Last month, just as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy concluded its unprecedented dual-aircraft carrier operations east of the second island chain, two articles by well-known ‘China Hands’ were published by two of America’s most respected academic institutions. Unfortunately, the publication of these two pieces reflects a dangerous return to “Threat Deflation,” an intellectual protocol that has downplayed the military threat from the People’s Republic of China (PRC)—one that has dominated America’s foreign policy over the past 30 years.
Threat Deflation is a dangerous mindset that has put America’s national security at great risk from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) grand strategy to replace freedom and liberty with totalitarian control. The Threat Deflation mindset stems from faulty reasoning and logic, of course, but is also a proven deception campaign by the CCP.
The first article, “A New Step in China’s Military Reform,” was published in the National Defense University Joint Force Quarterly (Issue 117, 2nd Quarter 2025), written by Joel Wuthnow, about the PLA’s newly created “Information Support Force” (ISF).
While this article provides useful historical context and a description of the PLA’s new ISF, the author’s conclusions are fatally flawed. Useful insight includes the author’s assertion that the most likely reason the former Strategic Support Force (SSF), which was created in December 2015, was disestablished and the ISF was established was to build Xi’s “Military Force System” [现代军事力量体系].
Xi’s new system properly aligns the ISF as a co-equal support force joining the three other existing PLA support forces (Aerospace, Cyber, and Joint Logistics). This is the “4+4” system: four services (Army, Navy, Air, and Rocket Force) with the four support forces (Aerospace, Cyber, Joint Logistics, and Information Support), all of which are subordinate to and support the five theater commands (created in 2015).
Before this change, the SSF was on the same level as the services. This change means Xi and the CMC recognize what the U.S. Navy (and the rest of the Pentagon) has not been able to grasp: that cyber and information warfare are “supporting forces,” not services like the Army, Navy, Air, or Rocket Forces.
Alas, the author’s conclusions about the importance and relevance of this new PLA organization reflect the ultimately self-defeating “threat deflation” perspective. For example, the author purports that there are three weaknesses from this PLA reorganization: First, “the center’s difficult task of managing the bureaucracy,” asserting that Xi is just a part-time Central Military Commission (CMC) chairman. This is a specious argument: if true, it would also mean that the U.S. Commander-in-Chief is likewise unable to manage the bureaucracy of the Pentagon during wartime, which is obviously not true given America’s recent strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Most pernicious is that this argument represents a misperception amongst the “threat deflators,” namely that Xi would never give the CMC’s Joint Staff Department/Joint Operations Command Center and Theater Commanders operational control over major combat operations and would retain personal control over such operations. This assertion, common amongst the “threat deflators,” remains unsubstantiated. The daily reality of PLA operations—whether they be dual-aircraft carriers operating together around Guam and Iwo Jima, PLA Air Forces conducting air-to-air refueling operations in the skies over Egypt, or PLA Navy warships circumnavigating Taiwan, Australia, Japan, and the Philippines—is that command and control remain at the operational level.
Second, the author asserts, “The PLA will continue to face challenges in the allocation of national assets to theaters, including those held by the support forces.” This argument should also be rejected, as it is based on a presumption that resource requirements under Xi and the CMC constitute a limited “pie” of unchanging size. This “threat deflation” mindset reflects the authors’ mirror imaging perspective from decades within the lifelines of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). This kind of assessment makes the common mistake of believing that since the U.S. DoD faces budget limitations, the PLA also faces limited resources. Instead, the facts reveal that over the past 25 years, the PLA’s budget has grown dramatically year after year, a growth that is undoubtedly driven by the requirements of the CMC, Services, Theater Commanders, and the support forces (including the new information support force).
Finally, the author states, “The new ‘military force system’ does not support a larger global role for the PLA. The intent of the system is to promote more cohesive joint operations, but the focus remains on domestic and regional crises. There are no joint command and control structures available to lead the integration of combat and support forces beyond China’s periphery.” This is classic “threat deflation” that ignores the strategic trend line of the PLA moving its operations from just offshore the mainland of China 25 years ago to now having a continuous anti-piracy task force operating for 17 years in the Gulf of Aden, a power projection base in Djibouti, recent air exercises in Egypt, multiple naval operations around the globe, and increasing access to support facilities that have bypassed the First Island Chain in nations such as the Solomon Islands.
This kind of analysis can also be characterized as the “Carpenter’s Outlook,” where analysts simply “snap a chalk line” that reflects the size and scope of the PLA at a single moment in time rather than analyzing the PLA from a strategic trendline perspective, which has directly led to this mindset of “threat deflation.” It’s unfortunate that the author relies on this kind of shallow assessment, especially given the otherwise solid basic facts surrounding the creation of the Information Support Force that the article provides.
The second example of this recent resurgence of threat deflation came from the pages of Foreign Affairs in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor M. Taylor Fravel’s article “Is China’s Military Ready for War? What Xi’s Purges Do—and Don’t—Mean for Beijing’s Ambitions.” The essential thesis of this leading China Hand is to assert that the recent “purges” of PLA officers by Xi Jinping are proof that the PLA is not a serious threat to the United States. Fravel’s conclusion is, at best, wishful thinking, based on no discernible credible evidence.
For example, there is this sweeping statement: “Whatever the reasons for the recent purges, they will almost certainly degrade China’s combat readiness and the Chinese leadership’s confidence in the PLA’s capabilities.” Yet throughout the article, the author provides no evidence to support such an assessment. In fact, any honest assessment reflects just the opposite conclusion. Over the past 13 years of Xi’s rule, the PLA’s military operations, especially around Taiwan, have dramatically increased in number, scope, complexity, and potential lethality. The PLA Navy is now circumnavigating Australia, conducting unannounced live-fire exercises in the process, and it has amassed maritime, aviation, rocket, cyber, and ground combat forces that pose a potential mortal threat to U.S. forces in blue water and near-sea combat.
The author acknowledges that under Xi’s direction, the PLA was reorganized in 2015 to be able “to prevail in potential conflicts on China’s periphery, especially a war over Taiwan” through the mastery of joint operations, “which combine elements from the different services and branches to achieve military objectives.” Yet he concludes that the PLA cannot meet the complexity of such operations, which “requires unity of command and integrated planning, the interoperability of platforms within and across services, delegation and flexibility, and robust command, control, communications, and surveillance systems.” Fravel then concludes that “the likelihood of a successful invasion or other military operations has been degraded—thus not a serious threat.” Again, such a conclusion is prima facie evidence of the resurgence of “threat deflation” from the China Hands within our national security apparatus.
Fundamentally, the problem for analysts like Wuthnow, Taylor, and others is that they do not look at the minute details of the PLA daily and then connect these data points over time to understand the strategic trendline the PLA has been on for over a quarter of a century. This trend line of increasing combat capability has grown exponentially under the reign of Chairman Xi Jinping. Tracking and assessing the PLA’s progress in such a routine, methodical manner does not lead analysts to ignore the fact that the PLA faces serious challenges and is not “10 feet tall”; rather, it leads to a balanced, comprehensive understanding of what is clearly a growing threat. Conversely, persistent “threat deflation” has created a mindset in Washington, DC, and elsewhere that has put America in a position where we find ourselves dramatically behind in key areas of shipbuilding, critical munitions, reliance on Beijing for rare earths, and a host of other problems.
Threat deflation is an intellectual cancer and must be replaced by worst-case analysis and assessment—analysis and assessment that is time-tested and true. It is vitally important to refute such fatally flawed analysis with facts on the ground and from the sea, and then eradicate it from our national security establishment. Further, a worst-case analysis of not just the PLA but also the Ministry of State Security, United Front organizations, and other political warfare operatives is necessary to correctly assess the impact of their long-term efforts to deceive the world regarding “China’s Peaceful Rise” and its hidden capabilities.
James E. Fanell served as a career naval intelligence officer whose positions included senior intelligence officer for China at the Office of Naval Intelligence and chief of intelligence for CTF-70, Seventh Fleet, and the U.S. Pacific Fleet. He is the co-author of the book Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure.
Professor Kerry K. Gershaneck is a visiting scholar at National Chengchi University in Taipei. A former U.S. Marine, he was a NATO Fellow for Hybrid Threats and an advisor to the U.S. Congress’s recently concluded 2-year investigation into the CCP’s political warfare. His books include Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to ‘Win Without Fighting.’