zwetsloot, ``Strengthening the U.S. AI Workforce,'' (Brookings,
September 2019), https://cset. georgetown.edu/publication/
strengthening-the-u-s-ai-workforce/.
\35\ ``The Global AI Talent Tracker 2.0;'' and Remco Zwetsloot et
al., Skilled and Mobile: Survey Evidence of AI Researchers' Immigration
Preferences (arXiv.org, May 5, 2021), https://arxiv.org/pdf/
2104.07237.pdf.
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Numerical caps on visas and green cards, long wait times, and
limitations on visa sponsorship all create obstacles for foreign
scientists who want to work in the United States. \36\ A numerical cap
on H-1B work visas arbitrarily constrains U.S. companies from hiring
foreign talent. Per-country caps on green cards create especially long
wait times for Indian scientists, who make up a quarter of Silicon
Valley's workforce. \37\ One study estimated an 89 year wait time for
Indian nationals applying for an employment-based green card. \38\ It
is not surprising, then, that nearly 70 percent of top machine learning
researchers residing in the United States said visa and other
immigration problems were an obstacle to recruiting foreign scientists.
\39\ Immigration policy is the single biggest area where government
regulation is harming American competitiveness.
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\36\ Tina Huang and Zachary Arnold, ``Immigration Policy and the
Global Competition for AI Talent,'' (Center for Security and Emerging
Technology, June 2020), https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/
immigration-policy-and-the-global-competition-for-ai-talent/
\37\ Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies, ``Share of
Residents in Technical Occupations with a Bachelor's Degree or Higher,
by Place of Origin,'' 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20230121023908/
https://siliconvalleyindicators.org/data/people/talent-flows-diversity/
tech-talent/share-of-residents-in-technical-occupations-with-a-
bachelors-degree-or-higher-by-place-of-origin/.
\38\ David Bier, ``Backlog for Skilled Immigrants Tops 1 Million:
Over 200,000 Indians Could Die of Old Age While Awaiting Green Cards,''
(CATO Institute, March 30, 2020), https://www.cato.org/publications/
immigration-research-policy-brief/backlog-skilled-immigrants-tops-1-
million-over#.
\39\ Zwetsloot et al., Skilled and Mobile.
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The Biden administration has taken some steps to make it easier for
international STEM students to come to the United States. \40\ The
White House has, for example, increased the number of foreign exchange
programs, expanded the number of fields qualifying for the STEM
Optional Practical Training (OPT) visa for recent college graduates,
and updated policies on the evidence STEM PhDs can present when
applying for the O-1A ``extraordinary ability'' visa. These are
valuable steps but have a minor impact relative to the scale of self-
imposed barriers to talent. The United States needs comprehensive
reform of high-skilled immigration policy to make it easier for U.S.
universities and companies to recruit international scientists and
engineers. This should include reducing barriers for STEM PhD graduates
to stay in the United States by exempting them from the H-1B cap and
easing the path to permanent residency. \41\
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\40\ The White House, ``Biden-'Harris Administration Actions to
Attract STEM Talent and Strengthen our Economy and Competitiveness,''
fact sheet, January 21, 2022, https://www. whitehouse.gov/briefing-
room/statements-releases/2022/01/21/fact-sheet-biden-harris-
administration-actions-to-attract-stem-talent-and-strengthen-our-
economy-and-competitiveness/.
\41\ For recommendations on additional steps to increase high-
skilled immigration, see National Security Commission on Artificial
Intelligence, Final Report, 175-179.
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iran
14. Senator Rosen. Dr. Brands, you have argued for the enduring
importance of the Middle East to United States foreign policy and the
challenges posed by Iran. What key elements should be included in a
reassessment of United States strategy toward Iran to address its
nuclear ambitions, regional aspirations, and warfare via terrorist
proxies?
Dr. Brands. Regardless of what happens in the current Middle East
crisis, the United States will face an expanded challenge from an Iran
whose nuclear program continues to advance and whose foreign legion of
proxies has become far more potent than many American observers had
expected. In any reassessment of United States strategy in the region,
the United States will need to reestablish redlines beyond which
further progress toward a nuclear capability would bring a swift and
dramatic response, which will, in turn, require establishing more
credible threats to use force against Iran's nuclear program and its
accompanying military capabiliies. It will also need to develop a
strategy that inflicts higher costs on Iran for the actions of the
proxies it has empowered. It is not sustainable, for instance, for the
US to be playing defense in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden against Huthi
attacks, while taking no action against the Iranian naval assets that
are assisting those attacks with intelligence and other support. Only
when Tehran becomes convinced that it will pay a major price for
actions of its proxies will it move to distance itself from them or
restrain them. Finally, any strategy in the region must be accompanied
by a strengthening of United States ties with key regional players, in
the Gulf and beyond, that are most likely to join Washington in pushing
back against Iranian influence.
[all]