Since Chinese President Xi is in Washington this week, we thought we’d talk about what China’s been up to while the rest of the world is distracted with Iran, Ukraine, gas prices, Gaza, or FILL IN THE BLANK.
As usual, it’s JR’s fault. One of the challenges joys of co-writing with a former intelligence officer turned professor of national security is that JR is constantly forwarding articles to me with the some version of the subject line:
You have to use this in a newsletter.
Well, this time he was right. He went on to say:
This think piece perfectly outlines the stakes in Central Asia and mirrors what we wrote in Covert Action and Proxy War.
The article in question was “How China Is Building an Architecture of Control Across the Heart of Asia,” by Masoud Andarabi, published on The Cipher Brief. As the former Minister of Interior for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, I think we can assume that the man knows something about the region.
The premise of the article is that China’s growing influence in Central Asia is a strategic, multidimensional threat that no one is talking about. Coincidentally, as JR pointed out, it’s also what we described in the two-novel story arc contained in Covert Action and Proxy War.
If you need a primer on either the region or the novels, we’ve got you covered:
The area where our fiction vigorously agrees with Andarabi is how the United States tends to view China’s strategic influence:
…Washington still tends to analyze terrorism, artificial intelligence, surveillance technology, regional instability, and great-power competition as separate categories. The emerging architecture across the region suggests adversaries increasingly view them as interconnected systems.
Whereas we used a fictional AI system, called Foresight, as the means by which the Chinese integrate their systems, the reality described by Andarabi is even more insidious.
The real battlefield is not about territory anymore, it’s a “contested frontier of cognition, surveillance, infrastructure, and machine-driven influence.”
Let’s translate that line from diplo-speak to plain English:
After 9-11, the US invaded Afghanistan to take on physical threats, like terrorist networks, training camps and safe havens. In other words, we took the physical fight to the physical enemy.
But what if you’re not fighting a physical enemy? What if you’re fighting
AI-assisted propaganda, synthetic media, autonomous disinformation networks, digitally coordinated extremist ecosystems, predictive behavioral analysis, biometric governance systems, and drone-enabled proxy operations…Influence operations can now scale globally through digital ecosystems that transcend geography.
The kind of threat we’re talking about here doesn’t crash a plane into a building. It shows up on your phone…fills your inbox…floods your TV with dark money political ads…the list is longer than we can even imagine.
These are “gray-zone” conflicts, so called because they’re not overt attacks on our infrastructure. Instead, they seek to erode and reshape our society based on the “strategic understanding that future competition will target perception, trust, decision-making, and societal cohesion as much as physical infrastructure.”
Are we ready for that kind of attack? Ready or not, it’s on the way.
A few years ago, when we wrote Covert Action and Proxy War, we felt like we were pushing the envelope of believability.
Turns out, we didn’t go far enough.
Didn’t finish Books 1-4 in the Command and Control series yet?
Not a problem. Covert Action is the lead title in a two-book, standalone story arc. Whether you’re brand-new to the series or still working your way through the line-up, this is the perfect place to jump right in.
Travel with us to the Steppes of Central Asia, where the People’s Republic of China is opening up a new front in their push for geopolitical supremacy.
Have no fear: Don Riley is on the case.
As always, thanks for being a supporter –
David & JR
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David, you and J.R. keep insisting on keeping your readers up all night. I'm not just talking about turning pages in your thriller novels but our ever scarier reality. What's even more terrifying is the brain drain we've seen over the last two years of our general officer core. We've lost a huge amount of competence to suit the ego of the commander in chief who seems to live in another century, in between reading chapters in the dictator's handbook.
What's coming is scary and our armed forces are being directed to act like the next conflict will be a reenactment of the 1940s both in tactics and armaments. I hope that as a nation we can pull away from the politicizing of the military and let the smart professionals do what they do best. Then next step is to follow their advice.
Thanks for another thoughtful article and reason to toss and turn when it's dark out.
Are we ready? Maybe, but I'm not convinced there is common understanding that the threat is real.