The US military must be ready for possible confrontation with China, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Thursday, pushing the US Congress to approve the Pentagon’s proposed US$842 billion budget, which would modernize the force in Asia and around the world.
“This is a strategy-driven budget — and one driven by the seriousness of our strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China,” Austin told the US House of Representations Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.
Pointing to increases in new technology, such as hypersonics, Austin said the budget proposes to spend more than US$9 billion, a 40 percent increase over last year, to build up military capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region and defend allies.
Photo: AFP
The testimony comes on the heels of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) visit to Moscow, which added to concerns that China would step up its support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine and increasingly threaten the West.
China’s actions “are moving it down the path toward confrontation and potential conflict with its neighbors and possibly the United States,” US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley said.
He said deterring and preparing for war “is extraordinarily expensive, but it’s not as expensive as fighting a war. And this budget prevents war and prepares us to fight it if necessary.”
US Representative Hal Rogers pressed the defense leaders on Xi’s meeting with Putin and its impact on US competition with China, which he called “the elephant in the room.”
The US is “at a crucial moment here,” he said.
The growing alliance between China and Russia, two nuclear powers, and Xi’s overtures to Putin during the Ukraine war are “troubling,” Austin said.
He added that the US had not yet seen China provide arms to Russia, but if it does, “it would prolong the conflict and certainly broaden the conflict potentially not only in the region but globally.”
Milley, who is to retire later this year, said the Pentagon must continue to modernize its forces to ensure they would be ready to fight if needed.
“It is incumbent upon us to make sure we remain No. 1 at all times” to be able to deter China, he said.
Two decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq eroded the US military’s equipment and troop readiness, so Washington been working to replace weapons systems and give troops time to reset.
It has paid off, Milley said, referring to the US military overhaul.
“Our operational readiness rates are higher now than they have been in many, many years,” Milley said, adding that more than 60 percent of the active force is at the highest states of readiness and could deploy to combat in less than 30 days, while 10 percent could deploy within 96 hours.
BUYING TIME: Russia is estimated to have suffered over 100,000 casualties in its push to capture the strategically insignificant town, giving Ukraine time to ready its troops Whether Bakhmut has fallen or not, Moscow is being pulled deeper into an ever more costly fight for the frontline city as Kyiv readies a major offensive, experts said. Russia’s claim to have conquered the destroyed city, which Ukraine rejected on Sunday, does not mean significant new terrain from which to launch attacks nor harden defenses. However, Moscow has made the eastern city’s capture a key aim and has fought the war’s longest battle, as well as one of its deadliest, to try to win what it would like to bill as a significant success. US President Joe Biden, speaking from the G7
DEEPFAKE: Using AI to change their face and voice, a fraudster convinced a businessman that they were his friend and needed 4.3 million yuan for a public tender A scammer in China used artificial intelligence (AI) to pose as a businessman’s trusted friend and convince him to hand over millions of yuan, authorities have said. The victim, surnamed Guo, received a video call last month from a person who looked and sounded like a close friend. However, the caller was actually a con artist “using smart AI technology to change their face” and voice, said an article published on Monday by a media portal associated with the government in Fuzhou City. The scammer was “masquerading as [Guo’s] good friend and perpetrating fraud,” the article said. Guo was persuaded to transfer 4.3
A Malaysian comedian better known for mocking attempts by Western chefs at Asian cooking has had his Chinese social media account suspended after making jokes about China. Nigel Ng (黃瑾瑜), who uses the name Uncle Roger, is the latest comedian to feel the consequences of jokes that could be perceived as reflecting negatively on China under increasingly intense censorship and rising nationalism. Last week, a Chinese comedian came under police investigation for a joke about stray dogs. Ng on Thursday posted a video clip from an upcoming comedy special in which he pokes fun at Chinese surveillance and Beijing’s claims of sovereignty over
Gunmen in Ecuador opened fire in a restaurant in a beach town popular with tourists, killing at least six people and wounding six more, prosecutors said on Sunday. The attack happened on Saturday night in a busy nightlife area of the town of Montanita on the Pacific coast, the prosecutors’ office said on Twitter. It gave no information on the age or identity of the people who were shot. Located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s top producers of cocaine, Ecuador is weathering the biggest surge in crime in its recent history. Crime linked to drug trafficking caused the murder rate to almost double