Tag Archives: featured

Infrastructure

The Grid is the Arsenal: Power Wars and the New Foundations of Military Strength

Leave a comment

By Morgan Bazilian and Jahara Matisek

Just as oil fueled the mechanized warfare of the 20th century, electricity is becoming the foundational resource for militaries of the 21st century. Echoing First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill’s historic decision to switch the Royal Navy from domestic coal to imported oil, today’s energy transition means the ability to generate, store, and deliver electricity will increasingly dictate national power. In order to meet this urgent challenge, the United States government and military must treat grid expansion as a national security priority by creating “Defense Energy Security Zones” to expedite federal permitting, intentionally and aggressively leveraging the Defense Production Act (DPA) to secure critical grid components, and integrating power resilience into how the Pentagon chooses to fund firms that produce munitions and weapon systems.

After two decades of flat demand, U.S. consumption is projected to rise 20% by 2030, driven by a boom in data centers and advanced manufacturing. Yet the physical grid cannot keep up. Transmission projects often take a decade to permit and build. New generation projects face grid interconnection queues lasting around five years, with over 2.6 terawatts of proposed capacity – that’s more than double the existing power fleet – just waiting for a connection. And now, political issues are compounding these technical bottlenecks. From Virginia to Arizona, local communities are increasingly pushing back against the construction of new data centers and the gas-fired power plants required to run them, citing concerns over noise, land use, tax breaks, and environmental impact. The result is $64 billion worth of data center projects being blocked and delayed. The entire digital age system is under strain from every direction.

Growing electrical bottlenecks also challenge American military power. For the Iran war, the Pentagon utilized Anthropic’s tool Claude and Palantir products like Maven, which used AI to process vast amounts of sensor data for multi-domain awareness and to identify targets. Successful AI targeting use, however, was predicated on an enormous, and largely invisible, expenditure of electrical power in the data centers that trained and ran the models.

This reveals a new reality: the military’s power dependencies operate on very different time scales. At the tactical level, the hour-by-hour management of peak load dictates whether radar networks, command centers, and various weapon systems can function without rolling brownouts. At the strategic level, precision munitions, advanced materials, and microelectronics all depend on electricity-intensive sites that take years to plan and build. Worse, their production of these cannot be surged during a crisis without a reliable baseload of power.

The technologies driving the modern civilian economy (e.g., AI, advanced computing, semiconductors, etc.) also enable warfighting advantages. This constraint is not just domestic. The power grid in Guam is falling critically short, putting U.S. bases there at risk and undermining military readiness in the Pacific.

Herein lies the central paradox of digital-age military power: America’s relentless pursuit of technological overmatch has created a profound and overlooked vulnerability. The military is becoming highly dependent on the very energy-intensive technologies, such as AI-enabled military systems, that are straining the national grid to its breaking point. The data center boom in Virginia and Arizona is now in direct competition for power with the industrial base needed to build weapons, maintain air defense, and collect real-time multi-domain awareness. America’s economic might and military power are both being constrained by an infrastructure that cannot meet the demands of the present, let alone the future.

Strategy is Outrunning Infrastructure

Historically, achieving military advantage depended on technological sophistication and industrial production. More recently, this has translated into developing stealthy aircraft and faster missiles, alongside trying to mass produce drones, with energy infrastructure being treated as a background concern. That hierarchy is reversing. Modern military power is an energy-intensive ecosystem, and three systemic shifts explain this transition.

First, computational power has become a foundational military resource. AI is not a niche capability, but is being embedded across everything from logistics to targeting. While training a single frontier AI model requires tens of megawatt-months of electricity (mainly due to dual-use commercial applications), the military challenge is trying to deploy these models. Running continuous AI inference across thousands of distributed battlefield nodes for Joint All-Domain Operations (JADO) creates a persistent, high-volume electrical demand on local grids. Because military operations are increasingly dependent on processing substantial amounts of data in real-time, warfighting capability is now directly constrained by grid capacity at the tactical and operational levels.

Second, modern weapons production is electricity-intensive. From the advanced metallurgy needed for hypersonic weapon systems to the high-temperature processing for ‘old’ artillery shells, manufacturing at every level relies on continuous, high-reliability power. Recent experience demonstrates this defense industrial base link. During Iran’s April 2024 attack on Israel, U.S. Navy destroyers fired substantial numbers of advanced interceptors to defend against ballistic missiles. This single engagement consumed a significant number of missiles from a limited stockpile, while annual production rates for these complex systems remain low. The munitions shortfall has only worsened since the 2026 Iran war, where 5 weeks of munitions expended may take up to 5 years to replace. The expenditure-refill gap reflects the physical limits of specialized, energy-bound production lines. Surge capacity is thus a function of power availability, not just funding and minerals.

Third, this energy demand is creating fierce competition for foundational materials across the entire military-industrial complex. No material illustrates this challenge better than copper. The entire energy transition, from grid expansion and electric vehicles to the data centers powering AI, all runs on copper, where the gap between supply and demand is rapidly widening. Estimates show that global demand for copper is set to double by 2035, creating a massive supply gap – and an obstacle to future economic growth. Yet this demand surge is colliding with a rigid supply chain. New copper mines take an average of 18 years to develop globally and nearly 30 years in the United States. The refined copper needed for the electronics in a missile or a fighter jet is the same copper sought for a new data center.

These shifts mean military effectiveness depends on an integrated supply chain: from mineral extraction to electrical generation, to industrial processing, and finally to operational power. If any link in that chain is constrained (i.e., lack of copper or congested grid) the entire system slows. The decisive question is no longer simply who invents the most advanced technology, but who can secure the materials and power to manufacture and operate that technology at scale.

America’s Structural Power Vulnerability

The United States enters this new era of energy competition with an electrical grid designed for a different century. The energy landscape is changing rapidly. After two decades of flat demand, U.S. consumption will rise 20% by 2030, driven by major growth in data centers, electrified industry, and advanced manufacturing. Forecasts show data centers alone consuming 9% of total U.S. electricity demand by 2030 – roughly 75% of Texas’ power generation. Now, with demand skyrocketing, the grid is being asked to accelerate after years of standing still.

Unfortunately, this demand crashes against a highly balkanized system. The U.S. electrical grid is heavily fragmented into regional interconnects (like ERCOT in Texas or PJM in the Mid-Atlantic) that struggle to share power across state lines. Because power cannot easily flow from regions with a surplus to regions facing brownouts, the physical location of defense manufacturing facilities becomes a critical vulnerability. An ammunition plant in a power-constrained region cannot surge production, regardless of national security needs.

While permitting delays and interconnection queues are well-known problems, the physical expansion of the grid is also hampered by critical hardware shortages driven by booming global demand for power. For example, in the Global South, electricity demand is rising due to growing basic electrification and air conditioning, not AI usage. Worse, the market for high-voltage transformers is straining the ability of countries to build new power plants. The procurement lead time for these essential components has ballooned from months to several years. This not only delays new generation projects but also creates a severe national security risk, as it limits the ability to recover from major storms or a physical attack on the grid.

This challenge is magnified when contrasted with China. While the U.S. grid struggles with fragmentation and inertia, China is executing a centrally planned, state-funded strategy to dominate the energy landscape. Beijing has built a network of over 30,000 kilometers of Ultra-High-Voltage transmission lines to move massive amounts of power from its energy-rich interior to its coastal industrial hubs.

This is not just an energy policy; it is a geopolitical strategy designed to underwrite industrial and military power. This “tale of two grids” creates a grim picture: China is building the electrical foundation for 21st century capabilities for advanced tech and manufacturing for mass, while America remains mired in regulatory and physical gridlock. The result is a dangerous structural mismatch: U.S. strategic ambition is outrunning the very infrastructure required to sustain it.

Conclusion: Power is the new bottleneck for the Economy and Military

The defining strategic constraint is now electrical capacity, not technological innovation. Economic growth, industrial output, and military readiness now depend on America’s ability to build, permit, and deploy the physical systems that generate and move power. Without that expansion, economic ambition and military strategy outrun infrastructure. Allowing any further grid stagnation is essentially a “geopolitical tax” that directly undermines American national security.

Military power faces this constraint immediately. Joint all-domain operations (JADO) need an unbroken chain of energy-intensive data fusion, satellite networks, AI-driven targeting, precision manufacturing, and advanced chips. JADO is what the Pentagon is betting on to ensure warfighters can out-fight near-peer threats, an approach paired heavily with AI during the 2026 Iran war. A resilient and capable electrical grid is needed for JADO and AI to function properly. To win the global AI race, the United States must first harden its grid. Electricity now sets the speed, reach, and endurance of the U.S. military.

To prevent domestic infrastructure from undermining military effectiveness, the United States government must proactively intervene with policies that treat grid expansion as a national security imperative. While the April 2025 White House executive order on grid security and the Department of Energy’s commitments in 2026 are steps in the right direction, they need more ‘industrial teeth’ to be effective in the era of great power competition.

First, Congress must move beyond half-measures. While the House Energy and Commerce Committee holds hearings and debates grid reliability bills, industry experts are right to call out that permitting reform is not a ‘silver bullet’. Market structures must be reformed to properly value and compensate firm, dispatchable power that can survive crises, ensuring a resilient grid that is valued like a strategic asset rather than letting it be dictated by the whims of the free market. Furthermore, the Pentagon should be granted statutory authority to designate specific manufacturing hubs as “Defense Energy Security Zones,” granting them expedited federal permitting under the FAST-41 framework to override local gridlock.

Second, the administration must aggressively leverage the Defense Production Act (DPA) to secure the domestic supply chain for critical grid components. Relying on state-level energy emergency policies to manage shortages is a reactive, losing strategy. Growing lead times for high-voltage transformers are a national security crisis. Utilizing the DPA to incentivize domestic manufacturing and stockpiling of grid parts is a crucial ‘insurance plan’ to ensure the United States can surge when needed and rapidly recover from an attack against the grid.

Third, the Pentagon must integrate power availability into its acquisition approach. The Pentagon cannot award massive contracts to defense firms that host AI data centers or make munitions and weapon systems without assessing whether their facilities (and their suppliers) are connected to a regional grid that is capable enough to sustain surge periods. Power resilience must become an important metric to consider for future defense procurement programs.

The arsenal of the future is becoming increasingly dependent on electricity. If the United States fails to treat grid expansion as a national security priority on par with funding the next submarine or fighter jet, it risks an era where military capability is decided by domestic infrastructure failures rather than adversary action. If America cannot generate and deliver that power at scale, it will lose the next war before the first shot is fired.

Morgan D. Bazilian is the director of the Payne Institute for Public Policy and professor at the Colorado School of Mines, with over thirty years of experience in global energy policy and investment. A former World Bank lead energy specialist and senior diplomat at the UN, he has held roles in the Irish government and advisory positions with the World Economic Forum and the International Energy Agency. A Fulbright fellow, he has published widely on energy security and international affairs.

Lt. Col. Jahara “Franky” Matisek (PhD) is a U.S. Air Force command pilot, senior fellow at the Payne Institute for Public Policy, and a visiting scholar at Northwestern University. He is the most published active-duty officer currently serving, with 2 books and over 200 articles on the defense industrial base, strategy, and warfare. Views are his own and not those of the U.S. Air Force, Department of War, or the U.S. Government.

Featured Image: The new 350 kilowatt-hour solar array located near the Hill Aerospace Museum at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. (U.S. Air Force photo by Cynthia Griggs)

Alliances and Partners

The Cost of Abandoning Taiwan: How Appeasement Leads to an Outcome Far Worse Than Defeat

5 Comments

By Josh Richards and Joseph Hanacek

A Cause Worth Losing For

Foreign policy debates are often framed around a single question: what causes are worth fighting for? Far less often do strategists ask the more uncomfortable but ultimately more revealing question, what causes are worth losing for? In the case of Taiwan, that distinction matters profoundly.

A war over Taiwan would carry the potential for catastrophic military losses, a severe global economic shock, and escalatory dynamics that could touch the nuclear threshold. Senior U.S. defense officials, allied governments, and independent analysts increasingly agree on one point: the only certainty in a direct U.S.–China conflict is that win or lose, the repercussions would be drastic and global in scope.1

But focusing only on the dangers of war obscures the larger strategic reality. Taiwan is not simply another flashpoint in an increasingly crowded Indo-Pacific. It is a structural pillar of the modern international system, technological, economic, and military, on which U.S. power rests. Allowing Beijing to force Taiwan under its control would not merely alter the cross-Strait balance; it would reshape the global distribution of power in ways that are both durable and deeply unfavorable to the United States and its allies.

At the heart of the U.S. relationship with Taiwan are factors that will influence the rest of the twenty-first century: access to advanced computing hardware, the US diplomatic credibility and real power projection, and the strategic positioning that will drive the next generations of technological breakthroughs.  Abandoning Taiwan would impose costs across all three simultaneously, and once incurred, those costs would be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.2

The strategic situation, in other words, is not that the United States might defend Taiwan and suffer severe consequences. It is that choosing not to defend Taiwan would impose even greater long-term costs on American power. The preferred outcome remains a peaceful resolution that maintains preservation of Taiwan’s democratic autonomy and the cross-Strait status quo. But a peaceful appeasement that effectively abandons Taiwan to coercive unification would be cataclysmic for America and the entirety of the western world.

Reframing the Question: The Strategic Costs of Appeasement

Reframed properly, the Taiwan question is less about the risks of action than the consequences of inaction. If the United States were to abandon Taiwan in the face of Chinese coercion or force, three losses stand out as both credible and, once triggered, largely irreversible.

The first is the erosion, and likely collapse, of U.S. leadership in advanced computing, including the race toward artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the broader ecosystem of high-performance and consumer computing hardware. Taiwan is not merely a major supplier within global semiconductor markets; it is the central node of the world’s most advanced fabrication capacity. Control over that capacity confers leverage not only over supply chains, but over the pace and direction of technological progress itself.3 Should Taiwan’s semiconductor ecosystem fall to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), China would gain an unparalleled advantage in the production of the hardware that underpins artificial intelligence, advanced weapons systems, and the digital economy writ large.4

The second cost of appeasement would be a profound loss of U.S. diplomatic credibility around the world, particularly with regards to its power projection capability across Asia. Taiwan is the keystone of the first island chain and a focal point for how allies and partners assess American resolve. A failure to defend Taiwan would not be interpreted in isolation; it would be read as a signal about U.S. willingness to absorb risk on behalf of its security commitments more broadly. In more concrete terms, it would result in the creation of an incredibly influential strategic salient for China, providing them geostrategic leverage throughout the entire first island chain. Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, and others would be forced to reconsider long-standing assumptions about American staying power, basing access, intelligence sharing, and strategic alignment.5 History suggests that when fear eclipses confidence in a patron’s resolve, alliances erode quickly, and are rarely reconstituted on the same terms.6

The third cost is more subtle, but no less consequential: the loss of the United States’ ability to break out ahead in the next generation of foundational industries. Advanced computing is not an end in itself; it is the enabling substrate for future dominance in quantum technologies, automated manufacturing, robotics, advanced materials, and scalable energy systems. The United States currently enjoys a powerful advantage in these domains not only because of capital or policy, but because it remains the world’s most attractive ecosystem for top scientific and engineering talent.7 A collapse in technological leadership, paired with a visible retreat from global commitments, would redirect those talent flows, and the breakthroughs they enable toward alternative centers of gravity.

Taken together, these three losses describe more than a regional setback. They outline a pathway by which the United States would relinquish its position at the center of the global technological and security order. Once the process began, reversing it would demand resources, time, and political cohesion on a scale that great powers historically struggle to mobilize once strategic momentum turns against them.

The first cost of appeasement: Taiwan and the Foundations of American Technological Power

Taiwan’s strategic importance to the United States is often summarized in shorthand: semiconductors. But that simplification understates the depth of the relationship and obscures why Taiwan’s role is so difficult to replace. Taiwan is not merely a large producer within global chip markets; it is the central node of the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem. Its firms are the world’s only producers capable of manufacturing the world’s most advanced semiconductor nodes, combining leading-edge logic fabrication, advanced process integration, and the tacit manufacturing knowledge required. Despite massive state-backed investments by the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, and the European Union, no competitor has successfully replicated Taiwan’s frontier manufacturing capabilities at any scale.8

Advanced semiconductors now underpin nearly every domain of modern state power, including artificial intelligence, advanced weapons systems, secure communications, space and cyber capabilities, and industrial productivity. The United States retains world-class strength in chip design, electronic design automation, and systems integration, but those advantages are inseparable from Taiwan’s ability to manufacture at the cutting edge.9 Without access to that manufacturing base, the U.S. technology stack becomes brittle, slower to innovate, and more vulnerable to disruption.

Much has been made of U.S. efforts to reshore or “friend-shore” semiconductor production through initiatives such as the CHIPS and Science Act. These efforts are strategically necessary, but they should not be confused with strategic sufficiency. Building a handful of fabrication plants does not recreate the dense industrial ecosystem Taiwan has spent decades refining, an ecosystem that includes specialized suppliers, an experienced workforce, rapid iteration cycles, and institutional memory that cannot be legislated into existence on a political timeline.10 Even optimistic projections suggest that U.S.-based fabs will take years to reach maturity, and longer still to approach the yield, flexibility, and cost structures that Taiwanese firms currently achieve.11

From a strategic perspective, Taiwan’s value lies not only in output volume, but in the continuity and reliability of frontier computing supply. That supply underwrites what can be described as frontier computing, the high-performance chips used in advanced AI research, military systems, and scientific discovery, as well as consumer computing, the mass-market hardware that sustains global digital ecosystems.

In this sense, Taiwan functions as critical infrastructure for the modern world. Its fabs are not interchangeable assets that can be relocated or duplicated without consequence. They are strategic choke points whose fate will shape the balance of technological power between democratic and authoritarian systems for decades to come.12

The Computing Arms Race: Bad Cases, Worst Cases, and Irreversible Outcomes

At a high level, two plausible futures stand out, both damaging, but one far more destabilizing than the other.

The first is what might be termed the bad case. In this scenario, a Taiwan crisis, through blockade, quarantine, or limited conflict, causes Taiwanese semiconductor production to halt or sharply contract. Advanced chip supply would collapse, driving up costs, freezing portions of AI research and deployment, and triggering a sharp economic downturn. Analysts estimate that a major Taiwan disruption could cost the global economy trillions of dollars in lost output within the first year alone.13

In this bad case, both the United States and China would scramble to fill the void. The Western world retains access to much of the underlying intellectual property, design expertise, and niche manufacturing equipment required to rebuild capacity, but it moves slowly in constructing facilities, training labor forces, and scaling production. China, by contrast, possesses formidable advantages in industrial mobilization: the ability to build quickly, direct capital at scale, compel workforce participation, and absorb inefficiencies through state subsidy.14 At the same time, Beijing would continue to face constraints imposed by export controls, sanctions, and limited access to the most advanced lithography and design tools. The result would be a grinding, costly computing arms race in which neither side emerges unscathed.

The second scenario, the worst case, is qualitatively different. In this outcome, Taiwan’s semiconductor ecosystem does not merely shut down; it falls under effective PRC control, either through occupation, coerced integration, or a perceived abandonment by the United States that precipitates a rapid political and industrial merger. In such a case, the single most important variable is not physical plant damage, but the fate of Taiwan’s workforce, intellectual property, and specialized equipment. Should those assets be absorbed intact into China’s industrial base, Beijing would almost certainly surge ahead in both frontier and consumer computing.15

This outcome would have consequences far beyond short-term supply shocks. China would become the dominant producer of advanced hardware across nearly every category of modern computing, from data center accelerators and AI training chips to smartphones, electric vehicles, avionics, and missile guidance systems. The competitive balance in artificial intelligence would tilt decisively, not because of superior algorithms alone, but because of privileged access to the hardware that makes large-scale experimentation and deployment possible.16 Whether one believes artificial general intelligence is imminent or distant, beneficial or dangerous, its development under the exclusive control of an authoritarian state and great power rival would represent one of the most destabilizing and consequential shifts in the global balance of power in modern history.

Even in the bad case, the world would begin to fracture into competing technological blocs as states seek reliable access to computing resources. In the worst case, that fracture would harden rapidly, locking in Chinese advantages and forcing others to adapt to standards, platforms, and dependencies set in Beijing rather than Washington. Once that transition occurred, reversing it would require not just policy change, but the reconstruction of entire industrial and research ecosystems, a task that history suggests few great powers successfully accomplish after a major strategic reversal.

From this perspective, the central danger of abandoning Taiwan is not disruption, but capture. Preventing the seamless transfer of Taiwan’s semiconductor ecosystem into PRC hands is therefore not a secondary concern or contingency plan; it is one of the core strategic imperatives shaping the U.S. response to China’s aggression.

Pax Silica Ends: Two Tech Stacks and a Fractured Global Economy

If Taiwan’s semiconductor ecosystem is disrupted, or worse, captured, the consequences will not be confined to chip shortages or temporary market dislocations. The more enduring effect would be the collapse of what might be called pax silica: a global technological order in which advanced computing supply chains, standards, and research networks remain broadly interoperable across political systems.

That order is already under strain. U.S. export controls, Chinese industrial policy, and intensifying strategic competition over technology flows have begun to fragment the global technology landscape. A decisive break over Taiwan would accelerate this process dramatically, pushing the world toward two competing and increasingly incompatible technology stacks, one centered on the United States and its allies, the other organized around the People’s Republic of China.17

On the surface, this bifurcation might appear to concern consumer-facing choices: whose smartphones dominate emerging markets, which AI platforms are most widely adopted, or which digital standards govern next-generation networks. In reality, the fault lines would run much deeper. Competing tech stacks would structure access to rare earth minerals, advanced materials and chemicals, energy inputs, cloud infrastructure, financial services, and the research ecosystems that underpin long-term innovation.18 Countries would be pressured, implicitly or explicitly, to align their regulatory regimes, supply chains, and security partnerships with one bloc or the other.

In such a world, Taiwan’s fate becomes determinative. If Taiwan remains outside PRC control, the United States and its partners retain a credible foundation for a high-end technology ecosystem that can sustain innovation and resilience, even under stress. If Taiwan falls into Beijing’s orbit, the balance shifts decisively. China would not only command a dominant share of advanced hardware production; it would be positioned to shape standards, dictate terms of access, and leverage dependencies across a wide swath of the global economy.19

This would be particularly destabilizing for middle powers and developing states, many of which rely simultaneously on Western security guarantees and Chinese economic engagement. Over time, such pressures would erode the openness that has characterized the post–Cold War global economy, replacing it with a more rigid, bipolar system defined by technological allegiance rather than market efficiency.20

For the United States, the end of pax silica would represent more than a loss of convenience or profitability. It would mark a structural shift in how power is accumulated and exercised internationally. Technological leadership has long allowed Washington to amplify its influence without constant coercion, embedding U.S. preferences in standards, platforms, and institutions that others voluntarily adopt. A world split between rival tech stacks, especially one in which China controls the most critical hardware inputs, would sharply curtail that advantage.

Appeasement and the Erosion of US Influence Abroad

Technology alone, however, does not determine strategic outcomes. Taiwan’s importance is magnified by its role in the military and political geography of the Indo-Pacific, where perceptions of U.S. resolve are as consequential as force posture itself.

Taiwan sits at the center of the first island chain, anchoring a network of alliances and partnerships that constrain the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to project power into the Western Pacific. Its continued autonomy complicates Chinese military planning, preserves U.S. freedom of maneuver, and reassures regional partners that American commitments remain credible.21 Conversely, Taiwan’s loss would create a cascading crisis of confidence that no amount of declaratory policy could easily repair.

Diplomatic credibility is not an abstract concept. It is built through repeated demonstrations that commitments will be honored even when doing so entails risk. A failure to defend Taiwan would be interpreted throughout Asia not as a narrow exception, but as a signal that the United States is unwilling or unable to absorb the costs required to maintain its strategic position in the Indo-Pacific. Japan would be forced to reconsider the viability of extended deterrence and the security of its southwestern islands. South Korea would face renewed pressure to pursue independent nuclear capabilities. Southeast Asian states would accelerate hedging strategies, recalibrating basing access, intelligence cooperation, and diplomatic alignment in anticipation of a diminished U.S. role.22

The logic underlying these reactions is well captured by Thucydides’ enduring insight that fear, honor, and interest drive state behavior. Alliances endure not because partners are altruistic, but because they believe their interests and honor are safer within a collective framework than outside it. When fear of abandonment outweighs confidence in a patron’s resolve, alignment gives way to accommodation. History offers few examples of alliances that survived such a reversal intact.23

Importantly, this dynamic cuts both ways. A credible U.S. effort to defend Taiwan, even under adverse conditions, would reinforce deterrence well beyond the immediate theater. It would signal that when Washington draws a line in the sand, crossing it has repercussions. In a world where diplomacy is increasingly being made on the basis of realpolitik rather than ideological framework, demonstrating a willingness to partake in brinksmanship with PRC is the only way to assure allies and partners that it is in their own best interest to share burdens, accept risk, and align their long-term strategies with U.S. leadership regardless of the shifting political winds attendant with democratic nations. As several analysts have noted, credibility is often less about winning clean victories than about demonstrating a willingness to stand firm when outcomes are uncertain.24

Taiwan thus functions as a strategic litmus test. The question facing U.S. policymakers is not whether defending Taiwan guarantees stability, but whether abandoning it would all but ensure the unraveling of the alliance system that has underwritten American influence in Asia for more than half a century.

Geography Still Matters: Taiwan as the Modern Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier

Long before semiconductors or artificial intelligence entered the strategic lexicon, Taiwan’s importance was rooted in geography. General Douglas MacArthur famously described the island as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” a forward position from which the United States could project power and constrain adversaries across maritime Asia. While the technologies of warfare have changed dramatically since MacArthur’s era, the underlying logic has not; if anything, it has intensified.25

An autonomous and U.S. aligned Taiwan shapes deterrence dynamics throughout the region. As things stand today, any Chinese attempt to project power seaward must contend with layered defenses, allied coordination, and the prospect of early escalation under unfavorable conditions. Remove Taiwan from that equation, and the PLA’s operating environment becomes markedly more permissive. Deterrence weakens not because U.S. capabilities vanish overnight, but because the balance of risk and opportunity shifts decisively in Beijing’s favor.26

A PRC controlled Taiwan presents a stark contrast from a geostrategic perspective. As Taiwan sits astride the most critical maritime and air corridors linking Northeast Asia to Southeast Asia and the broader Pacific, control of the island would allow the PLA to break through the first island chain, extending Chinese power projection deep into the Philippine Sea and undermining the defensive geometry that has long favored the United States and its allies.27 From Taiwan, China could more effectively contest U.S. naval operations, threaten key bases in Japan, and exert sustained pressure on sea lines of communication that carry a significant share of global trade.28

Equally important are the second-order effects. A PRC-controlled Taiwan would significantly tighten Beijing’s grip over waters within the entire first island chain, from Japan to Singapore. In the event that China wanted to exert pressure on any nation attempting to conduct commerce inside that arc, a PRC bastion in Taiwan would alter risk calculations for commercial shipping, energy flows, and undersea infrastructure, driving up insurance costs and increasing the vulnerability of global trade to political pressure.29 For an international system heavily dependent on maritime commerce, such a shift would reverberate far beyond the Indo-Pacific.

Seen through this lens, MacArthur’s aphorism is not an anachronism. Taiwan remains an unsinkable aircraft carrier, not in the narrow sense of hosting runways, but as a fixed geographic asset that anchors regional stability. Surrendering that asset would impose enduring military disadvantages that no amount of distant force projection could easily offset.

Losing the Next Industrial Breakout

The strategic consequences of abandoning Taiwan would not end with today’s technologies or force postures. A third, often under-appreciated cost lies in the loss of opportunity to lead the next wave of industrial and scientific breakthroughs, those that will define economic and military power in the decades ahead.

Advanced computing is the enabling substrate for progress across a wide range of emerging sectors, including quantum information science, automated and additive manufacturing, robotics, advanced materials, and scalable low-cost energy systems. In each of these fields, the pace of discovery and commercialization is increasingly shaped by access to high-performance computing, large datasets, and AI-driven experimentation. States that command these inputs gain a compounding advantage, accelerating innovation while widening the gap with competitors.30

The United States currently occupies a strong position in this landscape not because of deterministic superiority, but because it hosts a uniquely attractive ecosystem for global talent. Its universities, research institutions, venture capital networks, and open scientific culture continue to draw many of the world’s most capable engineers and scientists.31

Abandoning Taiwan would place this ecosystem at risk. A visible collapse in U.S. technological leadership, paired with a retreat from global security commitments, would redirect talent flows and investment decisions toward alternative hubs perceived as ascendant or more stable. China, already investing heavily in strategic technologies through state-directed programs, would be well positioned to capitalize on such a shift, particularly if it also secured dominant access to advanced compute through control of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry.32 Losing ground in these areas would not simply slow U.S. growth; it would constrain strategic choice, forcing policymakers to operate within narrower margins of technological advantage.33

History suggests that technological leadership, once ceded, is extraordinarily difficult to reclaim. It depends not only on investment and policy, but on intangible factors, prestige, confidence, and the belief among innovators that they are building the future rather than catching up to it. By allowing Taiwan to fall into Beijing’s hands, the United States would risk forfeiting precisely those intangibles at a moment when they matter most.

In this sense, the defense of Taiwan is not merely about preserving the status quo. It is about protecting the conditions under which the United States can continue to shape the frontier of American strategic advantage. Appeasement would not buy stability; it would mortgage the future.

Conclusion: Fear, Honor, and Interest in the Twenty-First Century

More than two millennia ago, Thucydides observed that fear, honor, and interest drive the decisions of states. That framework remains instructive today, not as a relic of classical realism, but as a reminder that power, credibility, and perception are inseparable in international politics.

In the case of Taiwan, all three align. The fear is evident: a world in which China controls the most critical nodes of advanced computing, dominates the military geography of the Western Pacific, and sets the terms of technological and economic participation for others. The interest is unmistakable: preserving the foundations of American technological leadership, alliance credibility, and freedom of maneuver in a system that has underwritten U.S. prosperity and security for decades. And honor, often misunderstood, lies not in abstract notions of pride, but in the trust that allies and partners place in American commitments, and in the reputational capital that makes leadership possible.34

Much has been written about whether Taiwan is a cause worth fighting for. That question, while important, is incomplete. The more consequential question is whether the United States is prepared to live with the world that would follow from choosing not to. The evidence suggests that such a world would be poorer, more coercive, and less stable, defined by fractured technology systems, weakened alliances, and a strategic environment in which force and dependency replace rules and consent.

This paper has argued that Taiwan’s significance lies not in symbolism, but in structure. Taiwan anchors the technological supply chains, alliance networks, and military geography that sustain the current international order. Its loss would not be a discrete regional setback, but a systemic shock whose effects would reverberate across innovation, security, and global governance for generations.

For that reason, this paper serves as a foundation rather than a conclusion. The defense of Taiwan cannot be understood, or executed, through military posture alone. It depends on a wider set of enabling conditions: the ability to sustain asymmetric defense at scale, to endure economic and energy coercion, to secure critical materials, and to preserve the physical and digital infrastructure that connects Taiwan to its allies. Each of these domains merits focused analysis in its own right.

Defending Taiwan does not promise easy victories or risk-free outcomes. But abandoning it would represent a strategic self-inflicted wound, one that would shape the next century of American power far more decisively than the costs of deterrence ever could. In that sense, Taiwan is not merely a test of resolve. It is the fulcrum on which the future balance of the international system may well turn.

Josh Richards is the Chief Commercial Officer of Pacific Peering. He serves on the UN’s Joint Task Force on SMART Cables as a member of the Steering Committee, and chairs the Business Development Committee. He is a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project, a Tech Policy Fellow with the Aspen Institute, and a Senior Fellow with AI2030.

Joseph Hanacek is a Surface Warfare Officer in the United States Navy. He serves as a Warfare Tactics Instructor at the Surface Advanced Warfighting School detachment of the Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center in San Diego, CA. The views and opinions presented herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of War, the Department of the Navy, or its components.

References

1. U.S. Department of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2023, Office of the Secretary of Defense (Washington, DC, 2023), https://media.defense.gov/2023/Oct/19/2003323409/-1/-1/1/2023-MILITARY-AND-SECURITY-DEVELOPMENTS-INVOLVING-THE-PEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA.PDF

2. Hal Brands and Michael Beckley, Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China (New York: W. W. Norton, 2022), https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324021308

3. Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology (New York: Scribner, 2022), https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Chip-War/Chris-Miller/9781982172008

4. Emily de La Bruyère, “Made in China 2025—Who Is Winning?,” Congressional Testimony: Foundation for Defense of Democracies, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission February 6, 2025, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2025-02/Emily_de_La_Bruyere_Testimony.pdf

5. Ryan Hass, “An American perspective on the role of Taiwan in US-China relations,” Brookings Institution, July, 2022, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/an-american-perspective-on-the-role-of-taiwan-in-us-china-relations/

6. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Thomas Hobbes (London: 1629), https://archive.org/details/eightbookesofpel00thucuoft/page/n5/mode/2up; see also Graham Allison, Destined for War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), https://www.jstor.org/stable/26557386

7.  Michael Beckley, “The Power of Nations: Measuring What Matters,” International Security 43, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 7–44, https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/isec_a_00328

8. Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology (New York: Scribner, 2022), https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Chip-War/Chris-Miller/9781982172008

9. Dan Blumenthal et al., “How China Views It: Sino-American Technology Competition,” American Enterprise Institute, October 2022, https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/how-china-views-it-sino-american-technology-competition/

10. Semiconductor Industry Association, “2023 State of the U.S. Semiconductor Industry,” May 2023, https://www.semiconductors.org/state-of-the-u-s-semiconductor-industry/

11. U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Semiconductor Supply Chain: Policy Considerations from Selected Experts for Reducing Risks and Mitigating Shortages,” GAO-22-105923, July 2022, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-22-105923.pdf

12. Emily de La Bruyère, “Made in China 2025—Who Is Winning?,” Congressional Testimony: Foundation for Defense of Democracies, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission February 6, 2025, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2025-02/Emily_de_La_Bruyere_Testimony.pdf ; see also Richard Danzig and Lorand Laskai, “Symbiosis and Strive: Where Is the Sino-American Relationship Bound?,” Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU APL), 2020, https://www.jhuapl.edu/assessing-us-china-technology-connections/dist/00f3f3c246ab508f9fe11452bb18200c.pdf

13. Bloomberg Economics, “Xi, Biden and the $10 Trillion Cost of War Over Taiwan,” January 8, 2024, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-01-09/if-china-invades-taiwan-it-would-cost-world-economy-10-trillion

14. Michael Beckley and Hal Brands, “The End of China’s Rise” Foreign Affairs (October 1, 2021), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-10-01/end-chinas-rise

15. Rush Doshi, Emily de La Bruyere, Nathan Picarsic, and John Ferguson, “China as a ‘Cyber Great Power:’ Beijing’s Two Voices in Telecommunications,” The Brookings Institution, April 2021 https://www.brookings.edu/articles/china-as-a-cyber-great-power-beijings-two-voices-in-telecommunications/

16. James Manyika et al., “The State of AI in 2023,” McKinsey Global Institute, August 2023, https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai-in-2023-generative-ais-breakout-year

17. Emily de La Bruyère and Nathan Picarsic, “Commanding Heights: Ensuring U.S. Leadership in the Critical and Emerging Technologies of the 21st Century,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies, July 26, 2023, https://www.fdd.org/analysis/testimonies/2023/07/26/commanding-heights-ensuring-u-s-leadership-in-the-critical-and-emerging-technologies-of-the-21st-century/

18. Elizabeth Economy, The World According to China (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021), https://www.cfr.org/book/world-according-china

19. Jude Blanchette, “China’s New Red Guards,” Foreign Affairs, June 2019, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2019-10-15/two-books-china

20. Minxin Pei, “China’s Coming Upheaval,” Foreign Affairs, April 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-04-03/chinas-coming-upheaval

21. Ryan Hass and Bonnie Glaser, “U.S.-Taiwan Relations: Will China’s Challenge Lead to a Crisis?,” Brookings Institution, 2023, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7864/jj.3919358

22. Zack Cooper, “Rethinking the Rebalance,” American Enterprise Institute, September 2025, https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Rethinking-the-Rebalance-Zack-Cooper-9-5-2025.pdf?x85095

23. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Thomas Hobbes (London, 1629); see also Charles Glaser, “Rational Theory of International Politics,” International Security 41, no. 4 (Spring 2017): 49–86, https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/ISEC_a_00273

24. Evan S. Medeiros, “The Changing Fundamentals of U.S.–China Relations,” The Washington Quarterly 42, no. 3 (2019): 93–119, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0163660X.2019.1666355

25. Bonny Lin et al., Regional Responses to U.S.–China Competition in the Indo-Pacific, RAND Corporation, 2020, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR4412.html

26. Sidharth Kaushal, “All Strategies Short of War,” Royal United Services Institute, February 2022, https://mwi.usma.edu/all-strategies-short-of-war-getting-the-most-out-of-the-gray-zone/

27. Andrew S. Erickson and Gabriel Collins, “China’s Real Blue Water Navy,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2012, https://www.andrewerickson.com/2012/08/chinas-real-blue-water-navy/

28. James Holmes, “Taiwan Must Prepare for War with China,” The National Interest, June 5, 2024, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/taiwan-must-prepare-war-china-211304

29. Isaac Kardon and Wendy Leutert, “Pier Competitor: China’s Power Position in Global Ports,” International Security 46, no. 4 (Spring 2022): 9–47, https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/isec_a_00433

30. Michael Horowitz et al., The Future of Military Applications of Artificial Intelligence, Orbits Volume 64, Issue 4, 2020, Pages 528-543, August 2020, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0030438720300430?via%3Dihub

31. Michael Beckley, “The Power of Nations: Measuring What Matters,” International Security 43, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 7–44, https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/isec_a_00328

32. Rush Doshi, The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), https://www.rushdoshi.com/thelonggame

33. Kori Schake, “Ending China’s Chokehold on Rare-Earth Minerals,” Bloomberg, September 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-09-18/ending-china-s-chokehold-on-rare-earth-minerals

34. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Thomas Hobbes (London: 1629), https://archive.org/details/eightbookesofpel00thucuoft/page/n5/mode/2up; see also Kori Schake, “Deterrence,” Hoover Institution, May 2022, https://www.hoover.org/research/deterrence

Featured image: Taipei skyline at night. (Wikimedia Commons)

Iran War Series

Iran War Series Concludes on CIMSEC

Leave a comment

By Dmitry Filipoff

In the last two weeks, CIMSEC featured writing submitted to our Call for Articles on maritime conflict with Iran. 

Authors covered a wide range of topics, including strategic differences between allies, new paradigms in warfare, and underappreciated yet decisive dimensions of the conflict. The maritime domain has prominently featured in this conflict and exerted a major influence over the terms of war termination. The broader impacts of the war still remain to be seen, but could include a wider degradation of freedom of the seas and lesser readiness for great power conflicts. This war deserves the most careful examination from navies and maritime forces to better understand how the changing character of warfare and global connectivity is evolving the security maritime domain.

Below are the articles and authors that featured in the series. We thank them for their contributions.

“The Price of Doubt: Sea Control in the Strait of Hormuz,” by James Jackson

“The strait was open when the bombs fell. On March 4, Iran closed the strait in response to the strikes. What had been a campaign against Iranian military power became, by consequence, a campaign to reopen a waterway the United States had helped shut.”

“Hormuz and the Era of Asymmetry: Sea Mines, Unmanned Systems, and the Redefinition of Naval Power,” by Admiral Massimo Vianello (Ret.) and Master Chief Petty Officer Giovanni Giorguli (Ret.)

“These threats, once categorized as one-off tactics employed in isolation, are now weighted by indigenous industrial capacities and employed at scale by Iran and its proxy networks. They are systematically integrated with cyber operations and strategic disinformation campaigns designed to destabilize financial markets, energy security, and global communication architectures.”

“The Insurance Chokepoint: War-Risk Pricing as an Instrument of Maritime Coercion,” by Bruce Randolph Tizes

“Most analysis of the U.S.-Iran maritime war will focus on carrier strike group positioning, IRGC small-boat tactics, Marine Corps Stand-in Forces, and the operational lessons of contested chokepoints. Those analyses are necessary. They also miss a dimension Iran has built as deliberately as its mine and drone programs, one that will outlast any ceasefire: the commercial and insurance layer through which maritime trade is priced and governed.”

“The Hormuz Closure and the Limits of Sanctions: How Russia Benefited from Iran’s Chokepoint Weapon,” by Rustam Taghizade

“When the Trump administration granted India a 30-day waiver on March 5 to purchase Russian oil, the formal justification was straightforward: stabilize global energy markets after Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz. Yet beneath the surface, a deeper story unfolded. The waiver revealed a tension between two pillars of contemporary U.S. strategy—the use of maritime power to secure global chokepoints and the use of economic sanctions to punish adversaries.”

“Asymmetric Alliance Strategy: An Israeli Maritime Perspective on the Iran War,” by Ehud Eiran

“For the United States, however, the restoration of maritime order gradually became an objective in its own right. This did not produce an open alliance dispute, but it did create different hierarchies of priorities. Israel viewed the sea primarily as another theater through which Iran could be weakened. The United States viewed the sea as both a theater of war and a strategic system whose disruption could undermine wider political and economic interests.”

“Chokepoint Hormuz: Epic Fury and Italy’s Mediterranean Strategy,” by Rear Adm. Roberto Domini (Ret.)

“The closure of Hormuz must be read through this framework — not as a regional crisis to be observed from a safe distance, but as a challenge that ‘cannot be delegated to others.’ This analysis traces the evolution of the conflict, assesses its geopolitical and operational consequences, and highlights Italy’s maritime vulnerabilities, which if left unaddressed, could lead to the loss of its relevance in the Mediterranean.”

“The Iran War Highlights New Realities and Changing Paradigms,” by Paul Viscovich

“To effectively impact Iran’s ability to launch similar attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. would have to seize and hold the coastline from where these strikes originate. If the landings are successful, occupation of these coastal regions would force Iran to move its drone and ASCM launch sites further inland, increasing the reaction time for forces to target and engage, while exposing Iranian weapons to ground fire enroute to their targets at sea. However, this carries significant risks of its own.”

“The Hormuz Strait Crisis Confirms Nodal Control Will Dominate Maritime Geopolitics,” by Ludvico Domini

“The 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis exposes the inadequacy of some classical geopolitical frameworks. Alfred Thayer Mahan’s sea power, centered on blue-water naval supremacy, and Halford Mackinder’s land power, which focuses on Eurasian continental hegemony, are framed in a dualistic tension with one another. This framing proves insufficient in an era of advanced globalization and asymmetric warfare.”

“Convert Merchants into Unmanned Ships to Manage Risk in the Strait of Hormuz,” by Alexander Lott, Kristjan Tabri, and Angela Sooba

“Would it be possible for ships to undertake the passage through danger zones, such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, autonomously via shore-based control centers? Could crew members disembark for the inbound transit and then board the outbound ships in the ports far from the theater of war? Such a method could substantially change the risk calculus affecting commercial shipping and the safety of navigation in dangerous waters.”

“American Naval Mines Can Be Decisive Against Iran,” by Ronald Stewart and Scott Truver

“The conventional bombs carried by the Navy’s aircraft carriers could easily be converted to unconventional ‘Quickstrike’ naval mines to be planted in water as well as on dry land for offensive and defensive requirements, generating strategic, operational, and tactical implications.”

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at Content@cimsec.org.

Featured Image: March 12, 2025 – Naval vessels take part in a joint Iranian-Russian-Chinese military drill in the Gulf of Oman. (Iranian Army photo)

Mine Warfare

American Naval Mines Can Be Decisive Against Iran

4 Comments

Iran War Topic Week

By Commander Ronald E. Swart, United States Navy (Retired) and Scott C. Truver, PhD

President Donald J. Trump on March 9, 2026 declared that the United States “will not allow Iran’s terrorist regime to stop global oil supply. The Strait of Hormuz is going to remain safe. We have a lot of Navy ships there. We have the best equipment in the world inspecting for mines,” hinting that Iran had already deployed in the main channel about 80 of its estimated 6,000 mines. “Most of their ships are down at the bottom of the sea,” Trump asserted. “But we will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world.”

Since February 2026, the spectrum of violence stemming from the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz has been expansive. It was not uncommon to see vessel masters playing “chicken” for better positions among many vessels anchored in the waterway. It included suicide attacks by small fast craft and patrol boats armed by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fighters brandishing small arms and lightweight mines. Five-inch guns and anti-ship missiles were fired from U.S. surface warships and tactical aircraft and attack-helicopters. The U.S. fast-attack submarine USS Charlotte (SSN 766) torpedoed the Iranian frigate Dena in international waters, killing 104 crewmembers.

Six weeks after launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran, Trump ordered the Navy to blockade Iranian ports and to clear the area of any Iranian mines. Vice President J.D. Vance accused Iran of “economic terrorism” by closing the Strait and defended the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports as an equal response: “They basically threatened any ship that’s moving through the Strait of Hormuz.”

On May 3, Trump announced yet another plan to guide ships through the Strait, Project Freedom, which would search for and locate mines to be avoided but not to render them safe. Mine-hunting and sweeping would come later.

In all of this, there has been no indication that U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) or U.S. Navy planners have seriously considered using American-made naval mines to neutralize what was left of the Iranian navy and other vessels attempting to make runs into and out of Iran’s ports. Minefield objectives that could inform U.S. planning are listed in the Barriers, Obstacles, and Mine Warfare for Joint Operations, Joint Publication 3-15:

  • Disrupt: A minefield is used to alter enemy formations and tempo, interrupt enemy timetables, cause the enemy to conduct MCM operations, or some combination.
  • Fix: A minefield is designed to slow or stop targets to create a target-rich environment for friendly forces in an engagement area. Ideally, this field would inhibit the enemy’s capability to defend itself against friendly forces.
  • Turn: A minefield is intended to divert enemy formations from their intended transit onto one that is advantageous to friendly units.
  • Block: A minefield is emplaced to stop maritime traffic along a specific avenue of approach. Blocking minefields should be able to withstand enemy MCM techniques, including clearance through attrition, using creativity, technology, mine density, or some combination to overcome enemy efforts. While all minefields can be integrated with joint/integrated fires, blocking minefields benefit the most.

The conventional bombs carried by the Navy’s aircraft carriers could easily be converted to unconventional “Quickstrike” naval mines to be planted in water as well as on dry land for offensive and defensive requirements, generating strategic, operational, and tactical implications.

A Proven Weapon

Naval mines have been a constant for the United States since David Bushnell’s semi-submersible Turtle attacked General William Howe’s HMS Eagle on September 6, 1776. More recently, in the early 1960s the Navy bought conversion kits for more than 4,000 Mk-36 Destructor (DST) magnetic-influence bottom mines (maximum operational depth of 300 feet) fashioned from standard-issue Mk-82 500-pound bombs. The DSTs were the provenance of the Mk-62/63 Quickstrike mines that entered service in 1980.

In 1972-1973 Operation Pocket Money, the United States dropped thousands of mines against North Vietnamese ports and waterways, shutting down the port of Haiphong and energizing North Vietnam to return to the Paris Peace Talks. On May 9, 1972, Navy attack aircraft began minelaying strikes against Haiphong harbor. Thirty-six mines were planted, and, to limit provocation of the Soviets, Chinese, and other third parties, the mines were set with a 72-hour delay before they became active.

U.S. President Richard M. Nixon explained:

“All entrances to North Vietnamese ports will be mined to prevent access to these ports and North Vietnamese naval operations from these ports. United States forces have been directed to take appropriate measures within the internal and claimed territorial waters of North Vietnam to interdict the delivery of any supplies. Rail and all other communications will be cut off to the maximum extent possible. Air and naval strikes against military targets in North Vietnam will continue.”

Nixon’s announcement gave other nations’ ships three days to escape the port before becoming trapped. Nine ships departed Haiphong safely, while twenty-seven vessels remained “swinging on the hook.” Several merchant ships headed toward Haiphong turned away because of the mine threat. The Navy continued to reseed the minefields in Haiphong and at other North Vietnamese ports throughout 1972.

43 Years and Counting

The most recently designed mines reached the fleet in 1983. The Mk-65 aircraft-laid bottom mine consists of a thin-walled, purpose-built mine case, nose faring, and tail section adaptable to a parachute option. The Mk-65 is used against submarines and surface targets. The Mk-60 CAPTOR (enCAPsulatedTORpedo) mine was armed with a Mk-46 Mod 4 lightweight homing torpedo. CAPTORS, which were decommissioned in 2001, were able to detect, target, and attack submarines at long ranges, about 17,000 yards.

Since then, some 15 new-design concepts, including foreign navy candidates, never saw the light of day.

As of 2026, U.S. surface warships and special-mission surface craft cannot deploy mines, while only a handful of the 2,000 pound Mk-67 Submarine-Launched Mobile Mines (SLMMs) and the traditional thin-walled air-delivered Mk-65s remain in service. The three-boat Seawolf (SSN 21) nuclear-powered fast-attack submarines and some 26 Virginia (SSN 774)-class boats can deploy mines, should such weapons be used.

The aircraft-deployed shallow-water (about 150 feet) Quickstrike mines are the Navy’s only high-volume mines, and the remaining SLMMs can be launched only by aging Los Angeles-class (SSN 688) attack submarines. Of note, the Navy has repurposed SLMM Mk-13 warheads for the new clandestine delivered mines program.

The Quickstrikes also provide rapid-response capability. Because the Mk-62 500-pound and Mk-63 1,000-pound mines are bomb-conversion weapons, aircraft carrier air do not need to store them in special magazines reserved only for mines. A Mk-62/63 conversion-kit can be applied to a standard dumb bomb to create a naval mine.

The Mk-62 Flounder and Mk-63 Skipjack mines use the general-purpose Mk-82 (500-pound) and Mk-83 (1,000-pound), dumb bomb bodies. The smart bomb includes a variable-influence Mk-57 target detection device (TDD). These mines target submarines and surface ships and are capable of numerous arming delay, target sterilization, self-destruct, and other operational settings. The Mk-57 TDD uses magnetic and seismic influences for target detection and can be set to require combined magnetic and seismic influences of specific magnitudes.

In September 2014, U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) demonstrated the extended-range Mk-62 Quickstrike-ER, a modification of the 500-pound winged Joint Direct-Attack Munition (JDAM)-ER. Dropped from a B-52H strategic bomber, this was the first-ever deployment of a high-accuracy, razor-sharp-precision, long-standoff aerial mine.

Subsequently, another joint effort between PACOM, the Navy, and the Air Force successfully dropped a 2,000-pound Mk-64 Quickstrike-JDAM-ER launched from a B-52H. It was effective out to ranges of 300 nautical miles, and from cruise altitudes at up to 40,000 feet, and landed with precision at desired drop points.

PACIFIC OCEAN (May 30, 2019) the Quickstrike-ER (QS-ER) Naval mine project drops towards the Pacific Ocean from a B-52 Stratofortress during an operational demonstration. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communications Specialist 1st Class Holly L. Herline)

The Air Force has also planned anti-ship “Quicksink” weapons in future loadouts. In July 2024, the Air Force and allied air forces tested sinking a large surface ship at long range, including for the first time using a U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. The test of the weapon occurred on 19 July, when a B-2 participated in sinking the ex-USS Tarawa (LHA-10), a retired amphibious assault warship the size of a small aircraft carrier. Quicksink warheads of some 2,000 pounds could give the Air Force bombers the anti-ship capability of a submarine-launched torpedo without exposing a submarine to risk from detection and targeting.

In 2026, the Navy was upgrading the Quickstrike mines to the Mk-71 TDD, a state-of-the-art firing mechanism. The Mk-71 senses magnetic, seismic, and pressure signatures and can be programmed with sophisticated target-processing and counter-countermeasures algorithms. This enables the Navy’s miners to optimize performance against different target classes and to counter future targets. In short, the Quickstrike mines are not simple devices but rival even the Navy’s cruise missiles in complexity and sophistication.

Analysis of the American experience with naval mines reveals that it took about three decades to approve the Mk-71 TDD for fleet operations. It is little surprise that in the competition for resources the Navy mine warfare community is often regarded as the service’s forgotten capability.

Blockading Iran

A blockade of Iran’s Hormuz ports, both inside and outside the Strait, could be accomplished with the use of American mines, assuming that U.S. minefield plans are updated and the mine hardware is ready to use. Stopping Iran’s minelayers, many of which are very small and can be deployed from numerous ports or caves along the Iranian littoral, will not be trivial. The job of keeping these threats in ports­­ will be challenging enough.

As soon as the decision to lay U.S. mines is received, the Navy’s carriers could immediately launch Quickstrike-armed attack aircraft. Quickstrike TDDs can be set to such a sensitivity that they can detect and detonate on a wide range of surface and subsurface vessels, including Iran’s small-vessel signatures. Once U.S.-Iran War hostilities are exhausted, the deployed Quickstrike mines, already pre-set to self-destruct at a predetermined time, will self-clear, eliminating an additional hazard for U.S. and other navies’ mine countermeasure force efforts to ensure safe passage. Strait of Hormuz commercial and naval ship traffic will return to normal transits. Still, when hostilities in the Strait and Persian Gulf and Hormuz finally wind down, the dangerous and difficult task of clearing mines must begin.

As The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations NWP 1-14 (Hague Convention 1907) explains, nations that laid mines must remove them when hostilities end and must notify the positions of mines to the other belligerents. This is an extremely burdensome task. For example, following the cessation of Operation Desert Storm in 1992, it took a dedicated multi-navy coalition mine countermeasure force more than a year to clear the ten mine danger areas in the northern Persian Gulf.  U.S. Navy mine counter-measure operations continued into 1997.

Similarly, mine countermeasures vessels participating in various NATO exercises in the Baltic and North Sea have continued to find and destroy World War I- and World War II–era mines. To date, they have discovered between 50,000 and 80,000 mines. In mid-2026, should the United States decide to blockade Iran’s waters with sea mines, the challenges for U.S. miners would be to develop and plant effective minefields quickly and accurately. Estimates of the time it would take mine-sweepers and -hunters to sanitize a Hormuz waterway ran from a month to more than a year.

Into the Fight

Mine warfare is not easy, quick, or career-enhancing. Since 1776, only a handful of Navy flag officers (RDML/RADM) commanded mine warfare forces. Reaching Captain (O-6) was considered stellar performance. Multiple back-to-back mine warfare tours assured sitting in the last pew. As mine warfare historian Tamara Moser Melia recognized,  “By the end of World War I, most U.S. naval officers probably agreed with the assessment that mine sweeping [and mine hunting] remained merely unpleasant work for a naval man, an occupation like that of rat-catching.” The sentiment holds true today.

The U.S. Navy’s Quickstrike bottom influence mines will be critical to success. Despite the cost it will take to clear them when the war truly ends, their effects will be decisive in bringing the conflict to a conclusion. It is past time to get them into the fight.

CDR Ronald E. Swart, USN (Ret.) is the Principal Advisor to the Mine Warfare Association (https://minwara.org). He has 32 years of experience in naval minefield planning and mine readiness.

Dr. Scott Truver, also a Principal Advisor at MINWARA, has worked in support of U.S. Navy mine warfare since 1990 and is the co-author of Weapons that Wait: Mine Warfare in the U.S. Navy (2nd ed, Naval Institute Press).

References

Brad Lendon, “How the US Navy could Blockade Iran’s Port and Sweep Mines from the Strait   of Hormuz,” CNN World, 13 April 2026, https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/13/middleeast/us-iran-hormuz-blockade-minesweeping-explainer-intl-hnk-ml. Brad Lendon, “The U.S. Says It Has Successfully Practiced Using a Low-Cost Bomb to Sink a Major Surface Ship: China is Taking Note,” Navy Strategy News, 29 July 2024.

Brad Lendon, “The U.S. Says It Has Successfully Practiced Using a Low-Cost Bomb to Sink a Major Surface Ship: China is Taking Note,” Navy Strategy News, 29 July 2024.

Bryan Clark, “’Shoot and Kill’” Orders Made on Mine-Laying Boats in the Strait, Hudson Institution, CNN, April  2026 shttps://www.hudson.org/missile-defense/shoot-kill-orders-made-mine-laying-boats-strait-bryan-clark.

Jessie Yeung, “Day 45 of Middle East conflict––US Navy starts Blockade on Iranian ports,” CNN World, 14 April 2026.

Edwards, “Preparing Today for the Mines of Tomorrow,” Naval War College Review, Vol72, No3, 2019, 12, https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol72/iss3/5/.

Mine Warfare Plan: Meeting the Challenges of an Uncertain World. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, OP-00/OP-03, 29 January 1992. Mimeo.

Riley Cedar, “The US has counter-mine ships homeported in the Middle East. Are they effective?” Navy Times, 23 March 2026, https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2026/03/23/the-us-has-counter-mine-ships-homeported-in-the-middle-east-are-they-effective/.

Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations NWP 1-14 (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, March 2022, NWP­_1-114M.pdf)/.

Tamara Moser Melia, Damn the Torpedoes: A Short History of U.S. Naval Mine Countermeasures, 1777–1991, (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy, 1991).

Tony DiGiulian, Owner, Naval Weapons Systems (NavWeaps, http//www.NavWeaps.com) military database. Accessed 3 June 2026.

“Trump Announces Plan to help ‘Guide’ Ships Out of the Strait of Hormuz, The Maritime Executive, 3 May 2026.

Featured Image: A Mk-63 Quickstrike Mine is mounted on a P-3 Orion aircraft. (US Navy photo)