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Rand Issues Commentary: Better Way to Use Criminal Records in Hiring
SANTA MONICA, California, Oct. 17 -- Rand issued the following commentary:
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A Better Way to Use Criminal Records in Hiring
Oct 15, 2026
By Elizabeth Chase and Shawn D. Bushway
Someone in your company just decided to rescind a job offer to a welder, a warehouse supervisor, a medical assistant, or a coder you desperately wanted to hire--not because the person can't do the work, but because a background check turned up a conviction record and your company's rules said, "no hire."
Roughly 90 percent of employers run those checks, and in some surveys as many as 60 percent say they won't hire ... Show Full Article SANTA MONICA, California, Oct. 17 -- Rand issued the following commentary: * * * A Better Way to Use Criminal Records in Hiring Oct 15, 2026 By Elizabeth Chase and Shawn D. Bushway Someone in your company just decided to rescind a job offer to a welder, a warehouse supervisor, a medical assistant, or a coder you desperately wanted to hire--not because the person can't do the work, but because a background check turned up a conviction record and your company's rules said, "no hire." Roughly 90 percent of employers run those checks, and in some surveys as many as 60 percent say they won't hireanyone with a prior conviction. That's misguided.
What an employer actually wants to know is whether this applicant is likely to commit another crime, possibly on the job. But the screening rules many employers use are often about as accurate as a coin toss, in part because they're based on data that don't represent the population of job seekers with criminal records. A better approach comes from using representative data and careful analysis to answer the question: Which applicants are done committing crimes?
Most of them, it turns out. For a study published last month in the journal Statistics and Public Policy, we traced what happened to nearly 9.5 million people with convictions across seven states. We used court and prison records from 1992 to 2021 to see who among them was convicted again in the next decade and, just as importantly, who wasn't. In five of those states, close to four in five people hadn't been convicted again. In Texas and North Carolina, where reconviction was most common, the figure was still two-thirds.
The risk is low in the aggregate and low for most individuals. More than half of the people in our data set had a five percent or smaller chance of being convicted of anything in the coming year.
Our study found that three simple facts in a criminal record did nearly all the predictive work: How many total prior convictions do they have? How long has it been since their last conviction? And how old is the applicant now? We believe completing a rehabilitative program matters, too, but it wasn't something we could quantify across states for this study.
Now compare that to what employers scrutinize. Asked to rank their concerns about hiring someone with a felony record, employers in a RAND survey put any violent felony conviction first by a wide margin, with more than half calling it their single greatest concern. But the type of crime tells you almost nothing over and above what you can learn from the three simple facts listed above. Criminologists have held for decades that people who break the law tend to be generalists rather than specialists; the correlation between one offense and the next is weak.
On a standard accuracy scale where 0.50 is a coin flip, our model scored 0.70 at predicting a conviction in the year ahead when one year had passed since the last offense, and 0.64 at five years. A decade past the last conviction, no model we tested predicts well. At that point the record has told you what it can, and work history and references are the better evidence. Screening for felony convictions or violent offenses performed substantially worse than our model at every point we measured.
So why do the bright-line felony and violent-offense screens persist? Employers face a lopsided ledger. Hiring someone who causes harm can mean a negligent-hiring suit--rare, but expensive and unpredictable. Declining to hire someone who would have been fine costs the company essentially nothing in a labor market with plenty of workers. It starts to become costly in a tight labor market. It's also unfair. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has an informal test for such job screenings: Does it clear one protected group at less than 80 percent the rate of another protected group? Under a 10-year felony threshold, Black men in our data were 74 percent to 78 percent as likely to be cleared as White women--a failing grade. Under a model built on time, age, and priors, Black men were 98 percent as likely to be cleared as White women.
Because it's more statistically accurate and less discriminatory, this approach is also defensible across a range of regulatory schemes. California employers are feeling this directly right now: The state is in an active enforcement push on fair hiring regulations, and a pending law will further reshape those rules. An approach like the one we outline gives companies a path to compliance and also reduces the time required to evaluate candidates. As states become more prescriptive about the hiring screens that employers need to use, they should also evaluate the quality of their proposed rules. New laws that are not based on good science may actually increase racial disparity and prevent perfectly safe people from being hired.
Our approach fits within the sequence large employers already run: conditional offer, background check, targeted screen, then individualized assessment for anyone flagged. The job of the targeted screening is to clear the low-risk majority quickly so that human judgment is focused on the smaller group that warrants a real conversation.
Finally, a caution: Predicting reconviction risk is not the same as predicting job performance. It does not guarantee your job candidate will show up on time or do good work. That is still the hiring manager's job to find out.
Almost a third of American men have a conviction as an adult. In a labor market with less than 4.5 percent unemployment, where the United States has been for five years, the employer that uses hiring decision tools that are based on high-quality statistical models will find more capable workers that competitors may miss.
* * *
More About This Commentary
Elizabeth Chase is an associate statistician at RAND. Shawn D. Bushway is an adjunct economist and criminologist at RAND and a professor at the University at Albany, SUNY.
Their seven-state study was funded by Arnold Ventures. Bushway is developing a commercial tool, through a company in which he holds a financial interest, that builds on the methods described here; Chase has served as a paid consultant to that company.
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Original text here: https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2026/10/a-better-way-to-use-criminal-records-in-hiring.html
[Category: ThinkTank]
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A Better Way to Use Criminal Records in Hiring
Oct 15, 2026
By Elizabeth Chase and Shawn D. Bushway
Someone in your company just decided to rescind a job offer to a welder, a warehouse supervisor, a medical assistant, or a coder you desperately wanted to hire--not because the person can't do the work, but because a background check turned up a conviction record and your company's rules said, "no hire."
Roughly 90 percent of employers run those checks, and in some surveys as many as 60 percent say they won't hire ... Show Full Article SANTA MONICA, California, Oct. 17 -- Rand issued the following commentary: * * * A Better Way to Use Criminal Records in Hiring Oct 15, 2026 By Elizabeth Chase and Shawn D. Bushway Someone in your company just decided to rescind a job offer to a welder, a warehouse supervisor, a medical assistant, or a coder you desperately wanted to hire--not because the person can't do the work, but because a background check turned up a conviction record and your company's rules said, "no hire." Roughly 90 percent of employers run those checks, and in some surveys as many as 60 percent say they won't hireanyone with a prior conviction. That's misguided.
What an employer actually wants to know is whether this applicant is likely to commit another crime, possibly on the job. But the screening rules many employers use are often about as accurate as a coin toss, in part because they're based on data that don't represent the population of job seekers with criminal records. A better approach comes from using representative data and careful analysis to answer the question: Which applicants are done committing crimes?
Most of them, it turns out. For a study published last month in the journal Statistics and Public Policy, we traced what happened to nearly 9.5 million people with convictions across seven states. We used court and prison records from 1992 to 2021 to see who among them was convicted again in the next decade and, just as importantly, who wasn't. In five of those states, close to four in five people hadn't been convicted again. In Texas and North Carolina, where reconviction was most common, the figure was still two-thirds.
The risk is low in the aggregate and low for most individuals. More than half of the people in our data set had a five percent or smaller chance of being convicted of anything in the coming year.
Our study found that three simple facts in a criminal record did nearly all the predictive work: How many total prior convictions do they have? How long has it been since their last conviction? And how old is the applicant now? We believe completing a rehabilitative program matters, too, but it wasn't something we could quantify across states for this study.
Now compare that to what employers scrutinize. Asked to rank their concerns about hiring someone with a felony record, employers in a RAND survey put any violent felony conviction first by a wide margin, with more than half calling it their single greatest concern. But the type of crime tells you almost nothing over and above what you can learn from the three simple facts listed above. Criminologists have held for decades that people who break the law tend to be generalists rather than specialists; the correlation between one offense and the next is weak.
On a standard accuracy scale where 0.50 is a coin flip, our model scored 0.70 at predicting a conviction in the year ahead when one year had passed since the last offense, and 0.64 at five years. A decade past the last conviction, no model we tested predicts well. At that point the record has told you what it can, and work history and references are the better evidence. Screening for felony convictions or violent offenses performed substantially worse than our model at every point we measured.
So why do the bright-line felony and violent-offense screens persist? Employers face a lopsided ledger. Hiring someone who causes harm can mean a negligent-hiring suit--rare, but expensive and unpredictable. Declining to hire someone who would have been fine costs the company essentially nothing in a labor market with plenty of workers. It starts to become costly in a tight labor market. It's also unfair. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has an informal test for such job screenings: Does it clear one protected group at less than 80 percent the rate of another protected group? Under a 10-year felony threshold, Black men in our data were 74 percent to 78 percent as likely to be cleared as White women--a failing grade. Under a model built on time, age, and priors, Black men were 98 percent as likely to be cleared as White women.
Because it's more statistically accurate and less discriminatory, this approach is also defensible across a range of regulatory schemes. California employers are feeling this directly right now: The state is in an active enforcement push on fair hiring regulations, and a pending law will further reshape those rules. An approach like the one we outline gives companies a path to compliance and also reduces the time required to evaluate candidates. As states become more prescriptive about the hiring screens that employers need to use, they should also evaluate the quality of their proposed rules. New laws that are not based on good science may actually increase racial disparity and prevent perfectly safe people from being hired.
Our approach fits within the sequence large employers already run: conditional offer, background check, targeted screen, then individualized assessment for anyone flagged. The job of the targeted screening is to clear the low-risk majority quickly so that human judgment is focused on the smaller group that warrants a real conversation.
Finally, a caution: Predicting reconviction risk is not the same as predicting job performance. It does not guarantee your job candidate will show up on time or do good work. That is still the hiring manager's job to find out.
Almost a third of American men have a conviction as an adult. In a labor market with less than 4.5 percent unemployment, where the United States has been for five years, the employer that uses hiring decision tools that are based on high-quality statistical models will find more capable workers that competitors may miss.
* * *
More About This Commentary
Elizabeth Chase is an associate statistician at RAND. Shawn D. Bushway is an adjunct economist and criminologist at RAND and a professor at the University at Albany, SUNY.
Their seven-state study was funded by Arnold Ventures. Bushway is developing a commercial tool, through a company in which he holds a financial interest, that builds on the methods described here; Chase has served as a paid consultant to that company.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2026/10/a-better-way-to-use-criminal-records-in-hiring.html
[Category: ThinkTank]
Manhattan Institute Issues Commentary to Washington Post: In Michigan, Jewish Voters Are Reconsidering Their Allegiances
NEW YORK, Oct. 17 -- The Manhattan Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary:
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In Michigan, Jewish Voters Are Reconsidering Their Allegiances
By Jesse Arm
Washington Post
October 16th, 2026
Communal preservation must accompany universal concern.
-
Amid concerns over rising antisemitism on the left, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel recently told her fellow Jewish Democrats that they may have to "sacrifice the comfort, safety, security and even the very future of our own people in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity."
In a bizarre inversion of ... Show Full Article NEW YORK, Oct. 17 -- The Manhattan Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary: * * * In Michigan, Jewish Voters Are Reconsidering Their Allegiances By Jesse Arm Washington Post October 16th, 2026 Communal preservation must accompany universal concern. - Amid concerns over rising antisemitism on the left, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel recently told her fellow Jewish Democrats that they may have to "sacrifice the comfort, safety, security and even the very future of our own people in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity." In a bizarre inversion ofthe story of Queen Esther, who risked her own life to save the Jews, Nessel invoked the biblical heroine to suggest that Jews should risk their own survival to save everyone else.
I grew up in West Bloomfield, Michigan, a center of Jewish life in the state. Many of the town's residents are declining Nessel's invitation.
It's easy to see why. In March, a Hezbollah-inspired attacker from Dearborn Heights, Michigan, rammed a truck loaded with gasoline, fireworks, guns and ammunition into the preschool of Temple Israel, a Reform synagogue in West Bloomfield, while more than 100 children were inside.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/10/16/abdul-el-sayeds-rise-has-challenged-michigans-jewish-community)
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Jesse Arm is the vice president of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute, where he oversees communications, government relations, and public opinion research.
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Original text here: https://manhattan.institute/article/in-michigan-jewish-voters-are-reconsidering-their-allegiances
[Category: ThinkTank]
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In Michigan, Jewish Voters Are Reconsidering Their Allegiances
By Jesse Arm
Washington Post
October 16th, 2026
Communal preservation must accompany universal concern.
-
Amid concerns over rising antisemitism on the left, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel recently told her fellow Jewish Democrats that they may have to "sacrifice the comfort, safety, security and even the very future of our own people in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity."
In a bizarre inversion of ... Show Full Article NEW YORK, Oct. 17 -- The Manhattan Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary: * * * In Michigan, Jewish Voters Are Reconsidering Their Allegiances By Jesse Arm Washington Post October 16th, 2026 Communal preservation must accompany universal concern. - Amid concerns over rising antisemitism on the left, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel recently told her fellow Jewish Democrats that they may have to "sacrifice the comfort, safety, security and even the very future of our own people in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity." In a bizarre inversion ofthe story of Queen Esther, who risked her own life to save the Jews, Nessel invoked the biblical heroine to suggest that Jews should risk their own survival to save everyone else.
I grew up in West Bloomfield, Michigan, a center of Jewish life in the state. Many of the town's residents are declining Nessel's invitation.
It's easy to see why. In March, a Hezbollah-inspired attacker from Dearborn Heights, Michigan, rammed a truck loaded with gasoline, fireworks, guns and ammunition into the preschool of Temple Israel, a Reform synagogue in West Bloomfield, while more than 100 children were inside.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/10/16/abdul-el-sayeds-rise-has-challenged-michigans-jewish-community)
* * *
Jesse Arm is the vice president of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute, where he oversees communications, government relations, and public opinion research.
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Original text here: https://manhattan.institute/article/in-michigan-jewish-voters-are-reconsidering-their-allegiances
[Category: ThinkTank]
Manhattan Institute Issues Commentary to Daily Wire: Dangerous Consequences Of 'Concept Creep' In Dating
NEW YORK, Oct. 17 -- The Manhattan Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary:
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The Dangerous Consequences Of 'Concept Creep' In Dating
By Christina Buttons
Daily Wire
October 15th, 2026
When "bad sex" becomes a crime.
-
The sexual-assault allegations against seven fraternity members at Cornell University have revived a decades-old debate about whether college campuses face a rape crisis. A former Cornell student, identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe, says the men sexually assaulted her during a night of heavy drinking and drug use in 2024.
Though the allegations remain ... Show Full Article NEW YORK, Oct. 17 -- The Manhattan Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary: * * * The Dangerous Consequences Of 'Concept Creep' In Dating By Christina Buttons Daily Wire October 15th, 2026 When "bad sex" becomes a crime. - The sexual-assault allegations against seven fraternity members at Cornell University have revived a decades-old debate about whether college campuses face a rape crisis. A former Cornell student, identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe, says the men sexually assaulted her during a night of heavy drinking and drug use in 2024. Though the allegations remaincontested, journalists, activists, and Democratic politicians have already treated them as fact, citing the case as evidence of a larger problem at American colleges and universities. Vox says that there is "[a] crisis that goes far beyond Cornell." The Atlantic asks whether college is becoming less safe for women.
The Guardian declares that we live in a "rape-prone society." Tens of thousands of women on TikTok have posted #IAmJaneDoe in solidarity with the Cornell accuser, drawing comparisons to the #MeToo movement. New York Governor Kathy Hochul is using the case to push for changing state law, arguing for closing the "voluntary intoxication loophole," and has appointed Attorney General Letitia James to reinvestigate the allegations.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Daily Wire (https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-dangerous-consequences-of-concept-creep-in-dating?author=Christina+Buttons&category=undefined&elementPosition=0&row=3&rowHeadline=Latest+News&rowType=Vertical+Carousel&title=The+Dangerous+Consequences+Of+%E2%80%98Concept+Creep%E2%80%99+In+Dating)
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Christina Buttons is an investigative reporter at the Manhattan Institute. Her work focuses on a range of social issues, including pediatric gender medicine, child welfare policies, youth mental-health treatment, and immigration. This piece originally appeared in City Journal.
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Original text here: https://manhattan.institute/article/the-dangerous-consequences-of-concept-creep-in-dating
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
The Dangerous Consequences Of 'Concept Creep' In Dating
By Christina Buttons
Daily Wire
October 15th, 2026
When "bad sex" becomes a crime.
-
The sexual-assault allegations against seven fraternity members at Cornell University have revived a decades-old debate about whether college campuses face a rape crisis. A former Cornell student, identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe, says the men sexually assaulted her during a night of heavy drinking and drug use in 2024.
Though the allegations remain ... Show Full Article NEW YORK, Oct. 17 -- The Manhattan Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary: * * * The Dangerous Consequences Of 'Concept Creep' In Dating By Christina Buttons Daily Wire October 15th, 2026 When "bad sex" becomes a crime. - The sexual-assault allegations against seven fraternity members at Cornell University have revived a decades-old debate about whether college campuses face a rape crisis. A former Cornell student, identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe, says the men sexually assaulted her during a night of heavy drinking and drug use in 2024. Though the allegations remaincontested, journalists, activists, and Democratic politicians have already treated them as fact, citing the case as evidence of a larger problem at American colleges and universities. Vox says that there is "[a] crisis that goes far beyond Cornell." The Atlantic asks whether college is becoming less safe for women.
The Guardian declares that we live in a "rape-prone society." Tens of thousands of women on TikTok have posted #IAmJaneDoe in solidarity with the Cornell accuser, drawing comparisons to the #MeToo movement. New York Governor Kathy Hochul is using the case to push for changing state law, arguing for closing the "voluntary intoxication loophole," and has appointed Attorney General Letitia James to reinvestigate the allegations.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Daily Wire (https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-dangerous-consequences-of-concept-creep-in-dating?author=Christina+Buttons&category=undefined&elementPosition=0&row=3&rowHeadline=Latest+News&rowType=Vertical+Carousel&title=The+Dangerous+Consequences+Of+%E2%80%98Concept+Creep%E2%80%99+In+Dating)
* * *
Christina Buttons is an investigative reporter at the Manhattan Institute. Her work focuses on a range of social issues, including pediatric gender medicine, child welfare policies, youth mental-health treatment, and immigration. This piece originally appeared in City Journal.
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Original text here: https://manhattan.institute/article/the-dangerous-consequences-of-concept-creep-in-dating
[Category: ThinkTank]
Jamestown Foundation Issues Commentary: CCP 'Saturates' Religion With Socialist Values
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 16, 2026, in the foundation's China Brief:
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The CCP 'Saturates' Religion with Socialist Values
Jonah Reisboard
Executive Summary:
* The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing to "saturate" religion with Chinese culture and socialist values. Party organs have used this tactic for more than a decade to wear down the organizational and spiritual independence of religious groups, and it is one of four mechanisms in a framework Party-state scholars use to describe the sinicization of religion.
* "Saturation" ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 16, 2026, in the foundation's China Brief: * * * The CCP 'Saturates' Religion with Socialist Values Jonah Reisboard Executive Summary: * The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing to "saturate" religion with Chinese culture and socialist values. Party organs have used this tactic for more than a decade to wear down the organizational and spiritual independence of religious groups, and it is one of four mechanisms in a framework Party-state scholars use to describe the sinicization of religion. * "Saturation"creates new Party-aligned norms that must be followed to avoid persecution. It demands surveillance, both through grassroots inspections and through technical means to ensure compliance.
* Local governments have run sinicization campaigns for years following Party guidance alone in the absence of a national statute on religion. However, the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress Law contains some provisions relevant to religion and will lead to renewed efforts.
-
At the opening ceremony of the 2026 Shanghai Religious Community Chinese Culture Week, Shen Bin, the bishop of the Catholic Church of Shanghai, introduced the "Initiative on Chinese Culture Saturating Religion" (The Paper, July 17). The term "saturate" refers to the integration of Chinese culture--and socialism with Chinese characteristics--into religion, acting as one mechanism for the sinicization of religion. In 2023, Zheng Xiaoyun , director of the department of world religion research at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, characterized the management of religion as consisting of (guidance), (harmonization), (saturation), and (transformation) (Zheng, 2023).[1]
Each tactic provides a framework for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to sinicize religion through its United Front Work Department (UFWD) and local ethnic and religious affairs (ERA) offices. In many Party-state directives and reports, multiple tactics are cited as the ends or means of the Party's religious work, and Zheng's heuristic is useful in showing that sinicization is multi-faceted. "Saturation" is particularly illustrative of the CCP's mandatory integration between socialism and religion, such that the independence of religious groups is both organizationally and spiritually eroded.
The Party-state's religious affairs work has explicitly followed the path of sinicization since the United Front Work Conference in 2015, when General Secretary Xi Jinping said that religion "must adhere" to this direction (People's Daily, May 21, 2025). The recently enacted Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress Law then standardized the sporadic approaches to sinicization across the People's Republic of China (PRC), which will likely lead to renewed efforts (China Brief, March 27, April 2).
The ethnic unity law expands on existing procedure in ways that touch religion, especially regarding mandates on Party alignment in the home and in schools; but provincial, county, and municipal governments do not need a national law to target religion. Party guidance previously sufficed to carry out sinicization efforts in the absence of a wide-ranging national statute, and Party organs have been promoting sinicization through "saturation" for over a decade, with local governments executing their guidance.
Local Documents Show 'Saturation' Efforts
"Saturation" is an attempt to reshape religion and integrate socialism with Chinese characteristics into personal identity. Book donations fill religious libraries with socialist and Party-aligned literature, such as Xi Jinping's Talks on Governance and Regulations on Religious Affairs. ERA committees also install flagpoles and put up propaganda posters. Shenyang City boasted donations of more than 2,000 books and more than 500 national flags in the years leading up to 2020 (Liaoning ERA Committee, December 18, 2020).
Party-guided education in history also plays a role in reshaping identity. In the northeast region, studying the Korean War is cited as helping to "cultivate the patriotism of the religious community, sharpen the ambition of strengthening the country, and practice service to the country" (Liaoning ERA Committee, December 18, 2020). In Hubei province, the ERA committee celebrated the "Hubei Religious Community 'Red Education' Base," a historical showcase that celebrates the CCP and its sinicization efforts (Hubei ERA Committee, April 24, 2022). The PRC's Patriotic Education Law calls for developing and visiting these sites (China Brief, December 15, 2023).
What the CCP calls "excellent traditional Chinese culture" provides yet another vector for influencing religious identity. In Hubei and elsewhere, religious sites will hold traditional festival celebrations and recitations of the Chinese classics (Hubei ERA Committee, April 24, 2022). Along with legal measures, using traditional culture for religious sinicization establishes that "the nation is greater than religion" (UFWD, May 19). Xu Xiaohong, chairman of the National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, a state-sanctioned body that oversees Protestant churches in the PRC, put this in a zero-sum context, saying that sinicization is a modern effort to prevent a reality where "one more Christian is one fewer Chinese" (Xinhua, March 11, 2019). This indicates that the fusion of religion and secular culture is an attempt to maintain a solely "Chinese" identity.
"Saturation" of religion also calls for the Party to influence theology itself. This can occur indirectly from book donations and ideological education, but is achieved more directly by encouraging religious leaders to align their messaging with the CCP. In Zhengzhou, the Protestant liang hui held a competition soliciting sinicized sermon manuscripts, and reportedly received 461 submissions (Zhengzhou ERA Bureau, July 9, 2024).[2] Sinicized sermons have covered themes such as "taking dedication to work as a sacrifice" and "being a patriotic Muslim" (China Islamic Steering Committee, 2021; The Protestant Church in China, July 1). [3] For these religious leaders, contests provided an incentive for alignment, but they also serve the CCP's goal of bringing ideology into churches. The Party-state's tactics of identifying, cultivating, and co-opting willing religious leaders to advance its "saturation" of religion mirrors its work in overseas united front operations (China Brief, February 11).
'Saturation' Demands Grassroots and Technical Surveillance
Governing religion through "saturation" creates ideological norms that must then be upheld by religious followers. In Pengxi county, located in Sichuan province, cadre inspections include "heart-to-heart talks" and soliciting opinions before meetings. This is an attempt to increase "ideological contact", and forces Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists to embrace ideology or be marked as anti-CCP elements (Pengxi County UFWD, July 28, 2023). Sending cadres into religious sites serves as a tool for monitoring religion and identifying the people, ideas, and value systems that threaten the Party's interests. The experience of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), where indicators of religious extremism came to be defined so expansively as to include growing a beard or maintaining foreign contacts, shows how Party narratives shape what is tolerated and what is seen as religious fanaticism (United Nations, August 31, 2022).
The Party-state uses grassroots means to identify areas of interest and concentrate its monitoring efforts. In Jincheng, Shanxi province, the municipal united front work report discussed "targeted surveys and assessments covering villages with concentrated religious populations" and "foreign religious influences," seeking to "fortify defenses against religious infiltration and expansion in key sectors and regarding specific religious groups" by "firmly grasping the city's religious data" (Taixing Daily, February 28, 2022). In a sub-district of Wuxi City, "grid staff" must conduct inspections of religious sites daily and maintain a registration ledger of religious leaders (Wuxi ERA Bureau, January 21). A local government in Anhui province also made reference to inspections by "grid staff" and "work ledgers," where this refers to a report on investigative findings (Suncun Township Government, June 3, 2020).
The same inspection and monitoring tactics are used to identify "underground" religious sites. In advance of the 100th anniversary of the CCP's founding in 2021, a local government in Huoqiu county, Anhui province, distributed an internal directive to villages and local bureaus. Party branches were ordered to inspect village units, shops, supermarkets, and hotels to identify unauthorized gathering points, including home-based gatherings (Wulong Town Party Committee and Government Office, 2021). The document names "core members" of "underground" churches that had previously been broken up, both as subjects for long-term monitoring and nodes within continuous investigations to ensure that their organizations do not return. At least during this "Large-Scale Inspection and Rectification Campaign", village Party officials were to "provide renewed education and guidance" for these "core members."
Religion-specific indicators are used to determine threats, reinforcing the Party's desire to "saturate" and co-opt religious groups. According to a work plan released by Shiti town, located in Dazhou, Sichuan province, the threats emerging from different religions vary, but all must be "checked and changed" (Dazhou District People's Government, September 22, 2018). Buddhists and Taoists are identified as constructing unauthorized temples and statues; the supposed threats in Christianity come from private gatherings, self-appointed preachers, and foreign influence; and for Islam, the Party is concerned by the appointment of imams from the northwest, foreign missions, and illegal classes (Dazhou District People's Government, September 22, 2018). These issues are seen as threats because they reflect religion taking on a form that the Party feels is beyond its control. "Saturation" is a way to re-center ideology and Chinese identity.
The Party-state turns to technical surveillance to reinforce cadre inspections. In 2022, Zhejiang province's "religious intelligent patrol" used real-time monitoring and early warning to identify three instances of illegal missionary activities, 11 illegal Buddhist events, three illegal renovations, and 49 cases of minors entering religious places (Daishan County Government Office, August 23, 2022). A document from Nantong, a city in Jiangsu province, shows that video surveillance is ubiquitous, with 534 surveillance cameras outfitted to the city's 178 religious sites. All video is fed to the county's "governance command center" that has supposedly "achieved full coverage of site monitoring and no blind spots" (ERA Commission of Jiangsu Province, April 25, 2025). Local Public Security Bureaus in Zhejiang also used the social media app Douyin to identify illegal Christian private gatherings (Daishan County Government Office, August 23, 2022).
Local governments rely on technical platforms built by the private sector. Baotou Pasis Network Technology, for instance, offers a "smart religion management system" that integrates and analyzes data such as personnel, activities, and finances, in part with assistance from artificial intelligence (Pasis, accessed October 4). [4] There are also mobile applications intended to facilitate ERA work, as have emerged across departments in the PRC in recent years (China Brief, April 28). One, which is offered on Apple's App Store, is meant to support inspections and assessments (Apple App Store, accessed October 4). Other companies offer similar products. In 2024, Jiangsu Cable Data Network won a bid to provide a digitalized platform for the Jiangsu government, writing in the press release that the project would "actively publicize relevant policies, regulations, and socialist core values through audio and video systems and terminals, and promote the implementation of religious sinicization" (Jiangsu Cable Data Network, April 24, 2024).
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Figure 1: AI-enabled video monitoring service advertised by Pasis
* * *
Conclusion
The CCP describes the threat it faces from unmitigated religious practice, in part, as foreign "infiltration", with sinicization as the response. It is difficult to understand sending cadres into religious sites, shaping sermon rhetoric, cultivating ideology, and other aspects of religious "saturation" as anything other than the "infiltration" of religion by the Party itself. By acting against religious groups in much the same way that it describes the threat, the Party expresses its view that religion offers rival value systems and organizations that cannot remain independent. Zero-sum framing, such as Xu Xiaohong's statement that without sinicization "one more Christian is one fewer Chinese," only underscores this perspective.
* * *
Jonah Reisboard is an editorial assistant at the Jamestown Foundation. His research focuses on foreign influence and corporate engagement in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. He received his BA from the University of Richmond and is pursuing an MA in Asian Studies at George Washington University.
* * *
Original text here: https://jamestown.org/the-ccp-saturates-religion-with-socialist-values/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
The CCP 'Saturates' Religion with Socialist Values
Jonah Reisboard
Executive Summary:
* The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing to "saturate" religion with Chinese culture and socialist values. Party organs have used this tactic for more than a decade to wear down the organizational and spiritual independence of religious groups, and it is one of four mechanisms in a framework Party-state scholars use to describe the sinicization of religion.
* "Saturation" ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 16, 2026, in the foundation's China Brief: * * * The CCP 'Saturates' Religion with Socialist Values Jonah Reisboard Executive Summary: * The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing to "saturate" religion with Chinese culture and socialist values. Party organs have used this tactic for more than a decade to wear down the organizational and spiritual independence of religious groups, and it is one of four mechanisms in a framework Party-state scholars use to describe the sinicization of religion. * "Saturation"creates new Party-aligned norms that must be followed to avoid persecution. It demands surveillance, both through grassroots inspections and through technical means to ensure compliance.
* Local governments have run sinicization campaigns for years following Party guidance alone in the absence of a national statute on religion. However, the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress Law contains some provisions relevant to religion and will lead to renewed efforts.
-
At the opening ceremony of the 2026 Shanghai Religious Community Chinese Culture Week, Shen Bin, the bishop of the Catholic Church of Shanghai, introduced the "Initiative on Chinese Culture Saturating Religion" (The Paper, July 17). The term "saturate" refers to the integration of Chinese culture--and socialism with Chinese characteristics--into religion, acting as one mechanism for the sinicization of religion. In 2023, Zheng Xiaoyun , director of the department of world religion research at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, characterized the management of religion as consisting of (guidance), (harmonization), (saturation), and (transformation) (Zheng, 2023).[1]
Each tactic provides a framework for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to sinicize religion through its United Front Work Department (UFWD) and local ethnic and religious affairs (ERA) offices. In many Party-state directives and reports, multiple tactics are cited as the ends or means of the Party's religious work, and Zheng's heuristic is useful in showing that sinicization is multi-faceted. "Saturation" is particularly illustrative of the CCP's mandatory integration between socialism and religion, such that the independence of religious groups is both organizationally and spiritually eroded.
The Party-state's religious affairs work has explicitly followed the path of sinicization since the United Front Work Conference in 2015, when General Secretary Xi Jinping said that religion "must adhere" to this direction (People's Daily, May 21, 2025). The recently enacted Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress Law then standardized the sporadic approaches to sinicization across the People's Republic of China (PRC), which will likely lead to renewed efforts (China Brief, March 27, April 2).
The ethnic unity law expands on existing procedure in ways that touch religion, especially regarding mandates on Party alignment in the home and in schools; but provincial, county, and municipal governments do not need a national law to target religion. Party guidance previously sufficed to carry out sinicization efforts in the absence of a wide-ranging national statute, and Party organs have been promoting sinicization through "saturation" for over a decade, with local governments executing their guidance.
Local Documents Show 'Saturation' Efforts
"Saturation" is an attempt to reshape religion and integrate socialism with Chinese characteristics into personal identity. Book donations fill religious libraries with socialist and Party-aligned literature, such as Xi Jinping's Talks on Governance and Regulations on Religious Affairs. ERA committees also install flagpoles and put up propaganda posters. Shenyang City boasted donations of more than 2,000 books and more than 500 national flags in the years leading up to 2020 (Liaoning ERA Committee, December 18, 2020).
Party-guided education in history also plays a role in reshaping identity. In the northeast region, studying the Korean War is cited as helping to "cultivate the patriotism of the religious community, sharpen the ambition of strengthening the country, and practice service to the country" (Liaoning ERA Committee, December 18, 2020). In Hubei province, the ERA committee celebrated the "Hubei Religious Community 'Red Education' Base," a historical showcase that celebrates the CCP and its sinicization efforts (Hubei ERA Committee, April 24, 2022). The PRC's Patriotic Education Law calls for developing and visiting these sites (China Brief, December 15, 2023).
What the CCP calls "excellent traditional Chinese culture" provides yet another vector for influencing religious identity. In Hubei and elsewhere, religious sites will hold traditional festival celebrations and recitations of the Chinese classics (Hubei ERA Committee, April 24, 2022). Along with legal measures, using traditional culture for religious sinicization establishes that "the nation is greater than religion" (UFWD, May 19). Xu Xiaohong, chairman of the National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, a state-sanctioned body that oversees Protestant churches in the PRC, put this in a zero-sum context, saying that sinicization is a modern effort to prevent a reality where "one more Christian is one fewer Chinese" (Xinhua, March 11, 2019). This indicates that the fusion of religion and secular culture is an attempt to maintain a solely "Chinese" identity.
"Saturation" of religion also calls for the Party to influence theology itself. This can occur indirectly from book donations and ideological education, but is achieved more directly by encouraging religious leaders to align their messaging with the CCP. In Zhengzhou, the Protestant liang hui held a competition soliciting sinicized sermon manuscripts, and reportedly received 461 submissions (Zhengzhou ERA Bureau, July 9, 2024).[2] Sinicized sermons have covered themes such as "taking dedication to work as a sacrifice" and "being a patriotic Muslim" (China Islamic Steering Committee, 2021; The Protestant Church in China, July 1). [3] For these religious leaders, contests provided an incentive for alignment, but they also serve the CCP's goal of bringing ideology into churches. The Party-state's tactics of identifying, cultivating, and co-opting willing religious leaders to advance its "saturation" of religion mirrors its work in overseas united front operations (China Brief, February 11).
'Saturation' Demands Grassroots and Technical Surveillance
Governing religion through "saturation" creates ideological norms that must then be upheld by religious followers. In Pengxi county, located in Sichuan province, cadre inspections include "heart-to-heart talks" and soliciting opinions before meetings. This is an attempt to increase "ideological contact", and forces Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists to embrace ideology or be marked as anti-CCP elements (Pengxi County UFWD, July 28, 2023). Sending cadres into religious sites serves as a tool for monitoring religion and identifying the people, ideas, and value systems that threaten the Party's interests. The experience of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), where indicators of religious extremism came to be defined so expansively as to include growing a beard or maintaining foreign contacts, shows how Party narratives shape what is tolerated and what is seen as religious fanaticism (United Nations, August 31, 2022).
The Party-state uses grassroots means to identify areas of interest and concentrate its monitoring efforts. In Jincheng, Shanxi province, the municipal united front work report discussed "targeted surveys and assessments covering villages with concentrated religious populations" and "foreign religious influences," seeking to "fortify defenses against religious infiltration and expansion in key sectors and regarding specific religious groups" by "firmly grasping the city's religious data" (Taixing Daily, February 28, 2022). In a sub-district of Wuxi City, "grid staff" must conduct inspections of religious sites daily and maintain a registration ledger of religious leaders (Wuxi ERA Bureau, January 21). A local government in Anhui province also made reference to inspections by "grid staff" and "work ledgers," where this refers to a report on investigative findings (Suncun Township Government, June 3, 2020).
The same inspection and monitoring tactics are used to identify "underground" religious sites. In advance of the 100th anniversary of the CCP's founding in 2021, a local government in Huoqiu county, Anhui province, distributed an internal directive to villages and local bureaus. Party branches were ordered to inspect village units, shops, supermarkets, and hotels to identify unauthorized gathering points, including home-based gatherings (Wulong Town Party Committee and Government Office, 2021). The document names "core members" of "underground" churches that had previously been broken up, both as subjects for long-term monitoring and nodes within continuous investigations to ensure that their organizations do not return. At least during this "Large-Scale Inspection and Rectification Campaign", village Party officials were to "provide renewed education and guidance" for these "core members."
Religion-specific indicators are used to determine threats, reinforcing the Party's desire to "saturate" and co-opt religious groups. According to a work plan released by Shiti town, located in Dazhou, Sichuan province, the threats emerging from different religions vary, but all must be "checked and changed" (Dazhou District People's Government, September 22, 2018). Buddhists and Taoists are identified as constructing unauthorized temples and statues; the supposed threats in Christianity come from private gatherings, self-appointed preachers, and foreign influence; and for Islam, the Party is concerned by the appointment of imams from the northwest, foreign missions, and illegal classes (Dazhou District People's Government, September 22, 2018). These issues are seen as threats because they reflect religion taking on a form that the Party feels is beyond its control. "Saturation" is a way to re-center ideology and Chinese identity.
The Party-state turns to technical surveillance to reinforce cadre inspections. In 2022, Zhejiang province's "religious intelligent patrol" used real-time monitoring and early warning to identify three instances of illegal missionary activities, 11 illegal Buddhist events, three illegal renovations, and 49 cases of minors entering religious places (Daishan County Government Office, August 23, 2022). A document from Nantong, a city in Jiangsu province, shows that video surveillance is ubiquitous, with 534 surveillance cameras outfitted to the city's 178 religious sites. All video is fed to the county's "governance command center" that has supposedly "achieved full coverage of site monitoring and no blind spots" (ERA Commission of Jiangsu Province, April 25, 2025). Local Public Security Bureaus in Zhejiang also used the social media app Douyin to identify illegal Christian private gatherings (Daishan County Government Office, August 23, 2022).
Local governments rely on technical platforms built by the private sector. Baotou Pasis Network Technology, for instance, offers a "smart religion management system" that integrates and analyzes data such as personnel, activities, and finances, in part with assistance from artificial intelligence (Pasis, accessed October 4). [4] There are also mobile applications intended to facilitate ERA work, as have emerged across departments in the PRC in recent years (China Brief, April 28). One, which is offered on Apple's App Store, is meant to support inspections and assessments (Apple App Store, accessed October 4). Other companies offer similar products. In 2024, Jiangsu Cable Data Network won a bid to provide a digitalized platform for the Jiangsu government, writing in the press release that the project would "actively publicize relevant policies, regulations, and socialist core values through audio and video systems and terminals, and promote the implementation of religious sinicization" (Jiangsu Cable Data Network, April 24, 2024).
* * *
Figure 1: AI-enabled video monitoring service advertised by Pasis
* * *
Conclusion
The CCP describes the threat it faces from unmitigated religious practice, in part, as foreign "infiltration", with sinicization as the response. It is difficult to understand sending cadres into religious sites, shaping sermon rhetoric, cultivating ideology, and other aspects of religious "saturation" as anything other than the "infiltration" of religion by the Party itself. By acting against religious groups in much the same way that it describes the threat, the Party expresses its view that religion offers rival value systems and organizations that cannot remain independent. Zero-sum framing, such as Xu Xiaohong's statement that without sinicization "one more Christian is one fewer Chinese," only underscores this perspective.
* * *
Jonah Reisboard is an editorial assistant at the Jamestown Foundation. His research focuses on foreign influence and corporate engagement in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. He received his BA from the University of Richmond and is pursuing an MA in Asian Studies at George Washington University.
* * *
Original text here: https://jamestown.org/the-ccp-saturates-religion-with-socialist-values/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Hudson Institute Issues Commentary: Why Losing a Taiwan War Might Not Break China
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary to National Interest:
* * *
Oct 15, 2026
National Interest
Why Losing a Taiwan War Might Not Break China
The Yuan dynasty felt secure enough to invade Japan--and suffer catastrophic losses--because its position on the Eurasian landmass was secure. Is China's today?
Ken Moriyasu
Many Western analysts believe that a failed Taiwan operation could threaten Communist rule in China and that Chinese Communist Party General Secretary ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary to National Interest: * * * Oct 15, 2026 National Interest Why Losing a Taiwan War Might Not Break China The Yuan dynasty felt secure enough to invade Japan--and suffer catastrophic losses--because its position on the Eurasian landmass was secure. Is China's today? Ken Moriyasu Many Western analysts believe that a failed Taiwan operation could threaten Communist rule in China and that Chinese Communist Party General SecretaryXi Jinping therefore would not risk everything on such a high-stakes gamble. This hypothesis may or may not be true. But China's own imperial history suggests another possibility. Over seven centuries ago, Kublai Khan, Great Khan of the Mongols and emperor of China's Yuan Dynasty, launched two massive amphibious invasions of Japan. Both ended in failure. Yet Kublai remained on the throne, and the Yuan Dynasty survived for nearly another century. Why? Because the defeat at sea did not destroy the Yuan's continental foundations of power.
Today, the People's Republic of China under Xi has approached its near-environs in Eurasia and the Pacific with a strikingly similar logic. That Xi hopes to bolster China's power in the Pacific is hardly a secret. Yet under an increasingly continental conception of strategy, Beijing is also building sources of power that extend far into the Asian landmass. The United States and its allies need to grasp this continental dimension of Chinese power, so as not to overlook the larger strategic system that could allow Beijing to take risks at sea.
The Mongol Empire was first forged on the high steppe under Genghis Khan, and consolidated in China under his grandson Kublai Khan. Kublai ruled China as emperor of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), establishing his capital in present-day Beijing. It was under the Yuan that the far-flung regions of Tibet and Yunnan were brought under Chinese rule. At the same time, the Yuan Emperor, as Great Khan, claimed nominal supremacy over the other Mongol khanates ruled by members of his extended family: the Golden Horde in what is now southern Russia, the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, and the Ilkhanate centered on Iran. Together with tributary and vassal relationships extending into Korea and parts of Southeast Asia, this gave the Yuan court a political horizon that stretched far beyond China proper, deep into the Eurasian continent.
The Han-led Ming Dynasty, which succeeded the Yuan in 1368, cast the Mongols as barbarians and rhetorically distanced itself from their rule. Yet in strategic practice, the continental focus the Yuan brought to Chinese foreign relations endured. Yongle, the Ming's third emperor, repeatedly led armies deep into Mongolia, competing with the descendants of Genghis Khan to shape the balance of power across the Eurasian steppe.
Modern China's behavior echoes this continental strategic logic. Like the Ming, the rhetoric of Xi's China has hedged towards a promotion of Han nationalism. However, like the Yuan before it, the modern Chinese state has devoted enormous resources to securing its land frontiers, strengthening political and economic ties across Central Asia, and building infrastructure that binds China more closely to the Eurasian interior. In both the medieval and modern cases, security on the Asian continent provides the strategic depth that allows the Chinese state to devote greater attention and resources to its maritime periphery.
Divine Winds, Medieval and Modern
In War on the Rocks, we argued that Eurasia, not just the Indo-Pacific, will be crucial to the next phase of Taiwan deterrence. We focused on the trade and energy corridors that China is building across the Eurasian landmass, as well as Beijing's engagement with crucial swing states along those routes. Pipelines and railways traversing the continent are less vulnerable to US maritime power than maritime routes, and could provide China with alternative economic and energy lifelines in a contingency such as a war over Taiwan.
The Belt and Road Initiative's overland component is oriented toward Inner Asia and evokes the Silk Road caravans of the 13th-century Pax Mongolica, when Mongol rule facilitated the movement of merchants, goods, technologies, and ideas across much of Eurasia. Under Kublai, Beijing sat at the eastern end of a vast political and commercial network extending through Mongol-ruled territories far into the continental interior.
Why does this matter for Taiwan? Kublai offers a history lesson.
In the late 13th century, the Yuan launched naval expeditions as far afield as Japan and Java as Kublai sought to extend his authority beyond China's shores. It was the failed invasions of Japan, during which storms devastated the Yuan-led fleets, that gave rise to the Japanese legend of the kamikaze, or "divine wind"--later lending its name to the notorious World War II suicide attacks, but predating them by centuries.
To prepare for the invasions, Kublai mustered thousands of soldiers and sailors for both the 1274 campaign and the far larger second campaign in 1281. Korea supplied much of the fleet for the first invasion, while in 1281 Yuan forces launched a two-pronged assault on southern Japan involving Chinese and Korean ships and troops. Kublai's secure position on the Asian mainland gave him the strategic depth to undertake these expeditions at enormous cost in personnel and materiel.
Logistical difficulties, Japanese resistance, storms, and the inherent limitations of premodern warfare ultimately thwarted Kublai's ambitions against the shogunate. Yet the very fact that he could mount two such expeditions demonstrates both the resources at his command and the importance the Yuan attached to the effort. Despite these military failures, the dynasty survived for nearly another century. Its collapse in the late 14th century was not due to the sorts of major military invasions that had featured in its rise, but rather to popular rebellions that arose from domestic mismanagement.
Ultimately, the Yuan was able to sponsor significant overseas campaigns against Japan and survive their failure because it could absorb the losses without jeopardizing its position at home. It was the preeminent continental power in Eurasia, with no significant rivals capable of threatening its northern Chinese heartland.
Seven centuries later, the Communist Party today has staked much of its political capital on the promise of "reunifying" the Chinese nation, tying that goal to Xi's broader project of national "rejuvenation." Taiwan occupies a far more central place in the Chinese Communist Party's conception of sovereignty and national rejuvenation than Kublai's Japan campaigns, which were about imperial expansion. A defeat over Taiwan would therefore carry political stakes far greater than those of Kublai's failures.
Yet extraordinary shocks do not necessarily produce regime change. The Chinese Communist Party has already survived civil war, world war, the Cultural Revolution, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. It should not be assumed that a failed Taiwan operation would automatically trigger regime collapse in China.
Disrupting the "Khanate" in Inner Asia
Modern China differs from Mongol China in another way. Unlike the Yuan Dynasty, which sat at the center of a broader political order across Eurasia, today's China must actively compete with the United States and other powers for influence across the continent. While we offer a broader set of recommendations for strengthening that competition in our War on the Rocks piece, here we propose a narrower set of administrative changes within the US government. The objective is to place Central Asia at the heart of America's China strategy.
Our first recommendation is to move military responsibility for the five Central Asian republics--Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan--from the US Central Command (CENTCOM) to the newly renamed US Pacific Command (USPACOM). All five currently fall under CENTCOM, lumped in with the greater Middle East from Egypt to Pakistan. It is time to stop viewing Central Asia primarily through the legacy of US operations in Afghanistan and instead see the region through the prism of long-term strategic competition with China. Making the USPACOM commander responsible for Central Asia would integrate the region into planning for Pacific contingencies and encourage planners to consider how developments along China's continental periphery could affect Beijing's calculations over Taiwan.
Second, the undersecretary of defense for policy should shift responsibility for the five Central Asian republics to the assistant secretary for Indo-Pacific security affairs--and establish a dedicated office for Central Asia and Mongolia, headed by a deputy assistant secretary for Inner Asian affairs. A new Inner Asia office would consolidate expertise and give the region an institutional advocate able to assess Central Asia not simply as an adjunct to other theaters, but as a strategic arena in its own right.
Third, the same logic should extend to the State Department and Congress. At State, Central Asia should be severed from the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs and brought into the bureau responsible for East Asia and the Pacific, aligning the diplomatic and defense bureaucracies around the same strategic geography. Congress should similarly pair Central Asia with East Asia and the Pacific rather than South Asia. Washington needs to adapt to the geopolitical reality that Central Asia is no longer primarily an adjunct to stabilizing Afghanistan, and is strategically distinct from the maritime-oriented Indian subcontinent: it is increasingly part of the China challenge, and must be treated accordingly.
If the United States wants to deter a modern Chinese maritime campaign against Taiwan, it should draw a lesson from medieval China's maritime failures more than 700 years ago. A continental power's willingness to accept risk at sea depends on the security and resilience it enjoys on land. If Beijing does not like what it sees in the west--courtesy of thoughtful and well-executed US policy planning--it may have second thoughts about moving east.
Read in National Interest (https://nationalinterest.org/blog/silk-road-rivalries/why-losing-a-taiwan-war-might-not-break-china).
* * *
Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/why-losing-taiwan-war-might-not-break-china-ken-moriyasu
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Oct 15, 2026
National Interest
Why Losing a Taiwan War Might Not Break China
The Yuan dynasty felt secure enough to invade Japan--and suffer catastrophic losses--because its position on the Eurasian landmass was secure. Is China's today?
Ken Moriyasu
Many Western analysts believe that a failed Taiwan operation could threaten Communist rule in China and that Chinese Communist Party General Secretary ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary to National Interest: * * * Oct 15, 2026 National Interest Why Losing a Taiwan War Might Not Break China The Yuan dynasty felt secure enough to invade Japan--and suffer catastrophic losses--because its position on the Eurasian landmass was secure. Is China's today? Ken Moriyasu Many Western analysts believe that a failed Taiwan operation could threaten Communist rule in China and that Chinese Communist Party General SecretaryXi Jinping therefore would not risk everything on such a high-stakes gamble. This hypothesis may or may not be true. But China's own imperial history suggests another possibility. Over seven centuries ago, Kublai Khan, Great Khan of the Mongols and emperor of China's Yuan Dynasty, launched two massive amphibious invasions of Japan. Both ended in failure. Yet Kublai remained on the throne, and the Yuan Dynasty survived for nearly another century. Why? Because the defeat at sea did not destroy the Yuan's continental foundations of power.
Today, the People's Republic of China under Xi has approached its near-environs in Eurasia and the Pacific with a strikingly similar logic. That Xi hopes to bolster China's power in the Pacific is hardly a secret. Yet under an increasingly continental conception of strategy, Beijing is also building sources of power that extend far into the Asian landmass. The United States and its allies need to grasp this continental dimension of Chinese power, so as not to overlook the larger strategic system that could allow Beijing to take risks at sea.
The Mongol Empire was first forged on the high steppe under Genghis Khan, and consolidated in China under his grandson Kublai Khan. Kublai ruled China as emperor of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), establishing his capital in present-day Beijing. It was under the Yuan that the far-flung regions of Tibet and Yunnan were brought under Chinese rule. At the same time, the Yuan Emperor, as Great Khan, claimed nominal supremacy over the other Mongol khanates ruled by members of his extended family: the Golden Horde in what is now southern Russia, the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, and the Ilkhanate centered on Iran. Together with tributary and vassal relationships extending into Korea and parts of Southeast Asia, this gave the Yuan court a political horizon that stretched far beyond China proper, deep into the Eurasian continent.
The Han-led Ming Dynasty, which succeeded the Yuan in 1368, cast the Mongols as barbarians and rhetorically distanced itself from their rule. Yet in strategic practice, the continental focus the Yuan brought to Chinese foreign relations endured. Yongle, the Ming's third emperor, repeatedly led armies deep into Mongolia, competing with the descendants of Genghis Khan to shape the balance of power across the Eurasian steppe.
Modern China's behavior echoes this continental strategic logic. Like the Ming, the rhetoric of Xi's China has hedged towards a promotion of Han nationalism. However, like the Yuan before it, the modern Chinese state has devoted enormous resources to securing its land frontiers, strengthening political and economic ties across Central Asia, and building infrastructure that binds China more closely to the Eurasian interior. In both the medieval and modern cases, security on the Asian continent provides the strategic depth that allows the Chinese state to devote greater attention and resources to its maritime periphery.
Divine Winds, Medieval and Modern
In War on the Rocks, we argued that Eurasia, not just the Indo-Pacific, will be crucial to the next phase of Taiwan deterrence. We focused on the trade and energy corridors that China is building across the Eurasian landmass, as well as Beijing's engagement with crucial swing states along those routes. Pipelines and railways traversing the continent are less vulnerable to US maritime power than maritime routes, and could provide China with alternative economic and energy lifelines in a contingency such as a war over Taiwan.
The Belt and Road Initiative's overland component is oriented toward Inner Asia and evokes the Silk Road caravans of the 13th-century Pax Mongolica, when Mongol rule facilitated the movement of merchants, goods, technologies, and ideas across much of Eurasia. Under Kublai, Beijing sat at the eastern end of a vast political and commercial network extending through Mongol-ruled territories far into the continental interior.
Why does this matter for Taiwan? Kublai offers a history lesson.
In the late 13th century, the Yuan launched naval expeditions as far afield as Japan and Java as Kublai sought to extend his authority beyond China's shores. It was the failed invasions of Japan, during which storms devastated the Yuan-led fleets, that gave rise to the Japanese legend of the kamikaze, or "divine wind"--later lending its name to the notorious World War II suicide attacks, but predating them by centuries.
To prepare for the invasions, Kublai mustered thousands of soldiers and sailors for both the 1274 campaign and the far larger second campaign in 1281. Korea supplied much of the fleet for the first invasion, while in 1281 Yuan forces launched a two-pronged assault on southern Japan involving Chinese and Korean ships and troops. Kublai's secure position on the Asian mainland gave him the strategic depth to undertake these expeditions at enormous cost in personnel and materiel.
Logistical difficulties, Japanese resistance, storms, and the inherent limitations of premodern warfare ultimately thwarted Kublai's ambitions against the shogunate. Yet the very fact that he could mount two such expeditions demonstrates both the resources at his command and the importance the Yuan attached to the effort. Despite these military failures, the dynasty survived for nearly another century. Its collapse in the late 14th century was not due to the sorts of major military invasions that had featured in its rise, but rather to popular rebellions that arose from domestic mismanagement.
Ultimately, the Yuan was able to sponsor significant overseas campaigns against Japan and survive their failure because it could absorb the losses without jeopardizing its position at home. It was the preeminent continental power in Eurasia, with no significant rivals capable of threatening its northern Chinese heartland.
Seven centuries later, the Communist Party today has staked much of its political capital on the promise of "reunifying" the Chinese nation, tying that goal to Xi's broader project of national "rejuvenation." Taiwan occupies a far more central place in the Chinese Communist Party's conception of sovereignty and national rejuvenation than Kublai's Japan campaigns, which were about imperial expansion. A defeat over Taiwan would therefore carry political stakes far greater than those of Kublai's failures.
Yet extraordinary shocks do not necessarily produce regime change. The Chinese Communist Party has already survived civil war, world war, the Cultural Revolution, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. It should not be assumed that a failed Taiwan operation would automatically trigger regime collapse in China.
Disrupting the "Khanate" in Inner Asia
Modern China differs from Mongol China in another way. Unlike the Yuan Dynasty, which sat at the center of a broader political order across Eurasia, today's China must actively compete with the United States and other powers for influence across the continent. While we offer a broader set of recommendations for strengthening that competition in our War on the Rocks piece, here we propose a narrower set of administrative changes within the US government. The objective is to place Central Asia at the heart of America's China strategy.
Our first recommendation is to move military responsibility for the five Central Asian republics--Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan--from the US Central Command (CENTCOM) to the newly renamed US Pacific Command (USPACOM). All five currently fall under CENTCOM, lumped in with the greater Middle East from Egypt to Pakistan. It is time to stop viewing Central Asia primarily through the legacy of US operations in Afghanistan and instead see the region through the prism of long-term strategic competition with China. Making the USPACOM commander responsible for Central Asia would integrate the region into planning for Pacific contingencies and encourage planners to consider how developments along China's continental periphery could affect Beijing's calculations over Taiwan.
Second, the undersecretary of defense for policy should shift responsibility for the five Central Asian republics to the assistant secretary for Indo-Pacific security affairs--and establish a dedicated office for Central Asia and Mongolia, headed by a deputy assistant secretary for Inner Asian affairs. A new Inner Asia office would consolidate expertise and give the region an institutional advocate able to assess Central Asia not simply as an adjunct to other theaters, but as a strategic arena in its own right.
Third, the same logic should extend to the State Department and Congress. At State, Central Asia should be severed from the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs and brought into the bureau responsible for East Asia and the Pacific, aligning the diplomatic and defense bureaucracies around the same strategic geography. Congress should similarly pair Central Asia with East Asia and the Pacific rather than South Asia. Washington needs to adapt to the geopolitical reality that Central Asia is no longer primarily an adjunct to stabilizing Afghanistan, and is strategically distinct from the maritime-oriented Indian subcontinent: it is increasingly part of the China challenge, and must be treated accordingly.
If the United States wants to deter a modern Chinese maritime campaign against Taiwan, it should draw a lesson from medieval China's maritime failures more than 700 years ago. A continental power's willingness to accept risk at sea depends on the security and resilience it enjoys on land. If Beijing does not like what it sees in the west--courtesy of thoughtful and well-executed US policy planning--it may have second thoughts about moving east.
Read in National Interest (https://nationalinterest.org/blog/silk-road-rivalries/why-losing-a-taiwan-war-might-not-break-china).
* * *
Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/why-losing-taiwan-war-might-not-break-china-ken-moriyasu
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Commentary: Could Russia Be Poised to Use an On-Orbit Weapon Against a Commercial Satellite?
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary:
* * *
Could Russia Be Poised to Use an On-Orbit Weapon Against a Commercial Satellite?
Commentary by Clayton Swope and Chantal Li
October 15, 2026
As of October 15, 2026, based on commercial space situational awareness data, a Russian satellite called Cosmos 2612 is on a trajectory that will bring it into very close proximity to a U.S.-registered commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite. The satellite, which supports Ukraine, is operated by ICEYE, a company founded in Finland. ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary: * * * Could Russia Be Poised to Use an On-Orbit Weapon Against a Commercial Satellite? Commentary by Clayton Swope and Chantal Li October 15, 2026 As of October 15, 2026, based on commercial space situational awareness data, a Russian satellite called Cosmos 2612 is on a trajectory that will bring it into very close proximity to a U.S.-registered commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite. The satellite, which supports Ukraine, is operated by ICEYE, a company founded in Finland.Given Russia's history of testing on-orbit weapons, policymakers should assume Cosmos 2612 could take an action that threatens the commercial satellite. But the risk extends beyond just one satellite. A Russian counterspace activity in the vicinity of Western satellites should be assessed within the context of aggressive Russian gray zone activities targeting U.S. and European interests. To date, neither the United States nor Europe has been able to deter Russia from expanding the scope and frequency of these gray zone actions. As Russia appears poised to increase hostile actions in outer space to test Western resolve, the United States and Europe should decide how they would respond to a hostile act in space and make that response clear.
In April 2026, Russia launched six satellites, Cosmos 2609 through Cosmos 2614, into low Earth orbit (LEO). A month later, five of the satellites executed high-energy maneuvers that raised their inclinations to match the orbital plane of the ICEYE satellite. These moves were unusual because satellites in LEO typically avoid plane-change maneuvers as they require a large amount of fuel. Several of these Cosmos satellites came near the commercial satellite in May 2026, with Cosmos 2609 getting closest on May 26, at just 2.5 kilometers away. However, none of the Cosmos satellites maneuvered during this period to stay plane-matched (or coplanar) with the ICEYE satellite, so their orbital planes slowly diverged. Then, over two weeks beginning on September 30, 2026, Cosmos 2612 executed a series of new maneuvers that brought it back into coplanar alignment and placed it at nearly the same altitude as the commercial satellite.
Russia has previously tested releasing objects from satellites in orbit, which one senior U.S. official described in 2017 as a nesting doll, and said it "exhibited characteristics of a weapon system." In July 2020, Cosmos 2543 released an object that traveled at up to 186 meters per second relative to the satellite. Both the United States and United Kingdom subsequently issued public condemnations of the test, noting that it had the hallmarks of a counterspace weapon. In 2026, the commander of U.S. Space Command said it was "evident" that Russia was deploying a "space weapon" with Cosmos 2558. Although none of these tests occurred near non-Russian satellites, over the last several years, Russia has maneuvered satellites into coplanar orbits with respect to U.S. government and commercial satellites, raising concerns from U.S. officials.
Maneuvering a satellite in LEO into a coplanar orbit is unusual because it requires a large expenditure of fuel--a limited resource on a satellite--and is not part of the standard mission profile for most satellite missions, including broadband and remote sensing. A satellite in an orbit coplanar to another satellite is positioned to quickly move, with little additional fuel expenditure, into place for conducting close-proximity operations. Close-proximity operations could have a benign purpose, such as satellite servicing or debris removal, but might also presage the deployment of a kinetic or non-kinetic counterspace weapon or a hostile grappling operation. The concern arises, then, that a potentially hostile satellite could project kinetic or non-kinetic energy on a target satellite. A Russian satellite conducting plane-matching maneuvers with a Western satellite is, thus, justifiably raising significant alarm. The West needs a unified approach toward deterring this specific type of behavior: Russia maneuvering its satellites into plane-matched orbits, possibly paired with a standoff distance, with non-Russian satellites in LEO. The United States and Europe certainly also want to deter Russian use or testing of on-orbit kinetic weapons near their satellites.
Over the last several years, Russia has deployed increasingly aggressive hybrid warfare against U.S. and European interests. Russia has conducted cyberattacks, interfered with satellite navigation signals, and planned sabotage operations, including against undersea cables, space infrastructure on Earth, and a German airport, using a drone. The frequency of these attacks is also increasing. Using a counterspace weapon against a Western satellite may fit this pattern. Additionally, Russia has said it might consider commercial satellites supporting Ukraine to be legitimate military targets.
The United States and its allies should expeditiously consider several questions. How can the United States and its partners deter Russia from testing or using any type of counterspace capability near a U.S. or friendly satellite? While Russian satellites have conducted such activities near other Russian satellites, no public information indicates they have done so near non-Russian satellites. If Russia does conduct counterspace operations near a U.S.-registered commercial satellite, what should be the U.S. and allied response? Possible responses include canceling the recent diesel deal between the United States and Russia and cracking down on Russian shadow fleet operations. The United States and its partners should also consider the implications of more widespread Russian coplanar activities in LEO near U.S. and allied satellites.
No one should assume to know what Russia will do next with Cosmos 2612, but the potential for a threat is there. Washington and its allies may think that hostile actions targeting a Western satellite would be highly escalatory--but Moscow may be willing to take that risk, believing the West will not respond forcefully. Russia may see little risk of escalation, a belief that is reflected across Russian actions in Europe. The United States and Europe must respond assertively if Russia makes a hostile act against another nation's satellite. A muted Western response would signal to Moscow that it can continue to expand the envelope of its gray zone actions with little risk of escalation, with reverberations well beyond outer space.
* * *
Clayton Swope is the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Chantal Li is a research assistant with the Aerospace Security Project at CSIS.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/could-russia-be-poised-use-orbit-weapon-against-commercial-satellite
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Could Russia Be Poised to Use an On-Orbit Weapon Against a Commercial Satellite?
Commentary by Clayton Swope and Chantal Li
October 15, 2026
As of October 15, 2026, based on commercial space situational awareness data, a Russian satellite called Cosmos 2612 is on a trajectory that will bring it into very close proximity to a U.S.-registered commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite. The satellite, which supports Ukraine, is operated by ICEYE, a company founded in Finland. ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary: * * * Could Russia Be Poised to Use an On-Orbit Weapon Against a Commercial Satellite? Commentary by Clayton Swope and Chantal Li October 15, 2026 As of October 15, 2026, based on commercial space situational awareness data, a Russian satellite called Cosmos 2612 is on a trajectory that will bring it into very close proximity to a U.S.-registered commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite. The satellite, which supports Ukraine, is operated by ICEYE, a company founded in Finland.Given Russia's history of testing on-orbit weapons, policymakers should assume Cosmos 2612 could take an action that threatens the commercial satellite. But the risk extends beyond just one satellite. A Russian counterspace activity in the vicinity of Western satellites should be assessed within the context of aggressive Russian gray zone activities targeting U.S. and European interests. To date, neither the United States nor Europe has been able to deter Russia from expanding the scope and frequency of these gray zone actions. As Russia appears poised to increase hostile actions in outer space to test Western resolve, the United States and Europe should decide how they would respond to a hostile act in space and make that response clear.
In April 2026, Russia launched six satellites, Cosmos 2609 through Cosmos 2614, into low Earth orbit (LEO). A month later, five of the satellites executed high-energy maneuvers that raised their inclinations to match the orbital plane of the ICEYE satellite. These moves were unusual because satellites in LEO typically avoid plane-change maneuvers as they require a large amount of fuel. Several of these Cosmos satellites came near the commercial satellite in May 2026, with Cosmos 2609 getting closest on May 26, at just 2.5 kilometers away. However, none of the Cosmos satellites maneuvered during this period to stay plane-matched (or coplanar) with the ICEYE satellite, so their orbital planes slowly diverged. Then, over two weeks beginning on September 30, 2026, Cosmos 2612 executed a series of new maneuvers that brought it back into coplanar alignment and placed it at nearly the same altitude as the commercial satellite.
Russia has previously tested releasing objects from satellites in orbit, which one senior U.S. official described in 2017 as a nesting doll, and said it "exhibited characteristics of a weapon system." In July 2020, Cosmos 2543 released an object that traveled at up to 186 meters per second relative to the satellite. Both the United States and United Kingdom subsequently issued public condemnations of the test, noting that it had the hallmarks of a counterspace weapon. In 2026, the commander of U.S. Space Command said it was "evident" that Russia was deploying a "space weapon" with Cosmos 2558. Although none of these tests occurred near non-Russian satellites, over the last several years, Russia has maneuvered satellites into coplanar orbits with respect to U.S. government and commercial satellites, raising concerns from U.S. officials.
Maneuvering a satellite in LEO into a coplanar orbit is unusual because it requires a large expenditure of fuel--a limited resource on a satellite--and is not part of the standard mission profile for most satellite missions, including broadband and remote sensing. A satellite in an orbit coplanar to another satellite is positioned to quickly move, with little additional fuel expenditure, into place for conducting close-proximity operations. Close-proximity operations could have a benign purpose, such as satellite servicing or debris removal, but might also presage the deployment of a kinetic or non-kinetic counterspace weapon or a hostile grappling operation. The concern arises, then, that a potentially hostile satellite could project kinetic or non-kinetic energy on a target satellite. A Russian satellite conducting plane-matching maneuvers with a Western satellite is, thus, justifiably raising significant alarm. The West needs a unified approach toward deterring this specific type of behavior: Russia maneuvering its satellites into plane-matched orbits, possibly paired with a standoff distance, with non-Russian satellites in LEO. The United States and Europe certainly also want to deter Russian use or testing of on-orbit kinetic weapons near their satellites.
Over the last several years, Russia has deployed increasingly aggressive hybrid warfare against U.S. and European interests. Russia has conducted cyberattacks, interfered with satellite navigation signals, and planned sabotage operations, including against undersea cables, space infrastructure on Earth, and a German airport, using a drone. The frequency of these attacks is also increasing. Using a counterspace weapon against a Western satellite may fit this pattern. Additionally, Russia has said it might consider commercial satellites supporting Ukraine to be legitimate military targets.
The United States and its allies should expeditiously consider several questions. How can the United States and its partners deter Russia from testing or using any type of counterspace capability near a U.S. or friendly satellite? While Russian satellites have conducted such activities near other Russian satellites, no public information indicates they have done so near non-Russian satellites. If Russia does conduct counterspace operations near a U.S.-registered commercial satellite, what should be the U.S. and allied response? Possible responses include canceling the recent diesel deal between the United States and Russia and cracking down on Russian shadow fleet operations. The United States and its partners should also consider the implications of more widespread Russian coplanar activities in LEO near U.S. and allied satellites.
No one should assume to know what Russia will do next with Cosmos 2612, but the potential for a threat is there. Washington and its allies may think that hostile actions targeting a Western satellite would be highly escalatory--but Moscow may be willing to take that risk, believing the West will not respond forcefully. Russia may see little risk of escalation, a belief that is reflected across Russian actions in Europe. The United States and Europe must respond assertively if Russia makes a hostile act against another nation's satellite. A muted Western response would signal to Moscow that it can continue to expand the envelope of its gray zone actions with little risk of escalation, with reverberations well beyond outer space.
* * *
Clayton Swope is the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Chantal Li is a research assistant with the Aerospace Security Project at CSIS.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/could-russia-be-poised-use-orbit-weapon-against-commercial-satellite
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Commentary: 'Bunker Busters' - Deep Targets, Shallow Stocks
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary:
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"Bunker Busters": Deep Targets, Shallow Stocks
Commentary by Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park
October 15, 2026
"Bunker busters" is the nickname given to a class of weapons designed to attack what the Department of Defense (DOD) calls "hard and deeply buried targets" (HDBTs). These targets are typically an adversary's most valuable assets. Although such targets have historically been relatively few, their numbers are increasing as countries and nonstate actors seek protection against ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary: * * * "Bunker Busters": Deep Targets, Shallow Stocks Commentary by Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park October 15, 2026 "Bunker busters" is the nickname given to a class of weapons designed to attack what the Department of Defense (DOD) calls "hard and deeply buried targets" (HDBTs). These targets are typically an adversary's most valuable assets. Although such targets have historically been relatively few, their numbers are increasing as countries and nonstate actors seek protection againstU.S. precision weaponry. The United States has developed a range of weapons to attack these targets, but their large numbers and increasing hardness will require a greater U.S. effort.
The U.S. bunker buster inventory today contains three types of weapons to cover different situations. All, except the B83-1 and B61-11, can use precision guidance to hit their target. The appendix has details on each of these weapons.
* Bombs: Most currently available bunker busters are air-dropped bombs (bomb live units, or BLUs) that can be fitted with laser or GPS guidance kits to be configured as guided bomb units (GBUs). Compared with regular bombs, bunker busters have a much heavier casing and smaller explosive charges.
* Standoff munitions: Variants of existing systems with enhanced penetrating capability were made during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Only the Navy's system (JSOW-C) remains in the inventory today.
* Nuclear weapons: Because there are targets that even specially designed conventional munitions cannot destroy, nuclear weapons are also an option.
[View table in the link at bottom.]
Weapons to destroy hardened targets have a long history. During World War I, the German Army had "Big Bertha," a 17 in howitzer firing 2,000 lb projectiles and designed to pry open Belgian forts. During World War II, the British developed the Grand Slam bomb to strike underground structures and German U-boat pens in France.
Militaries with nuclear weapons built underground facilities during the Cold War to conceal and protect their operations from a nuclear attack. A major change came with the advent of precision-guided conventional munitions and their subsequent widespread adoption in U.S. warfighting, as shown in Table 2. This made many more targets vulnerable, spurring the rapid growth of HDBTs as countries and nonstate actors sought to protect key military assets. The People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, for example, built networks of tunnels--referred to as the "Underground Great Wall"--to protect its, until recently, limited arsenal of nuclear weapons and ensure second strike capability against other nuclear powers. Many of North Korea's nuclear and missile facilities were built underground. Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other adversaries during the counterterrorism campaign also took to hiding in underground bunkers or caves.
* * *
Table 2: Precision-Guided Munitions Used in U.S. and Coalition Military Operations
* * *
As the Trump administration considers its next steps in the Iran campaign, many hardened military targets remain. Continuing Iranian missile launches appear to confirm reports that some underground missile and drone storage facilities have survived, particularly in the reported 33 underground missile bases adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz.
The United States has used large numbers of 2,000 lb and 5,000 lb bunker busters to attack Iran's extensive underground nuclear facilities and other protected military infrastructure. Israel, too, has used large numbers of these U.S.-made munitions in its wars since Hamas's October 7 attack. Hamas's estimated 310 miles of tunnels--about six times the underground length of the Washington Metro--enabled its surprise attack on October 7, 2023, and helped the group survive Israeli air and ground attacks. Nevertheless, the United States retains a large inventory of 2,000 lb bunker buster munitions. Inventory stress may occur with the largest munitions (5,000 lb), which would be needed for the surviving and likely most hardened targets.
Further, existing U.S. weapons may be insufficient to reach the most hardened and deeply buried facilities. Among Iranian nuclear sites, analysts have identified Pickaxe Mountain to be even deeper underground and likely beyond the reach of even the most powerful conventional munitions, compared to other facilities at Isfahan and Natanz. Construction at Pickaxe Mountain is ongoing, so the facility may not be ready. It is nevertheless a part of Iran's nuclear program, and eliminating it would be necessary to fully meet President Trump's goal of preventing the regime from ever having a nuclear weapon.
Out of the Shadows, Into the Mainstream
What were once niche weapons for use against a limited set of targets are now in great demand. The proposed FY 2027 defense budget reflects the demand for weapons against HDBTs, requesting $429 million for conventional bunker buster weapons--up from an average of $123 million (in FY 2027 dollars) in the previous 10 fiscal years. The previous spike in FY 2019 reflects the high demand to defeat the Islamic State.
* * *
Figure 1: Procurement Spending for Conventional Bunker Busters
* * *
A limitation is that current bunker busters are nearly all bombs because of the weight needed for heavy casings and explosive power. Delivery aircraft must fly over the target, requiring at least local air superiority. That has been feasible in recent conflicts, but it will not always be achievable, for example, in a potential conflict with China. A standoff munition would be highly desirable to reduce risk to the aircraft and expand the number of targets that could be reached.
The demand for weapons against HDBTs will continue to grow because, as colleague Eliot Cohen put it, there has been a "revolution in tunneling affairs." U.S. adversaries are digging deeper and more extensively to protect themselves from U.S. precision weapons. These military facilities will be both more numerous and harder to reach than in the recent past. Thus, the United States needs bunker busters that can address two target sets. One is the large number of tunnels and other moderately difficult targets, which require volume. The other is a much smaller but more difficult target set of facilities inside mountains. Here, numbers matter less; the key capability is depth of penetration.
Appendix: Types of Bunker Busters
This appendix describes each of the munitions listed in Table 1, dividing them into three categories: bombs, standoff munitions, and nuclear weapons. It provides a broad view of U.S. capabilities and limitations.
Bombs
Bomb live units (BLUs) are free-fall ordnance that can be fitted with guidance kits to become Guided bomb units (GBUs). They are listed here by size and date of production. It is important to note the size differences. The GBU-43B, "Mother of all Bombs," is 60 times the size of the BLU-140.
* BLU-140: This 500 lb bomb retains the shape of the Mk 82 500 lb general purpose bomb but has an external casing designed for penetration. The bomb's relatively small size allows more to be loaded on aircraft, and thus more targets can be struck per sortie. It can be fitted with the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance system.
* BLU-109: This 2,000 lb bomb can be precisely delivered when fitted with the Paveway laser-guided system or JDAM and reportedly can break through six feet of reinforced concrete. It . Compared with the standard 2,000 lb bomb used by U.S. forces, the Mk 84, it has a thicker steel case and a smaller explosive charge (approximately 500 lb versus 945 lb). The bomb has been widely used since its introduction in the 1980s. Recent operational uses include the Israeli Air Force strike against Hassan Nasrallah's compound in Lebanon and U.S. operations during Operation Epic Fury. Nevertheless, a sizable inventory remains due to large procurement over decades.
* BLU-116/BLU-121: During the counterterrorism campaigns, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency procured variants of 2,000 lb bombs. BLU-116 had more than twice the penetration capability of the BLU-109. The Navy received 580 of them in 2005, but likely none remain in the inventory today. Also procured, though in limited numbers, was the BLU-121. It had a thermobaric warhead that could penetrate Taliban tunnels, not just collapse the entrances.
* BLU-137: Also referred to as the Advanced 2,000 lb Penetrator, or A2K, this is the latest variant of the 2,000 lb hard target penetrator bomb. It has "increased reliability and survivability" over the BLU-109 as the United States faced "increasingly hardened targets." Procurement began in FY 2018.
* BLU-113: This 5,000 lb bomb has a 650 lb explosive package and the ability to penetrate over 20 feet of concrete or 100 feet of earth. It was fitted with the Paveway laser-guided system (GBU-27), with later variants adding GPS/INS guidance (GBU-28). In planning for an air campaign against Iraq following the invasion of Kuwait, deeply buried Iraqi command bunkers raised questions of whether the existing BLU-109s would be sufficient. The Air Force crash developed the GBU-28 ahead of Operation Desert Storm--the bomb body, for example, was made from an Army artillery barrel. Only two were used during the First Gulf War due to the limited inventory and rapid conclusion of the war. The BLU-122 improved the bomb's performance.
* BLU-138: Also known as Advanced 5,000 lb Penetrator, or A5K, this bomb has been procured since FY 2023. Compatible with the JDAM guidance kit, it will replace the BLU-113/122 bombs.
* GBU-57/BLU-127: Also known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), this is a 30,000 lb bomb with a 5,700 lb explosive charge. The munition reportedly can penetrate up to 200 ft of unspecified material. Budget documents record a procurement quantity of only 8, but public reports indicate the Air Force took delivery of at least 20. MOPs have had a series of upgrades, driven in part by concerns over their effectiveness against increasingly deep and fortified targets. 14 MOPs were used in the attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities at Fordow and Natanz during Operation Midnight Hammer. The Trump administration subsequently reprogrammed $123 million to replenish the inventory, but it will take several years for the bombs to be delivered. The number of MOPs remaining in the U.S. inventory is estimated to be in the low single digits.
* GBU-43/B: This 21,000 lb munition bears the moniker "The Mother of all Bombs" (MOAB). The picture below shows its massive size. The bomb casing is not designed to penetrate; rather, the casing is thin, and the bomb contains a maximum amount of explosive. That explosive creates massive overpressure that can reach inside caves or, potentially, blow open doors to underground facilities. The bomb is so large that it must be dropped by a cargo plane, usually a C-130. Because of the large effects and potential for collateral damage, the MOAB has been used only once: in 2017, when President Trump ordered a strike against a Taliban cave complex in Afghanistan. The United States built about a dozen of these huge weapons. With one used operationally and perhaps two in testing, around 10 should remain.
Standoff Munitions
During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, each military service developed bunker busters with standoff range by modifying existing missiles to carry penetrating warheads. The Air Force's Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM) with a BLU-116-based warhead retired with other CALCMs in 2019. An Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missile with a Navy reentry and penetrator system was canceled during development.
The Joint Standoff Weapon version C (JSOW-C) is the only standoff munition still in the U.S. inventory designed for use against hardened targets. It has a 500 lb British-developed penetrating warhead with two charges: an initial shaped charge to cut a passage and a following warhead to explode inside the target. It is not a missile, but rather glides, unpowered, 12-70 miles to the target. Range depends on the release altitude--more altitude provides a longer range. The inventory goal was initially set at 7,000. In FY 2015, the Navy reported a low inventory of the missile but ended procurement the following year based on "ongoing investment in related weapons." Several hundred are estimated to remain in U.S. inventory.
Nuclear Weapons
Some targets are too well fortified or deeply buried for conventional munitions to destroy. The United States developed "earth-penetrating weapons"--nuclear variants of bunker buster munitions--for particularly difficult HDBTs. Nuclear blasts generate large ground shock and overpressure effects that can more readily defeat adversary hardening than conventional munitions. The United States has three nuclear bombs, all air-delivered, available for this purpose:
B83-1 is an unguided nuclear bomb developed as a nuclear bunker buster. With a yield of 1.2 MT, it is the most powerful nuclear warhead in the current U.S. stockpile. Hundreds were manufactured, but only a handful remain. The Biden administration planned to retire the B83-1 as the B61-13 was deployed. The Trump administration has not yet stated its policy.
B61 is a family of air-dropped gravity bombs that has become the main element of the U.S. tactical nuclear stockpile. One variant, the B61-11, has earth-penetrating capability but is unguided. A later variant, the B61-13, was designed against "large area and some harder targets" with precision guidance, a hardened nose cone, and steel casing. Air Force budget materials suggest a new nuclear bunker buster may be in development.
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Mark F. Cancian (Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, ret.) is a senior adviser with the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Chris H. Park is a research associate for the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at CSIS.
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Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/bunker-busters-deep-targets-shallow-stocks
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
"Bunker Busters": Deep Targets, Shallow Stocks
Commentary by Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park
October 15, 2026
"Bunker busters" is the nickname given to a class of weapons designed to attack what the Department of Defense (DOD) calls "hard and deeply buried targets" (HDBTs). These targets are typically an adversary's most valuable assets. Although such targets have historically been relatively few, their numbers are increasing as countries and nonstate actors seek protection against ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary: * * * "Bunker Busters": Deep Targets, Shallow Stocks Commentary by Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park October 15, 2026 "Bunker busters" is the nickname given to a class of weapons designed to attack what the Department of Defense (DOD) calls "hard and deeply buried targets" (HDBTs). These targets are typically an adversary's most valuable assets. Although such targets have historically been relatively few, their numbers are increasing as countries and nonstate actors seek protection againstU.S. precision weaponry. The United States has developed a range of weapons to attack these targets, but their large numbers and increasing hardness will require a greater U.S. effort.
The U.S. bunker buster inventory today contains three types of weapons to cover different situations. All, except the B83-1 and B61-11, can use precision guidance to hit their target. The appendix has details on each of these weapons.
* Bombs: Most currently available bunker busters are air-dropped bombs (bomb live units, or BLUs) that can be fitted with laser or GPS guidance kits to be configured as guided bomb units (GBUs). Compared with regular bombs, bunker busters have a much heavier casing and smaller explosive charges.
* Standoff munitions: Variants of existing systems with enhanced penetrating capability were made during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Only the Navy's system (JSOW-C) remains in the inventory today.
* Nuclear weapons: Because there are targets that even specially designed conventional munitions cannot destroy, nuclear weapons are also an option.
[View table in the link at bottom.]
Weapons to destroy hardened targets have a long history. During World War I, the German Army had "Big Bertha," a 17 in howitzer firing 2,000 lb projectiles and designed to pry open Belgian forts. During World War II, the British developed the Grand Slam bomb to strike underground structures and German U-boat pens in France.
Militaries with nuclear weapons built underground facilities during the Cold War to conceal and protect their operations from a nuclear attack. A major change came with the advent of precision-guided conventional munitions and their subsequent widespread adoption in U.S. warfighting, as shown in Table 2. This made many more targets vulnerable, spurring the rapid growth of HDBTs as countries and nonstate actors sought to protect key military assets. The People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, for example, built networks of tunnels--referred to as the "Underground Great Wall"--to protect its, until recently, limited arsenal of nuclear weapons and ensure second strike capability against other nuclear powers. Many of North Korea's nuclear and missile facilities were built underground. Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other adversaries during the counterterrorism campaign also took to hiding in underground bunkers or caves.
* * *
Table 2: Precision-Guided Munitions Used in U.S. and Coalition Military Operations
* * *
As the Trump administration considers its next steps in the Iran campaign, many hardened military targets remain. Continuing Iranian missile launches appear to confirm reports that some underground missile and drone storage facilities have survived, particularly in the reported 33 underground missile bases adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz.
The United States has used large numbers of 2,000 lb and 5,000 lb bunker busters to attack Iran's extensive underground nuclear facilities and other protected military infrastructure. Israel, too, has used large numbers of these U.S.-made munitions in its wars since Hamas's October 7 attack. Hamas's estimated 310 miles of tunnels--about six times the underground length of the Washington Metro--enabled its surprise attack on October 7, 2023, and helped the group survive Israeli air and ground attacks. Nevertheless, the United States retains a large inventory of 2,000 lb bunker buster munitions. Inventory stress may occur with the largest munitions (5,000 lb), which would be needed for the surviving and likely most hardened targets.
Further, existing U.S. weapons may be insufficient to reach the most hardened and deeply buried facilities. Among Iranian nuclear sites, analysts have identified Pickaxe Mountain to be even deeper underground and likely beyond the reach of even the most powerful conventional munitions, compared to other facilities at Isfahan and Natanz. Construction at Pickaxe Mountain is ongoing, so the facility may not be ready. It is nevertheless a part of Iran's nuclear program, and eliminating it would be necessary to fully meet President Trump's goal of preventing the regime from ever having a nuclear weapon.
Out of the Shadows, Into the Mainstream
What were once niche weapons for use against a limited set of targets are now in great demand. The proposed FY 2027 defense budget reflects the demand for weapons against HDBTs, requesting $429 million for conventional bunker buster weapons--up from an average of $123 million (in FY 2027 dollars) in the previous 10 fiscal years. The previous spike in FY 2019 reflects the high demand to defeat the Islamic State.
* * *
Figure 1: Procurement Spending for Conventional Bunker Busters
* * *
A limitation is that current bunker busters are nearly all bombs because of the weight needed for heavy casings and explosive power. Delivery aircraft must fly over the target, requiring at least local air superiority. That has been feasible in recent conflicts, but it will not always be achievable, for example, in a potential conflict with China. A standoff munition would be highly desirable to reduce risk to the aircraft and expand the number of targets that could be reached.
The demand for weapons against HDBTs will continue to grow because, as colleague Eliot Cohen put it, there has been a "revolution in tunneling affairs." U.S. adversaries are digging deeper and more extensively to protect themselves from U.S. precision weapons. These military facilities will be both more numerous and harder to reach than in the recent past. Thus, the United States needs bunker busters that can address two target sets. One is the large number of tunnels and other moderately difficult targets, which require volume. The other is a much smaller but more difficult target set of facilities inside mountains. Here, numbers matter less; the key capability is depth of penetration.
Appendix: Types of Bunker Busters
This appendix describes each of the munitions listed in Table 1, dividing them into three categories: bombs, standoff munitions, and nuclear weapons. It provides a broad view of U.S. capabilities and limitations.
Bombs
Bomb live units (BLUs) are free-fall ordnance that can be fitted with guidance kits to become Guided bomb units (GBUs). They are listed here by size and date of production. It is important to note the size differences. The GBU-43B, "Mother of all Bombs," is 60 times the size of the BLU-140.
* BLU-140: This 500 lb bomb retains the shape of the Mk 82 500 lb general purpose bomb but has an external casing designed for penetration. The bomb's relatively small size allows more to be loaded on aircraft, and thus more targets can be struck per sortie. It can be fitted with the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance system.
* BLU-109: This 2,000 lb bomb can be precisely delivered when fitted with the Paveway laser-guided system or JDAM and reportedly can break through six feet of reinforced concrete. It . Compared with the standard 2,000 lb bomb used by U.S. forces, the Mk 84, it has a thicker steel case and a smaller explosive charge (approximately 500 lb versus 945 lb). The bomb has been widely used since its introduction in the 1980s. Recent operational uses include the Israeli Air Force strike against Hassan Nasrallah's compound in Lebanon and U.S. operations during Operation Epic Fury. Nevertheless, a sizable inventory remains due to large procurement over decades.
* BLU-116/BLU-121: During the counterterrorism campaigns, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency procured variants of 2,000 lb bombs. BLU-116 had more than twice the penetration capability of the BLU-109. The Navy received 580 of them in 2005, but likely none remain in the inventory today. Also procured, though in limited numbers, was the BLU-121. It had a thermobaric warhead that could penetrate Taliban tunnels, not just collapse the entrances.
* BLU-137: Also referred to as the Advanced 2,000 lb Penetrator, or A2K, this is the latest variant of the 2,000 lb hard target penetrator bomb. It has "increased reliability and survivability" over the BLU-109 as the United States faced "increasingly hardened targets." Procurement began in FY 2018.
* BLU-113: This 5,000 lb bomb has a 650 lb explosive package and the ability to penetrate over 20 feet of concrete or 100 feet of earth. It was fitted with the Paveway laser-guided system (GBU-27), with later variants adding GPS/INS guidance (GBU-28). In planning for an air campaign against Iraq following the invasion of Kuwait, deeply buried Iraqi command bunkers raised questions of whether the existing BLU-109s would be sufficient. The Air Force crash developed the GBU-28 ahead of Operation Desert Storm--the bomb body, for example, was made from an Army artillery barrel. Only two were used during the First Gulf War due to the limited inventory and rapid conclusion of the war. The BLU-122 improved the bomb's performance.
* BLU-138: Also known as Advanced 5,000 lb Penetrator, or A5K, this bomb has been procured since FY 2023. Compatible with the JDAM guidance kit, it will replace the BLU-113/122 bombs.
* GBU-57/BLU-127: Also known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), this is a 30,000 lb bomb with a 5,700 lb explosive charge. The munition reportedly can penetrate up to 200 ft of unspecified material. Budget documents record a procurement quantity of only 8, but public reports indicate the Air Force took delivery of at least 20. MOPs have had a series of upgrades, driven in part by concerns over their effectiveness against increasingly deep and fortified targets. 14 MOPs were used in the attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities at Fordow and Natanz during Operation Midnight Hammer. The Trump administration subsequently reprogrammed $123 million to replenish the inventory, but it will take several years for the bombs to be delivered. The number of MOPs remaining in the U.S. inventory is estimated to be in the low single digits.
* GBU-43/B: This 21,000 lb munition bears the moniker "The Mother of all Bombs" (MOAB). The picture below shows its massive size. The bomb casing is not designed to penetrate; rather, the casing is thin, and the bomb contains a maximum amount of explosive. That explosive creates massive overpressure that can reach inside caves or, potentially, blow open doors to underground facilities. The bomb is so large that it must be dropped by a cargo plane, usually a C-130. Because of the large effects and potential for collateral damage, the MOAB has been used only once: in 2017, when President Trump ordered a strike against a Taliban cave complex in Afghanistan. The United States built about a dozen of these huge weapons. With one used operationally and perhaps two in testing, around 10 should remain.
Standoff Munitions
During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, each military service developed bunker busters with standoff range by modifying existing missiles to carry penetrating warheads. The Air Force's Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM) with a BLU-116-based warhead retired with other CALCMs in 2019. An Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missile with a Navy reentry and penetrator system was canceled during development.
The Joint Standoff Weapon version C (JSOW-C) is the only standoff munition still in the U.S. inventory designed for use against hardened targets. It has a 500 lb British-developed penetrating warhead with two charges: an initial shaped charge to cut a passage and a following warhead to explode inside the target. It is not a missile, but rather glides, unpowered, 12-70 miles to the target. Range depends on the release altitude--more altitude provides a longer range. The inventory goal was initially set at 7,000. In FY 2015, the Navy reported a low inventory of the missile but ended procurement the following year based on "ongoing investment in related weapons." Several hundred are estimated to remain in U.S. inventory.
Nuclear Weapons
Some targets are too well fortified or deeply buried for conventional munitions to destroy. The United States developed "earth-penetrating weapons"--nuclear variants of bunker buster munitions--for particularly difficult HDBTs. Nuclear blasts generate large ground shock and overpressure effects that can more readily defeat adversary hardening than conventional munitions. The United States has three nuclear bombs, all air-delivered, available for this purpose:
B83-1 is an unguided nuclear bomb developed as a nuclear bunker buster. With a yield of 1.2 MT, it is the most powerful nuclear warhead in the current U.S. stockpile. Hundreds were manufactured, but only a handful remain. The Biden administration planned to retire the B83-1 as the B61-13 was deployed. The Trump administration has not yet stated its policy.
B61 is a family of air-dropped gravity bombs that has become the main element of the U.S. tactical nuclear stockpile. One variant, the B61-11, has earth-penetrating capability but is unguided. A later variant, the B61-13, was designed against "large area and some harder targets" with precision guidance, a hardened nose cone, and steel casing. Air Force budget materials suggest a new nuclear bunker buster may be in development.
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Mark F. Cancian (Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, ret.) is a senior adviser with the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Chris H. Park is a research associate for the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at CSIS.
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Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/bunker-busters-deep-targets-shallow-stocks
[Category: ThinkTank]