by Jennifer Stewart
China announced in December stringent and targeted export restrictions on critical minerals, including banning shipments of gallium, germanium and antimony to the United States.
Gallium and germanium are two of the most essential minerals required to develop high-performance chips, and they are preferred in defense applications over traditional silicon processors due to their properties that boost performance, speed and energy efficiency.
These critical minerals, along with graphite — which was also subject to additional, although less restrictive, sanctions — are essential components for a number of advanced technologies.
The announcement marked the first time Beijing export restrictions were directly targeted at the United States and explicitly linked to Western restrictions on advanced technologies. This should be seen for what it is: a visible, concrete example of escalation in the ongoing global technological competition.
As the year closed, President Xi Jinping delivered his annual speech, which focused on how his government intends to address significant domestic problems, including those the ruling party closely manages in order to preserve the regime’s stability.
In addition, he emphasized his vision for the eventual reunification of Taiwan with mainland China. But he also used the address to highlight China’s technology developments in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum and space.
It was not a coincidence that Xi chose to report progress on the dual-use technological areas expected to drive economic prosperity and global leadership by the middle of this century.
As the new Trump administration takes shape, it will remain important for policymakers to reinforce the linkage between a strong U.S. defense industrial base and effective national deterrence. The policy objective remains the same, which is to support national policymakers’ ability to maximize the range of credible response options to prevent conflict or — should conflict erupt — to provide the U.S. Joint Force and its allies and partners with the capabilities required to prevail in conflict as expeditiously as possible.
Based on the announced national security leaders for the new administration, significant policy focus is expected on deterring conflict in the Indo-Pacific and building the resilience of key allies and partners in the region. As part of developing response options, more policy focus will need to be spent on strengthening the Joint Force’s capabilities left of conflict.
A critical element to both deterring conflict and building resilience will fall on U.S. special operations forces under Special Operations Command, which has spent the last two years honing its campaign plan to effectively address the fluid nature of modern warfare across the full spectrum of conflict.
The campaign plan emphasizes the value proposition special ops plays in deterring competitors’ use of both conventional and unconventional methods to achieve military objectives at a threshold below open conflict.
As part of these efforts, the command recently released a white paper, “SOF Renaissance: People Win Transform,” which includes the special operations concepts for winning in strategic competition, specifically through the “Prevent, Prepare, Prevail and Preserve” construct.
Under “prevent,” the forces intend to shape the operational environment through their competitive advantage of persistent access and placement, which includes effecting an adversary’s decision calculus left of conflict.
The command prepares the operational environment through the strengthening of capabilities and readiness of U.S. allies and partners by utilizing its unique authorities for training and building partner capacity.
The command intends for these authorities to continue to serve as a vehicle to maintain generational relationships and share the burden against common threats. To prevail, it will focus the employment of SOF-unique capabilities and authorities to provide cost imposition on adversaries in contested and denied spaces. This is designed to provide the Joint Force an essential warfighting advantage to prevail should conflict occur.
Finally, by maintaining the command’s global remit on counterterrorism and crisis response, special operations forces’ activities are designed to address and solve problems quickly to preserve the strategic focus for the United States on prevailing in the overarching competition.
The white paper also emphasizes SOF’s role as critical connective tissue across diplomatic, informational, military and economic realms in support of comprehensively integrating various instruments of national power.
Of particular note, this includes supporting strategies involving technological competition and economic warfare. Through their coordinating authority for counter-threat finance and relationships with the Commerce and Treasury Departments, special operations forces provide a unique capability by identifying adversarial military-industrial complex vulnerabilities within global markets and providing early warning and decision space for decision-makers.
As policymakers focus on the providence of capital in defense contracts, foreign investment trends in the United States and globally and de-risking supply chains, it is highly likely the demand signal on Special Operations Command will increase in these areas.
Link to Article: Demand Signal for Special Operations Will Only Grow