US hard power must get harder

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

- TODD G. BUCHHOLZ MICHAEL MINDLIN

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Harrison Ford gets his biggest laugh when a desert assassin twirls a scimitar with menacing bravado. Following this brief performance, Ford’s character cracks a wry smile, takes out his pistol, and shoots the man dead. In a potential contest with China, the United States looks more like the medieval assassin, deploying young sailors and soldiers equipped with perilously outdated, vulnerable technology.

Aircraft carriers and fighter jets look a lot less stealthy in a world of limitless drones and autonomous submarines. But the problem is not just the weapons. China's strategists are targeting the nodes that allow America to project power: satellites, logistics, and command networks. China need not worry about a Navy destroyer's specifications if the captain can’t talk to his superiors, access his satellites, or get refuelled and restocked with artillery. At that point, the destroyer might as well be a Carnival cruise ship without the lounge singers. The military calculus that defined American supremacy for decades has been quietly, and perhaps catastrophically, inverted. While the US showcased its “shock and awe” dominance in the 2003 Battle of Baghdad — broadcasting videos of pinpoint missile attacks — China was conducting a forensic analysis of US vulnerabilities. Now, the People's Liberation Army is armed with YJ-18 supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles and DF-26 “carrier killers” that can turn their targets into US$13 billion shrimp reefs. Just as the Chinese firm DeepSeek recently sent shudders through Silicon Valley with its cheaply made large language models, China's attack missiles pose a lethal threat at a bargain price.