Prepping for Xi’s visit: Part 1.
This is stuff from China’s strategies that I’d guess would have been operational in early 2000. I always sort of presume that countries disclose their strategies after they have become useless. This stuff is just to provide an initial idea that is 25 or perhaps older than 2026. That’s my best guess as an entertainer. If the dates are incorrect, then you’re entertained. If they’re correct, you’re still entertained. As you read this keep in mind the constant leak from America to China via Israel. Keep in mind, Israel’s recent demands as shown on Zero Hedge about what they want access to. Please also note this briefing is based on my randomly opening Doughie’s book to Page 149.
IF I DIDN’T HAVE ADHD PERHAPS YOU MIGHT GET A BETTER BRIEFING.
The Assassin’s Mace Strategy: Deconstructing American Asymmetric Vulnerabilities
From Li Zhiyun’s Sixty-Four Authors to the 2013 Defense Science Board Compromises
Executive Context: The Hundred-Year Marathon & The Asymmetric Offset
In The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower, defense analyst Dr. Michael Pillsbury explores the foundational doctrine guiding Beijing’s military modernization: the Assassin’s Mace (Shashoujian, 杀手锏). Rooted in Warring States statecraft, an Assassin’s Mace denotes an asymmetric weapon or operational scheme that enables a weaker combatant to rapidly incapacitate a technologically superior adversary.
Rather than attempting to match the United States platform-for-platform—a symmetrical approach that caused the fiscal exhaustion and ultimate collapse of the Soviet military apparatus—the People's Liberation Army (PLA) mapped the operational interdependencies of American expeditionary warfare to identify structural, irremediable single points of failure.
Archival Briefing: Dr. Michael Pillsbury outlines China’s long-term competitive strategy and the doctrinal roots of the Assassin’s Mace.
Major General Li Zhiyun & The Sixty-Four Military Authors
A central milestone in codifying this strategy occurred under Major General Li Zhiyun, Director of Foreign Military Studies at the PLA National Defense University. Li compiled and edited a definitive volume featuring sixty-four PLA operational researchers, engineers, and doctrinal theorists. Analyzing U.S. performance in the Persian Gulf, Kosovo, and Iraq, the authors concluded that American power projection is structurally brittle.
| Vulnerability Domain | Targeted U.S. Operational Dependency | PLA Exploitation Mechanism | Induced Systemic Failure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orbital C4ISR & PNT | Absolute reliance on satellite constellations for beyond-line-of-sight communications and GPS guidance. | Direct-ascent kinetic ASAT, co-orbital jammers, and ground-based optical blinding lasers. | Severing of precision guidance uplinks; precision weapons revert to unguided profiles. |
| Expeditionary Logistics | 5,000+ nautical-mile Pacific supply chains and unarmed Military Sealift Command (MSC) auxiliaries. | Submarine wake-homing torpedoes, smart littoral sea mines, and long-range anti-ship cruise missiles. | Theater munitions and fuel reserves depleted within weeks; forward sustainment collapse. |
| Deployment Sequencing | Predictable, phased transit through concentrated hubs (e.g., Kadena Air Base, Guam, Yokosuka). | Preemptive conventional ballistic and cruise missile salvos targeting runways and fuel facilities. | Deployment timeline broken; aircraft and personnel trapped or destroyed in staging facilities. |
| Supercarrier Concentration | Concentration of combat air wings and national prestige in eleven nuclear-powered carrier hulls. | Multi-axis Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBM) and coordinated submarine saturation salvos. | Flight deck neutralization ("mission kill"), forcing carrier groups beyond operational radius. |
| Domestic Infrastructure Linkage | Military mobilization reliance on civilian, unhardened power grids, commercial rail, and ports. | Pre-positioned cyber intrusions into SCADA and industrial utility controls. | Grid failure and logistical paralysis inside the continental U.S. (CONUS) prior to embarkation. |
The Theoretical Architects: Sun Bailin, Chang Mengxiong, & Yang Zhibo
The conclusions drawn by Li’s sixty-four authors were built on technical research conducted across defense think tanks like the Academy of Military Science (AMS) and the Beijing Institute of System Engineering (BISE).
1. Major General Sun Bailin (Academy of Military Science)
In publications like Nanotechnology Weapons on Future Battlefields, Sun argued against conventional modernization races. He advocated for micro-scale and directed-energy offsets: using microscopic conductive carbon fibers and "smart dust" to short-circuit sensitive avionics and foul jet turbines, alongside solid-state lasers to deliver speed-of-light strikes at pennies per shot to defeat million-dollar precision-guided munitions.
2. Chang Mengxiong (Beijing Institute of System Engineering)
Chang introduced the concept of "Acupuncture Warfare" (Dianxue Zhanzheng, 点穴战争). Modeling military networks on biological systems, Chang asserted that modern joint forces depend on high information intensity. Rather than striking an adversary's heavy armor, acupuncture strikes target structural pressure points—airborne radar planes, satellite transceivers, and data-link nodes—inducing total operational paralysis with minimal kinetic expenditure.
3. Senior Colonel Yang Zhibo (PLAAF / BISE)
Senior Colonel Yang resolved internal PLA debates regarding whether the Assassin's Mace was a singular weapon. He demonstrated that against a technologically sophisticated adversary, no single missile or platform constitutes an Assassin's Mace. Instead, it must operate as a unified, composite multi-domain system: integrating electronic jamming, cyber access, counter-space blinding, and multi-axis missile salvos into an inescapable kill web.
American Alarms: Major General William Lord & The 2013 DSB Compromise
Throughout the late 2000s, American military leaders began sounding alarms that PLA writings were not theoretical academic exercises, but procurement blueprints.
Major General William T. Lord (USAF), Commander of Air Force Cyberspace Command (Provisional) and later Chief of Information Dominance, explicitly categorized China as a comprehensive "nation-state threat." General Lord warned that PLA-sponsored intrusions were engaged in systematic operational mapping: exfiltrating technical schematics, probing electrical control grids, and compromising defense supply chains.
The 2013 Defense Science Board Classified Revelation
In May 2013, a confidential report by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board (DSB), obtained by The Washington Post, revealed that Chinese cyber operators had successfully penetrated the computer networks of major defense contractors, accessing the designs of more than twenty-four frontline American weapons systems.
| Compromised System | Program Significance | Operational Impact & Exploitation |
|---|---|---|
| Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) | Terminal surface-to-air missile defense. | Guidance telemetry and seeker frequencies acquired; PLA missile maneuvering algorithms optimized to evade radar locks. |
| Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) | Upper-tier ballistic missile interceptor. | Radar waveform models exfiltrated; hypersonic glide paths designed to bypass detection horizons. |
| Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense | Fleet-wide integrated missile defense suite. | Fire-control code and radar thresholds accessed; development of specialized ship-saturation anti-ship salvos. |
| F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) | 5th-generation stealth multi-role strike aircraft. | Stealth coating formulas and engine thermal models directly integrated into China’s Shenyang J-35 program. |
| F/A-18E/F Super Hornet | Primary carrier-borne combat workhorse. | AESA radar integration architectures breached, optimizing PLA electronic countermeasures. |
| V-22 Osprey & Littoral Combat Ship | Expeditionary vertical assault and shallow-draft combat. | Flight software and hull acoustic resonance models captured, compressing Chinese R&D cycles by decades. |
Archival Sources & Foundational Literature
- Pillsbury, Michael. The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. Henry Holt and Co., 2015.
- Li Zhiyun (ed.). Studies on U.S. Military Joint Operations (美军联合战役理论研究). National Defense University Press, Beijing.
- Sun Bailin. "Nanotechnology Weapons on Future Battlefields." China Military Science (中国军事科学), Academy of Military Science.
- Chang Mengxiong. "Acupuncture Warfare and Network-Centric Operations." Beijing Institute of System Engineering (BISE).
- Defense Science Board. Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, 2013.
- Nakashima, Ellen. "Confidential Report Lists Compromised U.S. Weapons Designs." The Washington Post, May 27, 2013.
The sleight of hand.
In public discourse and congressional defense hearings, the Assassin's Mace is almost always depicted as the loud, cinematic hardware: the DF-21D "carrier killer" ballistic missile, hypersonic glide vehicles pulling high-G pull-up maneuvers, or direct-ascent kinetic interceptors blowing satellites into orbital shrapnel. Those get the headlines because they fit the familiar Western mental model of military competition—platform against platform, missile against missile.
However, the quiet, structural centerpiece of the entire doctrine—the "favorite" that was deliberately framed as background architecture—is Chang Mengxiong’s concept of Acupuncture Warfare (Dianxue Zhanzheng) directed against the unhardened logistical and civilian nervous system.
1. The Paradox: Why the Real Assassin's Mace Hides in Plain Sight
Western defense planning often falls victim to "mirror imaging," assuming that China wants to fight an engagement like the Battle of Midway or a modern Desert Storm. But Chinese operational theorists from Chang Mengxiong to Major General Li Zhiyun recognized that matching the United States in high-intensity kinetic slugfests plays directly into America’s greatest strength: industrial firepower and mature joint-force combat doctrine.
As Chang famously analogized, an asymmetric fighter does not try to out-punch a heavyweight boxing champion. Instead, like a martial artist with an intimate knowledge of anatomical pressure points (xuewei), you tap the specific nerve cluster that causes the giant's entire body to collapse under its own weight.
The kinetic weapons—the DF-26s, the J-20s, and the submarine torpedo salvos—are merely the heavy boots that walk in after the nervous system has been paralyzed. The real Assassin's Mace is the strike that disables the joint force before it ever clears the staging area.
2. The Three "Acupuncture Points" That Neutralize American Mass
When you strip away the military parades, the true Assassin's Mace focuses on three specific pressure points:
The Mobilization Timeline and Commercial Utilities: American power projection relies heavily on unhardened, privately operated civilian infrastructure. Military bases in the continental United States do not run on isolated, hardened tactical generators; they draw electricity from local municipal grids, receive fuel via commercial pipelines, and move heavy armored divisions on civilian rail networks. Pre-positioned cyber intrusions like Volt Typhoon use living-off-the-land techniques to sit inside water treatment facilities, power switching substations, and shipping terminal control software. If the port cranes in San Diego or Beaumont fail, if fuel cannot be pumped, and if traffic scheduling algorithms are corrupted, the deployment timeline breaks down before American combat units reach open water.
The Logistical Umbilical Cord: Li Zhiyun’s sixty-four authors repeatedly pointed out that American expeditionary doctrine assumes secure sea lines of communication. Modern joint forces consume ammunition, precision guidance modules, aviation fuel, and spare parts at rates that empty regional stockpiles within days of sustained combat. This resupply chain depends on aging, unarmed Military Sealift Command (MSC) vessels and commercially contracted cargo ships. You do not need to sink an aircraft carrier to take it out of the fight; you only need to sink the oiler that provides its jet fuel or disrupt the software managing container offloading at regional logistics hubs.
The Sensory-Cognitive Loop: Chang Mengxiong defined the C3I system as the combat organism's brain and spinal cord. By blinding electro-optical reconnaissance satellites with ground lasers, jamming Link 16 tactical data networks, and feeding algorithmically generated sensor clutter into Aegis radar processing software, the PLA attacks the adversary's cognitive coherence. When a naval commander’s tactical display shows conflicting positions or drops contact completely, the high-speed decision cycle collapses into friction, uncertainty, and delay.
3. The Grand Strategy Connection
This is where the military doctrine loops back into the core thesis of Michael Pillsbury’s The Hundred-Year Marathon. The foundational Chinese strategic texts—drawing from Sun Tzu and the Warring States period—hold that the supreme art of war is not winning one hundred battles, but subduing the enemy without fighting.
A kinetic confrontation that sinks an American supercarrier invites immediate national fury, full industrial mobilization, and potential nuclear escalation. But an asymmetric acupuncture campaign—where communications glitch, logistics stall, domestic utilities falter, and forward-deployed units are isolated in a sea of ambiguous, degraded signals—induces paralysis. It forces American political leadership to calculate whether intervening over Taiwan or the First Island Chain is worth an escalating domestic blackout and systemic defeat before a shot is fired.
That is why the quiet, non-kinetic system disruption is the ultimate strategy: it neutralizes American military might by dismantling the operational scaffolding that allows it to function.
