From the Crows' Nest

Ken Miller [00:00:00]:
Welcome to From the Crows' Nest, a podcast on Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations, or EMSO. I'm your host, Ken Miller, Director of Advocacy and Outreach for the Association of Old Crows. As always, thanks for listening. All right, before we get started on today's topic and guest, I just did want to mention a couple quick changes that we're making to our show. This is some exciting news. First and foremost, we are now on YouTube, so all of our episodes are now available on our From the Crows' Nest channel. The episodes now of course are audio only, but we will be using YouTube in the near future to release some video content, live streams and so forth. So regardless of your preferred platform for listening to the podcast, please take a moment to go to the YouTube channel and follow the show so that we can begin to build our engagement on that platform.

Ken Miller [00:00:57]:
Also from our listener survey that we've mentioned a couple times over the recent months, the listener survey that we did in the spring, one of the changes we've decided to make was to remove the subscription firewall from all of our AOC members only episodes. These episodes are more current affairs focused and have really been really important for a lot of our listeners who have tuned in to learn a little bit more about how EW is related to current global security environment and kind of the current affairs. And so we've gotten a lot of calls to kind of make these more available. So AOC members will still have the exclusive opportunity to participate in the virtual studio audience. But from here on out if you go into the podcast feed, you will be able to have access to every episode free to listen to everyone. And when we release these episodes every two weeks in addition to our regular shows, they are free to listen to as well, so we hope you enjoy them again. We make these changes as in response to some listener comments and suggestions and we always want to make the show as listener friendly as possible. So thank you for your feedback and enjoy those past episodes and the future episodes that we release.

Ken Miller [00:02:08]:
Onto today's episode, we are going to pivot our conversation today to the Asia Pacific region and discuss the latest security challenges that threaten to destabilize Indo Pacom region, especially China's escalating aggression to reunify Taiwan. To help me with this topic, I am very pleased to have on the show once again Duncan McCrory. He has appeared on the show previously on our episodes related to our annual AOC Europe show in May of 2024 and May of 2025. So if you go back into our archives, you can Pull up those episodes and hear his thoughts on European EW as well as global security. All right. I am pleased to be here with Duncan McCrory, his PhD researcher at the Freeman Air and Space Institute, King's College, London. Duncan, as always, thank you for being here on from the grossness. It's great to talk with you again.

Duncan McCrory [00:02:59]:
Thank you so much for having me onto the show again, Ken.

Ken Miller [00:03:02]:
You've become a regular guest, so to speak. I've had you on my podcast each time last couple years for AOC Europe and really appreciate your thoughtful ideas about how on global security and kind of some of the challenges we face. We had a great conversation at AOC Europe earlier this year and we we were talking about Chinese invasion of Taiwan that the threat of that and what that means for global security and just felt it would be a good time to really unpack that more as a full episode here over the summer. So I really do appreciate you taking time to join me here to talk a little bit about the Indo Pacific region and how we need to be thinking about this as quite frankly, the deadline is looming in terms of Chinese aggression in South China Sea and against Taiwan.

Duncan McCrory [00:03:47]:
Indeed. And I'd like to do a shout out to Dean Cheng, who did a really interesting, fascinating podcast with you a while back on the CCP in general and the geopolitical aspects. And I'd encourage anyone listening to this to although times moved on a bit, I think a lot of the principles and key learning is definitely worth going through because you provided a lot of insight there. I'm hoping to talk a little bit more about the pla, People's Liberation army, and the threat of specifically of an invasion of Taiwan and what that scenario might look like. And then from what I presented at the conference in Rome, the AOC Europe Conference, I had the privilege of being on Dr. Tom Withington's panel and I was able to discuss a little bit about some of the relevant lessons, in my opinion from Ukraine that could be applied to potentially strengthen Taiwan's asymmetric approach to resisting a potential invasion from China to hold out until further support arrives. So that's sort of the where I'd like to take the scope today, please.

Ken Miller [00:04:51]:
So you, you mentioned the my episode with Dean Chang. I can't remember when we aired that. I think that was might have been like a year and a half ago last year sometime a great conversation. And so we really appreciate you bringing that up for our listeners and we can maybe provide a link in the show notes to go back and listen to that it really was an informative look at how the PLA and the Communist Party is. Is thinking about these issues from their perspective and kind of how we've gotten that perspective wrong from the west and what kind of what that. The implications of that for global security. So thank you for raising that. Great, great panel at AOC Europe.

Ken Miller [00:05:28]:
Really do appreciate you being on the panel with Tom. Always enjoy having Tom on. So I just. Let's just dive right into this here. So AOC Europe, and we've covered this a lot on the podcast. You know, a lot of our attention goes to the Russian Ukraine war now. And I think it's fourth year, it's still churning. But the advances, what we're learning, the lessons learned both tactically and technologically are really coming, you know, kind of off the charts.

Ken Miller [00:05:52]:
Things are moving so fast over there from that perspective. But over the last year or so, we're starting to turn our attention to a little bit more, as we should be, to the Indo Pacific region. I was just meeting with some stakeholders last couple weeks ago, and they were talking about, you know, this timeline of 2027 really kind of looming as a marker for Chinese aggression against Taiwan in the South China Sea. And, and it made me think that, you know, when I was talking to Dean Chang a year or so ago, one of the things that kind of jumped out at me was we really don't do a very good job of understanding how the other side thinks of comprehending it, comprehending their worldview, their perspective, their priorities, their fears and so forth. And we oftentimes define those characteristics from a Western perspective. And that, of course, leads us down this path of getting it wrong. With that as context. Duncan, kind of the first question to kind of give you some freedom to answer in your research on Chinese aggression in the region, what are some of the attributes or characteristics that you think we're getting wrong in terms of understanding how they are thinking and what that region means to China and its history of hegemonic power?

Duncan McCrory [00:07:13]:
Sure. I think. I think it's worth setting some context around that. So you talked about timing, which is absolutely critical. And you mentioned 2027, which is, you know, the Davidson windows, it's referred to as.

Ken Miller [00:07:24]:
I haven't heard that. That term turn, Davidson window.

Duncan McCrory [00:07:27]:
It was reported in, I believe, in a congressional hearing, that it was a likelihood of when there might be an invasion attempt.

Ken Miller [00:07:35]:
True.

Duncan McCrory [00:07:35]:
Thing is, no one can say precisely when an invasion might occur. The thing is, the threat of an invasion, the fact that Xi Jinping has vowed reunification with Taiwan by force if necessary. And according to the US intelligence community that he's ordered the PLA to be capable of achieving this by 2027, those should not be taken as empty words. And we should not for a second underestimate China and its ambitions here. And the fact that President Xi has absolute control over the PLA from the Executive level through the Central Military Commission, there will be absolutely no hesitation if he decides that the use of force is the necessary course of action. And because the PLA serves the Chinese Communist party and it's 100% loyal to them, they will be able to marshal the full states resources behind what would be truly a multi domain effort to seize control spanning air, land, maritime space and of course the cyber and EW domain. The PLA itself is enormous. According to US DoD, it's the world's largest military force by active serving personnel with over 2 million active duty plus around half a million reserves and then a further half a million apartments approximately in paramilitary personnel.

Duncan McCrory [00:08:56]:
And that spans multiple services. So the pla, Army, Navy, Air Force and the Rocket Force and they are supported by the PLA Information Support Force, the Aerospace Forces, Cyberspace Force and the Joint Logistics Support Force. Again, all of these arms and services are directly loyal to the Chinese Communist Party. If they decided to go ahead with this, the implications, you know, you talked about the need to prioritize thinking in this region. I think again that's absolutely critical because the implications could be profound for global security. Not only are we talking about undermining the rules based order and denying the Taiwanese people the right to freedom of democracy, it could weaken alliances if there's a failure to act and come to Taiwan's aid. Alternatively, if there is an intervention, any miscalculation could lead to direct conflict with China. There's war gaming that's been done by CSIS which has showed that could be extremely costly and could lead also to a humanitarian crisis and potentially even nuclear conflict.

Duncan McCrory [00:10:04]:
There is the whole impact on trade and supply. Approximately a fifth of global maritime trade is reported to go through the Taiwan Strait. That's roughly two and a half trillion dollars worth of goods. And if you can imagine the disruption that would cause on our supply chains, not just automotive manufacturing. But you know what happens if we suddenly get a cut off of the semiconductor supply into the defense sector? How are we going to ramp up our defense strength if suddenly that is displaced? That could be very severe indeed. I think maybe the final point in terms of that context, the thinking that we need to consider is NATO Secretary, Secretary General Mark Ross recently said that, you know, because of this no limits relationship that Russia has declared with, with China, he has said there's no reason why Russia and China might coordinate their actions together. And then President Putin could take advantage of what's already a very stretched US force displacement across the globe. If there's a pivot toward, a strong pivot towards in the paycom at the expense of some of the defence of Europe, Putin could use that to take advantage and potentially expand or redirect some of his forces, not just targeting Ukraine, but potentially others like we talked about the Baltic states before.

Duncan McCrory [00:11:24]:
I believe that's again a risk that we need to assess and consider how to respond to that. Because as right at the beginning I say timing is absolutely critical and once this starts to happen, it will happen very quickly indeed.

Ken Miller [00:11:36]:
You mentioned really good, a number of good points on context that I want to kind of dig into a little bit more. So we'll start with the most recent one you mentioned with the role of Russia, the Chinese Russian kind of node, limits, partnership, whatever, whatever that really means to them is, is one thing, what it means to everyone else is, could be slightly different. But you kind of mentioned that we don't really know how closely those two countries could or would work together. But the signals at least are that they are prepared to align at least enough to cause more disruption. And I think you kind of hit the nail on the head. You know, a lot of the stuff with the Russian Ukraine war, we, we, we can't think of that as one activity or one threat and then indopacom is another. The closer we get to that timeline, the closer those two conflicts kind of merge into a larger global conflict. Because either Russia or China could leverage the, as you mentioned kind of the, the, the stretch thin forces of the west to execute their plan.

Ken Miller [00:12:39]:
So at some point those two almost become one and the same in terms of the timing. So can you share a little bit? I know that in, in previous AOC Europe events that we've had, you know, obviously the conversation is largely on the Russian Ukraine war. Can you talk to us a little bit about that Russian China relationship, kind of what its history is? Because they're not friends, they historically have not been friends, but they're both obviously communist countries. So talk a little bit about that dynamic and where that could make matters worse for Taiwan, the West and so forth, or it could implode and backfire.

Duncan McCrory [00:13:17]:
I attended the Global Air Chiefs Conference in London last week and there was a question that was asked about, you know, we're seeing Russia, not just Russia and China, but also Iran and North Korea. A lot of bilateral exchange, whether it's training or cooperative development or exchange of arms. We even see North North Koreans sending soldiers to Ukraine to support Russia in their illegal aggression. It was explained, you know, the question was are we seeing an alternative, you know, an alliance, you know, alternative to NATO effect. And it was described that it's not what we would describe as an alliance in the NATO sense. It's not truly collaborative, it's not integrated. A lot of the bilateral ties are based on self interest. But that doesn't mean for a second that we should take our attention away from that trajectory of where it could go.

Duncan McCrory [00:14:13]:
It's definitely a cause for concern. In terms of China, Russia specifically. We talked before about the no limits relationship. The pla, while vast, is not the modern pla, is not battle tested. It's not fought a war since 1979 where there was a, a very brief invasion of Vietnam and we inflicted heavy losses at the time and then China withdrew soon after. China has since been observing, I think with great interest what's happening in Ukraine. Having trained with Russians and I think Dean brought this up in, in one of the previous discussions was they'll be now be reconsidering some of the training and lessons they've learned from joint training with Russia because they're effectively learning how not to fight a war. We've seen Russia's failure to gain control of the air and the consequences of that.

Duncan McCrory [00:15:02]:
We've seen the difficulties Russia's had with coordinating air and land operations and clearly trying to coordinate air, land, maritime space, etc. In a Taiwan scenario would be even more challenging. And I guess that's another point to come onto is I'll maybe talk later about some of what I see as the potential lessons from Ukraine that Taiwan could take in terms of implementing stronger defense. We have to remember that a conflict in Taiwan in that region would be very different, vastly different to what we're seeing in Ukraine. And the geography, the distances involved, the fact that Taiwan is, is relatively small compared to Ukraine, I think it's approximately similar size to Belgium. It's, it's not surrounded by friendly nations that can sneak supplies over the border. It's an island nation with very in, in terms of, I think the, the distance to, to China it's around 100 nautical miles at the sort of shortest distance, but that's over what can be treacherous waters, very shallow. It's known for storms, tropical storms and, and winds et get supplies over in A blockade condition would be extremely difficult.

Duncan McCrory [00:16:18]:
There's so many differences. But the key thing is trying to understand what are the relevant lessons from Ukraine that could be ported across. And that's again one, I think further thinking is needed in that area.

Ken Miller [00:16:30]:
One of the things that when we talk about where Russia has failed in terms of achieving air superiority especially, I think it all comes back down to, and this is a show about electromagnetic spectrum operations. I mean, you're dealing, dealing with the electromagnetic spectrum as, as a domain, as a physical domain, as which it is, whether DoD cites that or not, that that has to be the first and foremost advantage that you have to achieve if you even want air, land, sea or anything. And so Russia hasn't done that, Ukraine hasn't done that. And so you still have this, what is largely an EW battle because they're fighting over the airwaves, trying to get that advantage which would then enable air all the other domains. And so there is. While I think military planners don't really recognize that pecking order sometimes that EMS comes first, I think that history has proven that it is.

Duncan McCrory [00:17:23]:
That's so valid canon. It's a point that Eric Bramford brought up in, in the panel discussion I had about it being the first grind to take and the last to take away. And there was even, there was remarks recently about the first strikes happening in the space domain. And I think again, that's space being a key enabler for communications, pnt, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, et cetera. Again, these areas need far more attention because they are the linchpin that holds the joint force together. And as soon as you start to get degradation in space or in the EMS or in cyber domain, it all starts to fall apart. And if that's the case, we then need to consider, well, what contingency planning have we got if we start to lose communications, if we lose GNS success, if, if we have to revert to other means to fight so that we can maintain a level of effectiveness. Again, I think thinking is happening there.

Duncan McCrory [00:18:17]:
But are we including it in war games or does EW and space and cyber, do they tend to be pushed to one side and we focus on platform level conflict, which, having looked at some of the reports recently, there's very little if any mention of EW and cyber because it's, you know, hard to abstract for those who are less familiar with it. I think that's somewhere where the Crows association of OS could help provide that expertise into these kinds of war gaming activities.

Ken Miller [00:18:43]:
And I think if it gets to that point where it becomes a war of attrition or it's, it's, it's a costly system versus system fight you're going. It's not only costly in terms of money, but also costly in terms of lives. There's no way that you escape that without a huge toll on human life. And I don't think either side, at least from what I've learned about China, they're, they're not interested in a destructive conflict over Taiwan. They're very concerned about how they appear in the world stage. They want the, the infrastructure, the critical infrastructure, the, the progress that Taiwan has, the, the foundries and so forth. They want to make it look more celebratory and peaceful than bloodshed. And that is a complicated goal, but it's also one I think that you, the west has leveraged over the years to kind of push that timeline a little bit further to the right.

Duncan McCrory [00:19:34]:
That's right. I mean, I think they would like to avoid a conflict if possible. You know, it's by force if necessary is the words they've used. But if they decide to go over that threshold and use force. One of their doctrines is described as system destruction warfare. In their writings. They prioritize achieving information dominance by denying adversaries the ability to access the spectrum to their ability to coordinate forces, to weaken their will to fight and compel them to cease hostilities. They want to disrupt, degrade and deny joint operations by attacking sensors, communications and data links that make up those integrated systems architectures.

Duncan McCrory [00:20:17]:
They describe it as trying to achieve an effect that would paralyze adversary joint operations. And they envisage that not just through kinetic effects, but also electronic warfare, cyber operations and using disinformation, you know, again to erode their adversaries will to flight. They talk about a core operating concept being multi domain precision warfare. And if you interpret that, it seems to be similar to the jadic2join all domain command and control concept, you know, their thinking is similar. And again, I would just appeal that we cannot underestimate. We shouldn't assume that they're behind. You know, we had the CEO of Scale AI again at a congressional hearing. He'd explained that they're investing 10 times as much in AI as the US and if we think about how that could be applied across the domains, you know, I think we've seen less of a hesitancy to apply these types of technologies than maybe we have in the US and they're certainly not afraid of running multiple different concurrent technology competitions.

Duncan McCrory [00:21:26]:
You know, we saw just four at Christmas last Year two sixth generation prototype combat aircraft being revealed. You know, they, they have the will to test and, and, and demonstrate new technologies. And again, I think these are, these are just key things. What, so wh, what they might say in public, they want things to be peaceful. You know, definitely cannot be complacent here.

Ken Miller [00:21:48]:
I want to move to, to a second point that you made in the, in the context conversation at the beginning and that's, that's on the role of alliances. Now we kind of touched on that with, between Russia and China. But the Indo Pacific region looks a lot different in terms of partnerships and alliances than does the West. Then does Europe. You know, obviously we have NATO, we have geographic proximity of a lot of different countries. And even if Ukraine is, you know, Ukraine is Eastern Europe, the, the, the geography and the, the understanding of the environment is much more well understood from allies in, in other European countries. It's geographically contained in that way. When you get into the Pacific region, it's freaking huge.

Ken Miller [00:22:33]:
The, the maps of the globe do not do it justice how vast the Indo Pacific region is. And you know, we have a number of strategic partnerships, oftentimes bilateral, but nothing that looks like a NATO. We have relationships with South Korea and Japan and the Philippines and of course Taiwan and then Australia and others that may or may not be considered part of quote unquote Asia from a continent perspective, but from a regional perspective, all of those countries, including the US which is on the other side of the Pacific, obviously will all be significantly impacted by a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. How does that aggression impact US Alliances or partnerships in that region, as well as what type of stress does that put on other alliances like NATO that is currently engaged with Ukraine, the Russian Ukraine war? My concern is that if we do not contain China, if we do not prevent them from accomplishing their goal, that significantly weakens our ability to have a productive partnership with South Korea, Japan, because they're going to look at what we can and can't do for them in the face of China and that's going to change the nature of those relationships. So there's cascading consequences for not successfully pushing China back. So talk a little bit about how those countries interact from a partnership alliance perspective and how that might play into Chinese thinking about timing as well as the need to reunify with Taiwan.

Duncan McCrory [00:24:12]:
Well, I think if, if again taking the timing aspect and this, this is probably playing into a little bit of the scenario. So what, you know, before you discuss the reactions, what would the scenario look like? And I think a campaign to Surround and contain and potentially invade. And I say potentially because containment might be enough to succeed with their goals. But that would still be a massive undertaking. It would take considerable time to assemble the invasion force and achieve full operational readiness. And the potential indicators of that would be surge production and emissions, stockpiling, emergency supplies, mobilization of reservists and lots of heightened activity at ports. But to try and assess the true intent of what's happening I think would be very difficult for the intelligence services because the PLA conducts large scale joint military exercises in the region you've just described with growing complexity and they typically include rehearsals for what appears to be a Taiwan blockade or invasion. We had straight thunder back in April, that training exercise.

Duncan McCrory [00:25:20]:
The PLA openly declared that the purpose of that was to practice joint blockades and regional control and deliver precision strike and to try and understand what's happening and gain confirmation and then get alignment amongst those different allies that you've mentioned and reach a conclusion on what needs to happen next. That will be challenging given all of the disinformation that the PLA's Information Support Force is like to likely to use to flood the information space. And that's similar to Russia's Maska Doctrine. You know that deception effort that Russia used prior to the invasion of Ukraine where they tried to convince the west that it was just another training exercise. You know, many of their own soldiers didn't even know they were going to be on a real operation. So how do we convince the different allies you mentioned that actually it's for real this time. It's not just another boy who cried wolf scenario. So gaining that critical intelligence and then being able to define a clear response that is unified amongst those different allies, I think if there's any delay and let's face it, it would be really challenging, that buys the PLA time to tighten the noose to strengthen its grip around Taiwan and force capitulation.

Duncan McCrory [00:26:39]:
And it might be as they may be able to do that. It depends on how much pressure there is on Taipei. But again the more time that's spent trying to assess and understand what's happening that that will just impose huge challenges on then the ability to respond afterwards.

Ken Miller [00:26:55]:
I want to talk a little bit about the Chinese Communist Party you mentioned. You obviously they have total control over the, over the military. And Dean Chang again this was the. Our listeners will find this in that episode. He goes into great detail about how the CCP is organized and how it rules with really an iron fist down through echelons of, of people down to Just the, your, your everyday, your common person. When we hear Chinese Communist Party and their control, I think in from the west, we oftentimes think of, we try to relate it to our political parties here on the west, whether you're from US or Western Europe. That's not the same type of party structure. It's not the same type of party activity.

Ken Miller [00:27:41]:
Talk to us a little bit about what makes the CCP so much more of a, almost a, A force to be reckoned with as a party, quote unquote, as an organization than say, other political parties outside of, outside of China.

Duncan McCrory [00:27:58]:
Dean Chang, I think, went through this in, in far greater detail and I guess I could in, in, in these, these constraints. But I think what he emphasized was the fact that the CCP permeates every aspect of society in China. There's no organization, be it military, industrial academia, that doesn't have to basically answer to that party, and they have to literally toe the party line and follow their instructions or face the consequences. And it's the point earlier that we talked about. If there were to be an invasion against Taiwan, the PLA would be able to. Because the CCP has direct control over the PLA and can harness all assets of the state, you know, they could basically harness all of that in an invasion scenario. An example of that being, I talked earlier about the huge numbers of assets and troops that would be needed to conduct an amphibious invasion. And whilst the PLA navy is enormous, as is the Chinese coast guard, they would also be supplemented by a civil, effectively a militia that uses civil transport, shipping to bring munitions, vehicles, weapons across those vast distances.

Duncan McCrory [00:29:25]:
And they'd be hidden in plain sight because they would be concealed. And it's that, it's that power to literally seize assets and put them into a military operation. Again, all of the industry, again, they effectively are reporting into the PLA and CCP when it comes to technology development. And then there's an enormous global espionage campaign that the CCP runs to seize intellectual property, to reverse engineer, to adapt and enhance Western technologies, be it for weapon systems or for other, for other capabilities. And it's, it's that ability to. Again, Dean talked about hoovering up information and then being able to pull out key nuggets to then put into its technology developments. But again, the Chinese are accelerating so far ahead in so many areas, they're recognized as world leaders. So again, the.

Duncan McCrory [00:30:32]:
You see a lot of criticism in discussion forums when you see China releasing new military equipment which bears some resemblance to Western equipment, and you hear things like, oh, they're just copying us and they've no imagination. The fact is, is they, they are now surpassing in, you know, they're, they are accelerating ahead. They're generating a huge amount of their own intellectual property through their own research and development activities, through their own, you see enormous numbers of papers published every year. So again, I would just emphasize they, they should not be underestimated. And this entire effort, this sort of military civil fusion, as they describe it, it's all driven by the, the ccp.

Ken Miller [00:31:14]:
I remember back, you know, this was years ago when I was on Capitol Hill. One of the debates that raged on for years, quite frankly, was giving China the most favored nation trade status. And, and of course, the thinking back then was if we open up China and show them how amazing American democracy and free market economy is, they would see the light and they would become at least some loosely defined, you know, they'd be more democratic, more. More capitalist, more positive toward the West. That's. That of course, hasn't happened, but that was the argument. And I, even back then, you kind of got heartburn thinking. I'm like, we might be getting this wrong a little bit because it was very, you know, it was, it was very Western focused and didn't put a lot of emphasis on their thinking, Their, their cultural mindset.

Ken Miller [00:32:12]:
Twenty plus, 25 years since that debate, we clearly have gotten it wrong. And they've developed rapidly their military capability. The, the Communist Party is probably stronger today than it was back in the 80s when Tiananmen Square was, you know, was happening. What happened or, or even just the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90s, you know, kind of shook the strength of the communist ideology around the world. So you could make the argument today, in 2025, that they're stronger today than they were 25 years ago in that the ability to open, the desire to open up kind of backfired. I mean, hindsight's always 20 20, but. But is there, in your estimation, a diplomatic solution to this conflict or this security challenge in, in the, in the Pacific region, where if we could do X, they might do Y, and therefore we meet at this place where we're not fighting and everybody's happy? I'm. I have not heard one, but I'd be interested in your take is because hearing you, it kind of talked through the details of the problem.

Ken Miller [00:33:22]:
You know, we've covered this on the podcast before, and you can read any article, foreign affairs, whatever. It all points to aggression and reunification. And quite frankly, you could make a very strong argument through that. Because there's one more point that I want to talk about and that's the, the impact, the economic impact of such an effort. It all points to potentially really challenging, difficult times economically for the west, for the US because of how closely we are tied to Chinese trade and, and trade deficit and labor and so forth. Is there a way out of this without fighting or is this just, are we dealing with kind of the result of an effort to open China up and it just backfired.

Duncan McCrory [00:34:07]:
So I'm definitely not an expert in diplomacy. I need to stay within my lane. What I would suggest is, and it's been discussed previously, is strength through deterrence is something that I think to suddenly do a 1ac and try and open the doors and say aren't we grace when as you described, it's not been successful in the past to me is a very risky proposition. I don't suggest for a moment that the diplomatic efforts don't cease. If anything, they are crucially important and need to continue. But I think while that's happening, there's still a need to prepare. In the same way, Europe is now strengthening to face what it fears may be further aggression from Moscow in the near future. I think continuing to strengthen the posture and also strengthen Taiwan's ability to defend itself asymmetrically.

Duncan McCrory [00:35:03]:
To buy that time to hold off is absolutely key. And Ken, one thing I guess I'd like to talk about is we talked earlier about the criticality of the cyber in the EMS domain and we talk about how we're vulnerable there. But I think we need to remember that the PLA will be just as dependent on access to the spectrum for their sensing their command and control, their pnt to control their multi domain operations. And I think lateral thinking is needed to look at how Taiwan could potentially leverage EW cyber and information operations to try and gain some advantages in the area. Now we, we can't obviously discuss specific techniques, tactics and procedures in an unclassified form. But I would again point to there's an excellent what I describe as a seminal paper by Dr. Tom Withington on maneuver warfare in the spectrum that he published for Rusi. I think it's back in 2023 and he the key tenets he talks about in maneuver warfare across cyber and the spectrum are the use of surprise, deception and agility across the spectrum.

Duncan McCrory [00:36:12]:
And we've seen Ukraine exercise those tenets when they're fighting off overwhelming numbers by Russia. And Taiwan's going to face even greater combat mass challenges even more disproportionate ones. So how do we, in a proper classified form, look at those key tenets that Tom's outlined in his paper and look at preemptive strikes about how we move assets, how we are agile in the spectrum with frequencies and waveforms and techniques, how do we target critical nodes for sensing, command and control, et cetera, within the PLA's architecture. How do we use deception to cause confusion, poor decision making, and generate cognitive overload? That's a key takeaway. I would appeal for the we've got a really capable and intelligent community in the AOC that are hopefully going to listen to this suggestion. And I think it's how do we harness that collective brain power to come up with helping Taiwan to become a more resilient and asymmetric force so they can defend themselves and give China pause for thought in terms of if they do engage with this, this could be a very protracted and costly endeavor. So diplomacy? Absolutely. Proceed.

Duncan McCrory [00:37:29]:
But let's let's not take the ball off preparing because any weakness will just be seen as something that can be taken advantage of.

Ken Miller [00:37:38]:
Our listeners can't see I'm holding up a book to you, but I would recommend, and I'll mention here, it's called Crashback. It's written by a US Military naval affairs reporter, Michael Faby, good friend of mine as well, but he wrote this book several years ago. It's called Crashback, the power clash between the US And China in the Pacific. And really what he looks at is this notion of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and how fragile that is and the steps that US takes. I'm going to given the time that we have left, I want to combine this notion with something else in terms of the economic impact of the conflict in Indo Pacom freedom of navigation, South China Sea we we often talk about China reunifying with Taiwan. Then you have the South China Sea. You have all the trade routes that come out of through there that the US is trying to maintain that freedom. You look around, you zoom out even further around the world and you see how China has really exported their resourcing and control of resources around the world, looking, you know, as far around the world as Panama and Africa and other places.

Ken Miller [00:38:51]:
My fear is twofold, is that China has positioned itself effectively around the world to strangle trade routes and ignite other proxy conflicts or aggressions that are going to significantly impact economic and social life around the world, particularly in the US all the while trying to execute their plan to reunify China. In other words, it's not going to be, hey, we're going after China. Everything else is, is off the table. It's just one thing. They're, it's going to be a blanket. They're going to come at it from another, a number of different directions. And my concern is, apart from the concern of Taiwan reunification is the economic impact of losing South China Sea and access to Chinese goods and services that of course we depend on to keep prices low. So that means, you know, imagine a, a dystopian reality where every Walmart and every target and every, almost everything you know, that bases their goods on imports from China, they close or pricing goes 3, 4, 500% more expensive.

Ken Miller [00:40:02]:
Tremendous economic impact. That would happen almost overnight. From your research, do we spend too much time focusing on the China versus Taiwan perspective and not enough time on the global economic impact of a conflict in Indo Paycom or how do you fit these other pieces of this conflict? The global economic impact, the freedom of navigation, other, the autonomy of other states, the Philippines and Indonesia and Thailand and all these other countries that are going to be impacted by a much stronger reunified China. In many ways to me that I don't want to say it scares me more than the Taiwanese unification, but I don't look at Taiwan as a one shot problem. It is going to have a global impact.

Duncan McCrory [00:40:55]:
Sure, that's absolutely valid. I mean there's a famous again Chinese publication that's been translated Unrestricted Warfare which again I don't believe it's Chinese doctrine, but it has influenced Chinese doctrine, doctrinal development and it talks about basically anything becomes a valid target in precisely the type of manner you talked about being, you know, economic targets, financial etc. Rather than hearsay, you know, and don't take my word for it, everything I'm covering here is unclassified and I'm again, I'm not speaking on behalf of any organization. Last year, the nsa, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, they all publicly called out the People's Republic of China for sponsoring efforts to conduct what they call reconnaissance inside US Information technology networks. So going around computer networks to pre position themselves for cyber attacks on critical national infrastructure in the event of a major crisis or conflict with the United States. So there's an entire press release from those organizations which you can read, which goes into the threat in detail. But if you can imagine if again if China decides to commence hostilities to further cause delay and disruption by triggering off some of these pre positioned cyber. It could be malware, it could be some kind of cyber attack, which causes that disruption to critical national infrastructure, to finance, to water supply, to energy, whatever it happens to be.

Duncan McCrory [00:42:30]:
That alone could really start to cause significant issues. And it's like, hold on, we have to worry about this before even considering an offensive elsewhere. And you quite rightly talked about the trade issues, the impact on the stock market, the impact of not being able to get access to critical semiconductors. I think the issues are recognized and I think that there's a lot of debate around how to address it. It's just the fact that it's everything is so interrelated and complex that it's difficult to boil down to what is a carefully considered set of strategies depending on China may choose to act in the coming years. And I don't think there's a silver bullet to any of this. I think it's a case of looking at each of the risks and measuring them and trying to come up with an appropriate level of mitigations. And arguably the US needs support across its allies to come up with a joint response because, as I said, it's so interconnected across the globe.

Ken Miller [00:43:30]:
Well, Duncan, I feel like we could talk about this for, for another hour. I promise you I would not take up your entire day. So I appreciate that. Before we depart, I wanted to give you a moment to share a little bit about the Freeman Air and Space Institute at King's College, where you're affiliated over in the UK in London. Tell us a little bit about that and your research and point our listeners if they want to learn more about the areas that you're, you're researching, you're taught, you're discussing. Where can they find more? Sure.

Duncan McCrory [00:44:01]:
Well, first I say thank you so much, it's been a pleasure to contribute and yeah, I'd love to talk again in the future. So the Freeman Air and Space Institute is it was established in 2020 within King's College London in the School of Security Studies and it was established with funding from the Royal Air Force and the Freeman Air and Space Institute is its purpose effectively is to develop the next generation of scholars in air and space power, but also to inform debate, policy, doctrinal development, et cetera, across defense, but also in support of industry and academia. Anna is actively running PhDs and publishes a lot of papers on some of the critical topics that we discussed. Incidentally, as I mentioned earlier, everything I've covered is unclassified and based on open source information. If anyone would like to learn more about what I've discussed, I'd thoroughly recommend so not only Tom Within's paper that I mentioned earlier. But also U.S. dOD publishes an annual report to Congress on military and security developments involving the People's Republic of China that provides a comprehensive analysis of PLA capabilities and trends. And there's also the CSIS center for Strategic and International Studies report called the First Battle of the Next War, which provides again, comprehensive coverage of the war gaming exercises that they conducted with subject matter experts from the military intelligence community, et cetera, to look at various scenarios in terms of how a potential conflict, such as we've discussed how that might pan out to again inform policy development.

Duncan McCrory [00:45:45]:
So there are two critical documents which are open source. You can download them now from CSIS and US dod and they give really detailed insights into what we've just we've just skimmed the surface. But you could spend, you know, it's valuable information within these two reports. So yeah, I'd thoroughly recommend going into those if there's if they have time.

Ken Miller [00:46:05]:
Well, Duncan, thank you so much for taking time to join me here to discuss this important topic. We'd love to have you back on again and continue this conversation on this topic as well as a number of others that I'm sure that we could spend plenty of time on. So I do thank you for joining me and look forward to talking with you again soon.

Duncan McCrory [00:46:24]:
Thank you so much, Ken, and thank you to all of the AOC for your attention. It's been a pleasure that will conclude.

Ken Miller [00:46:30]:
This episode of From the Crows' Nest. I want to thank my guest, Duncan McCrory for joining me. Also, please take a moment to review and share the podcast, including our new YouTube channel. We always enjoy hearing from our listeners. That's it for today. Thanks for listening.