They're coming!

The Pentagon recently released the 2008 version of its annual report, entitled Military Power in the People's Republic of China.  (PDF) According to NASA:

The wide-ranging report is founded on the premise that China not only is a rising international economic power in the community of nations, but also is a rising military power with new and emerging capabilities that have global implications.

The Report highlights a number of concerns, including China's demonstrated ability to defeat space-based weapons and disrupt telecommunications networks in the event of armed conflict. I should note, however, that these are all things we've heard about before.

Back in 2007, I described the cyber-security threat in a paper entitled, "Exploit Derivatives & National Security." (PDF) I said,

A sustained computer network attack originating in China continues to target the United States government’s information systems with almost seven years of unabated activity and little means of defense. A 2002 war game on critical infrastructure revealed that the most vulnerable infrastructure components were the Internet itself and the computer systems that underpin the financial sector. And even though DHS created US-CERT to provide better information about computer network attacks in the hopes of reducing vulnerabilities, international, federal, and state laws inhibit reporting. Indeed, one can argue that critical infrastructure remains vulnerable largely because of the regulations and government bodies created to enhance our national security.

I also highlighted China's use of information warfare and disruptive technologies in the wake of the first Gulf War. Two PLA colonels described the strategy in a book called Unrestricted Warfare in which they described the following scenario:

[I]f the attacking side secretly musters large amounts of capital without the enemy nation being aware of this at all and launches a sneak attack against its financial markets, then after causing a financial crisis, buries a computer virus and hacker detachment in the opponent’s computer system in advance, while at the same time carrying out a network attack against the enemy so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network, and mass media network are completely paralyzed, this will cause the enemy nation to fall into social panic, street riots, and a political
crisis. There is finally the forceful bearing down by the army, and military means are utilized in gradual stages until the enemy is forced to sign a dishonorable peace treaty.

This all sounds kind of scary today, especially when you consider that (A) the colonels wrote the doctrine in the wake of the Asian financial crisis and(B) we've seen evidence of China building the very capabilities that would create the situation described above.  It's also somewhat frightening when you think about propaganda like the following Mao-era poster, which reads "The American Invaders will be defeated":

But here's the rub: as JG recently pointed out:

[A] few strategic strikes of national railroad lines would throw China into a major food crisis within 2-3 days. Last winter’s storms were a fine example of what can happen when a few trains stop. When food is brought into the equation, you usually get more of the war arguer’s attention, though anyone who is bent towards war usually doesn’t have much of a realistic sense of a future, even 2-3 days ahead. And they’re usually not very hungry for education, either.

So given the timing of the 2008 Report and the Pentagon's recent protests about Obama's efforts to reduce its budget, I can't help but read the Report with a more skeptical eye. And, in light of China's recent military build-up, I also wonder whether there's more Sino-US military cooperation going on than most people realize, at least with respect to the budget process.

UPDATE:  In perennial fashion, China's leaders took a few days to read the Pentagon's annual report on PRC military power and then trotted out some talking heads who proceeded to go ballistic (pun intended) about America's hostility and interference in China's internal affairs.  Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, recycled last year's slogans about the Pentagon's "Cold War" mentality and "peaceful development."  Hu Changming, spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said that "China unswervingly sticks to a path of peaceful development and pursues a national defense policy which is purely defensive in nature." Clearly, the peacefullness of shooting down satellites and hacking into computers at the US Department of Commerce is beside the point.