The U.S. Isn’t Ready for a Modern War

Two years ago, I was invited to lunch in Washington with Gilman Louie, a tech venture capitalist. He was in town to discuss the passage of the CHIPS Act, a $53 billion reinvestment in America’s semiconductor supply chain. Gilman believed that the offshoring of tech manufacturing was a dire national security issue. His concerns were many—from the vulnerability of Taiwan’s chip industry to China’s navy having surpassed the size of our own. If we ever had to fight World War III, the U.S. wouldn’t be ready.

Although I shared Gilman’s concerns, I told him that I wasn’t quite as worried as him. I repeated an argument I’d often heard from national security professionals, which was that the United States retained the upper hand against any potential adversary because the truly exquisite technology—from the iPhone to the chips developed by NVIDIA to the breakthroughs at OpenAI—didn’t occur in China, or Russia, but right here at home. No adversary could compete with us in the creation of exquisite technology.

Gilman listened patiently. Then he asked me a question. “In the Second World War, which nation produced the most exquisite technology? Because it wasn’t the United States.”

It was Germany, as Gilman reminded me.

Back then, American Sherman tanks—nicknamed “flaming coffins” by GIs—proved no match in a one-on-one contest with their German counterpart, the Tiger tank. Both the fighter jet and the long-range ballistic missile, innovations that came late in the war, weren’t creations of the Allies, but of Germany. With the notable exception of the atom bomb, the Germans were consistently the first to field what was then considered exquisite technology. The problem for the Germans was that they lacked industrial capacity. The Allies defeated the Axis with inferior technology that could be mass produced.

Today, the United States finds itself in the position of the Germans. We have divested ourselves of much of our industrial capacity. China, meanwhile, with 35 percent of the world’s global manufacturing output, finds itself in the position that allowed the United States to win the Second World War. With wars being fought in Europe and the Middle East, and continued Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, it’s hard to understate our vulnerability.

Over the past thirty years, technological dominance has allowed the United States to wage relatively bloodless wars. But the limited scope of those wars never tested our industrial capacity. The nature of war is changing, however. Our diminished industrial capacity comes at a time when the modern battlefield is demonstrating the limitations of high-end, legacy technologies. We’re seeing this in Ukraine.

For example, over the past two years, the Ukrainian government has petitioned the United States to equip it with M1 Abrams tanks, arguably the most technologically advanced tank in existence; each costs $10 million and requires $2 million in annual maintenance. This past September, those Abrams—31 one of them—arrived in Ukraine with much fanfare. Some speculated that the arrival of the tanks could even shift the balance of the war. But now, only 20 of those Abrams survive and they have mostly been pulled off the front lines due to their ineffectiveness. The most recent Abrams was destroyed by a Russian drone, a platform that typically costs in the low four figures.

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By Published On: October 3, 2024Categories: UncategorizedComments Off on The U.S. Isn’t Ready for a Modern War

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