According to a top-secret government assessment, the U.S. would be defeated by China in a war over Taiwan, The New York Times reported in an opinion piece.
"Overmatch Brief" is a highly classified review of U.S. military power prepared by the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, according to the Times, which obtained the review.
It documents China's ability to destroy American fighter planes, large ships, and satellites, and identifies the U.S. military's supply chain choke points, the Times said.
The report comes as Chinese President Xi Jinping continues to make threats about seizing Taiwan.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said this year that when the Pentagon conducts war games against China, the U.S. loses every time.
When a senior Biden administration national security official received the brief in 2021, he turned pale, the Times reported.
The briefing asserts that the Pentagon's overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons puts it in a dangerous position against a country that can make cheap, technologically advanced weapons, such as China.
"Nearly four decades after victory in the Cold War, the U.S. military is ill prepared for today's global threats and revolutionary technologies," the Times editorial board wrote, urging the military to reinvent itself.
The Times warns that the Trump administration's $1 trillion increase in defense spending will be "squandered on capabilities that do more to magnify our weaknesses than to sharpen our strengths," with dire global consequences.
The USS Gerald R. Ford deployed in 2022 at a cost of $13 billion. Yet the Times warned that the aircraft carrier would be vulnerable to new forms of attack, noting that China has amassed an arsenal of around 600 hypersonic weapons, which can travel at five times the speed of sound and are difficult to intercept.
The Ford is often defeated by China in war games, according to the Overmatch brief.
The Navy plans to build at least nine more Ford-class carriers in the coming decades, according to the Times, while the U.S. has yet to deploy a single hypersonic missile.
China has installed malware in the computer networks that control power grids, communications systems, and water supplies for U.S. military bases, the Times reported.
This malware, implemented by a state-sponsored hacking group, could threaten the military's ability to move weapons and forces in the event of a crisis in the Pacific, and could affect civilians, the Times warned.
U.S. cybersecurity experts have struggled to find and remove the malware, according to the Times.
Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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