Angry Planet - What a War Game Tells Us About Taiwan

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

It’s only human to play games. Some might argue it’s in the DNA. Games are part of how we learn, and can be the best way to teach or solve a problem. But some games are more serious than others. A game recently played at a Washington think tank is about as serious as it gets. It looked at what might happen if China attacked Taiwan, and the results weren’t pretty for anyone.Joining us today to discuss what they found in playing the game is Mark Cancian. He is a retired marine corps colonel and is a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies International Security Program.Here’s a link to the report.Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. One day, all of the facts in about 30 years' time will be published. When genocide has been carried out in this country, almost with impunity, and when it is near to co-operation, people talk about intervention. You don't get freedom.

freedom has never safe-guided people. Anyone who is depriving you of freedom isn't deserving of a peaceful approach. Hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I am Jason Fields. And I'm Matthew Galt.

It's only human to play games. Some might argue it's in the DNA. Games are part of how we learn and can be the best way to teach or solve a problem. But some games are more serious than others. A game recently played at a Washington think tank is about as serious as it gets. It looked like it looked at what might

happen if China attacked Taiwan. And the results weren't pretty for anyone. Joining us today to discuss what they found in playing the game is Mark Kansion. He is a retired Marine Corps colonel and a senior advisor for the Center for Strategic and International Studies International Security Program, which is a mouthful, but worth saying. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me on the show. Can you explain what a war game like this actually is? I mean, I think people are familiar with the game, risk, maybe. You know, it's a board game, but I'm assuming this is somewhat different. Well, it is, but of course, it's the same theory. For this project, we developed a war game. The war game has an operational map for the Western Pacific where we played air and naval units and then it has a ground map for Taiwan where we played the ground units.

There are 2,500 counters that include aircraft and ships and missiles and ground forces. And we have a 70-page rule book to describe how the game is played. typically we had two sides with two or three players on each side. The players were mostly former senior government officials, retired military officers. One side played China. The other side played the United States, Taiwan, and Japan. It was a free play game. That is the two sides could adopt whatever strategies they wanted in order to try to triumph, to win. And as a result, different teams. adopted very different strategies. What made this war game unusual were three things.

One was that it is entirely unclassified. All of the information came from open sources, and as a result we can talk about the assumptions and the outcome without any restrictions. This is important because DoD has done a lot of classified war gaming, but the details, of course, are not released and just little bits and pieces leak out. The second thing is that we ran the war game 24 times. This allowed us to investigate a wide variety of scenarios and different strategies. There are many excellent war games and projects in the unclassified world, but most of them only ran once or twice. We were able to run it 24 times, and as a result had a much but stronger analytical basis for the recommendations and insights.

And finally, we did a lot of work on historical experience and weapons testing data so that we could develop combat results and incorporate those into tables and computer programs so that it wasn't reliant on personal judgment and that the adjudication of the first game was the same as the 24th game. Not to get too technical, but one thing I was wondering is what constitutes a turn? When you're talking about a regular, you know, a game for civilians, you're talking about something where everybody acts at one at a time usually rather than simultaneously. In a war, people are doing things simultaneously, right? They are. This game operates like games that many people have seen. Each turn was three and a half days, so there were two turns for a week. and each side would move its counters to make its moves.

You know, they can make attacks. They can move forces around. And then at the end of each turn, our adjudicators would roll a die or run the computer programs to see what happened. Can I back up and ask a more basic and fundamental question about this? I'm super fascinated by this subject in general. the idea that we use these games what are essentially like advanced board games to simulate these kinds of conflicts.

I'm very interested in the history of it. I've always kind of wanted to write something longer about it, especially as it pertains to like the use of nuclear weapons. On a very basic level, why do we do this and what do you think we get out of it? Well, the basic level, the reason we do it is to get insight into what might happen in a future conflict and to do it in an unclassified way so we can have a broad discussion about the assumptions and the outcomes. And that's important because different people can make different assumptions. We lay all of our assumptions out there and we have different scenarios so that we adjust some assumptions based on plausible alternatives.

Just to give you a sense, one of our assumptions is that. that the United States can use its bases in Japan, but Japan would not enter the fight unless China attacked its territory. Now, as things come out, and 19 of the 24 iterations, the Chinese did attack the Japanese and they did come in, we had an excursion where Japan was entirely neutral. The United States could not use its bases in Japan. That made it a very difficult fight. You note that there's some history here with war games, and that's certainly true. The history of war games goes back, you know, decades, even centuries. I think since the Second World War, you've seen it maybe used more extensively.

The rise of think tanks like Rand have done a lot of wargaming. But even before that during the interwar period, the Naval War College did a lot of wargaming about a conflict in the Pacific. They argue that that was helpful in thinking about what would be required on a Pacific War and therefore structuring U.S. forces and, strategies for that war that finally came in 1941. So there's a long history here. And, you know, because we are attempting to, you know, see what the future might bring so we can better prepare for it today.

Before we talk about the results of this particular game, and I'd like to keep the listeners in suspense, no, but how accurate have these games been in the past? Is this something that you really view as could be predictive? Well, we're a little hesitant to say it's predictive. I mean, in part because for this particular game, we argue that an invasion of Taiwan is not the most likely course of action for China. They're more likely to use gray area or blockade, but it is a plausible course of action. The Chinese, for example, have threatened Taiwan. They've said that all options are on the table. and it's the most dangerous.

So that's why we looked at this particular course of action. So we're not trying to predict, but by having many different scenarios, we want to give decision makers and the public at large a sense about the choices that are out there, the decision space, so we can better prepare today.

It's not going to be as simple as this, but who won? The short version is that The United States, Taiwan, and Japan were able to maintain an autonomous and democratic Taiwan, but that came at very high price. The coalition lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of personnel. The Taiwanese economy was wrecked. The U.S. typically lost two aircraft carriers, for example.

But also the Chinese suffered heavily. They lost hundreds of ships and hundreds of aircraft. In many cases, thousands of POWs on Taiwan when their invasion collapsed. So there's some question about whether the Chinese Communist Party could maintain its rule in China in the face of such a defeat. What we take away from that is that given the level of destruction, we need to strengthen deterrence, so we never fight that war. and if the war happens, we need to be able to fight it more efficiently and bring it to a conclusion more quickly. Was this 24 out of 24 times that you got this result, or were there outliers? There was a spectrum of results. Most of them were Chinese defeats. Some of them were stalemates or the Chinese maybe had the upper hand at the end.

but it was about 24, 22 out of the 24 where the Chinese were either lost or were on course to lose. With some pessimistic outcomes or with some bad gameplay, the Chinese could conquer Taiwan. We did do one excursion where the United States did not intervene, where Taiwan was on its own, and the Chinese, not surprisingly, were able to conquer the island, although it did take two or three months. So, actually, that's an interesting scenario. What is the quality of the Taiwanese forces as they were played? Well, that's a great question because people debate that. Our base case assumed that all forces had their face value. You know, that is, they could do what the nation said they could do.

And we applied that to all four nations. that the Chinese could do what the Chinese say they could do, Taiwanese, et cetera. A lot of question on the Taiwanese, whether they're, particularly their ground forces are high quality. Right now, the conscription is only for four months. Now, they're lengthening that to one year. But, you know, a lot of questions about really whether they were, they would be very effective. So we ran a number of excursions where the Taiwanese forces were not as effective as, you know, the Taiwanese. advertised, but were less effective. We also ran some excursions where the Taiwanese decision-making

was slowed down because of either special forces attacks or information operations or subversion or something like that by the Chinese. Then I've got a similar question about Chinese forces. We've actually had a conversation or two on the show before about just how strong China has become. One, a retired admiral we spoke with. with once, specifically said that it was unclear that the United States could defeat China within its own sphere anymore. Not that China could overwhelm the United States overall, but within its own sphere could defend its space. What was your assumption usually about the Chinese forces, especially one aspect of this is they're largely unblooded? I'm going to use it. It's a horrible phrase, and I apologize for using it.

The United States has been fighting in one way or another for a long time, and the Chinese really haven't. So can you talk a little bit about the quality of the Chinese and what you think about that? I don't think there's some people in India that may have... Literal sticks and stones. That may argue with you, but fair, Jace. Well, many commentators have noted that the Chinese have not had extensive. military experience. The last war they fought was in 1979 against the Vietnamese, and they lost. And of course, the last great power conflict was against us and the Korean War. And, you know,

arguably they didn't, you know, their political objectives were met, but an immense military cost. But they've built a very different military. They, particularly over the last 20 years, expanded their naval forces and their air forces brought in very advanced technology. So when you look at these systems, you know, they really are very high quality. A lot of question, of course, of whether the Chinese have the software, you know, that is the training and doctrine to make all of this work together. As I noted, you know, we in the base case assumed that they did. And of course, keep in mind that the game is played for 2026.

So that gives the Chinese, you know, would now be another three plus years to get ready and continue on the course that they've charted out. But we did have some optimistic cases, that is optimistic cases for the United States, where the Chinese software, their training, their doctrine was not where they thought it was or where it was advertised to be. and that gave them much harder time getting on the island. All right, Angry Planet listeners, want to pause there for a break. We'll be right back after this. All right, Angry Planet listeners, thank you for sticking with us. We were back on.

Can you talk a little bit more about just what some of the major variables are in a game like this? It sounds so complex. I'm trying to imagine the board, and I think you actually have an image of it in the report. We do. We should talk about the report a little bit. but yeah, how do you play an element like the CIA, for example? We focused on operations in the Western Pacific. So if there were activities that didn't bear directly on what would happen in the Western Pacific,

and particularly in the time scale that we're talking about, which is about one month, then we either abstracted it or ignored it. A lot of people, for example, raise questions about information operations. You know, could the Chinese launch information operations against the United States, discourage the citizenry? And that's possible, but it's unlikely that you would have an operational effect within four weeks. In terms of intelligence, we did look at what's called ISR, intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance very closely, and developed some rules simplified, but some rules about basically who could see who,

when and who could target who when, you know, to bring that element into the game. You know, we also brought in cyber and space. Those were both a bit abstracted, but we wanted to bring it in because, of course, these domains get a lot of attention. You know, with cyber, basically there were some cyber attacks that each side could implement and with space the same thing. You know, you could go after the other side's satellites.

Now, in the event, no one ever did. I think both sides were so worried about what might happen that they did not go after the other side satellites. Both sides did use cyber, and that had some effect. Now, cyber is very hard to predict because, you know, by its nature, no one says what the weapon is, so you can't be sure about, you know, what effects they might have. We modeled what we, we modeled the game and the cyber effects on what we were seeing in Ukraine. so that, for example, the United States might be able to shut down a particular port for a turn because of cyber attacks on its information systems.

We did have imaginative participants who came in and said, all right, I'm going to use cyber to knock out all of the electricity on the east coast of China. And what we developed was a rule that said, we're only going to implement capabilities that each side has demonstrated. So we said, right, has the United States demonstrated the ability to knock out all the electricity on the east coast of China? No. Okay. Then we're not going to allow that.

And same thing like with soft. You know, we had some people who are very imaginative with soft. So we stuck with demonstrated capabilities. How many of these kinds of games have you participated in? Do you have any idea? You know, over the course of my career, I've participated in many of these. And of course, over time, did a lot of board games. My two collaborators, Eric Hagenbotham did assessments of China when he was at Rand and did a lot of wargaming there.

And the third collaborator, who is my younger son, runs war games at the Naval War College. He just got his Ph.D. from MIT. So he does this every day, although the war games he does are in a different part of the world, not on Taiwan. Are they fun? Say again? Are they fun? Are these games fun to play? You know, that's an interesting question because on the one hand, the participants were extremely enthusiastic.

So at some level, you'd say, yeah, it was fun because they found the games engaging, interesting, a lot of ideas during the hot wash at the end of the game. And I've received many, many emails from them saying about, you know, how interesting this was. And then how they've used it in some of their own teaching and academic work. The reason I hesitate on fun is because both sides really, really wanted to win. So, you know, I mean, is it fun, you know, when you're in this struggle against this other team, you know, and, you know, trying to see if you're going to win or not? So, I don't know if you call it fun, but, but I, you're just to find it engaging. So we've got video, the audience can't see you, but you are smiling as you talk about it. You look like you had fun when you were playing.

Well, and for us, of course, you know, I mean, this was work. Right. I mean, I was trying to make sure that everything worked well, you know, that both sides understood the play of the game and that, you know, we got good data at the end. So I don't know if I was really having fun. But again, we were very satisfied with the outcomes. And it was very interesting to see, you know, different approaches that different teams would make. And, you know, the generalship did matter. How do you come up with the rules?

I mean, you said it was more than 70 pages. How do you get people to agree? Who has to agree in order to play the game? Well, the rules were developed by the three of us, you know, the three principal investigators. And the participants were not given, you know, choices in the rules. At the end of each game, though, they were given the opportunity to, talk about the rules and the game. And, you know, there are a couple of places where we either clarified the rules or made

some adjustments based on comments that we received. But the rules we develop based on historical experience looking at a lot of amphibious landings, for example, you know, to come up with an algorithm for how Chinese would land troops, you know, how quickly they could land troops. We looked at D-Day and the invasion of Okinawa in 1945. We looked at a lot of weapons test data to get a sense about, you know, would the missile hit the target? And, you know, if it hit the target, what would happen to the target? So we tried to base this on objective data to the maximum extent we could.

In every game, you know, some side would come up with something we had not anticipated. So, you know, we would have to make an adjudication. But we tried to kick that to a minimum. And really, it was quite rare. Can we talk a little bit about Japan? Because we've talked about the other two sides a little bit, certainly more. Japan is just, or at least is in the process of agreeing to expand its military. And what kind of military were you counting on from Japan in this kind of game?

What do you feel we can expect? Well, we used the military that Japan had forecast for 2026, and the recent announcements are unlikely to make a big difference by then. I think you might see some differences. But, of course, it takes time to build forces, to build new pieces of equipment. From Japan, you know, we, you know, ascribed high quality to their equipment and to their forces. So when they participated, they were an important player. As noted on the assumptions, you know, sometimes they didn't participate. But most of the time, you know, they were dragged into the war.

And that's been a finding that has raised a lot of attention in Japan. I mean, this report was literally front page news all across Japan because of our finding that, regardless of what the Japanese wanted to do, they were probably going to be dragged into this war and they needed to think about how they were going to react to that, how they were going to deal with that. That's really an amazing response to the report. I mean, French page news. How has it been received here in the United States? Well, it's received tremendous attention really globally. It was front page news in Japan, also in Taiwan and in mainland China.

here in the United States, we've done a lot of work with journalists. On Friday, after four days, the report had been downloaded 73,000 times. And our short video explaining the project had been watched over 100,000 times. And that was in the first four days, I'm not sure what we're up to now. So it's got tremendous attention because it fills a gap that is an unclassified, objective, assessment of what a U.S. China conflict over Taiwan might look like. And the public at large, as well as decision-making groups, have really wanted something that they could discuss and debate. So we filled a void. And as a result, you know, I have, you know, I said we received tremendous attention.

We're going up on Capitol Hill talking to various members and staff. We're going going into the Pentagon, actually, to talk to a number of very senior officials there. You know, this is part of a process as we're explaining this to groups of people who have been interested. It's really, that is amazing, 73,000. I've done some work with the Atlantic Council in my past, and I've worked at the World Bank. So I'm just saying, you know, even with a successful launch, you're talking about in the low thousands. So this is actually very impressive.

Yeah, we've been very pleased. And that was four days, you know, last Friday. And, you know, I'm not sure what the count is up to now. But, you know, we continue to get a lot of interest. So what's next? Well, next, what we'd like to do is some follow-on work and particularly look at a couple of issues that we took off the board at the beginning, quite consciously. One of them is to look at Blockade. Most people, when they look at this problem, think that the Chinese would not launch a direct invasion, but would blockade the island and try to bring it into submission. We'd like to do an assessment of that. Use this game, but to look at what a blockade would entail, you know, how much, you know, how many supplies you'd have to get into Taiwan, how you might, might do that. We're also trying to do a follow on looking at nuclear operations. Again, many people pointed out that we have two nuclear powers who will be fighting a war.

You could have nuclear play. So we want to look at that, both the decision-making side and also if nuclear weapons were used, how would that affect the course of the conflict? And then finally, we're talking to some of the national groups of Japanese, you know, maybe to look at their particular issues in a little more depth. So were nuclear weapons just kind of off the table in this simulation? They were. And the reason is that once you bring in nuclear weapons, it's a whole different game. I mean, first, the dynamics of the fight are different. The decision making is different.

It's a totally legitimate thing to look at, but it just went beyond, you know, what the scope of this project was. You thinks can quickly spiral out of control. Other countries might get involved that aren't necessarily part of the war game, right? That makes sense. They would. They would. And, you know, what would be the dynamics of escalation? I mean, a lot of great questions there.

But, again, that was beyond what we could look at in this, you know, 24 iterations of the game. What was the most surprising thing that you took away from this? There were a couple of things that were surprising. One was that 90% of the coalition aircraft that were lost were destroyed on the ground. by Chinese missiles. What that meant was that we need to build hardened shelters and to disperse those forces, so they are not quite as vulnerable. We knew that they were going to be vulnerable.

We were surprised at just how vulnerable they were. Another thing was the vulnerability of surface ships. I mentioned that the two aircraft carriers typically get sunk at the beginning. aircraft cows can be very helpful in other circumstances, but here all the surface vessels were very vulnerable and really needed to get out of the way until the Chinese missile threat declined. Another thing, actually, an important outcome was that the Ukraine strategy won't work. That is, with Ukraine, the United States has been sending weapons and munitions. continuously from the beginning of the war. The Russians have tried to

interdict that but have not had any success. So we've been able to sustain Ukraine's resistance through sending supplies. We will not be able to do that with Taiwan. Once the war begins, the Chinese air and naval forces are so powerful that nothing can get onto the island. And that means a couple of things.

One is that the Taiwanese need to start the war with everything they need to fight. That puts a lot of emphasis on foreign military sales, making that work more smoothly. Maybe putting some U.S. munitions on the island. There are a couple ways you go, but the Ukraine approach won't work. Several of our participants tried that approach. They tried to send in convoys. They tried to fly in munitions. they were always destroyed. The convoy was destroyed. All of the aircraft were destroyed.

It just didn't work. It also means that some of the plans that the Marine Corps and the Army have for sending forces forward with anti-ship missiles and small groups on the islands are going to be very difficult to implement. First, they have to be there

before the war begins, and there are a lot of diplomatic problems with that. Once the war begins, they can't move forward just because of the Chinese defenses, even if they get forward, resupplying them is almost impossible so that the whole concept of how we would use these new kinds of units really needs work. Last question for me, unless Matthew has another, is how successful in the past other games that you've played, how successful are they in terms of predicting real world outcomes? You know, it's very,

difficult to answer that question because fortunately we haven't fought very many wars. For example, you know, there was a lot of war gaming about what might happen in Europe if the Soviets attacked. But fortunately, that never happened. So we never had to find out, you know, what the results would be. Now, the Navy claims that the war games in the interwar period were very instructive about what might happen. Nimitz is, you know, we're. report to have said that everything that happened during the war, except for the kamikazis, we had anticipated during these war games. I mean, I think that's a little extreme, but, but, you know, they claim that it was very helpful. So, uh, we're hopeful that we can do that

same sort of thing, you know, that is at least lay out what the issues are so we can better, uh, prepare. Matthew? No, I think that covers it. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Oh, no, please. Yeah, let me have. The report. it has a wide variety of insights and recommendations and people can go through. But one thing I want to wrap up with is the cultural issue. The cultural issue is that the United States is going to experience casualties on a scale it has not experienced since 1945. We're talking about two aircraft carriers being sunk, potentially hundreds of aircraft. It's going to be particularly difficult for the Air Force and the Navy because they have operated in sanctuary for,

70 years. The, you know, no Navy ships have been sunk at sea. And air bases have basically been protected. That's no longer going to be true. The senior leadership of the services understands that, but changing the culture, the culture of military services that are customable operating out of sanctuary is going to take quite a while. The example that we used to illustrate this point for people is follow on. forces arriving at Cadena Air Force Base in Okinawa. They're going to land on a bumpy runway because it has been hit so many times by Chinese

missiles and then repaired. They're going to taxi past literally hundreds of wrecked aircraft that have been bulldozed to the side of the runway because they were again destroyed by Chinese missile attacks. They're going to move into a barracks that was vacated by the previous squadron because they were all killed. And the attacks, the base hospitals full of wounded. the golf course is probably turned into a temporary cemetery. And they're going to be told tomorrow you fly against the Chinese over Taiwan.

This is not an environment that the U.S. forces have operated in for a long time. And it's going to take some cultural changes to be ready for that. What are those cultural changes? How do you even prepare someone for that? Well, part of it is you change. your training so that people understand that this is not a push button war. And, you know, the idea is out there, you know, the next war, it's all going to be ones and zeros. And, you know, people are going to push buttons and it's all going to be this antiseptic long range thing. No.

Again, for the Air Force, I make the point to young officers that, you know, these bases, Cadina Anderson on Guam, they're going to be struck by missiles. And you're going to have to lead people out and to clean up all of that debris and get the, get the, you're going to have to lead people out and get the base operating again. That means leaving your bunker and saying, follow me. And that sort of cultural change, I think has to start at basic training and then continue all the way through. I realized I left out a very basic question. How long does it take for the war from start to finish.

I don't mean how long it took to play the game, but I mean, how long are you gaming for it to take? Game time runs three to four weeks. And that's important because we get beyond the first couple of days when the capitalities are very high. And a lot of war games, particularly classified war games, we think,

focus on those first couple of days, which are very bad for them. the United States and the coalition because typically the Chinese get the first shot. As time goes on, of course, the United States is sending in reinforcements. Sometimes the Japanese now become involved. And the balance of power shifts, the Chinese are taking a lot of attrition. Because one thing I would note is just how difficult their task is. A lot of people point to the Chinese and say, hey, they've got this huge military.

Of course they're going to win. Well, they got a huge military, but they got a really hard task because is they have to cross water and then they have to land their troops on a foreign shore, which is hostile because they're shooting at you now. And then they have to sustain them, even though the U.S. and Japan and Taiwan are shooting missiles at you all the time and seeking ships left and right. Plus, Taiwan itself is very easy to defend. You know, the center of the island is very mountainous. The coastal strips have a lot of rivers and cities. It's just very hard island to capture.

I have one more, actually. I'm still processing the idea that there needs to be a cultural change in the U.S. military. And I think about 18-year-old kids coming in on a plane and seeing this wreckage and seeing the carnage and being told that they're going to defend, they're going to be fighting, you know, the Chinese in a, like, like an all-out war. Do you think that morale would be a problem? Do you think that we have done, the American military has done a good enough job of explaining to its soldiers

and airmen and sailors why this island needs to be defended? On the question about explaining about the island, you know, that's a tough question. You know, I think there is a lot of support. for defending Taiwan and clearly a lot of concern about the Chinese as a military economic threat. I don't think that that would be a hard sell if it came to a conflict, which of course we all want to avoid and deter. It's a tough question about, you know, is your rank and file and the military ready for this kind of conflict? And, you know, one of our findings is at one level, no, because, you know, we need to have.

have a cultural change because the kind of war is very different from what we've done for the last literally a generation. But I have two aspects of optimism here. I mean, one is that their grandfathers did this. You know, they landed on Omaha Beach, Iwo Jima, you know, those kinds of really desperate struggles and were successful. And they came from very similar backgrounds, you know, that is, you know, know, a peacetime environment and, you know, a lot of anti-war sentiment, a lot of, you know, isolationism, but they rose to the challenge. And the other thing is, you know, I did two tours in Iraq in the Marines and the troops were magnificent. So I, you know, so with those two data points, you know, I think we can do it.

Yeah, I mean, nobody ever really, it's an unanswerable question, right? Nobody's ever actually ready for this kind of. of thing. They aren't. And, you know, it's going to be a shock. And that's one of the reasons that we say, we need to prepare the troops for this because, you know, sure, you know, a month into it, six months into it, yeah, people will have the notion. But no, the first 24 hours, they have to be ready for it.

That's why I was asking about how long it would take to fight the war through, because it doesn't sound like you have a lot of time for culture changes or, you know, You're not going to bring up a draft class. They happen rapidly in that kind of environment, though, right? Yeah. Well, the culture does change rapidly. But that's why we need to start now to be ready because the Chinese are going to be just as unready. You know, there's a –

Lucas says Grant has a great quotation in his memoirs. He talks about really his first battle in the Civil War and just how nervous he was, you know, ordering his troops forward. against, you know, dug in enemy. And when he got there, he realized the enemy had pulled away. And he said, you know, I realized that they were just as nervous and just as scared as we were. So, you know, it's not a question of being ready against some ideal standard. We have to be better than the Chinese. Mark Kansion, thank you so much for joining us today.

And talking us through this, I think everybody should go to the CSI. dot org and take a look at this report. It really is fascinating. Well, thanks again for having me on the show. That's all for this week. Angericklanded listeners. As always, Anger Planet is me. Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell. It's created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, please give us $9 a month on Substack. It helps us keep doing this thing, which is a labor of love. I'm trying to turn into something else in 2023. I've got a good feeling. Angry Planetpod.com or Angry Planet.com.

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