In 2021, Erica Lonergan wrote, “A Grand Strategy Based on Resilience,” where she argued the United States should focus more time and resources on anticipating and withstanding disruptive events and the ability to rapidly restore key functions in the wake of a crisis. Four years later, we asked Erica to reflect on her article.In your 2021 article, “A Grand Strategy Based on Resilience,” you argue for reorienting America’s grand strategy so it can more effectively anticipate and respond to adversary actions. Amid ongoing conflicts involving U.S. allies and the escalating technology and AI competition with China, do you still stand by your claim that resilience should anchor American grand strategy?Resilience entails having the processes in place to anticipate and withstand disruptive events, rapidly restore key functions, and incorporate lessons learned into future resilience planning. I would argue that a grand strategy based on resilience is even more important now than it was several years ago. Recent revelations about Chinese intrusions into U.S. critical infrastructure, linked to the threat actor dubbed Volt Typhoon, underscore the centrality of resilience for grand strategy. U.S. government officials assess these intrusions represent an effort by the Chinese government to emplace cyber capabilities in critical infrastructure, with the potential to “activate” the malware to conduct disruptive or destructive cyber attacks in the event of a crisis or contingency between China and the United States. The United States sees this strategy as a form of Chinese cyber coercion, to make it more difficult for the United States to mobilize assets during a crisis and/or to coerce the population. As the Volt Typhoon incident has revealed, it is quite difficult to deter or prevent adversaries from gaining access to U.S. networks and systems through cyber means. If breaches are nearly inevitable, that shifts the strategic imperative toward having the
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In 2021, Erica Lonergan wrote, “A Grand Strategy Based on Resilience,” where she argued the United States should focus more time and resources on anticipating and withstanding disruptive events and the ability to rapidly restore key functions in the wake of a crisis. Four years later, we asked Erica to reflect on her article.In your 2021 article, “A Grand Strategy Based on Resilience,” you argue for reorienting America’s grand strategy so it can more effectively anticipate and respond to adversary actions. Amid ongoing conflicts involving U.S. allies and the escalating technology and AI competition with China, do you still stand by