May 12, 2023

Colloquium Topic: The Taiwan Flashpoint: Scenarios, Capability Gaps, and Deterrence

Robert Haddick’s presentation will describe the military-technical trends and force design decisions that are causing a deterioration in the U.S. military position in the western Pacific relative to China’s People’s Liberation Army. The presentation will then examine two scenarios regarding the defense of Taiwan and the U.S. military-technical capability gaps revealed in these scenarios. The presentation concludes with a discussion of the contribution U.S. and allied science and engineering communities can make to improving deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region.

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Colloquium Speaker: Robert Haddick

Robert Haddick is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Air & Space Forces Association in Arlington, Virginia. He is the author of Fire on the Water, Second Edition: China, America, and the Future of the Pacific, published by Naval Institute Press in 2022. Haddick was an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and served in East Asia and Africa. He was a contractor at U.S. Special Operations Command and also performed research for the U.S. Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment. He was a national security columnist at Foreign Policy Magazine and has delivered lectures on strategy across the U.S. government.