Free Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It by Richard A. Clarke, Robert K. Knake Page B

adversary’s seemingly superior conventional capabilities. The goal of the strategy is “fighting the fight that fits one’s weapons” and “making the weapons to fit the fight.” It proposes a strategy of ignoring the traditional rules of conflict, including, at its extreme, the prohibition on targeting civilians. It also advocates manipulating foreign media, flooding enemy countries with drugs, controlling the markets for natural resources, and joining international legal bodies in order to bend them to one’s will. For a book written a decade ago, it also places a heavy emphasis on cyber war.
    This possible use of cyber war against a superior force does not mean that China is in fact intent on fighting the U.S., just that its military planners recognize that war with the U.S. is a contingency for which they must plan. The Chinese government has adopted the phrase “peacefully rising” to describe the country’s projected emergence as a (if not the ) global superpower in the twenty-first century. Yet Admiral Mike McConnell believes that “the Chinese are exploiting our systems for information advantage, looking for the characteristics of a weapons system or academic research on plasma physics.” China’s rapid economic growth and dependence upon global resources, as well as its disputes with its neighbors (Taiwan, Vietnam), probably suggest to its military, however, that they have to be ready for possible conflict someday. And they are getting ready.
    To the head of the U.S. military, Admiral Mike Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), it all looks like it is aimed squarely at the United States. “[China is] developing capabilities that are very maritime focused, maritime and air focused, and in many ways, very much focused on us,” he said in a speech at the Navy League in May of 2009. “They seem very focused on the United States Navyand our bases that are in that part of the world,” he continued. The 2009 update of the annual report from the Office of the Secretary of Defense on the “Military Power of the People’s Republic of China” supports these claims. The Chinese have developed long-range radar that can see past our air base on Guam. They have developed antiship missiles that close so fast that none of our defense systems could intercept them. China has purchased one Russian Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier and is currently in the process of refurbishing it at Dalian shipyard. They will soon have the capability to start constructing new carriers and have put in place a training program so that pilots will be qualified for carrier operations. They have strung over 2,000 missiles along the coast facing Taiwan and are adding more at the rate of 100 per year. They are close to deploying a missile with a 5,000-mile range that could give them a sea-based nuclear strike capability.
    It all sounds a bit scary, but look closer and you will see evidence that the modernization alone is insufficient to counter U.S. conventional force superiority. China’s military budget is just a fraction of America’s. Allegedly only $70 billion, it is less than one-eighth of the Pentagon’s budget before adding in the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A U.S. carrier strike group is one of the most powerful conventional forces ever assembled. Consisting of up to a dozen ships, including guided-missile cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarines, and supply ships, a carrier strike group can cover over 700 nautical miles in a single day, which allows it to go anywhere there is ocean within two weeks. The U.S. Navy boasts eleven carrier battle groups. To keep that force modern, the Navy is in the process of constructing three next-generation Ford-class carriers, with the first carrier set to be launched in 2015.
    The Pentagon’s annual assessment, Military Power of the People’s Republic of China , for 2009 estimates that the former Russian aircraft carrier will not be operational before 2015. The