Top U.S. Military Officer Warns: We Must ‘Fundamentally’ Change Our Military Or China Will Beat Us

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned during this week during an event at the Aspen Security Forum that the U.S. military must rapidly change itself or face the prospect of losing a war against China or another nation state adversary.

Milley marveled over the speed in which China has transformed itself both economically and militarily, saying that “their aspiration is to challenge the United States globally.”

“They want to challenge the so called liberal rules-based order that went into effect in 1945 at the end of World War II, they want to revise it,” Milley said. “So we have a case here of a country that is becoming extraordinarily powerful, that wants to revise the international order to their advantage. That’s going to be a real challenge over the coming years. In next 10-20 years, that’s going to be really significant for the United States.”

Milley then addressed the recent hypersonic missile tests that China conducted, noting that they were significant within a larger context of how fast China is catching up to the U.S. in a variety of military domains.

“I would argue that the nature of that particular test, taken as part of a whole, if you look at, again, 40 years ago, they had 0 satellites, look at what they’ve got today,” Milley said. “They had no ICBMs, look at what they’ve got today. They had no nuclear weapons, look what they got today. They have no fourth or fifth generation fighters or even more advanced fighters back then, look what they got today. They had no navy, look what they have today. They had no sub force, look what they have today. So if you look at the totality, this test that occurred a couple weeks ago, is only one of a much, much broader picture of a military capability with respect to the Chinese, that is very, very significant.”

“We’re witnessing, in my view, we’re witnessing one of the largest shifts in global geostrategic power that the world is witnessed,” Milley continued. “And it only happens once in a while. And it’s not standalone. It’s happening within what I would call a operating environment, a change in the character of war. So that happens once in a while. In terms of a fundamental change in the character of war, what we’re seeing today is a fundamental change. And that only happens every, the last