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Franz-Stefan Gady

lines on the record: 48
first: 2025-10-11
most recent: 2025-10-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“That's axiom was sort of true maybe a couple of years ago, right? But I think that's also changing. So I think changes in the US political system, the role of the United States in the world would also mandate maybe changes in certain policies of the United States that may have had value at the last couple of decades, but no longer do so. Just from pure military perspective, I think you need clarity and you need to give the Tavernese also the clarity what's really going to happen in the event of a military confrontation. Should they pick up Web Enternado? Should they capitulate alone? It's going to be very tough for them to withstand the red onslaught, right? And so that to me, again, some of the first order questions that need to be answered in all of this.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To defend an island, but by the way, we're not actually quite sure whether we are going to do that. We are going to decide ad hoc, so to speak, right? I mean, once the Chinese fire the first shots, we're going to get together and then make a determination what the next course of action is going to be. I don't think that's going to be sound strategy here. And I understand that there is a virtue and strategic ambiguity. I understand all the diplomatic background and maintaining the status quo and so forth. That's important, but just in terms of military planning, it would make it a lot easier and a lot more credible, frankly. And that's, I think, my last word on that. It would make US military commitment a lot more credible in terms of NDIs of the Chinese, I think. Although there are discussions back and forth that the Chinese assume in any case that the United States would intervene militarily, I'm not so sure anymore under the Trump administration, to be honest.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think they are most likely going to want to outsource that to the Taiwanese military, but I put it in the book in order to trigger a discussion within the US armed forces about this, to be honest. The reason why they're not interested most likely in doing that is because it's still frankly unclear also what the United States commitment in all of this is, which is to me very interesting if you see what the United States Marine Corps is doing, the Navy, all these other service branches are doing where they identify China as the pacing threat, essentially, right? And still you have this policy in place about strategic ambiguity and you can come up with all these scenarios where the United States could class with China in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, a potential attack on Taiwan where the United States would jump in, maybe an escalation on the Korean Peninsula. But I think if you essentially say that we are going to build a force structure and develop”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You need for the close fight, so it's stuff like smart minds. It's actually unmanned underwater vehicles. It could potentially be submarines around Taiwan as well. It's certain shorter range missile capabilities, anti-ship missiles and so forth. It's tough essentially to sync the Chinese invasion fleet to sink Chinese ships to shoot down Chinese aircraft and drones. It's what one US military commander described as essentially the idea of turning the Taiwan straight into a hellscape for the People's Liberation Army. And I think we need to double down on that, essentially, right? And that's the recipe that, or that's my main recommendation in the book, fully aware that the United States is unlikely to embrace this approach alone.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That sort of has a direct impact on the close battle, right? And that to me has a lot of escalatory dynamics baked in, as I outlined, right? And so my recipe essentially is for the United States in order to avoid chances of an increase in vertical escalatory dynamics to focus on the closed battle, focus on the battle in the Taiwan Strait. And here the United States would essentially be supporting what the Taiwanese are already doing in terms of trying to fight a battle in the Taiwan Strait and essentially focus on destroying Chinese military assets in the Taiwan Strait and around Taiwan without necessarily striking targets deeper into China or potentially also targets where you have the potential that you would actually jeopardize or compromise the Chinese nuclear deterrent. And here it's really about capabilities that”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I mean, the first premise that I make in that chapter is essentially that I want to try to do everything to avoid vertical escalation of this conflict. And that's also pro-Western and it's not in the orbit of the Chinese Communist Party. So in order to do that, I essentially say that the United States, instead of focusing, and that's something I missed at the beginning, I should have mentioned the basic preferred warfighting approach of the US armed forces, but also NATO Western militaries generally is decisively shaping the battle space essentially by conducting a so-called deep battle, long-range strikes, long distances before there's actually real contact between the two opposing forces when it comes to close combat. And by doing so, essentially already coming to or forcing a decision already in the deep battle.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No matter what we think, how this war is going to be fought, most likely it's going to be fought somewhat differently. So that's the reason why I also really focus on larger questions in my book and discussions, right? Of course, it's filled with data points and capabilities described in detail and operational concepts discussed and so forth. For structure outlines. But at the end of the day, the larger question, as I said, again, pertains to vertical escalatory dynamics. the idea whether actually there is a plan B for the United States Armed Forces after it's preferred war fighting approach collapses and whether the brittle whether there are certain elements of brittleness when it comes to the US force structure as a result of this preferred warfighting approach that makes it unlikely that the United States armed forces can endure a war of attrition having said all of that it's not going to be easy for the Chinese and”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Difficult to pull off, right? So I think it's much more likely rather than a full-scale invasion, which is sort of the subject of my book, that the United Chinese would actually try various cursive measures, right? Short of war to get Taiwan to capitulate information warfare campaigns, perhaps even a blockade at some point, but even a blockade is an act of war, right? And here it's also not entirely clear to me that the People's Liberation Army Navy would be capable of pulling that off over a long period of time, but it remains to be seen, right? I think there's a lot of stuff that you only find out about armed forces after the first shots have been fired. That has been true with the war in Ukraine, for example, when it comes to the Ukrainian armed forces and the Russian armed forces. It's also going to be true about the Chinese military and the United States armed forces. A lot of the stuff we only will find out a few days, a few weeks, a few months into the war.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Long attritional contest against the Chinese. And I think it's also, frankly, a little bit not unfair, but I think problematic when you have U.S. delegations traveling to Taiwan telling them that they need to embrace an asymmetric strategy and focus on certain capabilities without properly knowing that the United States would actually come to help them in the event of a military conflict. And I think one important point that I want to make here also regarding the book is that obviously I don't cover the Taiwanese forces. And I do make it clear at the beginning though, that it would be extremely difficult for the Chinese also to cross that water in the Taiwan Strait and conduct a proper amphibious assault on Taiwan. And it's unclear to me also how successful the PLA would actually be because they don't have experience in these types of joint warfare operations, amphibious operations are extremely.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Strategic political level, it's really a fundamental question about both the role of the United States is going to be, not just in Asia, but in the world. And I think what we're seeing is the United States is turning from a status quo power to a revisionist power. It wants to change this global liberal world order that it has created after 1945. That's for sure. It's reassessing allies and partners across the globe, right? So all this leads to questions about the United States credibility at the end of the day and whether they actually would be willing to defend the island of Taiwan in the event of Chinese military aggression. Now, I do think that the preferred approach of the Chinese is still a peaceful unification. It's also not entirely clear to me how willing the majority of the Taiwanese population is to actually endure a lot.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“political leaders make a decision. Well, if you have 1200 tanks and I have only 800 tanks because I have 1,200 tanks, I'm going to try to attack you, right? I mean, that's not how it's done usually. Also historical from case studies, right? So it plays a role, right? But I think particularly analysts like myself, I think very often are exaggerating the importance of certain weapon systems and capabilities, for example, a debate about reintroducing tactical nuclear weapons or tactical cruise missile into the Asian theater of operations or the European theater of operations. Yes, it plays a role. You can make an argument, but I don't think that's ultimately going to be a deciding factor for a political leader, whether to start a war or whether to pursue a certain course of action, to be honest. So I think there are larger questions that can't be answered here. And I think honest.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think that it's always important to reassess pre-existing notions and also assumptions about our policies, right? And also how we envision that our Military would in the event of a military conflict in East Asia fight, deploy, and what the most likely results would be. So I think you constantly need to challenge and revise your assumptions, essentially Red Team, any of your conclusions, Red, when it comes to these larger military questions. But I think what you're really pointing to is on the one hand this idea of deterrence, which in many ways looks like it's terribly complicated if you look into deterrent theory, but it's actually fairly simple, right? I mean, deterrence is about credible threats and the idea that you actually deter an adversary from certain actions by threatening him with doing something, right? And that's extremely difficult to gauge, right? And the question is, what kind of actions cause your adversary to be deterred, right? It's usually not the military balance, to be honest, right? That's not how...”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“War that's actually more conducive to escalatory dynamics than the war. And second, why are we actually contemplating this military confrontation with China? Have we really thought this through at the strategic and political level? I think these first order questions are usually where a lot of people trip up, right? And that's usually where a lot of historically the United States foreign policy disasters over the last couple of decades have also occurred, right? But simply not asking or caring to listen to the answer to some of those first order questions and first-order questions are very basic questions. They often come across as fairly stupid, uninformed questions. But sometimes they really prove that you maybe need to go back to the drawing board with your approach.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Strike of a tactical nuclear weapon. If that's the case, what would be the United States response? So these are all these scenarios. And very often, and I've been part of war games around this and other discussions, a lot of these things are waived off, right? Now that has been changing over the last couple of years. There have been numerous games, also board gaming, various nuclear scenarios. But I think to me, it goes back to the original question, What would we be willing to risk in the war against China? And can this war be genuinely limited between two great powers with nuclear weapons, right? And this is essentially, if you go through all the data that's in the book and I spend a lot of time researching it, that's sort of the quintessential question, right? First, why do we have a system or a warfighting approach, right? Based on information dominance, right? Based on systems.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“China. Over Taiwan, they would be concerned, right? If they look at the consequences, I don't think they would be concerned if you just said, oh, no, we're going to fire, I don't know, 3,000 missiles at the Chinese and we're going to sink their invasion fleet and we're going to destroy their command and control knots and so forth. Okay, the logistics basis and okay, I understand, right? But the consequences, you know, only if you add, well, listen, there could be potential consequences, right? There's conventional nuclear entanglement maybe on the Chinese side, right? There is a potential that if you win too quickly to decisively, Xi Jinping will feel that the Chinese Communist Party rule is under danger. What are they going to do then, right? Are they going to enter a situation where they think the nuclear deterrent is compromised? Would they actually use nuclear weapons? Would there be a demonstration?”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There is a disconnect between our warfighting approaches and political leadership. Because let me tell you, I think if political leaders in the United States would really genuinely understand how the United States is really thinking and visioning.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What is exactly the U.S. national interest in conducting this war? Is it worthwhile fighting this war if it means perhaps not going nuclear, but losing a third, two-thirds of the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, the United States is a global power, it is involved in many regions of the world, right? It has interests everywhere in the world. What's the point of racking your force essentially to preserve an island thousands of miles away? the Chinese mainland, right? These are first order questions that you need to ask because only once you have a clear answer to that first order question, what's our interest here? Why are we actually going to war against China over Taiwan? And don't give me a domino theory type of explanation, by the way, right? Be very specific, right? And only then can you really start weighing the risks, right?”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because the turns happen in your adversaries head and how do you measure what's really going to be going on in Xi Jinping's head? And my major point is that we have created a structure, a warfighting approach that makes it more likely that you could actually vertically escalate and that there are better ways to essentially fight this war, right? If we take the right steps now. And I think Major question behind all of this is, and I think this is not very often discussed in my opinion, and perhaps actually that's some of, you know, that's one of the qualities of the new administration in the United States is asking the first order question, is it really worthwhile going to war with China potentially a nuclear war over the”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I think the idea here is that, yes, okay, there are escalatory dynamics involved, but we still think they are manageable, essentially, right? And there will be off-ramps, even if we are provoking the Chinese or even if we are backing them into a corner to a certain degree, right, by pursuing certain actions on the battlefield. There is a way how to assure that Kula heads are going to prevail. And I do think that's sort of the underlying assumption behind a lot of these concepts, right? To a certain degree. And when you talk to US nuclear war planners or nuclear strategies, they also emphasize that they strongly believe in nuclear deterrence and essentially that the Chinese are going to be deterred by the US nuclear arsenal from escalating, which is essentially something that's non-falsifiable at the end of the day, right?”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First off, I want to emphasize that there is no automatism when it comes to climbing the escalation ladder, right? And rarely are wars running out of control. Wars are always the result of very deliberate military and political decisions. And I think you can seek off-ramps, right? The issue is, however, that you may not know what exactly is going on in your adversaries' minds, right? And rather than escalating rather than de-escalating, you only escalate your adversaries response through specific actions, right? So I understand your concern here, and it's also a concern in my book, but I do think there's a difference between like an accidental nuclear war and a nuclear war by design, so to speak. And I do think that the latter is more dangerous to a certain degree.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of let's call them inflection points or perhaps breaks from the past in terms of how we think about each of these service branches and their contributions or really. As it were, for a conflict of this kind with this breadth Depth as”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Traditionally, the most decisive domain, and that the role of the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps essentially is still going to be fairly limited in comparison to the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force unless really there is going to be extensive fighting on Taiwan where the United States is actually engaging Chinese forces on the island itself. And I think I would see the US Army and the US Marine Corps in a war like that sort of as a support asset for the US Navy and the US Air Force. And I should say that this doesn't really cover the entire US Marine Corps. It covers certain units that are being transformed into units that would be more capable of fighting in the Pacific. But essentially what they're trying to do is become additional. Sensors for the Army and Navy and project additional firepower onto the battle space essentially.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what that would actually mean, what the United States Marine Corps could actually do as a land force in a potential war that's really dominated by the air and maritime domains. And in combination with the U.S. Army, they came up with a couple of fairly innovative concepts how to support essentially the Navy.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the world that constantly has to justify its existence, right? I mean, in reality, you don't need the U.S. Marine Corps, right? You basically cover all, I mean, most other capabilities and capacity in all the other service branches of the United States Armed Forces, right? So I think the US Marine Corps essentially always is trying to fight for its existence. And by doing so, they always identify or are early adopters to existing trends and so forth. And they're constantly shape-shifting every couple of years or decades, right? And the US Marine Corps, again, in this instance, I think have been spearheading an important change with a new force structure and a new force design that they've been experimenting with that really takes into account that the United States Armed Forces may not be able to attain information through period.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stride to the Western Pacific and East Asia. So I think the underwater domain is going to be quite important. I don't cover it in too much detail and there's a lot of debate happening also what really the role of submarines is supposed to be. I think a consensus that you wouldn't likely deploy US submarines into the into the Taiwan Strait, for example, but I'm not so sure about that to be honest because there also might be political considerations in the early phase of a conflict and so forth. But in any case, so these are sort of the sum of my takeaways from the air and maritime domain. When it comes to the land domain, what's interesting is that the United States Marine Corps especially, and I do think when it comes to discussing the future of warfare, it's always important to look at what the U.S. Marine Corps is doing because it's the only service brand and one of the few service branches.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“be very difficult for US Navy destroyers guided missile destroyers and other surface warships to rearm essentially in theater that is getting new missiles after they fired the entire arsenals right Hugely important issue, and all of this is also the underwater domain, right? Submarines, unmanned underwater vehicles. And I don't want to go into too many details here, but I do see it as quite significant development and as quite probably one of the most effective US military assets to combat the people's liberation army. And a lot of it will depend how quickly the United States can actually deploy submarines where it's going to deploy submarines and what kind of other assets it can deploy underwater, such as smart mines and prevent the people's liberation army from breaking out from the first island chain, right, and attacking, for example, the U.S. merchant marine or try to cut off American convoys, right? Going out from the west coast or going out from Hawaii to the west.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And in particular, what the US Navy has as a challenge is how do you essentially rearm your ships in theater logistics for both sides? I mean, for the maritime domain and the Navy domain, it's the logistics really that's going to be the most challenging aspect, right? How do you maintain your forces in the field, in the theater? And that's going to be much more challenging for the Americans than for the Chinese. And it's all about enabling capabilities. For the Air Force, it's strategic air refueling. Here the United States has a fairly limited amount of tankers who are also not very well protected. They essentially need to conscribe in the event of war civilian tankers to support the US Air Force and U.S. Navy aircraft. And the same is actually true for the U.S. Navy. There are not enough resupply ships.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That at certain altitudes, at least you're also risking your own space-based assets, right? So there's a certain deterrent effect that I think would prevent the space domain from becoming this all out. Warfare domain and that generally speaking, this leads to a more attritional character of the space domain rather than both sides trying to gain a decisive advantage by destroying the other side, you're going to see much more cyber operations in space, electromagnetic interference rather than kinetic destruction. And maybe a more careful targeting plan than we might have envisioned only a couple of years ago. When it comes to the air and maritime domains, I think I can summarize the two. I think here the essential issue is that the United States, but also China, Would fairly quickly run out of precision guided ammunitions.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“up to space domain and the emergence of mega constellations. And I think here the idea or my main conclusion actually from mega constellations is that you're going to have a deterrent effect in cyberspace. So this idea that you're going to have a space Pearl Harbor essentially where the Chinese can launch an out of the blue lightning strike attack against US-based assets or vice versa. I think that's not something that military planners believe in any longer as a real possibility just because you have so many constellations up there, so many space-based assets in all the different layers of the space domain that data in one way or the other is always going to get through and that also by essentially destroying a lot of your adversary space”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And dependent on the main actors involved, right? Because you essentially are creating It's going to essentially peter out after the wall because both sides are going to deploy a lot of offensive cyber capabilities and it takes actually time to rearm, right? There's this idea of cyber strikes in milliseconds and so forth. Well, it takes a long, long of preparatory time to conduct cyber operations, really. And it's going to be much more difficult to conduct these operations in wartime for various reasons because network operators are going to be much more alert to cyber intrusions, right? It's going to be much more difficult to actually catch your opponent off guard. And you always need an attack vector and these attack vectors can close fairly easily if there's an update in the software and so forth. And it's not going to be that easy. So these are sort of the key takeaways from the silo domain. When it comes to the space domain, I think the most interesting change in my research over the last couple of years has actually been the privatization.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I began research on this book already in 2020, whereas the initial idea that cyber would actually be a much more decisive domain, as it turns out to be, I found very little evidence, frankly, that cyber could actually have a strategic impact on the fighting. So I see cyber domain as principally an intelligence domain at the same time also as an enabling domain. So you do need to have strong cyber defenses. But I find it unlikely that you can launch devastating cyber attacks that are going to permanently disable a lot of the Chinese critical information infrastructure. Having said that, I don't obviously know what's in the cyber arsenal of the United States, and we shouldn't draw wrong conclusions from other conflicts about this, right? Because I do think every, you know, cyber is fairly individual.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Over long distances. So don't think what you see in the one Ukraine, where you have thousands of FVVs, essentially first-person few drones with 40, 50 kilometer ranges. Well, actually, anything from 12 to 30 kilometers is more realistic if I think about it. You wouldn't see that unless there would be a real invasion of the island of Taiwan and the United States actually also deploying troops to the island of Taiwan, or you would actually have what's called a horizontal escalation fighting on the first island chain along different islands there between Chinese and American troops and troops allied with the United States Armed Forces, right? But to cut it short, essentially, what do I see or like some key takeaways from the individual domains? I think for the cyber domain, what's interesting to me when I was doing research is that”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then after the initial clash, right, you're probably going to see a lull, like a period where both sides essentially are running out of ammunition, of capabilities. They need to reorganize, restructure. What you see in a lot of great power is that in the first couple of days and weeks, you tend to lose the best people in your military as terrible as this sounds, right? Because you do lose your best units most likely at the beginning because they are at the forefront. You are trying to achieve decisive results right at the beginning of a military conflict, right? So you need a phase of reconstitution of rearmament and so forth. And it's particularly difficult in a war between China and the United States because a war like that would be fought over long distances primarily on the maritime, in the air domain, space domain, and cyber domain, and especially for the air and maritime domains, you would use a lot of precision guided administration.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've taken into account that this conflict could potentially escalate to the nuclear dimension. Have we really thought through and have we actually by accident or maybe even by design created operational concepts or military doctrine that are actually accelerating escalatory trends in a military conflict? And I would argue that, I mean, that's the gist of my argument, that the preferred U.S. warfighting approach actually accelerates nuclear escalatory dynamics in such a conflict. Now, specifically to your question, first off, I should also say that in terms of character of warfighting and all of the warfighting domains, what you are going to see is at the beginning maybe a big flash, a lot of activity, a lot of resources, capabilities being spent, whether it's missiles, offensive cyber capabilities, operations in space and so forth.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I should point out that I'm not in any way discussing specific tactics and plans in my book, right? So you're not going to find like, okay, this is how I envision the United States actually defending Taiwan in stages, right? And these are the amounts of troops that the United States armed forces are going to need to defend Taiwan or actually defeat China and on what specific islands on the first island chain. the United States will need deploy such and such an amount of troops and missiles and so forth and how many aircraft right there are some discussions around this I mean my book is really mostly about trying to start a discussion on first order questions right that is what's really happening if you are not capable of achieving information superiority how do you actually fight a war between two great powers under the nuclear umbrella”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Balance out your loss of information superiority if you're not capable of more effectively identifying and hitting your targets than your adversary if you also are suffering from a quantitative advantage. So the point is it's not only that there are escalation concerns that should be looked at. On the other hand, there's also no plan B essentially when it comes to the United States not actually able to achieve information through priority and that's sort of the dilemma that I try to outline. So the United States is really fixed itself one of the most challenging military problems out there essentially and I'm not so sure that the United States Armed Forces are really up to this challenge to be honest”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Capable of essentially establishing this information superiority and as a result actually information cognitive dominance, for example, which is a fancy way of saying that the United States military can actually just identify targets faster. It can make decisions in the battle space faster than the Chinese. And by doing so, essentially can hit more targets more effectively and destroy more of the people's liberation army if the United States is not capable of doing that. It will have a real problem because the US doesn't have the mass in comparison to the People's Liberation Army. It's an expeditionary based military. It has to travel thousands of miles, right? To the area of operations to the battlefield, it has less combat aircraft. It has less ships. It has less man. It has less missiles and so forth.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Blind your adversary, you blind the People's Liberation Army, you blind certain command and control knots. That's rather dangerous up to a point for multiple reasons. One being that the People's Liberation Army could potentially intermingle conventional and nuclear combat and control knots, for example, that is by essentially attacking the People's Liberation Army conventional capabilities. you could also threaten the Chinese nuclear deterrent, which could trigger all kinds of escalation dynamics. The second point about information superiority or trying to achieve information superiority, I'm not that sure that the United States can actually do that, right? And that's a challenge because if the United States is not”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Intensifies and escalates, and you climb up the escalation ladder. And at some point, nuclear weapons are could potentially play a larger role on the battlefield even. And information superiority is essentially the key to unlocking this United States warfare approach. And I point out in the book, first of all, pursuing information superiority, actively requires that you essentially”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“various networks that are not necessarily hierarchical it's a challenge to really identify so-called centers of gravity and that's a main main criticism in my book essentially behind the united states systems warfare approach is that it is difficult to make a case that you can actually identify adversary centers of gravity and the second point is that even if you would identify centers of gravity it would be extremely dangerous perhaps to target them and I speak about vertical escalation also a lot that is an escalation of a military conflict from the conventional fear to the nuclear realm and that's something that you always need to keep in the back of your mind obviously when you have two great powers going to war armed with nuclear weapons and if this war”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and I think you're raising a very important point here. The key also to systems warfare is essentially this idea that the United States armed forces would be able to achieve what they refer to as information superiority, information dominance that is essentially having more information about the adversary than the adversary has about you and also actively limiting the adversary's access to information and intelligence and so forth. And again, by essentially achieving information superiority through a common operating picture, for example, you can map the system, you can identify the centers of gravity, and you can essentially target the adversary and collapse the system. Now, the problem is that if you think that the adversary consists of a system based”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“you essentially win on the cheap so to speak and you win relatively quickly and that's the idea also behind the subtitle of my book it's essentially this idea that united states armed forces despite some recent changes are always pursuing essentially a rapid decisive warfare approach aimed at rapid decisive results in order to shorten a war And that's essentially the idea behind systems warfare. Now, what you need to understand also is that the Chinese, the People's Liberation Army, also have a concept of systems warfare. And that's fairly similar. And I think that's often the case between two competing militaries. There's a lot of mirror imaging going on. One side copies the other side back and forth and so forth. So you have two sides essentially trying to disentapse the adversary system.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“adversary in a systematic manner that is his armed forces, his command structures, his political structures and so forth. And you essentially build out this adversary system through superior ISR, intelligence surveillance, reconnaissance capabilities, maybe some other capabilities as well, and you map essentially his system. And by mapping the system, you identify knots or centers of gravity if you use a clausibitsian term called from Clausibits, was a Prussian military theorist from the 19th century, and he sort of the doyen of military theory in Western military academies and staff colleges. And the idea behind identifying the centers of gravity is that rather than having to destroy the entire system, you just focus on those particular”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The basic thing to understand about how we in the United States and Europe, that is the West for the lack of a better word, thinks about warfare or how to maintain an advantage in warfare is essentially through technology, right? So the basic premise essentially of the United States preferred warfighting approach is that United States will always fight a war as the technologically superior power. And as a result, they can experiment with different approaches to warfare that essentially shorten wars and that potentially reduce the destruction necessary to defeat an adversary, right? And so the idea is essentially that you try to look at your adversary through superior technology as a system that is essentially you map your”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most likely there would be immense destruction. And it was important for me to really describe that though in detail and also say a lot of how we are thinking about a potential future war between the United States and China really concerns the outset the first couple of days and weeks. And we are not really focusing on what such a conflict would really look like, let's say day 30 or 60 into the conflict and what kind of destruction and suffering and catastrophic consequences a war like that could actually entail.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Doctrine is really sort of a how-to guide, right? How do you employ these capabilities? How do you really move around that force structure? What kind of tactics do you develop and so forth? And these are sort of the categories that I looked at in the individual service branches, the warfighting domains, how the United States would really go about and fight China. I also looked at essentially the character of warfighting in each chapter, right? So what's the character of warfighting in the cyber domain? What's the character of warfighting in the space domain? And here essentially, to summarize the character in all the domains by and large, it's fairly attritional, which I know is not a great word in English language, but it means essentially that you would take a lot, a lot of losses when you fight it out in those domains, right? Both sides would lose a tremendous amount of hardware manpower.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tanks, missiles, or cyber effects, right? What kind of cyber effects can be achieved, satellites, anti-satellite weapons, and so forth? So capabilities essentially the technologies of war, right? Weapon systems to sum it up. A second category that I looked at was the structure. That is how do you really organize all these different technologies and weapon systems? What kind of structure do you build up around these systems? And the third element that I looked at was organizational concepts and doctrines organizational concepts are essentially discussions or ideas how the United States think it would employ certain technological capabilities also emerging technological capabilities down the road over the next couple of years. And these operational concepts after they are tested and experimented with usually turn into doctrine.”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“La Cerie de Houlu Original Furiers Arives, Avoc Amy Rossum, Furieus Suilagent du FBI, Alice Black, a la Portie, Mysterious, Ecalculatris, Vera Justice Mesa Musur colour ventrome la frontier entroposes,”
2025-10-11 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the US Fight China? With Franz-Stefan Gady · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT