The Trump administration asked for redactions to a sweeping new Heritage Foundation report modeling a potential U.S.–China war over Taiwan, even though the analysis relied entirely on publicly available, unclassified data, according to the report’s authors.
The redacted report, TIDALWAVE, warns that the United States could reach a breaking point within weeks of a high‑intensity conflict with China — conclusions that the authors say prompted senior national security officials to seek redactions over concerns adversaries could exploit the findings or use them to identify U.S. and allied military vulnerabilities.
Those conclusions include warnings that U.S. forces would culminate far sooner than China, suffer catastrophic losses to aircraft and sustainment infrastructure in the Pacific, and still fail to prevent a global economic shock estimated at roughly $10 trillion, nearly a tenth of global GDP.
According to the report's authors, the AI‑enabled model drew exclusively on open‑source government, academic, industry and commercial information. An unredacted version of the report was provided to authorized U.S. government recipients for internal use.
Unlike traditional tabletop war games, TIDALWAVE employs an AI‑enabled model that runs thousands of iterations, tracking how losses in platforms, munitions, and fuel compound over time and drive cascading operational failure early in the conflict.
According to a Heritage spokesperson, the report had been shown to "high-level national security officials" who requested some of the specifics be crossed out in black ink before its release to the public. The report still details how quickly U.S. forces could reach a breaking point and why the conflict would carry global consequences.
"Redactions were made at the request of the U.S. government to prevent disclosure of information that could reasonably enable an adversary to (1) re mediate or ‘close’ critical vulnerabilities that the United States and its allies could otherwise exploit, or (2) identify or exploit U.S. and allied vulnerabilities in ways that could degrade operational endurance, resilience, or deterrence," the report said.
A Department of War spokesperson declined to comment on discussions surrounding TIDALWAVE's publication, but added: "The Department of War does not endorse, validate, or adjudicate third-party analyses, nor do we engage publicly on hypothetical conflict modeling. As a general matter, we take seriously the protection of information that, if aggregated or contextualized, could have implications for operational security."
The White House could not be reached for comment.
According to the report’s redacted findings, the U.S. would culminate in less than half the time required for the People's Republic of China in a high-intensity conflict. Culmination is defined as the point at which a force becomes incapable of continuing operations due to the loss of platforms, ammunition and/or fuel.
The report is explicit that the first 30 days to 60 days of a U.S.-China war determine its long-term shape and outcome, as early losses in aircraft, ships, fuel throughput and munitions rapidly compound and cannot be recovered on operationally relevant timelines.
The report concludes that the U.S. is not equipped nor arrayed to protect and sustain the Joint Force in a conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific. Rapid platform attrition, brittle logistics, concentrated basing and insufficient industrial surge capacity combine to force an early operational breaking point for American forces.
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