Then What? Assessing The Military Implications Of Chinese Control Of Taiwan

>> Kharis Templeman: Well, good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call our seminar to order. I'm Kharis Templeman. I'm the program manager of the project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific region here at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. It's my pleasure today to introduce our speaker, Caitlin Talmadge. We're grateful to have her give her third talk in three days here at Stanford on three completely different subjects.

She is multitalented, multifaceted. She contains multitudes, and we're delighted to have her join us here today. She's going to be speaking about a fairly apocalyptic topic. Then what? Assessing the military implications of Chinese control of Taiwan. She joins us as an associate professor of security studies in the School of Foreign service at Georgetown University.

So she's made the long trip across the country for this week. Unfortunately, we didn't have the sunniest or brightest weather, but I think it's still an improvement on DC.

>> Kharis Templeman: Low bar, but we'll take it. She is also a senior non resident fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution and a research affiliate in the security studies program at MIT.

During last fall, she also was the Kissinger chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the US Library of Congress. Is that still the case?

>> Caitlin Talmadge: That is concluded.

>> Kharis Templeman: That is concluded. Okay, we're really glad to have her here today because her research and teaching focus on deterrence and escalation, US military operations and strategy, and security issues in Asia and the Persian Gulf.

ll issues which have become increasingly pertinent to this project and to the study of Taiwan in the Indo- Pacific region. She is author of The Dictator's Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes, which forced affairs named the best book in security for 2016, and which won the 2017 best book award from the International Security Studies section of ISA.

In addition, she is co author of US Defense, the Origin of Security Policy from Rutledge. And she is currently writing a new book with Brendan Green on nuclear escalation risk in the emerging deterrence environment. And I should say the reason she's here today is she has a paper specifically on this topic looking at Taiwan and the implications of PLA control of Taiwan for the US's security posture in the region.

I just wanted to note a couple of things about this topic. Broadly, the question of why the US should defend Taiwan has gotten a lot of play in the United States over the last few years. Typically, when I'm asked this question, there are four answers. The first is an economic answer.

Taiwan is the US's 10th largest trading partner. Taiwan is as most of our audience knows, the United States main supplier of the most advanced semiconductors, but a second answer is reputational. The United States has actually had a significant interaction with the people and government of Taiwan for over 70 years, since June 1950.

Taiwan would not exist as a de facto independent state today if it were not for us intervention during that time. And so abandoning that 73 year commitment would have reputational consequences far beyond the Taiwan Strait. The third is a regime type argument. Taiwan today is a liberal democracy, a higher quality democracy than many of the others that transitioned during the third wave.

The US has had a longstanding interest in seeing Taiwan develop towards a liberal democratic model, potentially to influence not only other countries in the region, in the US security alliance, but especially the PRC itself, and have a positive development on that trajectory. The fourth answer is one that kind of waxes and wanes depending on how strong the security, the perception of military threat is to Taiwan, and that is Taiwan's strategic location in the western Pacific.

And so that's why we have Doctor Talmage here today to talk specifically about what it would mean if Taiwan was occupied by a power hostile to the United States. And so without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Doctor Talmadge to address that question.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Great, thank you so much and thank you very much for the introduction and the opportunity to be here with all of you today.

Certainly an honor and a pleasure to talk about some of my recent research with my colleague, Doctor Brendan Rittenhouse Green, looking at the military implications of potential Chinese control of Taiwan. I think, as most of us know, unless you've been living under Iraq for the last couple of years, Taiwan has certainly acquired increased political salience.

And the question of what us policy toward Taiwan should be has come into the mainstream of political debate in a way that it hasn't for many years prior to that. But as Kars mentioned, this debate in many ways has not looked at the question of the military implications of chinese control of Taiwan.

Most of the mainstream discussion about the US relationship with the island revolves around questions of Taiwan's political importance for some of the reasons that were just outlined. Chinese nationalist rather than strategic motives, potentially for attempting reunifications, and questions of US alliance credibility that might be invoked in the event of a threat to Taiwanese independence.

There's relatively little discussion of the geostrategic importance. Where the geostrategic importance of Taiwan is mentioned, it's sometimes actually dismissed. So if you're familiar with any of the debates over whether the United States should end its commitment to Taiwan as part of a grand bargain with China in the region.

Those analyses tend to be relatively dismissive of how control of the island itself might influence the future balance of military power between the United States and China. There are other analysts who do assert that Taiwan has military value in passing, but it is just that it's in passing.

It's often referenced as a Chinese perception. It's not an assumption that's actually interrogated. So we often hear references to MacArthur's famous description of the island as an unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender. And then the analysis kind of moves on without much discussion of what would it actually mean if China were to gain control of Taiwan.

Intuitively, there are some reasons to think that it might potentially be important. I'll discuss today kind of the way that we look at this question of Taiwan's potential military importance, our approach to answering that question, and the argument that we make about why Chinese control of Taiwan could impact the future US China military balance.

And our analysis is really based on a set of assumptions about military capabilities that China might be able to base on the island if it were to control it, particularly submarines and underwater sensors. I'll talk about what it would mean if China were to base those assets on the island, what the implications for post reunification military power balance between the two countries might be, and then try to draw out some of the implications for grand strategy and for policy.

So just to drill down a little bit, the question that we're looking. Looking at in this study is how would Chinese control of Taiwan affect the US/China military balance? And specifically, how would Chinese control of the island potentially affect China's ability to conduct military missions that could be relevant to US/China competition and conflict post reunification?

So how does Chinese control of the island influence post reunification military balance of power and specifically the performance of key military missions that could be relevant to continued competition and conflict? Now, of course, if you think that there's not going to be any further competition and conflict involving China and the United States post reunification, then our analysis is relevant, enjoy your sandwich.

 

>> Caitlin Talmadge: You can go home. And that's possible. Kinds of things are possible in the future. China could be quiescent after the acquisition of Taiwan. We're not taking a position on that in this research. We're just exploring what happens. If that's not the case and there's continued competition, then what does control of this island mean?

And intuitively, there's some reasons to think that the island does have geostrategic importance, as they say in real estate, location, location, location. If you look at a map of where Taiwan is, smack in the middle of the first island chain, it sits astride the major exits from China's coastal seas out into the Philippine Sea, and therefore the rest of the Pacific.

And so there's some good intuitive reasons to think that control of Taiwan could potentially be militarily important to whoever actually does gain control of it. And the question is kind of how to pin this down. And so in our analysis, we focus specifically on the question of how control of Taiwan and the potential basing of chinese military assets on Taiwan would affect China's ability to engage in the surface denial mission.

That is, the mission of going after us surface forces in the Philippine Sea post reunification? We think that's an important mission for a bunch of reasons, not least of which is that it's relevant, or it would be relevant to credibly defending remaining us allies in the region even if Taiwan were to change hands.

And so there's some reasons to ask, what is life going to be like for the surface navy in the Philippine Sea post reunification? And in particular, what does control of Taiwan mean for Chinese submarine warfare capabilities and Chinese ocean surveillance capabilities that could be based on Taiwan? So what does it mean if China gets access to Taiwan's eastern deepwater ports on the eastern side of the island that give it direct access to the Philippine Sea?

What happens if it can base submarines there? What happens if it can base sensors there that give it a window into us surface forces operating in the Philippine Sea. So that's the mission we focus on. Those are the assets we focus on. And we want to understand what happens if China essentially has its current force structure and technology and gains control of Taiwan.

Now, in reality, there's lots of debate over, of course, whether China ever would gain control of Taiwan, and even if it did, when that would happen, what the state of chinese forces would be at that time. But for purposes of our analysis, we're setting those questions aside about other potential changes that China could make in its force structure and technology.

And we're kind of conducting a thought experiment. We're basically saying, let's pretend that tomorrow China instantaneously gains control of this real estate. What can China do with that island just using its current force structure and technology and not building in a bunch of other assumptions about other leaps that China might make?

Now, we loosen that assumption a little bit. In some other places in the analysis, I'll show you where that is. But we're trying to isolate the effect of control of the real estate, so we hold those other things constant. The other thing is that we try to set aside the important question of how the reunification process itself might affect the military balance.

And if you're familiar with debates in this area, you know that there are a lot of different scenarios for how China might gain control of Taiwan. And some of them could be very, very damaging to other aspects of China's military capabilities. And some might be less so. In some scenarios for China retaking Taiwan, China might actually gain Taiwanese military assets, for instance, intact.

That could be useful. So there's another variable here that is important. We set that aside again to just focus on the impact of control of the territory. But, of course, in the real world, we know that this would also play into the resulting post war military balance. So given that approach, the argument that we make in this study, the main finding that comes out of the analysis, I'll show you in just a moment, is that chinese control of Taiwan would affect the military balance.

It would enable China to improve its undersea warfare capabilities and its ocean surveillance capabilities in ways that would significantly strengthen its ability to combat US surface forces operating in the Philippine Sea. So control of Taiwan, just with China's existing military assets, would improve its ability to conduct the surface denial mission in the Philippine Sea.

And we expand our analysis a little bit and loosen that assumption about kind of looking only at Chinese current capabilities in the short term by conducting some additional analysis that demonstrates that if over the longer term, and for some reasons, I'll explain as we go along. China developed a large fleet of truly quiet submarines, which it does not have today.

Basing them on Taiwan would enable China to threaten the sea lanes of communication, the SLOCs, and to strengthen its sea based nuclear deterrent in ways it is unlikely to otherwise be able to do. In other words, our argument is in the short term, control of Taiwan will have some important implications for the military balance.

Over the longer term, if China also improves some of its capabilities, there's likely to be an even more significant impact on the military balance if it also controls this real estate, and I'll explain why that is as we go along. So let me delve a bit more into the analysis that undergirds these conclusions.

And the reasons that we think basing key Chinese military assets on Taiwan might affect the missions of undersea warfare and ocean surveillance that could affect the performance of the US Navy in the Western Pacific. As I mentioned, two categories of assets here. I want to first talk about submarines.

What happens if we live in a world where China can base its submarines in Taiwan's eastern deepwater ports? Well, some of your assessment of that depends on what you think the world looks like today. And currently we live in a world where Chinese submarines are based inside the first island chain, concentrated especially at Hainan Island.

You can see that noted on the map here. And the geography is very important as far as their ability to actually reach us surface forces, standoff forces that might be in the Philippine Sea. And the reason is that currently, because Chinese submarines are based inside the first island chain, in order to get to the Philippine Sea, which you can see on this map here, and actually threaten US surface forces that are operating there, they have to pass through these choke points at the exits to the first island chain.

Notably, of course, Taiwan sits astride several of these major exits. And the United States is able to string ASW, or anti submarine warfare barriers along the first island chain that essentially enable it to know if and when Chinese submarines are trying to egress, they're trying to get out of China's inner seas.

And this is important because it alerts US anti-submarine warfare forces as to where Chinese submarines are when they're coming out at these exits. And that's critically important for being able to hunt them and prevent them from being able to attack US surface forces. So in the status quo, they've gotta pass over at least one, if not two, types of barriers.

The first of these barriers is a type of barrier that the United States had in the Cold War. If you've ever heard of SOSUS, or the Sound Surveillance System, which was a hydrophone network that the US deployed across the Northern Atlantic in the Cold War to basically catch Soviet submarines that were gonna try to do battle with NATO in the North Atlantic.

These are long-range deep water hydrophone networks, basically microphones, passive acoustic sensors that work in very, very deep water, utilizing something called the deep sound channel on the floor of the ocean. And provide persistent open ocean detection capability against, first, Soviet submarines and now today, Chinese submarines. And these are strung along, as I said, the exits to the first island chain, where the drop off from the continental shelf provides the very deep waters that are necessary to use this type of passive acoustic sensor.

And unless and until Chinese submarines are radically more quiet than they are today, these are gonna be some very effective sensors for catching those Chinese subs that are trying to get out to the Western Pacific. Even if Chinese submarines do become more quiet today, though, the United States has a second type of sensor that it can use in the more shallow waters that are at the edge of that continental shelf, at the exits of the first island chain, utilizing a different method, something called the reliable acoustic path.

And these are also hydrophones, but a different type. They're upward looking, bottom mounted conical sensors, and they don't provide long-range, persistent detection, but they do provide a fleeting detection of a submarine or a ship that passes above them. And so if you have thousands of those strung along a particular area, you can catch at least a fleeting detection of a chinese submarine that's passing by, even if it is very quiet.

And that's important. This kind of creates a belt and suspender situation for the United States, where even if China's submarine forces become a lot more quiet, as long as they're based inside the first island chain, which they currently are, the United States is going to have a pretty good ability to find them and conduct that anti submarine warfare mission.

So what does the world look like when China controls Taiwan? The world I just described, I think, changes because control of Taiwan allows China to potentially jump those ASW, those anti submarine warfare barriers and make it a lot harder to find them. And why is that? That's because China could potentially base its submarines not inside its coastal waters, where it has to go across those barriers and the choke points to get out to the Philippine Sea.

But in Taiwan's eastern deep water ports, where they leave their pens and go directly into the deep, open waters of the Philippine Sea. And this has a bunch of important implications for how China will conduct its undersea warfare mission. Among other things, to state the obvious, it lets China have a lot more submarines on station at any one time because they're not traversing the distance to get to their patrol areas from the Chinese mainland.

They pretty much go from their pens directly into the area where they'd be patrolling for US surface forces. They also are going to have lower attrition in getting there because they're not going through the barriers that potentially would enable us ASW forces to hunt them down as they transit.

And the result of this is that China would arguably acquire a greater denial capability against US surface forces that were operating in the Philippine Sea. Chinese submarines would be in a better position to hunt those us surface ships. As a side note, we're not making the argument that chinese submarines would get a big leg up on us undersea forces.

Us submarines that were operating in the Philippine Sea, which I think still retain very important survivability advantages, versus chinese ASW capabilities, which are relatively underdeveloped. But against us surface forces ships, this is not a good day. And in the longer term, were China to develop significantly quieter submarines, this could also have implications for China's sea-based nuclear deterrent.

Because in the status quo, China's ballistic missile submarines, just like its attack submarines, as I said, are largely confined to China's inner seas. Where their missiles, at best, even accounting for the new JL3SLBM that China's trying put on its next generation of ballistic missile submarines, can range kind of the northwestern edge of the United States and don't have the ability to threaten the entire continental United States.

For China to reliably land a submarine launched ballistic missile on Washington, DC, chinese ballistic missile submarines need to get currently to the open ocean. That's not a mission that they can accomplish at their ranges from inside China's inner seas. And so in a world where China is able to base its ballistic missile submarines in Taiwan's eastern deep water ports and they become more quiet and more survivable, which they're not right now, but they could get there.

China is working on its sea based nuclear deterrent. That creates a world in which China has a more survivable sea-based nuclear deterrent. Because it's not having to pass over even those reliable acoustic path barriers that could detect a more quiet Chinese ballistic missile submarine force. So that has some real implications for China's potential nuclear deterrent, we could talk more about those in Q&A if you want.

It also has the potential to create a world where Chinese attack submarines that are nuclear submarines can more effectively target the sea lanes of communication at very long distances. And again, this has important implications for remaining us friends and allies in the region who rely on the shipping lanes that go to Northeast Asia and probably do not want to live in a world where Chinese nuclear submarines are able to essentially run for an infinite amount of time interdicting the sea lanes.

And so if they get quiet and they're based on Taiwan, that's not a great thing. So what's the bottom line here? The bottom line, if you don't wanna hear any more about hydrophones, is we live in a world currently where Chinese submarines are trapped inside the first island chain.

If China controls Taiwan, those submarines can escape, and that affects what they can do in the Philippine Sea. So that's the first piece of analysis that we look at Chinese submarines. I mentioned that there was another important military asset that China might be able to base on Taiwan that we think could be militarily significant, and these are underwater sensor barriers.

So I mentioned a moment ago that the United States utilizes passive acoustic sensors that take advantage of this thing called the deep sound channel. And the US uses those to hear noisy Chinese submarines in the deep waters of the Western Pacific. China can use these sensors, too, they're not super high tech or anything.

It doesn't currently have access to deep water in order to utilize the deep sound channel and utilize these sensors. Taiwan, as you can tell from this map, that gives you some sense of the bathymetry in the region and the water depths, gives China access to those deep waters.

And China, in fact, with control of Taiwan, could develop its own passive acoustic sensor arrays and deploy them off Taiwan, using them to listen to not US submarines in the western, Western Pacific, because, again, US submarines are way too quiet to be heard by these. But noisy US surface forces at very, very long distances operating in the western Pacific.

Why is this important? Because turns out Pacific's very big, hard to find US surface forces in the giant Pacific. And if you can find a reliable way to precisely locate them, that's very, very useful information for queuing satellites that can then queue Chinese anti-ship missiles to go after US surface forces.

We hear a lot, for instance, about these Chinese missiles, China's carrier killer missiles, DF 21, possibly the DF 26. Those missiles are great, but they have to know where to go. And the ability to deploy passive acoustic sensor arrays that can hear us surface forces at very long distances is a potential queuing mechanism for that kill chain.

We often, as I already mentioned, think of these passive acoustic arrays as being useful only for hearing submarines. But if we actually look back at their development in the cold war, there's lots of evidence that they can hear surface forces. In fact, one of the main tasks of using them effectively in the cold War to hear submarines was isolating out all of the noise from surface ships that was also picked up by them.

So that is what these things do. They can hear surface ships pretty easily. And this would be an important advantage for China because it can string these passive acoustic arrays off Taiwan. And you might say, well, can't the US just go and do some cable cutting? Can't we cut their arrays?

Can't we cut the fiber optic cables that go ashore for data processing? And that's harder when your enemy controls the land where they're going to shore and the water's immediately surrounding them. So China can also have air defenses on Taiwan. It can mine the areas around the hydrophone cables.

This is a sensor that I think is potentially pretty survivable and in many ways more survivable and more reliable than some of the other sensors that China would otherwise, in the status quo, be relying on to feed targeting information into its kill chain against us surface forces. So if you think about what the other sensors are that China might use to perform this mission, it has over the horizon radars that are located on the mainland.

And, yeah, those can potentially find us service forces at really long distances. They're also vulnerable to jamming. And in a big war, I think they're also pretty vulnerable to kinetic attack because they're big, fixed, emitting targets that are going to be going after US carriers. And those seem like the kind of thing that in a serious war of the type we're talking about, here will not be long for this world.

And so OTH radars, they have them. I don't know how survivable they're going to be in a war compared to these hydrophone arrays. China does have SIGINT satellites that could be used in the status quo to find us service forces, but there's some reason to question their effectiveness.

The US Navy could engage in emission control procedures that essentially make those SIGINT satellites much less effective. And again, we have a lot of evidence from the cold war that this is something that the Navy can do very effectively to hide from that type of sensor. China has imaging satellites, but there aren't that many of them, and they're very inefficient, random searchers, when you're talking about the entire Pacific and trying to find carriers, seem big, but not that big when talking about the entire Pacific.

And China, of course, can have other sensors on aircraft and ships, but they're limited in range. And again, the platforms are not super survivable in the wartime scenario that would make this relevant. My point in mentioning all these other sensors is to acknowledge, yes, China does have other ways of finding us surface forces, and that's true whether it controls Taiwan or not.

But control of Taiwan and the deployment of these passive acoustic sensor arrays gives China a means of finding US service forces that we would argue is more survivable and more reliable than the means that it has in the status quo. And that's an important difference. And so it puts the United States in a world where, in order to interrupt that kill chain, that's feeding information from the hydrophone sensors to the satellites to the missile launch units in a position where the United States has to do something else to interrupt that kill chain.

So is it going to engage in anti-satellite attacks against the satellites then, if it can't interrupt the sensor networks that are feeding that information to the satellites, maybe. That isn't a decision I'd really want to have to make as president. That sounds like a bad day, having to escalate to anti-satellite warfare.

The US could also do things like operate outside the range of the hydrophones. We've done some notional efforts to model what a potential hydrophone array off of Taiwan could cover. And there are some bands kind of at the edges of the Philippine Sea where you might be able to operate US surface forces outside the range of Chinese hydrophones.

But, of course, China could do math, too. I mean, they're going to know where those things are. And so that isn't a great option, either. So this, this puts the US, I think, in a more difficult situation than it's in in the status quo. So what's the bottom line here again?

You know, the bottom line is the United States today has, we think, still a reasonably good chance of maintaining surface control in the Philippine Sea. And a world where China controls Taiwan is one in which China is better equipped to conduct the surface denial mission. And that has some real implications, potentially for US policy and strategy in the region.

So let me wrap up, having outlined the gist of our analysis on the submarines piece and the underwater sensors piece, what the big picture is here, what are some of the takeaways for grand strategy and for policy? I want to begin by coming back to some of the themes that Kara's raised in the introduction, which is that ultimately US policy toward Taiwan is a political question.

It's not a question that you can answer with military analysis alone. And military analysis is what I've presented here. So there's some limits here. However, we do think that understanding Taiwan's military value is an input of to political decision making. And in particular, we think that you can't come away from this analysis by itself with a firm answer on us policy toward Taiwan should be X or Y.

There's other inputs to that. But understanding Taiwan's military value, we think, does point to some of the costs and problems that are associated with all of the us grand strategic options that are being debated with regard to Taiwan. And I'll just give you a couple of examples of what I mean before I close up here.

For those who advocate keeping the US commitment to Taiwan. Our analysis, if it's correct, about the military value of the island, suggests just how intense and costly it might actually be to keep that commitment from a military perspective. And that's because we think one implication of our analysis is that China has important strategic, geostrategic motives for controlling the island beyond just kind of the nationalist and political ones that are often mentioned.

And again, if we're right, that suggests that the stakes are gonna be viewed as perhaps even higher than often recognized for Beijing. And if we want to keep the commitment, that's going to be a costly and intense proposition. So that's something we should know with our eyes wide open.

There are some who advocate a different course of action, ending the US commitment to Taiwan while keeping other relationships, our existing alliances in the region. And our analysis, I think, points. To important trade offs that would come with this policy option, too, that it's hard to just cut Taiwan loose and conduct the rest of your business as usual in the region, because chinese control of Taiwan affects your ability to do that other business in the region.

It suggests that there will be higher military costs to maintaining a credible defense commitment to states like Korea and like Japan. And again, you might want to keep those commitments, but policymakers would need to be prepared to make other operational and diplomatic and posture adjustments to account for the fact that we'd be living in a world where China would have an improved ability to conduct that surface denial mission that our allies generally expect us to be able to perform.

Finally, for those who would kind of like to wash their hands of the region and and all regional alliance commitments, not only kind of cutting Taiwan loose but pulling back from the relationships with Japan and Korea and other states in the region. I would just note that if the analysis that we've put forward here about the military value of the island is correct, it suggests that if China were to try to retake the island, there are probably other states in the region, most notably Japan, that could become militarily involved in an effort to stop that.

Which means that a war over Taiwan, even in a world where the US has exited the region, can still become a major power war, a war that involves Japan and China and Taiwan and who knows who else. And that's because I think Japan also appreciates that this island has military value.

And if you follow japanese defense policy, you see some inklings of that, even publicly. And so it suggests that even walking away doesn't totally solve the problem, because Taiwan does have this military value, and the US might get sucked back in precisely because of that. So with that, let me close.

Thank you for listening to me, and I very much look forward to your questions and engagement. Thank you.

>> Kharis Templeman: Thank you, Dr. Talmadge. I'd like to invite our online audience. If you have questions, please submit them in the Q&A box. I'll be monitoring that, and I can feed them along to our speaker.

I want to take chair's prerogative and ask the first question here. And that is basically, to what extent is Taiwan as a geographic entity unique in this picture? So as everybody knows, the PLA is interested in building out artificial islands in the South China Sea. There's conversations about a potential PLA access to the Solomon Islands or to Cambodia.

To what extent is Taiwan just completely unique? Or are there other kind of substitutes that could serve largely the same function for the PLA.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Great, great question. So we thought about this a bit at the beginning of this project, kind of wondering, should we just look at Taiwan?

Should we look at some of China's activities in the South China Sea in particular? We do think that, again, location, location, location. China really could derive some unique benefits from control of Taiwan because of its location at the center of the first island chain, because it's on the edge of the continental shelf that changes the availability of deep water.

And because on the other side of it is the Philippine Sea and open access to those waters which happen to be the waters that are also most relevant for some of the alliance commitments that the United States has elsewhere in the region. And so we do think that there's something special about Taiwan.

With that being said, I think there's a number of points in our analysis that point to, how constrained China actually is by its geography, that having to base military forces inside the first island chain is a challenge that I think is often, it's staring us right in the face, but we often don't think about it.

And I do think that some of its other activities, like in the South China Sea, while perhaps not as significant from the perspective of US military power, perhaps do have implications for balances of power vis a vis China's regional neighbors. And so I think there is a, and again, you and others are more of an expert on Chinese thinking on this than I am, but there's a sense in which China does need to kind of break out of some of its geographical handcuffs.

And I think those are activities that are of a theme, even if we do think there's something special about Taiwan.

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, great.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Thank you.

>> Kharis Templeman: From our in person audience, are there questions? Okay, let's go with Paul. And if you could introduce yourself as well.

>> Paul Wolfowitz: Yes, Paul Wolfowitz, former various things including Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, when the biggest fight was between the China desk and the Japan desk and I was the referee.

And you can tell which way I called the pitches mostly. I called one of them called. So basically that's what it came down to. But thanks for this, it's fascinating. And I would just say, as I'm listening to you, I'm putting this in the context of Xi Jinping's goal to be the dominant global power by 2049.

And this certainly plays into that. I mean, the domination of the Western Pacific and beyond plays into that dramatically. But to come much more immediately to potential of a war over Taiwan anytime soon, I become very much of the opinion that it's going to be hard to keep it a short war.

And I go to paraphrasing what Reagan said about nuclear war, to say, a war over Taiwan cannot be won, must not be fought. And that's the lesson we should send to Beijing. Reagan didn't mean that we should therefore abandon Berlin, he meant we should reinforce deterrence. And in that connection, I'm sorry, this is a long lead up to a military question, which is, I'm wondering if you can say anything about how all of this would affect the military balance in the northern Indian Ocean because it was very striking.

When was it? I guess the Clinton State Department announced the pivot to Asia, which never seemed to amount to very much except for TPP, which unfortunately died in Congress. The PRC at the same time announced its own new strategy of March west. In other words, if you Americans are going to pivot away from Iraq and now Afghanistan, we're going to move in behind you because that's the way to secure our energy resources.

So I'm wondering, how much do you think the control over Taiwan would change the balance far southwest of there? Too big a question, and I know you weren't studying that.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: So-

>> Paul Wolfowitz: But speculation is welcome.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: That's our business, right? So, incredibly important question. And we actually did look at this and the short answer is we think there's not that much of a connection.

We wondered, for instance, does Chinese control of Taiwan enable China in some way to project power west or to impede the US ability to operate in the northern Indian Ocean? And in looking at that, our sense is that the United States still has some really important advantages operating there that would not be undone by chinese control of Taiwan.

And I guess I'm thinking specifically about the US ability to potentially block chinese oil coming through the Straits of Malacca, which is something that obviously is of great concern to China. And I think is underlying the, the moves you just mentioned Beijing making. The thing that I think would really affect that is just China having more ability to project power in general, having a true blue water navy that can project power over really long distances.

Having, perhaps, greater ASW capabilities so that it can counter a US undersea campaign to keep it out of the straits of Malacca. And I think that those capabilities are largely independent of potential Chinese control of Taiwan.. The one way that I think it could matter is we could imagine, and again, you invited speculation, so I'm going to do it.

I mean, I can imagine a world, dismissing everything you just said about how this Taiwan war could actually be a long and protracted war, which I actually agree with. I think that there's, there's a bunch of reasons to be very uncertain about how it would go. And I think that's something we should be communicating not only to Beijing but also to Taipei.

But let's pretend that you're wrong and the war is actually really fast, and maybe it's not even an invasion. Maybe China tries to coerce Taiwan and it works and Taiwan rolls over. And then China has all of the resources that it had been dedicating toward a Taiwan campaign, Taiwan contingency, and all of that political energy and bureaucracy and all the platforms, and all of that freed up to do something else.

Would that help China do what you're talking about in the northern Indian Ocean? Yeah, I think it would. That would not be good. But you can see how that's a different type of argument than an argument about what control of Taiwanese territory itself means. So I think there's that connection.

But the distance-

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Yeah, the distances, yeah, it would be at that political level. The distances are so long that in the military sense, we didn't find a connection, but it's a very important issue.

>> Paul Wolfowitz: Owe that to the Indians.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Yeah.

>> Paul Wolfowitz: Sorry.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: I'm aware.

>> Paul Wolfowitz: No, that's helpful.

Thank you very much.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Thank you.

>> Kharis Templeman: Other questions from our in-person audience? Yeah, David, go ahead.

>> Kharis Templeman: Your mic.

>> David: Thank you. Could you just pull on the threat? You mentioned Japan and implications for them. I mean, your analysis here is focused on operational implications for US capabilities in the West Pacific.

Can you speculate on sort of how that might be more impactful for Japanese capabilities?

>> Caitlin Talmadge: For Japanese?

>> David: For Japanese operational capabilities.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: So I think it would be potentially significant for Japan. I mean, again, these are not things we talk about in company, of course, but Taipei is, excuse me, Okinawa, the southernmost Japanese islands, are closer to Taipei than they are to Tokyo.

And so a world in which China controls Taiwan, has the potential to, and again, in a scenario where you make a bunch of negative assumptions about Chinese intentions and yada, yada, yada, put some Japanese territory, I think, much more in the potential crosshairs of Chinese military power than is the case today.

There are other types of Chinese military assets that they could base on Taiwan that we didn't even talk about in this paper for reasons of space. But you think about air defense networks, you think about fighter aircraft. And it does raise the question as to whether, again, in a world where you really think China is expansionist and interested in maybe taking over other territory.

Or maybe just having the ability to threaten to do so as a source of coercive leverage vis a vis Japan, I think that would have to be concerning to decision makers in Tokyo, that China now controls this island that is so close to it.

>> Paul Wolfowitz: It is

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Yes.

 

>> Paul Wolfowitz: All right, it's just there in January, I can tell you.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Yeah, and so, you're seeing more glimmers of this. I mean, Japan, mostly in the form of making statements about how peace in the Taiwan Strait is important, and we support the status quo, but I think the subtext of a lot of that is a world where China controls Taiwan is not a world we wanna see.

And I think some of that is for military reasons. And so, I do think that it has that set of implications for Japan. And I think also, and I alluded to this, some in the presentation, if we are talking about a world where China controls Taiwan and they do base these submarines in the eastern deepwater ports.

And they also develop a larger, more quiet fleet of nuclear powered submarines, the ability to base them on Taiwan lets them pose a much more significant threat to the slocs. And that's also something that's a real concern for Japan, not only economically. But again, the concern isn't always China's going to actually use x, y, or z, it's having these capabilities gives China coercive leverage to get other things that it might want from Japan.

And so, I think per Dr. Diamond's points, I think this is something that they're concerned about. I understand why.

>> Kharis Templeman: Give me one moment. I've got a great question from online, and then I'll come to our in-person audience again. The question from online is, how quickly in months, years, or decades, do we think China could exploit these submarine advantages?

If, God forbid, they were to control Taiwan tomorrow, how much time would we have?

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Really excellent question, and I'll spare you the many hours of my life I wasted-.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Looking at questions like, how long does it take to construct a submarine port? But I will tell you that we actually did look at this question because it's very important, right, and it's something I didn't talk about explicitly.

But just because they have submarines and they have Taiwan doesn't mean they actually have the ports built and constructed and the infrastructure and all of that. And they don't, I mean, those ports are not developed for this purpose right now. And we spent some time actually trying to figure out, well, how long would it take to construct ports like this?

And we thought, how long would it take the United States? And we came up with an estimate that it could be years. I mean, it could be like five to ten years to really develop these ports if you were the United States. And then we started thinking, is China the United States?

We started thinking, is China good at building things quickly? I mean, I think there's actually a lot of reasons to question different aspects of Chinese military power and to not always assume that they're 10ft tall and every capability is going to actually become reality. But I actually think that building things quickly is something they're actually very good at.

And things like building ports are not technologically complex. I mean, you kinda know how to do it, they have ports. You just gotta get the stuff to the place where you wanna do it. So the fact that the experts we talked to in naval port construction, who, based on the us experience, told us this is something that would take the US five to ten years, makes me think that the most it would take the Chinese is five to ten years.

But it could be quicker. It's not months, but I think it's probably less than what it would take the United States if they're motivated.

>> Kharis Templeman: So that's the pretty much an upper bound.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: What did you say?

>> David: I said, look at the Schultz building next door. It's gonna be done in an year.

 

>> Kharis Templeman: Yes, okay, Larry.

>> Larry: Yeah, well, I'll predict that they won't be seeking permits from the Taiwan Environmental Protection Agency.

>> Larry: So I wanna put this in a broader context. For the following two reasons. Political, geopolitical context, and frankly, I think, a moral context. One is that everything you've said is very powerful and incredibly informative and compelling in terms of why we should care about this.

But it's obviously not the only reasons why we should care about this. And the second reason why is, I think it is we have an expert on Chinese propaganda sitting over there, Erin Bagot Carter. So she may correct me in what I'm about to say, but I have the impression that it is one prominent strand of PRC propaganda to develop the argument that this is all we care about.

The only reason why we want Taiwan is so we can keep it from becoming a PRC military asset. And, by the way, keep the PRC from ending the century of humiliation and just use it as a military platform for ourselves to contain China. And it now appears, I think it is one of the most alarming developments in the current calculus, that this is actually gaining traction among Taiwan public opinion.

Karas and I are gonna be there at the end of this month. We may get a more granular sense of whether this is really true or not and to what extent. And it may be that some of the currents in Taiwan public opinion now are kind of sincerely coming to believe this, and I think it may be that a lot of this is, frankly, very effective PRC penetration of the island.

So two questions. Number one, how can we graft on a kind of second layer of argument and appeal to Congress, the american public, and so on? That widens the arc to the other things that are important here, which is that one of the most liberal democracies in Asia not be wiped off the map as an autonomous and self-governing democracy.

And that our commitments to other democracies in the region, beginning with Japan, remain credible. And then the other question is, I realize maybe it's stretching a little bit beyond the work you're doing now, but what do you think China wants? What's its grand global aim? You said coercive leverage to get other things they want.

Ultimately, what are those other things?

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Well, thanks for those softballs. So, to be quite honest, I'm not sure that I'm the best person to answer either of these questions, but that's not going to stop me from talking a little bit more. So I think that what you say about perceptions in Taiwan of these sorts of arguments is very interesting, and I'm a little bit surprised actually to hear that, because I would have.

 

>> Larry: I was, too, when I began to learn about it.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Yes. And actually hearing you say that casts in a new light some conversations that I have had in response, in response to this work. I mean, I would have thought that there would be a relatively warm reception to a finding like this because it's a claim about a us interest that I think in the actual decision moment for a us president, were there the question of should the United States defend Taiwan?

I think the question of does the US have a geostrategic interest in this, I think is a question the president's going to be thinking about. And so having an analysis that suggests actually, yeah, there are just cold, hard geopolitical interests here, you would think that would be a piece of the conversation that would be welcome.

And yet I'm not totally sure that that's been the case. And it's interesting to hear from you how that might be received. As to the question that you asked, though, what do we do about it? How do we craft the appeal? I am not an expert in, in these questions of alliance relationships and kind of how we make that appeal to the broader public.

I guess my kind of simple minded view of this, again, as a military analyst, is that we should make arguments. We should make arguments about what us interests are. And I think the democracy argument is a real argument. It's an argument that is both based in values and in interests.

I mean, they're interlinked there. But I think this is too. So I guess, you know, my instinct would be to make all the arguments, but I may be wrong about that. I may be wrong about that because I'm not an expert on US public opinion and I'm not an expert on, I agree, taiwanese opinion either.

But that's really fascinating that you report that bac. As for what China wants, I am not an expert on that either. And we have some people in the room who I think know more about it than me. I will just note, though, with my political science hat on, that we often don't know what long term intentions are of a country because there's just all kinds of things that can change in the future.

Leaders change, regimes change, strategic intentions and realities change, alliances change. One of the reasons to focus on capabilities is because they are more trackable and predictable, I think in some ways than intentions. It doesn't mean they're more important. And we should never conflate capabilities and intentions. But I guess our thinking in this project is, let's imagine a world where chinese intentions did involve greater domination of the region, involved trying to kick the United States out of the region, sever us alliance commitments to the region.

You know, would control of Taiwan affect the chinese ability to attain those goals, but that doesn't mean that China will go after those goals. I don't know if that's the case, and I don't think China can know that. Nobody knows the future, and so we don't take a position on that because that's not our expertise.

Maybe others want to chime in on it, but it's an assumption that if you activate that assumption, this becomes consequential. That's how we think about it.

>> Kharis Templeman: Great. Amy, go ahead.

>> Amy Zegart: Yeah, so, Amy Zieger, Hoover Institution, FSI. It's good to see you.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Me too, thank you.

 

>> Amy Zegart: Great talk. So I wanna ust chime in on something that Larry said, and then I have two quick questions for you. Capabilities can drive intentions, too. And so I think that's one big implication, Caitlin, of your work, which is, the day after China controls Taiwan, are the intentions going to change about what China wants?

And the answer is maybe right? So two questions about the military analysis. The first is, Caitlin, if you were to imagine that you're sitting in Beijing and you're advising the Chinese government, and China has taken Taiwan, and now the question that the Chinese are asking is, what are we most worried about American countermeasures?

Flipping the script, what would, it's a way to get at what are our capabilities that we should be developing as countermeasures that would be most advantageous to the US. What would China worry about the most the day after taking Taiwan? That's question one. Question two, you said several times, if Chinese submarines get quiet, can you talk a little bit more about why they haven't gotten quiet?

What's the barrier given how much China has stolen intellectual property from the US and how much they've been able to advance in other areas? Why haven't they gotten quiet in this area yet? As a way to better understand what's the likelihood that they might.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Fantastic questions, and really interesting point that you made at the front about capabilities actually being a variable that can drive intentions.

So the question about what does China have to worry about in this situation, and what are kind of the operational implications for the US? So we've looked at this some, and when we briefed this to kind of more operational audiences, navy, Pentagon, we've talked about this a little bit more.

So I'm glad you raised it. I think there are some things that the United States could invest in to try to counter some of these improvements. So one is to think about ways to mess with chinese hydrophones. Think about cable cutting, which is not easy for the reasons that I mentioned, because these would be cables that the US would be trying to cut in defended areas.

But maybe underwater vehicles can let you make progress on that. Maybe you decide it's a mission that you care a lot about in order to protect your service forces, but interfering with those cables, either cutting them or finding the places ashore where the data is processed. And that's harder than it maybe sounds, because you don't need a big special building.

It's not like it's just a nondescript building that can house the data processing that's coming in from these hydrophones. The point is interrupting that sensor network, and there are some ways to do that. I hate to say this, but anti satellite capabilities, am I going to stay in public the US should be working on doing that?

No, I think your question was, what would China be worried about? So I'm going to say, yeah, I think China would be worried about that because it does place pressure on the United States to interrupt the kill chain another way. And anti satellite capabilities would be one of those ways, either kinetically or, jamming.

I think improving US ASW capabilities, so having way more attack submarines that could actually pick off these Chinese submarines that, would now be based closer to in the Philippine Sea, that that could potentially be important and also for protecting US surface forces. And of course, developing other long range strike capabilities that are not necessarily surface based would be another thing that would be important there.

So having more attack subs that can launch Tomahawk missiles would probably be the sort of capability that you'd want because your surface platform, the implication of the analysis is surface platforms are not gonna be super survivable in this era. So as they say in the little mermaid, like under the sea.

So those are the problems I'd wanna make China worry about. The question of why does China not have quieter submarines, is a real puzzler. I don't think we totally know the answer to that. I think it is really technically hard. It's very hard to get to the level, for instance, that the United States has achieved.

The United States, this is a project that it has been continuously innovating on for years and years. We never stopped the race.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Yeah, we never stopped when the cold war ended, we just kept regenerating. We were several generations ahead of where we were when the cold war ended, and we were doing pretty well then it's very technically hard.

It's not as easy as I'm gonna get your USB drive and figure out how to solve all these cavitation issues. I think that's part of it. And there may be a bureaucratic component to that. I don't know, but we have wondered about this and we don't really know the answer.

I am not sure I will say that they are making incremental progress. They do keep developing new generations, and so it's not like they're not working the problem, but I think they're a long way from solving it.

>> Kharis Templeman: Great. Next, I have a question from our online audience.

Donna Tanui asks if you could comment on the significance of the Philippines and in particular the recent agreement to expand US pacing opportunity. Well, for US force posture in that country and whether that affects this analysis at all.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Excellent question. And it relates right back to what Doctor Siegert was just asking about.

So another way to try to think about countering Chinese control of Taiwan is to see if there are other places in the first island chain where the US could have a more robust military presence. For instance, if you wanted to do cable cutting operations, would it help you to have air power and ships available to you in the Philippine Sea?

Could you try to string sensor arrays there and try to see what those might buy you. Doesn't help you a ton if chinese subs are still based in Taiwan. But I think there are a lot of reasons for the United States to want to strengthen that relationship after a very rocky period.

But it does speak directly, I think, to the issues here, that it's another place in the first island chain where the United States can try to counter the potential implications of Taiwan being in chinese hands. I think it also is potentially relevant to keeping Taiwan out of chinese hands, which I suspect is probably the shorter term motivation.

I think back to the point that Mister Wolfowitz raised earlier about convincing Beijing that this would be a very destructive, protracted war that doesn't necessarily guarantee either the political or military outcomes that they want. Having forward based us military presence in some of these places is a deterrent signal.

I mean it's basically saying like, you can't easily accomplish a fiat accompli because we are going to have these. These forces forward deployed, and we do have support from regional allies and so forth. And so I think there's a lot of defense cooperation that's going on that is trying to send that signal.

So that was how I at least read that agreement. Not an expert on the Philippines by any means, but looking at the map, that's what I think.

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, Jackie.

>> Jackie: So it's exciting to see this work. I got to see this work kind of early in the process.

So it's exciting to see where it is today and the impact that it really has had in how we think about the strategy, strategic importance of Taiwan. So I kind of wanna ask you about looking forward. So a lot of your work is about how we detect things underwater or on the water, but potentially the future of surface and subsurface detection is really changing with the advent of open source technology and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

To take even kind of the top of the measurements on the top of the ocean to understand what's going on underneath it. And so I'm wondering, what are the implications of your research if underwater becomes less stealthy and at the same time more contested?

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Fantastic question. And, yes, Jackie read through many, many previous iterations of this, and I think this may be the third or fourth time you've also been dragooned into a presentation that you had to listen to.

 

>> Jackie: Always riveting.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: She could probably give this talk. And, yeah, there are many, many important contributions, so thank you for that. So I think this question, I take your question to essentially be, what do we think about this debate over whether the oceans may actually become more transparent if the oceans are no longer a place where the US at least can hide very effectively?

And it's not a question that I have studied myself in depth. I'm familiar with the debate. My sense is this is very bad for the US, because at the grandest level, I think looking at this piece of research, what are we saying? We're saying that US surface forces and US air forces in the Western Pacific, which are already facing challenges to survivability, would really become a lot less survivable in a world where Taiwan is controlled by China in politically relevant scenarios.

And so, as I was just talking about a moment ago, it points, at least in the status quo, to the relevance of improving undersea capabilities. Because the US really does have some incredible advantages, I think, in terms of its both offensive and defensive undersea capability. So both its ability to use submarines to interdict enemy forces and also its ability to use submarines as platforms for launching attacks and so forth.

And so if that were to change, that really puts the United States, I think, in a difficult position. I mean, it also relates back to this discussion of, like, can the United States close the Straits of Malacca? It's like, well, how's it going to do that? It's going to use submarines.

I mean, that's overwhelmingly the domain in which that would occur. And so that's a real problem. I guess, from a technical perspective, I haven't been super persuaded that this is going to be a near term development, and I think it's going to be worse for everyone else than it is for the United States.

So if we simply ask, would it be bad if the oceans became transparent for the US? So yeah, that would be bad. But I think it'd be more bad for other countries that have even fewer advantages in this area to begin with. So I don't know how it would actually affect kind of the US China balance, but it would take away an area of relative advantage for the US.

So it's a concern. However, I'm not so concerned about it that I don't think we should still buy more attack submarines. I do, put my money where my mouth is in terms of my, I still recommend that.

>> Kharis Templeman: So we have about ten minutes left, and I've got, I think, five different people on the queue here.

So I encourage you to keep your questions short and you don't have to answer every bit of the question.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Okay, sorry.

>> Kharis Templeman: You can kind of pick and choose what you want. Next, we'll go behind you to Jason Kim. If you could introduce yourself.

>> Jason Kim.: Hi, Dr. I'm Jason Kim, I'm the US Army War College fellow visiting scholar.

Thank you for your brief today. I was researching on integrating allies and partners for contingencies, which has a heavy capabilities focus. So your brief kind of drew a lot of thoughts in my mind. I want to ask you a very simple question, is if what you brief actually becomes a reality, how do you see this change?

United States security, cooperating relationships with allies and partners, because you said it's going to be more bad for them. So when I see security cooperation, I'm talking specifically title 10 and title 22 programs. I'm really getting at do you think it's going to be a forcing function for us to share more, release more, potentially even talk multilateral contingency plans since now we have to work through them even greater because the threat is now spread even further than what it was before?

 

>> Larry: Jason, you should tell her what you're doing next.

>> Jason Kim.: I will be assigned to ait as the security cooperation chief.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Wow, okay, so on target.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Since I was asked to be quick, and thank you for your question, I think the answer is yes. I mean, I think if we're talking about that scenario where China controls Taiwan but the United States is trying to retain its residual commitments in the region.

I think not only for military reasons, but I think for political reasons, there's going to be a big demand for the US to do more and I think it would probably spur allies to do more too. And to get more serious about some of these missions of trying to integrate and be more interoperable contingency plan for the types of things we've been asking ourselves, will China actually do?

And they might not do those things, I don't know. But if you're talking about a world where Japan actually is concerned that China might threaten the Ryukyu Islands, or you're talking about a world where Korea actually is concerned that China might be able to impede the slocs that it depends on very vitally for all of its economics, its oil and so forth.

Then, yeah, I think that's going to stimulate greater efforts to engage in defense cooperation. It would have to in order for those relationships to survive. So, short answer is yes.

>> Jason Kim.: Thank you.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: And thanks for your question.

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, in the interest of time, let me take a couple of questions, and then you can kind of pick and choose at the end here.

So next, this gentleman up here in red.

>> Speaker 1: I don't have a question, but the gentleman across there does.

>> Kharis Templeman: I'm sorry. Yes, go ahead.

>> Henry Etzkowitz: As you say, we can't predict the future.

>> Kharis Templeman: Could you introduce yourself first?

>> Henry Etzkowitz: Henry Etzkowitz, Triple Helix Institute. So, as you say, we can't predict the future, but we can extrapolate from present trends.

And we could do thought experiments based on past historical events, like the motivation for Japan entering World War II, cutting off its natural resources. So, President Templeton, as one of the four legs of this premises mentioned, the Taiwanese advanced semiconductor industry. Which the United States is now ramping up to replace explicitly, it's said, for domestic reasons of restoring manufacturing.

But it also has international implications, especially, of course, for Taiwan. So if Taiwan loses a major customer, where would it likely go? To China, of course. And if that happens, and the current trend in China, of course, is to restore Marxism as a major framework, why worry about military power when you can get what you want through economics?

 

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay.

>> Henry Etzkowitz: China then becoming or Taiwan becoming dependent upon China is basically.

>> Kharis Templeman: Right, okay, let's see. Jim, great thoughts.

>> Jim: And I've got lots of questions. As you might imagine, there's no time for them. So-

>> Jim: We won't get into the details of air independent proposals.

Propulsion and-

>> Jim: Diesel versus nuclear submarines and what sources can really do in terms of triangulation and what it can't do. But I do first off, the context for the conversation isn't exactly clear, you gave us a fait accomplish that China now owns it. But later on, it implied that there was a continuing struggle, that we're still cutting cables and they were still sinking aircraft carriers and the like.

So that changes the context of the conversation and what we ought to be doing, quite frankly. But mine is a bit simpler than that, have you and your colleagues done the mirror imaging? I mean, if not to take MacArthur's metaphor, but to take another one, if Taiwan is the cork in the bottle, why aren't we doing there what the Chinese, what we fear the Chinese will do?

In other words, why aren't we building the socialist networks, putting in accelerating their own indigenous submarine program, and making sure it's as quiet and air independent propulsion as it needs to be? I mean, what are we missing here? And not only that, it then falls in the category of deterring the actions that predicated your whole analysis to some degree.

Those of us that have been there recently and those of us that were there over 25 years ago remember that we don't have the ability to plug into their C4 ISR network. We can't give them the common operating picture, we can't provide to Taiwan today a fraction of what we're providing to Ukraine on a daily basis.

And so my question is, have you flipped aside? Have you looked at in the mirror and why aren't we doing this, or allowing Taiwan to do this or encouraging them to do this in their own defense?

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay? And then did you have a question? No.

>> John Deutsch: I have two very brief remarks, you don't have to.

 

>> Kharis Templeman: Could you introduce yourself as well?

>> John Deutsch: My name is John Deutsch, I'm a MIT professor, I have two very brief remarks.

>> John Deutsch: The first is, why aren't, or why haven't the Chinese moved faster on developing their subway? Last time I was on a Chinese submarine was 35 years ago, but I remembered very clearly it was not a modern submarine.

And I'm told by my friends who drive aircraft carriers that they're still not very, why haven't they done better? And if they haven't done better, doesn't that say something about what they believe the value is of this scenario that you pushed? And the second thing is, I wanna make just a technical point, will the oceans become transparent?

I spent a large part of the middle part of my life worrying about non-acoustic ASW and I wanna tell you that's a hard problem, and it's not gonna happen, not during my lifetime.

>> Paul Wolfowitz: Computing is going to enable everything.

>> John Deutsch: I said, quantum computing is going to happen during my lifetime either.

 

>> Kharis Templeman: All right, what last word is yours, Caitlin?

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Sure well, thank you.

>> Caitlin Talmadge: Thank you for the array of important comments, we'd love to talk with you more about some of your comments. I mean, I take the punchline to be why is Taiwan not doing some of these things, or why are we not doing it with Taiwan?

We heard a glimmer of part of the answer, which is, I think we are actually constrained, as you all know, in some of what we can do with Taiwan. But I think there's others in the room who know more about this than me, but I'm struck by overall the last 20 years, the lack of urgency in some of Taiwan's own defense planning about these issues.

I sense that maybe some of that is starting to change, but I think even if the United States did push harder to develop some of these capabilities in Taiwan itself. Taiwan would have to also commit resources and would also have to have the civil military relations to kind of support these sorts of activities.

I also think in terms of a simple mirror imaging, it's not totally clear, like what Taiwan would gain from developing a submarine force on the eastern deepwater ports. I guess it's something to think about if that would, would actually help them in the scenarios that they're worried about for Chinese coercion or Chinese attack.

But I do think that the question of Taiwan's own defense posture is absolutely central to deterrence and to all the things we've been talking about here today. And this also gets to the question that was asked about does the lack of Chinese development of undersea worker capability say something about what their long-term intentions are?

And I don't know, I think that is one candidate explanation, that they think that their geography makes those capabilities much less useful to them. But to go back to the point that Doctor Ziegert made, maybe in a world where they actually had different real estate, would that stimulate them to make some of these technical leaps?

And I don't know, and I know a lot of people who share your view about the oceans not becoming transparent. So I don't know the answer to that one, but I've heard a lot of experts like yourself come down on that side of it. So time frames matter, but I'll.

 

>> Kharis Templeman: Great, all right, so we're at time, I want to ask everyone to join me in thanking our speaker.

>> Kharis Templeman: Before we sign off I just want to invite you all to our next event, we're doing event co sponsored with the cyber policy center over at the Freeman Smogley Institute next Wednesday, March 8 at noon.

Chun-Yi Lee is gonna be here speaking about Taiwan's semi-conductor industry, so if you're interested in that topic, we'll have much more time to explore it during our next event. This has been the project on Taiwan in the Indo Pacific region, and this is our regular speaker series. You've been listening to Caitlin Talmadge of Georgetown University, thank you.