China targeting three U.S. ‘centers of gravity’

NEWS AND ANALYSIS:

The military has identified three “centers of gravity” under attack by the Chinese Communist Party with the goal of weakening and defeating the U.S., Inside the Ring has learned.

A center of gravity refers to a military’s main sources of power, strength and will to act. The term originated with 19th century Prussian military theorist Gen. Carl von Clausewitz. 

The first target of China’s potential whole-of-government attack on an American center of gravity would be U.S. political decision-making — the ability of civilian and military leaders to rapidly make decisions.

The CCP organization behind targeting critical American decision-making is the United Front Work Department, a combination intelligence-gathering and influence unit with a budget estimated to be as high as $11 billion annually.

The work department has been identified by the U.S. military as the engine behind China’s massive information warfare operations that use disinformation, propaganda and money to skew and impact American decision-making.

The second center of gravity under assault from China is the American network of friends, allies and partners.

For years, Chinese civilian and military operations have sought to peel off Asian allies and partners that support the U.S., mainly through propaganda and political operations designed to send the message to the allies that the U.S. is a destabilizing and disruptive force. The narrative also asserts that Asia should be for Asians alone and that the U.S. must stay in its own hemisphere — a strategy bolstered by President Trump’s heavy emphasis on expanding American power and influence in the Western Hemisphere.

Beijing’s efforts in this strategic domain have so far been unsuccessful, with China damaging its reputation with aggressive and threatening activities and attempts to create vassal states out of regional U.S. allies.

China recently introduced a new element in this effort by subtly shifting the narrative with information operations asserting the U.S. is a hostile power trying to drag Taiwan, the Philippines and other regional states into wars.

Reframing its past approach to Taiwan, Beijing political and military strategists are now claiming — falsely, in the U.S. view — that during World War II, China, Russia and the U.S. teamed up to defeat fascism and now Taiwan remains the final fascist bastion. Regional states are encouraged to join China in closing a final chapter of the war by forcing unification.

Along with this line of attack, the CCP is claiming its forces, and not the U.S., were the victors in World War II. In fact the party’s forces sat out the war and then when it ended stepped in and took advantage of the aftermath in seizing power in 1949.

Leaders of regional states in the Indo-Pacific so far have not fallen for China’s new approach, however.

China’s goal in achieving regional dominance seeks to play on historical grievances, to revise history to suit its goals and to expand its power over the entire region.

The third center of gravity under assault from China is the targeting of U.S. power projection capabilities. 

This is evident in recent high-profile hacking operations code-named Vault Typhoon and Salt Typhoon.

The Chinese intelligence and military hacking programs are designed for conducting devastating cyberattacks in a future crisis or conflict.

The cyber intrusions are planned for attacks that will cause large-scale civil disruption and chaos in the U.S., and to disrupt and slow down U.S. leaders’ ability to make rapid decisions.

Chinese cyberstrikes are intended to be used to prevent U.S. forces from deploying and maneuvering and provide the PLA with superiority in all military domains — information, air and maritime — to prevent U.S. and allied forces from intervening in China’s military actions.

Beijing’s view of high-level military purge

Chinese government spokesmen normally are very forward-leaning in commenting on all manner of geopolitical events large and small.

That, however, has not been the case so far regarding the stunning purge announced Saturday of the People’s Liberation Army’s most senior general, Gen. Zhang Youxia.

Gen. Zhang, one of two vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, is under investigation for both political and financial crimes, the Chinese Defense Ministry announced in a brief statement.

Despite the silence from Beijing, Inside the Ring has obtained an official view from the CCP on what is being called the highest ranking political purge of a military general since the ouster of PLA Marshall Lin Bao.

Lin died in a plane crash fleeing China in 1971 after what CCP authorities claimed was a failed coup attempt. He was later denounced as a traitor.

Like Lin, Gen. Zhang reportedly came under suspicion by CCP authorities for political and financial crimes, including allegations that he leaked nuclear secrets to the U.S. — something the party considers high treason.

Gen. Zhang’s ouster is said to have come as a shock inside China because he was viewed as having close personal ties to President Xi Jinping, current chairman of the powerful military commission.

The high-level purge, like others in recent years, is part of efforts by Mr. Xi to consolidate power and to remove potential rival centers of influence.

Beijing also signaled with the purge of Gen. Zhang that the military pressure campaign involving large and threatening drills around Taiwan will continue.

Military action against Taiwan, however, is said to be unlikely and is not imminent as a result of the most senior military leader’s dismissal.

The purge of Gen. Zhang is expected to introduce a period of temporary risk aversion to PLA planners.

According to the view from Beijing, the removal of Gen. Zhang will leave a military leadership vacuum in the upper ranks of the PLA until new officers are appointed. Also, the purge is expected to temporarily disrupt operational continuity and military decision making.

The timing of the high-ranking purge also comes weeks before a key CCP meeting in March and months before a late 2027 major party conference called the 21st Party Congress.

Similar events in the past were used by the party to announce major leadership and personnel changes. The 21st Congress is expected to further solidify Mr. Xi’s unchallenged grip on power.

The fired CMC vice chairman was not immune from corruption and violations of CCP rules and most of his subordinating general officers also were purged.

No reliable stories or rumors of his current fate have circulated or surfaced in China.

Political stability remains intact and people appear calm with no signs of panic in Beijing.

Gen. Zhang is said to have a stern and unsmiling personality with limited knowledge of the U.S.

U.S. analysts dispute the notion the purge is part of Mr. Xi’s anti-corruption drive and instead say the Chinese supreme leader is preparing to appoint more competent PLA generals who share his views on future military action against Taiwan.

K. Tristan Tang, a China expert at the Secure Taiwan Associate Corporation and the Center for China Studies at National Taiwan University, said a close look at Gen. Zhang suggests he was purged over disagreements with Mr. Xi.

Gen. Zhang and a second high-ranking officer, Gen. Liu Zhengli, likely disagreed with the Chinese leader “over PLA development, particularly the joint operations training timeline, and may have pursued policies or issued orders that ran counter to Xi’s directives,” Mr. Tang said in a report published by the Jamestown Foundation.

“The simultaneous announcement of investigations into Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli indicates the decision stemmed from the same underlying cause,” he said.

Pentagon urged to wage decision-based AI warfare

The Pentagon is joining the global race to use artificial intelligence to produce more lethal forces but needs to shift from the current use of large language models to a new form of combat that a high-tech company is calling “agentic warfare.”

“Genuine strategic advantage in this new era will not come from stealthier jets, faster missiles or larger drone swarms alone; it will come from new kinds of human-machine teaming that drive accelerated decision-making,” the company Scale AI said in a new report.

The essence of agentic warfare is providing “decision advantage” at all levels of command. This advanced war fighting capability will allow U.S. forces to outpace and outmaneuver the most capable enemies, the report says.

“The United States must capitalize on its first-mover advantage before adversaries do,” the report said.

The report by Scale AI executives Dan Tadross and Jared Jonker said the national security usage of large language AI models has produced impressive tools.

But the tools are mainly benefiting “clever junior staffers, summarizing emails or drafting memos, yet unable to execute complex tasks or interact with the physical world,” the report says.

War is not fought using text and future military AI will be carried out with networks or groups of AI agents that can monitor the battlespace, plan, test and execute complex actions at speeds no human officer can match.

A fully armed military with strategically superior AI systems also will produce a deterrence of conflict through a superior decision-making advantage.

For example, a war in 2026 will include the world’s most advanced military sensors and weapons but will be hampered by an inability to rapidly connect them.

“We still rely on linear, manual workflows that produce static Operational Plans in physical binders that take two years to write and are often obsolete by the time they are printed,” Mr. Tadross and Mr. Jonker said.

“In a conflict with a near-peer adversary like China, we will not have two years; we may not even have two days.”

The authors warn that China’s military already has begun reorganizing its forces around so-called “intelligentized warfare” and “command brains.” These tools will seek to cognitively overwhelm enemies not equipped with AI-enabled systems and that can collapse American decision-making.

• Contact Bill Gertz on X @BillGertz.