University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation

As tensions mount between China and the United States in the western Pacific, countering China’s growing anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities has been a major focus of the Pentagon’s current Third Offset Strategy, which is designed to leverage US advantages in new and emerging critical technology areas. The brief explores the implications of a push for cutting-edge military technology capabilties for both the US defense industry and the global arms industry and concludes that the United States might have to go it alone, at least in the short term.