The research team found that both Russia and China appear to have employed information manipulation during the COVID-19 pandemic in service to their respective global agendas. This report, the second in a series, describes these efforts, as well as the analytic workflows employed for detecting and documenting state-actor malign and subversive information efforts.
In this first-ever regional assessment of firm-level governance networks in East and Southeast Asia, the author describes the structure of these interfirm networks and documents their dramatic growth and integration between 2006 and 2020. In addition to offering a descriptive account of the structure of these networks, the analysis describes suggestive structural factors that offer insight into the future of regional integration.
Since 2014, China and Russia have strengthened their relationship, increasing political, military, and economic cooperation. In this report, the authors seek to understand the history of cooperation between Beijing and Moscow, the drivers of and constraints on the relationship, the potential future of cooperation between China and Russia, the impact of the Chinese-Russian relationship on the United States, and implications for future U.S. policy.
Great powers have frequently employed large, expeditionary military forces engaged in various operations abroad. As China has ascended in power, observers have debated whether the country might follow a similar path. China has undertaken two types of military interventions in its post-1949 history. The report's authors assess which one of two patterns is likely to predominate in China's future and how this pattern might change.
Despite Russia's relatively small global economic footprint, it has engaged in more interventions than any other U.S. competitor since the end of the Cold War. In this report, the authors assess when, where, and why Russia conducts military interventions by analyzing the 25 interventions that Russia has undertaken since 1991, including detailed case studies of the 2008 Russia-Georgia War and Moscow's involvement in the ongoing Syrian civil war.
In recent years, Iran has risen as one of the most significant regional challenges faced by the United States. In this report, the authors assess when, where, why, and how Iran conducts military interventions and identify key signposts of Iranian military interventions that can be used as early warning indicators for U.S. military planners and can guide decisions about the use of forces in the Middle East region.
The authors explore where, how, and how often U.S. adversaries have intervened militarily since 1946 and identify why these adversaries initiated military interventions and why they might do so in the future. Three companion reports consider Chinese, Russian, and Iranian military intervention behavior in detail. The insights and signposts identified in these reports can inform U.S. decisions about military posture, partnerships, and investments.
The United Nations imposed increasingly restrictive sanctions on North Korea, but enforcement has been mixed. This report details the entities involved in North Korean sanctions evasion activities and uses case studies to illustrate North Korea's sanctions evasion techniques in four general areas of sanctions evasion activity: hard-currency generation, restricted and dual-use technology acquisition, covert transport, and covert finance.
In this report, the authors draw on intuition from game theory to better understand the situation in North Korea. They provide insights and recommendations based on game theoretic analysis of how to deal with Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, and the situation on the Korean peninsula; specifically, how to carry out negotiations on denuclearization.
The 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy instructed the U.S. military to become more operationally unpredictable and suggested that doing so would help the United States deter attacks on U.S. partners. The authors of this report assess whether and how the U.S. military might utilize unpredictability in force employment, posture, and operations to deter adversaries and identify the possible risks of such approaches.
As the United States has become increasingly reliant on space-based capabilities, protecting them has become vital to national security, especially in the face of China's ambitions for superiority in space. Considering the application of classical deterrence theory to the space domain, the authors show how and why China's own objectives should be considered in building a tailored deterrence strategy for China in space.
Fires in Indonesia contribute to severe air pollution, or haze, that causes public health, environmental, and economic degradation in Indonesia and across equatorial Asia. In this report, the authors present preliminary analysis that explores the drivers of fire activity in Indonesia and quantifies health consequences using a local survey collected in districts located around the country, and conclude with recommendations for future research.
Given rising tensions between the United States and China, understanding how the People's Liberation Army thinks about the use of disinformation campaigns on social media has emerged as an important question. The authors of this report identify key Chinese practices and the supporting infrastructure and conditions that such campaigns require to be successful, concluding that China is using Taiwan as a test bed for developing attack vectors.
Russia and China have sought to modernize their legacy defense equipment while concurrently developing new and increasingly sophisticated systems of their own. This report discusses recent research into the research, development, and acquisition processes of Russia and China—both doctrinally and in practice—and identifies areas in which each country excels and where each country has challenges.
Researchers used news and blog data to understand efforts by foreign countries to spread malign information regarding COVID-19 in the Indo-Pacific region. The authors used RAND's proprietary lexical analysis platform, RAND-Lex, to explore whether news and blog data could provide some initial insights on the reach of, content of, and tactical strategies used in foreign malign information about COVID-19 in the Indo-Pacific.
Over the past two decades, China's role in the geopolitical landscape has grown, and U.S. leaders now view China as a strategic competitor. One of its strategies in that competition is to seek influence around the world. This report examines China's ability to use various mechanisms of influence to shape the policies and behavior of 20 countries, as well as the lessons that these examples offer the United States.
The authors of this report explore notional international and defense strategies that China might employ to outcompete the United States. The authors created these strategies using Chinese political processes, concepts, policies, and national goals. Their purposes are to support U.S. planning and decisionmaking, educate readers about China's strategy and policymaking process, and spur discussion about the stakes and nature of the competition.
The authors examine how China's approach to deterrence signalling is evolving along with its expanding objectives, growing military capabilities, and the availability of new communication channels. This report presents a framework to evaluate China's changing approach, one that is intended to enable analysts and policymakers in Australia, the United States, and other countries to appropriately characterise, interpret, and respond to Chinese deterrence signalling.
It is difficult to guess when the situation in North Korea will become conducive to foreign investment and development. When it does, however, the country will need to find a path for economic development. The authors describe such a blueprint using foreign investment as an organizational framework.
One of the United States' key partners in long-term strategic competition with China is India, which has the world's second-largest active-duty armed forces and is already a peer or near-peer competitor of China across a range of military capabilities. However, U.S. planners must be keenly aware of the constraints on both India's willingness and capacity to forge a partnership based on strategic competition with China.
The model introduced in this report is intended to enhance the predictive capabilities available to cyber defenders while also augmenting resilience by improving preventions and detections of cyber threats. The authors test this model's effectiveness in attacks on the RAND Corporation and report the results.
Threats to international order, national stability and prosperity have changed dramatically in recent years. Grey-zone tactics, cyberwarfare, and natural and man-made disasters require different defensive responses from traditional mobilisation. Comparing a range of national strategic frameworks, the authors commend the effectiveness of a 'total defence' mobilisation planning framework and risk-driven analysis in defending against modern threats.
Both Russia and China appear to have employed information manipulation during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic to serve their respective global agendas. This report, part of the Truth Decay initiative, is one in a series systematically describing the types of COVID-19-related malign and subversive information efforts with which Russia- and China-associated outlets appear to have targeted U.S. audiences in the first half of 2020.
As part of a series of reports in which RAND researchers examine the established concepts of deterrence and develop a framework for evaluating the strength of deterrent relationships, this report explores two ongoing examples of extended deterrence. In particular, RAND researchers apply the established framework to U.S. efforts to deter North Korean aggression against South Korea and U.S. efforts to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan.
The authors document the history of the Third Offset, a U.S. strategy that focused on the potential of technology to offset Chinese and Russian military advances and that shaped the 2018 National Defense Strategy. The authors describe efforts to effect change within the U.S. Department of Defense and interview key defense leaders who did so, providing an example of how to bring about organizational change in large military institutions.
