It directs the Navy to develop “readiness for the possibility of war with the People’s Republic of China by 2027,” pointing to China’s preparations for a possible invasion of Taiwan in the same year.

“The Navy emphatically acknowledges the need for a larger, more lethal force,” the document, titled “Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy,” states.

“By 2027, the Navy will be more ready for sustained combat as part of a Joint and Combined force, prioritizing the People’s Republic of China as the pacing challenge and focusing on enabling the joint warfighting ecosystem.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, claims that Taiwan is a part of its territory that must be united with the mainland through any means necessary.

However, Taiwan is self-governed by a democratically elected government and has never been controlled by the CCP.

CCP leader Xi Jinping has nevertheless ordered the communist regime’s military wing to prepare for war and to develop the capabilities required to invade Taiwan.

The regime has since engaged in a more than decade-long shipbuilding spree, massively expanding its fleet, drone capabilities, and nuclear arsenal.

Most importantly, for a Taiwan invasion scenario, it has also launched its own advanced aircraft carriers and destroyers.

That poses a problem for the United States, as the U.S. Navy floats far fewer ships than the Chinese, and must spread them more widely to maintain its global military presence.

China, meanwhile, can position the vast majority of its naval and coast guard units close to home, where they can receive cover from land-based units and where it is easier to maintain their supply lines.

A congressional report published in July found that “the U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat” against China.

The July report also said that China is likely to increase its hostile behavior in the coming years to “normalize unlawful behavior” around Taiwan as it seeks to take advantage of the United States’ lack of ability to deter conflict.

Key to the new Navy document’s goals, therefore, is the fulfillment of Project 33, a naval initiative aiming to ready the force by eliminating delays in maintenance, scaling the use of autonomous and robotic systems, and increasing navy recruitment, among other things.

“We cannot manifest a bigger traditional Navy in a few short years, nor will we rely on mass without the right capabilities to win the sea control contest,” the document reads.

“Nearer-term operational challenges demand that we integrate proven robotic and autonomous capabilities as soon as possible.

“We must do so with a focus on how we will use these systems in war. By 2027, we will integrate proven robotic and autonomous systems for routine use by the commanders who will employ them.”

Scaling the deployment of autonomous systems is just part of the puzzle, with the document underscoring that the United States’ grim position in the Indo-Pacific “goes well beyond just the size of the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] Navy fleet.”

The document notes that China’s joint forces are developing into an integrated fighting force “specifically designed to defeat ours” and are backed by China’s massive industrial base.

The document also calls on the Navy to work with Congress to secure critical supply chains and lays out a vision in which all fleet headquarters in the service will field their own maritime operations centers.

The goal of the latter directive is to ensure that the U.S. Navy can continue to maintain superiority in command and control, military intelligence, and maneuvers, even against a numerically superior foe in a vast and distributed region.

“We must meet all the objectives in this Navigation Plan to field the people and capabilities needed to fight and win today, in 2027, and beyond,” the document states.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its military wing, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), are engaged in “cyber-enabled influence operations” against the United States and looking to further expand their capability for disruption, according to Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation.

“There is a group of PLA researchers, often focused on [influence operations], who argue that the cognitive domain is the new focus of warfare,” Mr. Beauchamp-Mustafaga said in prepared testimony to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on Feb. 1.

Such “cognitive domain operations,” or CDO, are ultimately aimed at encouraging “a psychological or cognitive decision to surrender,” he added.

Thus, by leveraging technologically enhanced propaganda, like AI-generated deepfakes, the regime hopes “to win a conflict with as little kinetic destruction as possible and force the adversary to accept defeat short of total destruction.”

China Preparing ‘Cognitive Attacks’ Against US

Mr. Beauchamp-Mustafaga outlined how researchers associated with the PLA have expressed interest in using “inauthentic content,” which they refer to as “synthetic information,” to coordinate “precision cognitive attacks” against adversaries.

These precision attacks are unique to other forms of CCP propaganda in that they are “specifically tailored or even personalized against small groups or individuals.”

As part of this effort, Mr. Beauchamp-Mustafaga said the PLA was researching how to reinforce “information cocoons,” or echo chambers, to deliberately polarize and divide American society to detract from “mainstream [Western] values” and isolate individuals psychologically.

Mr. Beauchamp-Mustafaga added that it was difficult to say how far the regime has yet gone to implement the researchers’ suggestions and that such ideas may be limited to certain scholarly circles associated with the PLA.

His findings, however, are consistent with reports documenting an increasing tempo and granularity in CCP influence operations.

One such report, published by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, found that the CCP pivoted into a new phase of influence operations in 2022, characterized by the creation of targeted messaging for well-defined audiences that were segmented based on granular demographic data.

Likewise, a declassified report from the director of national intelligence found widespread CCP-backed influence operations targeting the 2022 midterm elections.

Such operations included retaliation against U.S. lawmakers deemed a threat to the regime, the promotion of divisive content, and the impersonation of American voters online.

Throughout this effort, according to separate reports published by Meta and Microsoft, Chinese law enforcement covertly used social media, proxy websites, paid influencers, and public relations firms to manipulate U.S. public opinion about China.

To that end, the Pentagon has suggested that the CCP seeks to launch increasingly sophisticated cognitive attacks in an effort to achieve “mind dominance” over potential adversaries, including the United States.

The Pentagon’s 2022 China Military Power Report (pdf), which distills the Defense Department’s most authoritative assessments of China’s strategy and capabilities, summarized the regime’s CDO efforts as “a more aggressive form of psychological warfare” intended to “affect a target’s cognition, decision making, and behavior.”

“The goal of CDO is to achieve what the PLA refers to as ‘mind dominance,’ defined as the use of propaganda as a weapon to influence public opinion to effect change in a nation’s social system, likely to create an environment favorable to China and reduce civilian and military resistance to PLA actions,” the report said.

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AI systems may develop the desire to seize control from humans as a way of accomplishing other preprogrammed goals, said Geoffrey Hinton, a professor of computer science at the University of Toronto.

“I think we have to take the possibility seriously that if they get smarter than us, which seems quite likely, and they have goals of their own, which seems quite likely, they may well develop the goal of taking control,” Hinton said during a June 28 talk at the Collision tech conference in Toronto, Canada.

“If they do that, we’re in trouble.”

Hinton has been dubbed one of the “godfathers of AI” for his work in neural networks. He recently spent a decade helping to develop AI systems for Google but left the company last month, saying he needed to be able to warn people of the risks posed by AI.

While Hinton does not believe that AI will innately crave power, he said that it could nevertheless seek to seize it from humans as a logical step to better allow itself to achieve its goals.

“At a very general level, if you’ve got something that’s a lot smarter than you, that’s very good at manipulating people, at a very general level, are you confident that people stay in charge?” Hinton said.

“I think they’ll derive [the motive to seize control] as a way of achieving other goals.”

AI Now Capable of Reason

Hinton previously doubted that an AI superintelligence that could match humans would emerge within the next 30 to 50 years. He now believes it could come in less than 20.

In part, he said, that is because AI systems that use large language models are beginning to show the capacity to reason, and he is not sure how they are doing it.

“It’s the big language models that are getting close, and I don’t really understand why they can do it, but they can do little bits of reasoning.

“They still can’t match us, but they’re getting close.”

Hinton described an AI system that had been given a puzzle in which it had to plan how to paint several rooms of a house. It was given three colors to choose from, with one color that faded to another over time, and asked to paint a certain number of rooms in a particular color within a set time frame. Rather than merely opting to paint the rooms the desired color, the AI determined not to paint any that it knew would fade to the desired color anyway, electing to save resources though it had not been programmed to do so.

“That’s thinking,” Hinton said.

To that end, Hinton said that there was no reason to suspect that AI wouldn’t reach and exceed human intelligence in the coming years.

“We’re just a big neural net, and there’s no reason why an artificial neural net shouldn’t be able to do everything we can do,” Hinton said.

“We’re entering a period of huge uncertainty. Nobody really knows what’s going to happen.”

War Robots Will Destabilize the World

AI may not even need to reach superintelligence to pose an existential risk to humanity, however.

Hinton said that militaries worldwide are creating AI-enabled robots for war that could either seek to take control to fulfill their programmed missions or would disrupt the political order by encouraging increased conflict.

“Lethal autonomous weapons, they deserve a lot of our thought,” Hinton said.

“Even if the AI isn’t superintelligent, if the defense departments use it for making battle robots, it’s going to be very nasty, scary stuff.”

Foremost among those nations seeking to develop lethal AI are none other than the world’s two largest military powers, China and the United States.

China’s communist regime is developing AI-enabled lethal systems and investing in AI capabilities related to military decision-making and command and control.

The United States, meanwhile, is preparing for a world in which national armies are primarily composed of robots, which top brass expects to occur in less than 15 years.

“We know they’re going to make battle robots,” Hinton said. “They’re busy doing that in many different defense departments. So [the robots are] not necessarily going to be good since their primary purpose is going to be to kill people.”

Moreover, Hinton suggested that unleashing AI-enabled lethal autonomous systems would fundamentally change the structure of geopolitics by dramatically reducing the political and human cost of war for those nations that could afford such systems.

“Even if it’s not superintelligent, and even if it doesn’t have its own intentions. … It’s going to make it much easier, for example, for rich countries to invade poor countries,” Hinton said.

“At present, there’s a barrier to invading poor countries willy-nilly, which is you get dead citizens coming home. If they’re just dead battle robots, that’s just great. The military-industrial complex would love that.”

To that end, Hinton said that governments should try to incentivize more research into how to safeguard humanity from AI. Simply put, he said, many people are working to improve AI, but very few are making it safer.

Better yet, he said, would be establishing international rules to ban or govern AI weapons systems the way the Geneva Protocol did for chemical warfare after World War I.

“Something like a Geneva Convention would be great, but those never happen until after they’ve been used,” Hinton said.

Whatever course of action governments take or don’t take concerning AI, Hinton said that people needed to be aware of the threat posed by what is being created.

“I think it’s important that people understand it’s not just science fiction, it’s not just fear-mongering,” Hinton said. “It is a real risk that we need to think about, and we need to figure out in advance how to deal with it.”

Zelenskyy famously retorted that he needed ammunition, “not a ride.”

In the 15 months since, the United States has spent tens of billions of dollars giving Zelenskyy and embattled Ukraine just that. Now, officials say, the nation has depleted its own stores of critical munitions so severely that it would likely be incapable of fighting a major war.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth has said that the United States’ munitions production capacity is pushed to the “absolute edge.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley has said that the nation “has a long ways to go” to replenish its sorely depleted stockpiles.

One unnamed Pentagon official allegedly told the Wall Street Journal that the nation’s stores of critical artillery rounds were “uncomfortably low” as early as August of last year.

The Pentagon declined to provide an update to the Epoch Times on the status of its current munition stockpiles, with one spokesperson saying that providing any specifics on the matter could jeopardize “operational security.”

The spokesperson suggested, however, that the United States was making great strides in rebuilding what had been lost.

“Of note, the department has enabled a rapid increase in 155mm ammo production, from approximately 14,000 a month in February 2022 to over 20,000 a month more recently, with plans to produce more than 70,000 a month in 2025,” the spokesperson told the Epoch Times.

“This represents a 500 percent increase.”

There’s just one problem with the Pentagon’s rosy outlook on its quickly dwindling stockpiles: Even with a 500 percent increase in production by 2027, the nation would still only be halfway to keeping afloat.

That’s because, by the end of August of last year, the United States had already sent just over 800,000 155mm artillery rounds to Ukraine. That number has since increased to more than two million, according to a fact sheet provided to the Epoch Times by the Pentagon.

That’s a rate of more than 130,000 rounds per month. Nearly twice as much as the proposed production rate of 70,000 that the Pentagon hopes to achieve in five years.

US Struggles to Produce Enough Munitions

To be sure, the Pentagon has taken steps to stop the hemorrhaging of its critical munitions stocks. Most notably, it has taken to trying wherever possible to purchase ammunition for Ukraine from other countries rather than strip its own stores bare.

How long it can keep the current balance up is open for debate. Allied stockpiles are not infinite either, after all, and already some partners are thinking of their own security concerns.

Key ally South Korea, for example, has already refused requests to sell the munitions to the United States, citing fears of North Korean aggression.

Now, the U.S. is going so far as to pull equipment from units stationed in Israel and South Korea in order to adequately supply Ukraine without emptying its stockpiles.

Likewise, the U.S. Army is now seeking $18 billion from Congress to expand and modernize its munitions production capabilities over the course of the next 15 years. According to Secretary Wormuth, the effort will help to replenish the more than $20 billion in lethal aid already delivered to Ukraine directly from U.S. stockpiles.

Even that may not be enough, however.

“My sense is we’re going to need to do more,” Wormuth said during a March 30 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“One thing the war in Ukraine has shown us is that the estimates we’ve made for the munitions [required] for future conflicts are low.”

The Army’s first tranche of investments, worth $1.5 billion, is included in the Pentagon’s budget request for fiscal year 2024.

That amount is expected to help the Army expand and modernize the nation’s ammunition production facilities, arsenals, and depots, many of which date to World War II.

Despite the stoic facade presented by policymakers, the idea that it will take 15 years to modernize the United States’ munitions production capability has some lawmakers worried. Particularly so for those dedicated to stopping a Chinese communist invasion of Taiwan.

US Stockpiles, Systems Insufficient to Deter Taiwan Invasion

The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is tasked with overseeing the nation’s strategic competition with China’s communist regime. A key part of that competition is deterring a CCP invasion of Taiwan, which many believe the regime intends to be able to launch by 2027.

In order to prevent that from happening, the United States needs ammo to arm Taiwan with and, potentially, to use in a war defending Taiwan’s de facto independence.

It is thus no small surprise that Select Committee Chair Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) expressed dismay when told Wormuth’s plan for modernizing the U.S. arsenal would take 15 long years.

“Fifteen years is too late,” Gallagher told the Epoch Times.

“I think that five years is too late.”

To that end, Gallagher referred to a tranche of ten policy recommendations that the panel adopted on May 24; Policies that it says will help deter the CCP from invading Taiwan if adopted by Congress.

Gallagher said the report, titled “Ten for Taiwan” (pdf), underscores that the United States has just two years, not 15, to rebuild its arsenal and arm Taiwan if it is to avoid a catastrophic conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

“If you look at our recommendations, it’s what we can do in the next two years to really meaningfully enhance our deterrent posture in the Indo-Pacific,” Gallagher said.

“If we want to have a hope of stopping World War III, we need to arm Taiwan to the teeth right now.”

Gallagher is well aware of the problem, of course, that one cannot arm Taiwan if one does not have the munitions to begin with. To overcome that hurdle, he said, the United States would need to field aging or otherwise obsolete ammunition to new effect.

“That’s why you see some creative recommendations in [our report] on taking certain missile systems that we were going to put into deep storage and potentially MacGyvering those and giving those to the Taiwanese,” Gallagher said.

“It’s why you see a request for multi-year appropriation for critical munition systems, which I think is absolutely essential.”

In other words, until the United States can rebuild its critically depleted stores of munitions, it will have to get creative with what it has.

Above all, he said, the Department of Defense (DoD) will need to seriously convince the private firms responsible for manufacturing its precision munitions that it needs them, and will need them for years to come.

“More than anything, we just need to get the demand signal for DoD [right],” Gallagher said.

“We want to test the limits of what industry is capable of.”

Even then there are bound to be difficulties, however. Ensuring that the United States continuously invest in and deliver new munitions on time over the course of years will be difficult. Particularly so given a deeply divided Congress willing to haggle over just about any part of the federal budget.

“It’s worse for critical munitions because critical munitions always get shortchanged for other items,” Gallagher said.

“They’re not as sexy sometimes as ships and planes and things like that. But, I think if you had the secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense saying hey, we are going to rebuild our arsenal of deterrence … I think you could really start to increase production.”

US Lacks Industrial Capacity for One Week of War with China

The CCP claims that Taiwan is part of its territory, though the regime has never actually controlled the island. CCP leadership has likewise vowed to unite Taiwan with the mainland, by force if necessary, and its frequent acts of military intimidation against the democratic island have drawn international condemnation.

Thus, it is vital to understand that the United States’ ongoing shortages of munitions, and its inadequate capacity to manufacture them at scale, is not limited to artillery rounds, but also include those munitions likely to be used heavily in an amphibious war.

According to a Pentagon fact sheet obtained by the Epoch Times, the United States has delivered 1,600 Stingers surface-to-air systems and 38 HIMARS rocket launchers to Ukraine, both of which would be vital to maintaining Taiwan’s defense should the U.S. join the fray.

Beyond that, there is also the deeper issue of the nation’s current inability to actually produce the munitions it would need, with many systems requiring years of advance notice before acquisition.

To that end, a report released in January by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank found that the United States would quickly run out of critical munitions during a war with China over the future of Taiwan.

“The U.S. defense industrial base lacks adequate surge capacity for a major war,” the report said.

While the United States has ample amounts of small arms ammunition, low stockpiles, and slow acquisition and manufacturing processes would likely lead to a shortage of critical munitions like long-range anti-ship missiles (LRASMs) in less than one week of war, the report found.

“The U.S. defense industrial base is not adequately prepared for the competitive security environment that now exists,” the report reads.

“In a major regional conflict—such as a war with China in the Taiwan Strait—the U.S. use of munitions would likely exceed the current stockpiles of the U.S. Department of Defense, leading to a problem of ‘empty bins.’”

That finding has since been replicated in another wargame conducted by none other than the Select Committee on the CCP.

Conducted in May, the panel’s wargame quickly devolved into “catastrophic results,” with the U.S. side (played by Select Committee members) quickly running out of munitions and being rendered incapable of resupplying Taiwan with the weapons it needed to defend itself.

“I know the members of this committee will dig into the lessons we can learn from what may be some sobering outcomes of this game,” Gallagher said at the time.

“Deterring war is the only path to peace and stability, and it is incumbent upon elected officials to take decisive action to do so before it’s too late.”

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.