Nuclear War

[tim]

https://www.hudson.org/defense-strategy ... s-john-lee

Implications of Chinese Nuclear Weapons Modernization for the United States and Regional Allies

Based on current trends, China will become a quantitative and qualitative nuclear weapons peer of the United States by the early to mid-2030s with a diversified, accurate, and survivable force that will rival America’s. Rather than having only high-yield nuclear missiles as a strategic deterrent against nuclear attack, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is developing a range of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, the latter being lower-yield weapons usable in a conflict theater.

Why is China seemingly going beyond its long-standing nuclear weapons approach of maintaining only a minimal deterrent or assured retaliation? Why has it chosen to rapidly develop its nuclear arsenal and related delivery system in a deliberately opaque manner?

This report argues that Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) decided to embark on such a rapid nuclear modernization not primarily because China wants to “win” a nuclear exchange against the US. Rather, Beijing wants to create political and psychological effects that lead to enormously important strategic and military effects.

As the report explains, the CCP and PLA are using the rapid development of nuclear capability and related delivery systems to subdue the adversary and win without fighting. The following are components of achieving this:

Degrade the adversary’s decision-making.
Weaken the adversary’s will to fight.
Undermine the adversary’s public support for war.
Undermine the resolve of the adversary’s government from within.
Support and enhance deterrence.
The report assesses that there are three ways in which China uses nuclear modernization to change the material and psychological environment with important strategic effects that work to its advantage.

First, China uses advances in nuclear weapons to craft and entrench its strategic narratives throughout the region. Second, nuclear modernization enhances Beijing’s ability to deter, enjoy escalation dominance, and coerce in material and psychological ways that are advantageous for China. Third, Chinese modernization manipulates and degrades trust in US extended nuclear deterrence and deepens allied fears of US abandonment.

More broadly, the report argues that these strategic effects of Chinese nuclear modernization are completely aligned with evolving CCP and PLA notions of strategic stability, strategic deterrence, and strategic capabilities. For China, strategic stability is not simply a stable state in its relations with other great powers. It entails a stability that is advantageous for the advancement of Chinese geopolitical and development objectives. In this sense, a stable but dynamic (rather than static) set of relationships and arrangements allows China to accumulate comprehensive national power in a relative and absolute sense.

For the CCP and PLA, strategic deterrence is not only about deterring an adversary from a specific military course of action or policy. It also involves placing ongoing and enduring military and nonmilitary constraints on an adversary in a manner that is advantageous for the pursuit of China’s broader objectives. Indeed, China’s nuclear weapons do not exist only to deter a nuclear attack. They also exist to shape the military and nonmilitary actions and mindsets of other states to ensure they are conducive to Chinese interests. This includes asymmetric strategic stability and asymmetric strategic deterrence, which shape the actions and mindsets of nations that do not have proportionate strategic capabilities.

The modernizing nuclear arsenal exists to enable China to attack the adversary’s plans (strategies) and allies, bringing China one step closer to subduing the enemy and winning without fighting.

The report then offers case studies of the Chinese stratagem against the Philippines, Japan, and South Korea. It concludes with the recommendations summarized below:

Abandon the false hope of arms control and embrace ambiguity and strategic instability.
Recognize that there is no need for allies to consider developing their own nuclear weapons. This is a distraction that will play into Chinese hands.
Double down on conventional allied rearmament and underpin it with credible US extended nuclear deterrence.
Engage in psychological warfare with strategic effects.

[tim]

https://nataliegwinters.substack.com/p/ ... d-shocking

The CCP Is Inside the Fed: Shocking New Evidence of Chinese Infiltration at America’s Central Bank

A decade-long infiltration campaign by the Chinese Communist Party has penetrated the Federal Reserve—coercing employees, stealing sensitive data, and compromising America’s financial core.

Most Americans have heard about Chinese spies targeting our military or hacking private companies. But there’s another front in this quiet war, one that’s gone largely unreported—and it may be the most dangerous of all: China’s long game to infiltrate and manipulate the United States Federal Reserve.

A 2022 Senate investigation offered a rare glimpse into this operation, but even that barely scratches the surface. What’s playing out behind closed doors isn’t just a few bureaucratic missteps or naïve collaborations—it’s a full-blown economic espionage campaign.

This is warfare without bullets.

Hard Evidence of Espionage and Infiltration

Here are some documented examples that received little attention from the mainstream media:

1. Detained and Surveilled in China (Individual A)

• In 2019, a Fed employee was detained four separate times by Chinese authorities during a visit to Shanghai. He was threatened, told his family would be harmed, and coerced into handing over sensitive U.S. economic data. Chinese agents accessed his Fed laptop, phones, and internal contact lists. He was ordered to “tell a good story about China” back in the U.S. This employee returned to his post with full access to confidential monetary policy data.

2. Secret Data Transfers to Chinese Institutions (Individual B)

• Another employee sent modeling code and restricted Fed data to a university linked to China’s central bank (PBOC). He proposed deeper collaboration between his Reserve Bank and Chinese state institutions while maintaining access to Class II FOMC data, which includes sensitive internal forecasts and deliberations.

3. Coordination with Chinese Propaganda Outlets (Individual C)

• Another Fed employee took a paid visiting professorship in China funded by the CCP and subsequently acted as a liaison with Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese government’s propaganda arm. He even helped Chinese journalists and officials gain access to Fed contacts, often bypassing formal Fed communication channels.

4. Suspicious Talent Recruitment Programs (Individual D)

• Another Fed employee attempted to transfer large U.S. data sets to Chinese institutions. He was found to have joined the Thousand Talents Program, China’s premier foreign recruitment tool for stealing scientific and economic research. This affiliation was never disclosed and the employee continued working at the Fed.

[tim]

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-resear ... ize-taiwan

How Russia is Helping China Prepare to Seize Taiwan

Russia has agreed to equip and train the PLA to air-drop armoured vehicles and special reconnaissance capabilities.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has directed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be ready to militarily seize Taiwan by 2027. A large-scale amphibious operation is highly risky, with the sites suitable for landing craft to deliver troops and equipment ashore constrained by the gradient and load bearing capacity of the beaches. Seizing airfields could allow troops to flow in by air, but as Russia discovered during its invasion of Ukraine, runways can be quickly denied. The PLA is therefore eager to identify ways of diversifying both the methods and locations at which it can move units onto Taiwan.

Although the areas where Russia surpasses China in military capability are diminishing, Russia has practical experience and capabilities for air manoeuvre that China lacks. According to contracts and correspondence obtained by the Black Moon hacktivist group, Russia agreed in 2023 to supply the PLA with a complete set of weapons and equipment to equip an airborne battalion, as well as other special equipment necessary for airborne infiltration of special forces, along with a full cycle of training for operators and technical personnel to use this equipment. In addition, Russia is transferring technologies that will allow China to scale-up the production of similar weapons and military equipment through localization and modernization.

The approximately 800 pages of contracts and collateral materials appear genuine and details from within the documents have been independently verified. However, there is also the possibility that parts of the documents have been altered or omitted.

The Russian Offer

The agreements provide for the sale by Russia to China of:

37 BMD-4M, light amphibious assault vehicles with a 100 mm gun and 30 mm automatic cannon.
11 Sprut-SDM1 light amphibious anti-tank self-propelled guns with a 125 mm cannon.
11 BTR-MDM ‘Rakushka’ airborne armoured personnel carriers.

Several Rubin command and observation vehicles and KSHM-E command vehicles.
The agreements state that all armoured vehicles must be equipped with Chinese communication and command and control suites, and with verification of their electromagnetic compatibility with Russian electronic equipment. This is due both to the need to maintain interoperability with other Chinese units, and the better technical capabilities of Chinese equipment. The Russians must also prepare the equipment and software for the use of Chinese ammunition.

The agreements also require Russia to train a battalion of Chinese paratroopers in employing the equipment. Armoured vehicle drivers will be trained at the Kurganmashzavod base, and the crews of KMN command and observation vehicles and Sprut anti-tank guns will be trained in Penza at JSC NPP Rubin. After completing courses on training equipment and simulators, the collective training of the Chinese airborne battalion will be carried out at training grounds in China. Here, Russian instructors are to prepare the battalion for landing, fire control and manoeuvring as part of an airborne unit. The Russians are also transferring Rheostat airborne artillery command and observation vehicle and Orlan-10 multi-purpose unmanned aerial vehicles. A Centre for Technical Maintenance and Repair of Russian Equipment will be established in China, to which all necessary technical documentation will be transferred. This will allow China to undertake the production and modernisation of these capabilities in the future.

The capacity to airdrop armour vehicles on golf courses, or other areas of open and firm ground near Taiwan’s ports and airfields, would allow air assault troops to significantly increase their combat power and threaten seizure of these facilities to clear a path for the landing of follow-on forces
In addition, the agreements provide for the transfer of special-purpose parachute systems ‘Dalnolyot’, which are designed for inserting loads of up to 190 kg from an altitude of up to 32,000 feet, achieving a range of between 30-80 km depending on load. Russia is equipping and training Chinese special forces groups to penetrate the territory of other countries without being noticed, offering offensive options against Taiwan, the Philippines and other island states in the region.

Implications

The operational challenge for the PLA in seizing Taiwan is successfully landing with a sufficient mass of troops and thus enough combat power to be able to establish a lodgement and thereby build up a force that can defeat the Taiwanese military by seizing vital ground before the ROC mobilises. The beaches suitable for landing are limited, known, and dispersed. The runways and ports on the island could be invaluable for reinforcing the lodgement but denying these facilities would likely be a priority task for Taiwanese forces.

If the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, supported in a Joint Firepower Campaign, can successfully suppress Taiwanese air defences, then air manoeuvre offers the fastest means of transferring combat power onto Taiwan, and spreading operations across an expanded area. Helicopters offer the most flexible means of deploying troops, but light infantry, unsupported by armour and fires, will necessarily struggle to hold their objectives against a mechanised adversary, as Russian airborne troops found to their detriment at Hostomel. The capacity to airdrop armour vehicles, therefore, on golf courses, or other areas of open and firm ground near Taiwan’s ports and airfields, would allow air assault troops to significantly increase their combat power and threaten seizure of these facilities to clear a path for the landing of follow-on forces.

It should also be noted that an attempt to seize Taiwan would likely see fighting erupt throughout the South China Sea, creating a requirement for the PLA to project combat power further afield. In the initial phases of war air manoeuvre could allow the PLA to move airborne forces with organic firepower and mobility to critical terrain beyond Taiwan, securing airfields or other infrastructure that could otherwise support US operations to counter the PLA amphibious landings on Taiwan. In short, an expanded air manoeuvre capability gives the PLA a diversity of options for rapid power projection.

The equipment purchased from the Russians is compatible with Russian built Il-76/78 aircraft equipped with PBS-955M/957, MKS-350-14M and APSDG-250 landing and parachute platform equipment, which is used for landing vehicles ‘in a train’. This capability was recently demonstrated by Russian forces during the Zapad military exercise. The agreements provide for sending Russian instructors to train Chinese pilots and crew members in landing in this way on the territory of the PRC.

China already operates air deployable armoured vehicles from its Y-20 transport aircraft, and as of 2025 has fielded a range of new airborne equipment that is comparable to the Russian equipment. Given that an air manoeuvre operation for a battalion of the Russian supplied equipment would require around 35 Il-76s, while the PLAAF operates a fleet of 26 Il-76s, including 10 Il-76s sold to the PRC by the Russians in 2013, it may be asked why the PLA purchased a battalion set of Russian equipment. The fact that the contracts include a battalion’s worth of landing and parachute equipment suggests that the PLA expects to obtain the necessary aircraft, or to insert in multiple phases.

The greatest value of the deal to the PLA, however, is most likely in the training and the procedures for command and control of airborne forces, as Russia’s airborne forces have combat experience, while the PLA does not. The requirement for a battalion’s worth of equipment – with an expanded number of C2 platforms – likely speaks to the desire to conduct battalion scale collective training, and since the Russians are to deliver it, this must be conducted on Russian vehicles.

The deal also reflects the growing military-industrial co-operation between Russia and the PRC over the course of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On the Chinese side, the project is being handled by the Main Directorate for the Development of Armaments and Military Equipment of the Central Military Council with the involvement of representatives of the PLAAF and Airborne Forces Command. The Russian side of the deal is covered by Rosoboronexport, the sole state intermediary authorized to export military and dual-purpose goods, services, and technologies. But the deal involves participation from a range of Russian defence companies including PJSC Il (manufacturer of the Il-76/78), KBP Instrument Design Bureau (weapon systems), Sozvezdiye, United Instrument Corporation OPK and NIISSU (automatic control and communication systems), Kurganmashzavod and SKBM (armoured vehicles), NPP Rubin (command and surveillance vehicles), MKPK Universal, Technodynamika, and Polyot (parachute and landing systems), as well as 27 Central Research Institutes of the Russian Ministry of Défense. On the Chinese side, the implementation is being handled by state-owned companies AVIC (aviation), CETC (communications and control systems), and NORINCO (armoured vehicles, weapons, and ammunition).

Historically, Russia has been wary of exporting its areas of military-technical advantage to China out of fears of intellectual property theft. However, Moscow increasingly sees the invasion of Taiwan – and subsequent division of the global economic order into opposing spheres – as a means of building leverage over Beijing by making Russia a supplier of critical raw materials and military industrial capacity. For China, funding to Russian military industrial enterprises contributes to the continuation of fighting in Ukraine, which the PRC supports to fix NATO capacity in the European theatre. Nevertheless, China has hitherto sought to reduce the signature of its overt defence cooperation with Moscow. The question is whether these contracts represent a shift in Beijing’s willingness to deepen direct defence collaboration.

© RUSI, 2025.