Opinion – Why American Military Power No Longer Produces Security |
The New York Times has recently published a series of editorials on the weaknesses of the U.S. military (here and here). Their critique centers on the deep-seated pathologies of the military–industrial complex: the production of over-engineered weapons systems that are fragile, exorbitantly expensive, and perpetually scarce. This complex is the swamp that is never drained — indeed, never named. Its pulse is sustained by the convergent interests of defense contractors, members of Congress, and senior military officers. The F-35 is the paradigmatic expression of this dysfunction. So too is the Navy’s determination to build yet another fleet of aircraft carriers despite their growing vulnerability to hypersonic missiles. A recurring theme in the Times pieces is that U.S. military power is increasingly exposed to cheaper, lower-tech systems — especially drones — that can disable or destroy its most expensive platforms. These vulnerabilities extend beyond the battlefield to cyberwarfare, including the capacity to disrupt power grids and command-and-control systems: capabilities that may already be embedded in Chinese information infrastructures such as 5G networks. Despite its immense military expenditures, the United States now confronts a future — perhaps even a present — in which it is overmatched by Chinese military power in a conflict over Taiwan.
This is the central finding of the Pentagon’s classified “Overmatch” brief, reviewed by both the Trump and Biden administrations. China possesses sufficient missile capabilities to push the U.S. Navy out of the Western Pacific, as well as space-war assets capable of disrupting satellite-based intelligence, surveillance, and command systems. The Trump administration’s response has been to pour more money into defense spending. As the Times itself notes, this approach risks intensifying rather than correcting existing weaknesses, funneling additional resources into the same costly and ineffective systems. Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense initiative epitomizes this tendency: expensive, spectacular, and strategically dubious. According to the Times, the alternative is to reinvent the U.S. military around the technologies of the present. Silicon Valley defense firms such as Palantir and Anduril are positioned as the platforms for Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS)—a genuinely new revolution in military affairs, and one in which the United States is now lagging rather than leading.
Such a transformation would require massive, politically difficult investments,........