Cold war 2 0, p.1
Cold War 2.0, page 1
PRAISE FOR COLD WAR 2.0
“George S. Takach has convinced me: we are in the midst of a new cold war with autocratic governments around the globe. This war, Takach argues, will be won or lost not on human reaction to unfolding events, but on a people’s mastery of artificial intelligence. This mastery is fueled by human innovation, usually embraced in the United States. Cold War 2.0 is a superbly researched treatise on the imminent danger we find ourselves in, and a roadmap to our only route to victory.”
—Lis Wiehl, author of A Spy in Plain Sight
“This comprehensive, clear, and compelling book argues convincingly that the U.S.-led democracies will win the current Cold War 2.0 against the China-led authoritarian powers. Drawing on rich evidence and ideas from the past 2,500 years, Takach adds his personal experience and an impressive array of current detail to make his case. Moving smoothly from an analysis of countries’ key relative capabilities, through current flashpoints, to policy prescriptions and practical solutions, he identifies what they can and should do now to ensure that the democratic powers win this second cold war. It is a must-read for the many policymakers, scholars, and citizens afflicted by the current tidal wave of crises, uncertainties, and doubts, as it offers a message of hope—and shows why and how this hope can come true for the world as a whole.”
—John Kirton, professor emeritus of political science, University of Toronto
“George Takach has made a compelling and fascinating argument in taking on the crucial question of how cutting-edge technology, particularly AI, semiconductors, quantum computing, biotech, cloud computing, and fusion energy will impact the upcoming cold war with China. Technological innovation, as a process, has been the subject of constant evolution since the end of the nineteenth century, and its careful manipulation by the democracies played a decisive role in ending the first cold war. Takach explores these dynamics, including what he terms hyper-innovation, and the decisive role played by gender-inclusion and the particular advantages possessed by democracies in innovation. An insightful examination.”
—Professor Julian Spencer-Churchill, Concordia University
“A fascinating, timely, and chilling assessment of how AI will shape the looming struggle between China and the US over the battlefield of Taiwan. Key decision makers in Washington, DC, need to read George S. Takach’s compelling study before it’s too late.”
—Saul David, author of Devil Dogs: From Guadalcanal to the Shores of Japan, Operation Thunderbolt, Crucible of Hell, and The Force.
“Russian aggression in Ukraine and Chinese designs on Taiwan rightly worry the citizens of Western democracies. Add the uncertainty of innovations such as AI and biotech, and the future feels destined to be a dystopian science fiction political thriller. Takach, however, soberly analyzes the geopolitical and technological dangers and offers a hopeful message: the political strength of democracy and the innovative potential of market economies are more than enough to defeat our autocratic adversaries—if we understand the nature of Cold War 2.0.”
—David Head, author of A Republic of Scoundrels: The Schemers, Intriguers, and Adventurers Who Created a New American Nation and A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fall of the American Revolution
For Barb
GLOSSARY
ADS:
air defense system
AI:
artificial intelligence
BT:
biotechnology
C4:
command, control, communication, and computers
CCP:
Chinese Communist Party
Cheka, NKVD, KGB, FSB:
different terms for the state security police of the Soviet Union and Russia from 1917 to the present
CSTO:
Collective Security Treaty Organization
DPP:
the Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan
EDA:
electronic design automation
EGM:
ectogenesis machine
EU:
European Union
EUL:
Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography
GATO:
Global Alliance Treaty Organization (a proposed collective defense alliance, like NATO, but among willing democracies all around the world)
GRU:
Soviet and Russian military intelligence
KMT:
the Kuomintang
MIC:
military-industrial complex
NATO:
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
OECD:
Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development
PATO:
Pacific Alliance Treaty Organization (a proposed collective defense alliance, like NATO, but among willing democracies in the Pacific)
People’s Republic of China:
“mainland/Communist” China
PLA:
People’s Liberation Army
QC:
quantum computer
RCP:
Russian Communist Party
Republic of China:
Taiwan
SC:
semiconductor chip
SCO:
Shanghai Cooperation Organization
SCS:
South China Sea
SME:
semiconductor manufacturing equipment
STEM:
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
TRA:
Taiwan Relations Act
TSMC:
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation
UNCLOS:
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
UNSC:
United Nations Security Council
WHO:
World Health Organization
INTRODUCTION
China’s autocrat Xi Jinping, the leader of a country of 1.4 billion people, has stated clearly that Taiwan, a democracy of 23 million people, must become a part of China. China is 265 times larger than Taiwan geographically, and has 61 times as many people. Yet Xi has made the continued independent existence of Taiwan an existential threat to China. Autocrats detest democracies as neighbors, lest the urge to democratize infect the autocrat’s own citizens and unseat the autocrat from power. The tension between autocracy and democracy is a central theme of Cold War 2.0.
Xi’s preference would be to have Taiwan surrender to China peacefully, but the likely election in January 2024 of another Democratic Progressive Party president of Taiwan, who wants to keep Taiwan separate from China, as it has been since 1949, virtually ensures that Beijing will now move to take Taiwan by military force. China intends to attack Taiwan, much as Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. All that remains to be seen is when and how.
In terms of timing, Xi doesn’t wish to leave to his successor the task of subduing Taiwan, as Xi has woven into his persona the subjugation of the Taiwanese people. In the best autocratic tradition, Xi has also engineered himself into the “leader-for-life” position atop the Chinese Communist Party, the only political party permitted in China, which not only runs the government but also controls all aspects of Chinese society. Nevertheless, assuming he wants to repatriate Taiwan while he is in his seventies (he was born in 1953), Xi’s likely outside date for the takeover of Taiwan is 2034. All that remains, therefore, is the precise attack plan.
Military analysts anticipate that China will implement one of two attack plans for the takeover of Taiwan. China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could carry out a military invasion of the island or China could opt for blockading the island with the PLA’s navy and air force in order to pressure Taiwan into submission. Frankly, even the blockade scenario will likely turn violent quickly when the Taiwanese or United States armed forces act to break the blockade, given that Taiwan only has eight days of energy stockpiled on the island.
Assume China elects the invasion option. In such a Chinese attack, suddenly on the radar screens of military Command, Control, Communication, and Computers (C4) posts in Taiwan, on Taiwanese and American naval vessels in the waters around the island, and in many other American C4 centers around the world, several hundred blips will appear all at once. Each blip represents a precision-guided missile or drone launched by China from hundreds of aircraft, ships, and land bases on the east coast of China. The launch of these missiles and drones will be detected by a number of Taiwanese and American radar and sensor systems: Taiwan’s Bee Eye radar stations; the American-built Precision Acquisition Vehicle Entry Phased Array Warning System (PAVE PAWS) radar system located in Taiwan; the radars of the Taiwanese and American air defense systems (ADS) on Taiwan and on ships around the island, including the Taiwanese Tien-Kung (Sky Bow), Tien Chien 2 (Sky Sword), and Avenger air defense batteries. Also alerted would be the American Patriot and Aegis ADS batteries; the American Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) of twelve geostationary satellites, with its C4 center at the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Space Command (NORAD/SPACECOM) facility in Colorado; and the Solid State Phased Array Radar System (SSPARS) located in Alaska. Detecting the massive Chinese missile and drone attack will not be a problem. Dealing with it effectively and in time will be the challenge for the Taiwanese and American defenders.
At the moment China launches this unprecedented deluge of missiles and drones, time will cease to be Taiwan’s friend. The Taiwan Strait, the body of water separating the principal island of Taiwan from mainland China, is only 160 kilometers (100 miles) wide. The hundreds of cruise miss iles fired from batteries on the Chinese coast will reach Taiwan in twelve minutes. Those fired from Chinese naval vessels and aircraft would hit Taiwan in only a few minutes. China’s hypersonic missiles would be detected by Taiwan and American radar/satellites earlier at the C4 facilities noted above, but because of their incredible speed (6 kilometers per second), intercepting them with return fire will present a challenge of a different magnitude. Moreover, the objective is to shoot down the incoming missiles in a “missile engagement zone” that is well out in the middle of the Taiwan Strait, and not over Taiwan itself, and especially not over one of its heavily populated cities. The bottom line, for the Taiwanese and American militaries hoping to respond effectively to the first wave of the Chinese attack, is that time will be of the essence.
In this attack the fate of Taiwan, and the future of the global balance of power between the leading autocracies and the principal democracies (especially between the United States and China), will depend on the Avenger, Sky Bow, Sky Sword, Patriot, and Aegis air defense systems noted above. These ADS are built by the Taiwanese and American defense industries, and are operated by the Taiwanese and American militaries. The core computers of these ADS weapons are driven by an artificial intelligence (AI) software that receives information about enemy missiles and drones instantaneously from their own and other radars, satellites, and other sensors as soon as these enemy weapons are launched. It then determines and tracks the trajectories of the incoming missiles and drones, and then at the appropriate moment the ADS launches its own missiles to intercept the enemy’s missiles and drones. But that’s not all this AI software has to do.
The AI software of each ADS also has to communicate with the AI software of all the other ADS units to make sure that every enemy missile and drone is being dealt with methodically and thoroughly. It would be extremely unfortunate if two or more defensive interceptor missiles were tasked to take out the same incoming missile, and thus let a second incoming missile hit its target unimpeded. This is complicated work. One type of ADS interceptor missile can only hit relatively slow-flying drones. Another specializes in intercepting the fastest hypersonic missiles of the enemy. The AI system, therefore, must figure out what each blip on the C4 screen is, and which ADS to assign to its destruction. Hovering over the complex and critical workload of the AI system—and its human handlers—is the cruel logic of missile battles: the attacker doesn’t need to achieve 100 percent success (which is why they launch so many missiles and drones), while the defender does have to achieve 100 percent success. It seems hardly a fair fight.
There’s more to cause angst for the Taiwanese and American militaries. Taiwan is located in a region of incredibly busy commercial air traffic. A brief scan of flightaware.com shows dozens of flights coming into and leaving from Taiwan during most working hours of the day. The AI system underpinning the defense of Taiwan has to factor in these aircraft in an effort to reduce, ideally to zero, the downing of civilian planes during what will become known as the Battle of the Taiwan Strait. The memories of the USS Vincennes (an American naval vessel that in 1988 shot down an Iranian civilian aircraft during the Iran-Iraq War, killing 290) and Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (shot down in 2014 by Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine using a Russian missile, killing 298) will make the concern around civilian friendly fire very real for the Taiwanese and American defenders.
Military doctrine in the democracies allows three modes of operation for the AI software when it comes to target allocation. Manual means the AI collects and processes the data, but always requires the human operator to make the actual decision about the target and its timing. Semi-automatic means the AI will select the target (the incoming missile or drone), but the human operator has a short period (i.e., fifteen seconds) to override or delay the computer’s decision. Automatic mode allows the AI system to select the targets with no opportunity for human operator intervention.
Chances are, on that fateful day when China launches the opening shower of missiles and drones on Taiwan, the AI will quickly be set to automatic mode. Why? For the simple reason that there will be insufficient time to permit Taiwanese and American military personnel to effectively insert themselves into target selection and approval activities. Human eyes and ears cannot meaningfully absorb sufficient data points in this battle scenario quickly enough, and the human brain cannot digest and process information fast enough to know rationally what to do in the case of hundreds of missiles and drones coming at them, most of which will hit their intended targets a few minutes after launch. Ironically, the previous handicap of the military leader, the so-called fog of war (where the leader knew too little of what was going on in the battle space), has been replaced in this Taiwan attack scenario by the equally problematic “overwhelming clarity of war” (the leader has all the data points, just doesn’t know what to do with them all in a timely manner). The only chance of success here for the democracies is that the AI underpinning all the different defensive ADS weapons does its job spectacularly well, autonomously.
This autonomous setting for the AI system constitutes the most psychologically, emotionally, and operationally fraught deployment of AI in human affairs to date. The AI system in the ADS is huge, when viewed as lines of computer code. It has to be able to process millions of scenarios in real time, simultaneously. It is the most complex software ever written. This battle scenario over the future of Taiwan represents the epitome of the human/technology conundrum of our time. Human innovation has created precision-guided attack missiles (which also use AI) that are so fast and effective that to counter them human defenders need to harness technology that removes human oversight from the core processes of the combat. What could possibly go wrong? Still, this critical autonomy-in-defense design feature of the ADS—no human in the loop—is absolutely necessary. In this extremely time-constrained, pressure-filled situation, people, even experienced military technical experts, just get in the way. There is simply no time for humans to get involved.
In essence, the survival of Taiwan as an independent democracy depends on the AI in the Taiwanese and American ADS weapons operating blazingly fast. Fortunately, it turns out that a few years before, the ADS computer infrastructure for these ADS weapons systems was upgraded to operate centrally and remotely (by means of the “cloud”) on a quantum computer (QC). A QC operates about 200 million times faster than the quickest classical computer. In the military a QC is well suited to inhaling huge volumes of attack data, determining a course of action, and then distributing instructions to individual defensive ADS missile batteries to which it is networked. In the Battle of the Taiwan Strait, this compelling capability of the QC-based ADS network software ensures that each and every missile launched by China will be met by an adequate and timely response, at least in theory; the tricky part about wide-area missile defense systems is that they cannot be fully tested on a large scale—the first time they are used in combat against hundreds of incoming missiles is also their first real test.
The instructions issued by the ADS AI (running on the QC) are distributed to the hundreds of hardware control devices responsible for firing each interceptor missile from the ADS weapons. This hardware sits inside the ADS control equipment, right beside the actual missile about to be fired. This hardware can then perform at breakneck speed the instructions received from the AI C4 unit because the hardware runs on the world’s most powerful semiconductor chips (SCs). Irony of ironies, these SCs were manufactured not in the United States, but rather in Taiwan by the world’s leading SC maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC). The TSMC plant in Taiwan where these SCs are made contains the most complex manufacturing process known to humankind. Altogether, several hundred companies in a dozen democracies contributed equipment, or component parts for such equipment, so that TSMC could produce an SC the size of a thumbnail that contains about 15 billion transistors, which collectively allow the SC to perform about 16 trillion operations a second. The democracies’ arsenal of technology for manufacturing today’s leading weapons systems is spread around the world; for example, the most important piece of equipment used in the TSMC plant, costing a cool $500 million for one unit, is made in the Netherlands. TSMC then specializes in pulling all the pieces together to make an SC device that is the equivalent of modern magic, and that cause the ADS weapons to unleash their defensive missiles in time against the Chinese missiles and drones.
