T-Day Minus X?

Arthur K. reminded me that when I said I see no indications that China is preparing to invade Taiwan in the near future, I clearly shouldn't expect to see such indications. Point well taken. I'm sitting in Michigan reading news on the Internet. I'm not an intelligence analyst.

I guess I was trying to avoid the pitfall of assuming that since I don't read any open source indications about suspicious activity that it means the Chinese are just really good at hiding their preparations. I don't want to start with my speculation that China could achieve surprise by invading on the eve of the Olympics as the assumed answer.

What I really mean, as I wrote in another post, is that I haven't seen evidence of the amphibious and aircraft carrier programs I read about several years ago that should have resulted in actual steel hulls in the water by now. This remains true. Not that I think such ships are absolutely necessary for an invasion, but if built they sure would have increased Chinese capabilities tremendously.

Still, if China should invade this year, there will be plenty of indications of Chinese preparations to fight such as:

Chinese cyberwar practice, with the attacks on India only the latest incident.

The Chinese focus on upgrading only a fraction of their ground forces might indicate a desire to have enough well-equipped troops to hit Taiwan rather than being a leading edge of a broad modernization.

The unusual focus on training by the Chinese in recent years. Both army and air units are getting better training. And we've seen very specific training, too. For a difficult amphibious/airborne assault, you need high quality forces rather than a traditional reliance on mass and attrition that can be achieved with far lower training levels. This effort doesn't mean China will get good enough to win, but they might. And they might get good enough to believe they can win.

A purge of high ranking officers. Are the Chinese getting rid of dead wood who can't move quickly enough or use the new units the Chinese are putting in place?

The disturbing increase in Chinese ballistic missiles facing Taiwan. Our government just reported a thousand and now the number appears to be up to 1,400.

While the obvious assets of large amphibious ships and carriers aren't evident, there has been submarine modernization useful to delay our entry into war by posing a threat to our carriers.

And the Chinese have pushed back on our western Pacific carrier deployments, perhaps to make us a little more cautious about rushing forces to Taiwan's defense.

Further, even without the bid ticket naval items, the naval and air power military imbalance in Taiwan Strait has tilted in China's favor over this decade.

Some things that could be decisive that we don't see now could become apparent if the Chinese attack.

These are all signs that in retrospect could look like "obvious" indicators that China has spent the decade preparing to invade Taiwan and then carried it out to the surprise of the Taiwanese and the rest of the world.

Remember, that despite my caveat about not falling for the false logic of assuming that the lack of visible signs means the Chinese are just good at secrecy, the Chinese actually might just be really good at hiding the signs of imminent invasion.

Further, intelligence is almost never about discovering a smoking gun. You have a lot of noise with the clues perhaps sitting right there but they only become "predictors" after the event happens. Which means they aren't predictors, of course, except for people who want to blame someone for not figuring out the "obvious." Heck, even a so-called smoking gun that is countered by lots of other information can be discounted by leaders and analysts.

And it may also be true that we are far enough away from T-Day that there are no imminent signs to detect.