WASHINGTON, D.C. - After a new Department of Defense report detailed Beijing's military operations, one expert warns that China is conducting the largest military build-up seen since Nazi Germany during the 1930s, including bolstering weapons and psychological warfare.
According to Fox News, in an article for The Federalist, Chuck DeVore referenced the Pentagon's annual report to Congress and warned that the United States has spent $5.4 trillion on its war on terror and futile nation building while the Chinese threat has grown. DeVore, chief national initiatives officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said that Congress needs to get on board with the incoming Trump administration so resources can be reallocated within the Pentagon to better prioritize naval strength, nuclear deterrence, missile defense, and logistics.
DeVore, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, told Fox & Friends Weekend, "China is engaging in an unprecedented military build-up that the world frankly hasn't seen since Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Now, the big difference there, is that he really focused on land power, which frankly is pretty easy to build up pretty quickly. Navies are much more difficult to build up. And we are way behind. And not only do we need to catch up, but we also need to modernize our nuclear weapons and we need to put a lot of effort into missile defense."
DeVore further detailed the Department of Defense's findings in its report, which summarized "military and security developments involving the People's Republic of China" in 2024. DeVore said, "They're massively building up their nuclear arsenal. We expect it to expand to at least 1,000 warheads by 2030, only five years from now. Probably going to be bigger than that."
He added, "The Chinese Navy, not by tonnage, but by numbers is now larger than the U.S. Navy. China has something like 250 times the ship building capacity that America does."
The report cites how China has bolstered its People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) arsenal to include 50 new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which can strike the continental U.S., raising its total to 400. The report disclosed that the Department of Defense said that China has added 300 medium-range ballistic missiles and 100 long-range cruise missiles. The report states that their arsenal also now includes more than 600 operational nuclear warheads and is expected to have more than 1,000 by 2030.
The Department of Defense says that the People's Republic of China (PRC) has the world's leading arsenal of hypersonic missiles, including the DF-27, which according to DeVore, "are capable of evading U.S. missile defenses and targeting Guam, Hawaii, and Alaska."
China currently has the largest navy in the world, but is expected to expand from 370 ships and submarines to 435 by 2030. The Department of Defense Report, which is 182 pages long, also details how the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the military arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), seeks to "expand the reach of its influence operations around the world and seize information dominance on the battlefield," by researching and developing what it "believes to be the next evolution of psychological warfare," known as cognitive domain operations (CDO).
The Department of Defense said that CDO "blends previous PRC concepts, such as public opinion guidance and psychological warfare, with modern internet technologies and communication platforms and is designed to achieve strategic national security goals by affecting a target's cognition to change the target's behavior and decision-making." The report says that CDO incorporates emerging technologies, such as AI, big data, brain science, and neuroscience.
The report says, "The goal of CDO is to achieve what the PLA refers to as 'mind dominance,' which the PLA defines as the use of information to influence public opinion to affect change in a nation's social system, likely to create an environment favorable to the PRC and reduce civilian and military resistance to PLA actions. The PLA probably intends to use CDO as an asymmetric capability to deter U.S. or third-party entry into potential conflict or as an offensive capability to shape perceptions or polarize a society."
The report said that the PLA seeks to bring psychological pressure and fear on an opponent, assessing that using CDO to subdue the enemy without fighting "is the highest realm of warfare."
According to Fox News, in an article for The Federalist, Chuck DeVore referenced the Pentagon's annual report to Congress and warned that the United States has spent $5.4 trillion on its war on terror and futile nation building while the Chinese threat has grown. DeVore, chief national initiatives officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said that Congress needs to get on board with the incoming Trump administration so resources can be reallocated within the Pentagon to better prioritize naval strength, nuclear deterrence, missile defense, and logistics.
DeVore, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, told Fox & Friends Weekend, "China is engaging in an unprecedented military build-up that the world frankly hasn't seen since Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Now, the big difference there, is that he really focused on land power, which frankly is pretty easy to build up pretty quickly. Navies are much more difficult to build up. And we are way behind. And not only do we need to catch up, but we also need to modernize our nuclear weapons and we need to put a lot of effort into missile defense."
DeVore further detailed the Department of Defense's findings in its report, which summarized "military and security developments involving the People's Republic of China" in 2024. DeVore said, "They're massively building up their nuclear arsenal. We expect it to expand to at least 1,000 warheads by 2030, only five years from now. Probably going to be bigger than that."
He added, "The Chinese Navy, not by tonnage, but by numbers is now larger than the U.S. Navy. China has something like 250 times the ship building capacity that America does."
The report cites how China has bolstered its People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) arsenal to include 50 new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which can strike the continental U.S., raising its total to 400. The report disclosed that the Department of Defense said that China has added 300 medium-range ballistic missiles and 100 long-range cruise missiles. The report states that their arsenal also now includes more than 600 operational nuclear warheads and is expected to have more than 1,000 by 2030.
The Department of Defense says that the People's Republic of China (PRC) has the world's leading arsenal of hypersonic missiles, including the DF-27, which according to DeVore, "are capable of evading U.S. missile defenses and targeting Guam, Hawaii, and Alaska."
China currently has the largest navy in the world, but is expected to expand from 370 ships and submarines to 435 by 2030. The Department of Defense Report, which is 182 pages long, also details how the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the military arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), seeks to "expand the reach of its influence operations around the world and seize information dominance on the battlefield," by researching and developing what it "believes to be the next evolution of psychological warfare," known as cognitive domain operations (CDO).
The Department of Defense said that CDO "blends previous PRC concepts, such as public opinion guidance and psychological warfare, with modern internet technologies and communication platforms and is designed to achieve strategic national security goals by affecting a target's cognition to change the target's behavior and decision-making." The report says that CDO incorporates emerging technologies, such as AI, big data, brain science, and neuroscience.
The report says, "The goal of CDO is to achieve what the PLA refers to as 'mind dominance,' which the PLA defines as the use of information to influence public opinion to affect change in a nation's social system, likely to create an environment favorable to the PRC and reduce civilian and military resistance to PLA actions. The PLA probably intends to use CDO as an asymmetric capability to deter U.S. or third-party entry into potential conflict or as an offensive capability to shape perceptions or polarize a society."
The report said that the PLA seeks to bring psychological pressure and fear on an opponent, assessing that using CDO to subdue the enemy without fighting "is the highest realm of warfare."
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