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For the past decade, Chinese military strategists have keenly observed the changes in U.S. national strategy and military transformation. This report examines the constraints, facilitators, and potential options for Chinese responses to U.S. transformation efforts and offers possible U.S. counterresponses (particularly in light of whether Taiwan moves toward or away from formal independence).

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, many agencies within the federal government began restricting some of their publicly available geospatial data and information from such sources as the World Wide Web. As time passes, however, decisionmakers have begun to ask whether and how such information specifically helps potential attackers, including terrorists, to select U.S. homeland sites and prepare for better attacks. The research detailed in this book aims to assist decisionmakers tasked with the responsibility of choosing which geospatial information to make available and which to restrict.

U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have failed to exploit information power, which could be a U.S. advantage but instead is being used advantageously by insurgents. Because insurgency and counterinsurgency involve a battle for the allegiance of a population between a government and an armed opposition movement, the key to exploiting information power is to connect with and learn from the population itself, increasing the effectiveness of both the local government and the U.S. military and civilian services engaged in supporting it. Utilizing mostly available networking technology, the United States could achieve early, affordable, and substantial gains in the effectiveness of counterinsurgency by more open, integrated, and inclusive information networking with the population, local authorities, and coalition partners. The most basic information link with the population would be an information technology (IT)-enhanced, fraud-resistant registry-census. The most promising link would come from utilizing local cell phone networks, which are proliferating even among poor countries. Access to data routinely collected by such networks can form the basis for security services such as enhanced-911 and forensics. The cell phones of a well-wired citizenry can be made tantamount to sensor fields in settled areas. They can link indigenous forces with each other and with U.S. forces without interoperability problems; they can also track the responses of such forces to emergencies. Going further, outfitting weaponry with video cameras would bolster surveillance, provide lessons learned, and guard against operator misconduct. Establishing a national Wiki can help citizens describe their neighborhoods to familiarize U.S. forces with them and can promote accountable service delivery. All such information can improve counterinsurgency operations by making U.S. forces and agencies far better informed than they are at present. The authors argue that todayÂ's military and intelligence networks-being closed, compartmentalized, controlled by information providers instead of users, and limited to U.S. war fighters-hamper counterinsurgency and deprive the United States of what ought to be a strategic advantage. In contrast, based on a review of 160 requirements for counterinsurgency, the authors call for current networks to be replaced by an integrated counterinsurgency operating network (ICON) linking U.S. and indigenous operators, based on principles of inclusiveness, integration, and user preeminence. Utilizing the proposed ways of gathering information from the population, ICON would improve the timeliness, reliability, and relevance of information, while focusing security restrictions on truly sensitive information. The complexity and sensitivity of counterinsurgency call for vastly better use of IT than has been seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is a practical plan for just that.

A RAND study analyzed Chinese and U.S. military capabilities in two scenarios (Taiwan and the Spratly Islands) from 1996 to 2017, finding that trends in most, but not all, areas run strongly against the United States. While U.S. aggregate power remains greater than China’s, distance and geography affect outcomes. China is capable of challenging U.S. military dominance on its immediate periphery—and its reach is likely to grow in the years ahead.

Examines how terrorists make technology choices and how the United States can discourage terrorists' use of advanced conventional weapons. Concludes that the United States should urgently start discussions with key producer nations and also decide on an architecture needed to impose technical controls on new mortar systems that should enter development soon.

Assesses military use of commercial wideband satellites by evaluating their effectiveness across several characteristics defined by the United States Space Command. Assesses military use of commercial wideband satellites by evaluating their effectiveness across several characteristics defined by the United States Space Command.

Changes in technology and adversary behavior will invariably produce new threats that must be assessed by defense and homeland security planners. An example of such a novel threat is the use of cruise missiles or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) by terrorist groups. Individual threats cannot be assessed in isolation, however, since adversaries always have many options for staging attacks. To examine this threat, RAND utilized a ?red analysis of alternatives? approach, wherein the benefits, costs, and risks of different options are considered from the point of view of a potential adversary. For several types of attacks, the suitability of these systems was compared against other options. This approach can help defense planners understand how the capabilities that different attack modes provide address key adversary operational problems. Given the insights this analysis produced about when these systems would likely be preferred by an attacker, RAND explored defensive options to address the threat. UAVs and cruise missiles represent a ?niche threat? within a larger threat context; therefore, defenses were sought that provide common protection against both this and other asymmetric threats. The monograph concludes with a discussion of cross-cutting lessons about this threat and the assessment of novel threats in general.

This independent assessment is a comprehensive study of the strategic benefits, risks, and costs of U.S. military presence overseas. The report provides policymakers a way to evaluate the range of strategic benefits and costs that follow from revising the U.S. overseas military presence by characterizing how this presence contributes to assurance, deterrence, responsiveness, and security cooperation goals.

Although much of the growing digital economy rests on the Internet and World Wide Web, which in turn rest on information technology standards, it is unclear how much longer the current momentum can be sustained absent new standards. Although much of the growing digital economy rests on the Internet and World Wide Web, which in turn rest on information technology standards, it is unclear how much longer the current momentum can be sustained absent new standards. To discover whether today's standards processes are adequate, where they are taking the industry, and whether government intervention will be required to address systemic failures in their development, RAND undertook five case studies. So far, it seems, the current standards process remains basically healthy, with various consortia taking up the reins of the process, and the rise of open-source software has also aided vendor-neutral standardization. Nevertheless, the prospects for semantic standards to fulfill XML's promise are uncertain. Can the federal government help? Its policy on software patents clearly merits revisiting. More proactively, the National Institute for Standards and Technology could intensify its traditional functions: developing metrologies; broadening the technology base; and constructing, on neutral ground, terrain maps of the various electronic-commerce standards and standards contenders.