Another comment from a longtime China-focused CIA analyst:
“I read your pitch and very much enjoyed it, thanks for sending it! Here are some scattered thoughts and reactions:
My general view is that two things are true:
Lack of understanding is not a major contributor to the risk of Sino-US war, or indeed to the most important aspects of US policy toward China. BUT ALSO:
Improving public analysis and understanding of China is a good and very cheap thing that we should do! And yours are the best suggestions I have seen on how to do it.
I know little about the effective altruism approach, but I think I’m guided by a different set of criteria. The question for a philanthropist might be “where can I best spend my money amid the vast universe of worthy causes” and for me it’s more like, “should the US reallocate national resources from existing national security investments to this?” And I think the answer to the latter is unambiguously yes. Another CSET probably costs like 1 training sortie for a fighter jet...
I personally would ascribe drastically lower probabilities than you that philanthropic funding can influence PRC or US policy to materially reduce China-related risk. (Although again, I think it’s still absolutely worth bolstering our knowledge base and talent pipeline!) I’m skeptical because I think the primary drivers of policy decisions are other things like material factors, ideological dispositions (derived from an emotional base that is hard to move with fact-finding and analysis), and self-interest on the part of organizations and states.
I had a few other random specific comments, not really disagreeing with what you’ve written but just thoughts that your piece sparked:
I agree that on the kind of overarching strategic questions that guide major policy decisions, the intelligence community and outside observers are on an even playing field. Mostly that’s because those strategic questions are about “mysteries” that nobody knows the answer to (including Xi Jinping) rather than “secrets” that are knowable but hidden. I think there are many useful insights that can be gleaned from secrets to illuminate those broad questions and address them with more granularity, but this doesn’t yield dramatically different answers to many of the questions that policymakers care about.
This is sort of a side note, but I think sometimes people overlook the fact that some important datapoints are available to non-government observers because they have been first collected by intelligence sources and then publicized or leaked. For example, the fact that Iran is apparently supplying Moscow with drones seems like an important marker of Iran’s strategic calculus and the status of Russia’s war effort, and the reporting on that seems to be derived from intelligence collection. To be clear I think this kind of information transmission is a minor factor in strategic analysis, but it’s an interesting wrinkle that’s easy to overlook.
I do think there is a large difference between what the intelligence community knows about military capabilities and what is knowable outside—here the playing field is extremely uneven. I’m not talking about questions of intention like “does Xi intent to invade Taiwan by 2027” or whatever, I’m talking about more operational-level and tactical-level information about what the PLA is doing, where it’s doing it, how well it’s doing it, strengths and weaknesses of crucial military platforms, etc. Those questions are peripheral to many of the conversations in DC about China, but obviously they become absolutely essential in wartime, and the US devotes a massive amount of resources toward collecting information about these issues. So that’s the one area where I think your piece may underweight the knowledge that is present in the USG, although it may not be relevant from an EA catastrophic risk prevention point of view.
Your point about improving US procurement to reduce the risk of war was thought-provoking. You point out that enhanced US military capabilities will deter Beijing and therefore make catastrophic war less likely, which makes sense. But couldn’t enhanced US capabilities also make the US more likely to commit forces or escalate a war with China, because Washington was confident it could win it? I’m all for more effective US capabilities but I wonder if someone was approaching this from a pure EA framework if they’d have questions! (I’m aware that I’m kind of making a too-cute-by-half argument but oh well!)
Again I really enjoyed your pitch, it was very thought-provoking, and I hope your suggestions are getting audience and traction!”
Another comment from a longtime China-focused CIA analyst:
“I read your pitch and very much enjoyed it, thanks for sending it! Here are some scattered thoughts and reactions:
My general view is that two things are true:
Lack of understanding is not a major contributor to the risk of Sino-US war, or indeed to the most important aspects of US policy toward China. BUT ALSO:
Improving public analysis and understanding of China is a good and very cheap thing that we should do! And yours are the best suggestions I have seen on how to do it.
I know little about the effective altruism approach, but I think I’m guided by a different set of criteria. The question for a philanthropist might be “where can I best spend my money amid the vast universe of worthy causes” and for me it’s more like, “should the US reallocate national resources from existing national security investments to this?” And I think the answer to the latter is unambiguously yes. Another CSET probably costs like 1 training sortie for a fighter jet...
I personally would ascribe drastically lower probabilities than you that philanthropic funding can influence PRC or US policy to materially reduce China-related risk. (Although again, I think it’s still absolutely worth bolstering our knowledge base and talent pipeline!) I’m skeptical because I think the primary drivers of policy decisions are other things like material factors, ideological dispositions (derived from an emotional base that is hard to move with fact-finding and analysis), and self-interest on the part of organizations and states.
I had a few other random specific comments, not really disagreeing with what you’ve written but just thoughts that your piece sparked:
I agree that on the kind of overarching strategic questions that guide major policy decisions, the intelligence community and outside observers are on an even playing field. Mostly that’s because those strategic questions are about “mysteries” that nobody knows the answer to (including Xi Jinping) rather than “secrets” that are knowable but hidden. I think there are many useful insights that can be gleaned from secrets to illuminate those broad questions and address them with more granularity, but this doesn’t yield dramatically different answers to many of the questions that policymakers care about.
This is sort of a side note, but I think sometimes people overlook the fact that some important datapoints are available to non-government observers because they have been first collected by intelligence sources and then publicized or leaked. For example, the fact that Iran is apparently supplying Moscow with drones seems like an important marker of Iran’s strategic calculus and the status of Russia’s war effort, and the reporting on that seems to be derived from intelligence collection. To be clear I think this kind of information transmission is a minor factor in strategic analysis, but it’s an interesting wrinkle that’s easy to overlook.
I do think there is a large difference between what the intelligence community knows about military capabilities and what is knowable outside—here the playing field is extremely uneven. I’m not talking about questions of intention like “does Xi intent to invade Taiwan by 2027” or whatever, I’m talking about more operational-level and tactical-level information about what the PLA is doing, where it’s doing it, how well it’s doing it, strengths and weaknesses of crucial military platforms, etc. Those questions are peripheral to many of the conversations in DC about China, but obviously they become absolutely essential in wartime, and the US devotes a massive amount of resources toward collecting information about these issues. So that’s the one area where I think your piece may underweight the knowledge that is present in the USG, although it may not be relevant from an EA catastrophic risk prevention point of view.
Your point about improving US procurement to reduce the risk of war was thought-provoking. You point out that enhanced US military capabilities will deter Beijing and therefore make catastrophic war less likely, which makes sense. But couldn’t enhanced US capabilities also make the US more likely to commit forces or escalate a war with China, because Washington was confident it could win it? I’m all for more effective US capabilities but I wonder if someone was approaching this from a pure EA framework if they’d have questions! (I’m aware that I’m kind of making a too-cute-by-half argument but oh well!)
Again I really enjoyed your pitch, it was very thought-provoking, and I hope your suggestions are getting audience and traction!”
Thanks for posting these, great to read these perspectives!