Emerging 'Offset-X' Strategy Addresses Chinese Threat.

• Author: Montgomery, Mark

The People's Republic of China has emerged as the United States' top strategic competitor, and the pacing challenge for the U.S. military.

In the words of the recently published 2022 National Defense Strategy, China aims "to target the ability of the Joint Force to project power to defend vital U.S. interests and aid our allies in a crisis or conflict" as part of its "endeavor to refashion the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to suit its interests and authoritarian preferences."

The situation is further complicated by the rapid development of numerous emerging technologies that are changing the character of war, creating opportunities for both China and the United States to develop new ways to employ force.

If the United States does not meet this challenge with bold and deliberate action, the consequences could be dramatic--a global shift in power, and an upending of the relative peace, development, and stability that the United States has underwritten in the Indo-Pacific for almost 80 years. The U.S. military needs a competitive strategy, grounded in its asymmetric strengths to develop, deploy and employ capabilities that will restore its military-technological superiority.

Meanwhile, new military capabilities, enabled by artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, the development of creative ways to apply them and intensifying geopolitical rivalries are changing the character of war.

At the strategic level, new technologies are enabling persistent disinformation operations, the theft of intellectual property at a massive scale and cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, creating a sense of a persistent conflict. The proliferation of sensors, mass collection of shopping, dating, career networking and even biometric data, is enabling adversaries to develop individual targeting packages--moving all of us toward an individualization of war.

As technologies enabling persistent conflict and individualization develop, the United States will often be ethically constrained in its deployment and employment of these new technologies, as it is guided by a set of principles, U.S. and international laws, as well as the Defense Department's regulations and ethical guidelines. The United States cannot, and should not, expect the same from its adversaries, as has been demonstrated by Russia in Ukraine or China in Xinjiang.

At the more operational level, the proliferation of emerging technologies is creating new ways for military force to be applied. Mass produced and collected data...