Thank you for the kind introduction, and to Vanderbilt for inviting me to be part of this event with such a great collection of fellow panelists.  For my thoughts to get us started, I thought I’d make four points that aren’t really getting the attention they deserve as we struggle with the challenges of strategic competition with China. 

These are just my own personal views, of course, and don’t necessarily correspond to those of anyone else, either in the U.S. Government or elsewhere.  For whatever they’re worth, however, here are my four points:

More caution in technology engagement

First, a point about high-technology transfer to adversaries, to highlight the need for new approaches, and to remember what’s at stake.  As I’ve been arguing in public for years, the Chinese Communist Party’s technology strategy – including its “Military-Civil Fusion” (MCF) effort to break down barriers between China’s civilian sector and its defense industrial base – is requiring us to completely rethink our traditional approaches to technology-related engagement with China.  Under MCF, for anything made available to anyone under Chinese jurisdiction – and that includes any Chinese abroad unfortunate enough to have to answer to the authorities back home in China – we have to assume a good chance that such technology will be transferred to the military or security services if it’s something they would like.  That means, for one thing, that we need to rethink our approach to national security export controls. 

But ultimately these issues aren’t just about technology or even economic competition.  The issue is really about power.  MCF and a range of associated policies support the CCP’s broader ambition to seize what it calls the strategic “high ground” in a range of emerging technology areas and thus win “first mover” advantage in an anticipated “Fourth Industrial Revolution” and its associated “Revolution in Military Affairs.”  These are critical positions that Beijing hopes and expects will have enormous geopolitical payoffs.  If this doesn’t lead to adopt a whole different – and much more restrictive – mindset about tech engagement, shame on us.

Be more relaxed about sharing with our friends

Second, a point about sharing with our friends.  The flip side of being more restrictive with those who wish us ill is that we also need to be more permissive in sharing with those who share our interests in not becoming part of a new global order headed by an authoritarian China.  The recent AUKUS agreement is a good example of such forward-leaning technology engagement with some of our closest friends, but we should look for ways to do this much more systematically. 

For example, we should figure out how to speed up Foreign Military Sales (FMS) to strategic priority destinations such as Taiwan.  We should adjust our International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) framework to make technology transfers easier and quicker to our best security partners.  We should adjust the so-called “NOFORN” rules that restrict sensible intelligence sharing and impede deep interoperability and operational collaboration with our allies.  And we should expand security partnership capacity-building – in cybersecurity and other such arenas – to help our friends be better able to protect themselves against information theft and other such threats, so that we can safely share and collaborate with them even more.

The United States is no longer the post-Cold War “hyperpower” we once were, standing astride the world like a colossus.  We need to work with allies, partners, and friends of all sorts to meet strategic challenges, and that means getting accustomed to relationships that are a bit more like real partnerships.

Beware China’s “leverage web”

Third, we should beware China’s “leverage web.” Beijing is very adept at manipulating economic, technological, and other dependencies for strategic advantage, weaponizing such relationships for influence and coercion.  This is in many ways at the core of the model of control the Communist Party is trying to use in China, such as in trying to build a so-called “social credit system” to incentivize “harmonious” conformity.  And we should be very wary of China’s attempts to use such approaches, as well, in the outside world.

What the CCP calls its “dual-circulation” economic model, for instance, aspires to achieve two things.  For one, it wants to make China as self-reliant as possible in key technologies and resources, so it no longer has to face the risk of outside sanctions for its increasingly provocative behavior.  For another, it seeks to maintain – or even expand – the economic relationships through which others become dependent upon China, and thus also subject to its manipulation and coercion.  This approach may or may not succeed, but we dare not mistake its ambitiousness – nor the potential implications of that ambitiousness.

Even in economics, therefore, Beijing’s philosophy of engagement with the outside world is only secondarily about profit.  It is most of all about strategy and about power.  We need to recognize the challenges this approach inherently presents, for the world hasn’t seen a major power make such a bare-facedly strategic effort to insulate itself against disapproval by the international community and to encourage others’ strategic dependency upon it since Adolf Hitler entrusted Hermann Göring in 1936 with the task of making Nazi Germany sanctions-proof – that is, Blockadefestigkeit or “blockade-resistant,” as it was said at the time – and ready for aggressive war.

Don’t forget the nukes

As a final point, I would say “don’t forget the nukes.”  That is, don’t forget how nuclear weapons fit into the picture beyond just traditional Cold War ways of thinking in game-theoretical terms about strategic balance.  I’m referring to what can happen underneath a strategic balance, if you will, when one of the parties is nonetheless bent upon war.  Specifically, as I’ve also been warning for years, Russia has shown with Ukraine how a major power can use nuclear capabilities and saber-rattling to create tactical “space” for regional aggression, employing such threats to deter outside intervention to support the victims of a war of territorial annexation. 

You should not think for a moment that this lesson is lost on Xi Jinping – which may be a big part of why he’s embarked upon such an enormous nuclear weapons build-up.  He wants to frighten us enough with his nuclear arsenal that we talk ourselves out of providing support for Taiwan if and when he invades it.  So remember: there can, unfortunately, be “offensive nuclear umbrellas” as well as defensive ones.  We need to expect such gamesmanship over Taiwan, and we must devise and implement approaches that ensure that it will fail.

-- Christopher Ford