Todd G. Buchholz and Michael Mindlin Challenge Conventional Military Thinking: Beating China at Military Moneyball

LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, May 14, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Harrison Ford gets his biggest laugh when a desert assassin twirls a scimitar with menacing bravado, notes Todd Buchholz, best-selling author and renowned economist, and Michael Mindlin, esteemed business investor. With a wry sigh, Ford’s character takes out his pistol and shoots the man. In a potential contest with China, is the Pentagon looking more like the medieval assassin, sending into battle young sailors and soldiers with old and vulnerable technology?

In a recent Project Syndicate article, Buchholz and Mindlin note that aircraft carriers and fighter jets appear significantly less stealthy in a world of limitless drones and autonomous submarines. But it’s not just about weapons. Mindlin explains that China’s strategists are targeting the nodes that allow America to project power: satellites, logistics, and command and communications networks. China worries less about a Navy destroyer’s specs if the captain can’t talk to his superiors, his satellites, or get refueled and restocked with artillery. At that point, the destroyer might as well be a Carnival cruise ship without the lounge singers, Buchholz argues.

The military calculus that defined American supremacy has quietly, perhaps catastrophically, inverted. While the U.S. showcased its dominance in 2003’s Battle of Baghdad – broadcasting “shock and awe” videos of pinpoint missile attacks – China was conducting a forensic analysis of U.S. vulnerabilities. Mindlin says today the People’s Liberation Army’s YJ-18 supersonic anti-ship cruise missile and DF-26 “carrier killers” are designed to turn carriers into $13 billion shrimp reefs. And just as China recently sent shudders through Silicon Valley with its cheaply-made DeepSeek platform, China’s attack missiles are bargain-priced and pose a lethal threat to competitors, Buchholz explains.

China is taking a master class by watching (and participating in, to some extent) the Ukraine-Russia war. Ukraine’s battlefields are delivering a brutal market correction to conventional defense wisdom, as $400 commercial drones drop grenades, disabling $4.5 million tanks, a return on investment that would make the most aggressive venture capitalist blush. China mass-produces attack drones, as well as anti-drone barrage shields. Just as Chinese apparel companies can roll out “fast fashion,” its weapons makers quickly conjure new equipment, making the country both quick and patient, Buchholz and Mindlin point out.

While U.S. Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth must optimize his arguments with Congress for the 2026 budget, President Xi’s strategists optimize for 2049, their target date for achieving comprehensive naval power. They aim to gain century-spanning advantages, willing to absorb costs that Western analysts dismiss as irrational. It’s easier to do that when you don’t have to worry about electoral votes or the slings, arrows, and stings of social media pests, Buchholz explains.

The U.S., which has launched unparalleled breakthroughs at Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Palmer Luckey’s Anduril, cannot continue fielding military systems designed back when M*A*S*H was on the air. While our Defense Information Systems Network resembles a buggy corporate intranet, Chinese forces are deploying quantum-encrypted communication systems. Mindlin asserts that’s why Musk says the U.S. could “lose the next war very badly.”

To regain a competitive edge, the proposal includes three fundamental investments:

Resilient Energy & Power: America must cut the "fuel tether" constraining Pacific operations. "Conventionally-powered ships escorting our carriers need refueling every 3-5 days, with a single Combat Logistics Force ship burning through 100,000 gallons of marine diesel daily, like trying to drive cross-country while towing a gas station behind you," Buchholz emphasizes. The Pentagon should fast-track deployable micro-reactors developed in Project Pele and high-density fuel cells capable of powering bases for months.

Predictive and Autonomous Logistics Networks: Predictive algorithms drive Amazon’s and Walmart’s same-day deliveries to the home, even of the most trivial goods. Yet soldiers wait a perilously long time for the most vital supplies, and Chinese generals know this. Autonomous platforms (the Navy's Orca submarine drones, unmanned surface vehicles like DARPA's Sea Trains) must become the backbone of our military logistics, creating distribution networks that can withstand targeted disruption and deliver supplies through contested zones with acceptable attrition. Without this shift, our Pacific strategy is not so much a strategy but the crossed fingers of Uncle Sam.

AI-Enhanced Decision Advantage: Modern conflicts have compressed timelines. When Chinese hypersonic missiles, such as the DF-17, can travel at Mach 5 or higher, milliseconds matter. "We must leverage AI to dominate the OODA loop (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act). Projects like DARPA's Linchpin and the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System must evolve from promising startups to core operational capabilities soon," Bucholz and Mindlin assert.

While it would be easy to focus only on China’s might, that country, too, faces existential threats, whether from population decline, economic stagnation, or rebellion against authoritarian rule. Still, the algebra of defense has shifted, and we must confront the rising risks, Buchholz and Mindlin highlight. "Forget the hardware; America's defining superpower was never the iron of our carriers or the circuits of our fighters, but in the restless ingenuity — the unique capacity to reinvent when the situation demands it," says Mindlin.

The country that planted a flag on the moon was not built for managed decline. "When facing adversity, we don’t just compete; we reinvent the game itself," Buchholz concludes.

Mr. Buchholz, a former White House economic adviser and managing director of the Tiger hedge fund, is the author of "New Ideas from Dead Economists" (Penguin, 2021) @econTodd

Michael Mindlin served in the U.S. Marine Corps and is a private equity investor in energy, defense technology, and enterprise software.

Amanda Kent
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