China’s long-term blueprint for high-end conflict is no longer a matter of conjecture. A new wave of official assessments sketches a detailed, layered strategy that runs from nuclear coercion and regional invasion plans to information warfare against American society itself. Together, they amount to a sobering picture of a state preparing not just to fight, but to shape the terms of any future war.
What emerges from these reports is less a single “smoking gun” than a tightly integrated war plan designed to deter, disorient, and, if necessary, defeat the United States and its allies. I see a doctrine that fuses missiles, submarines, data, and disinformation into a campaign aimed at breaking American will before a shot is fired and overwhelming U.S. and allied forces if deterrence fails.
Inside Beijing’s long war blueprint
The most authoritative window into this planning comes from the Pentagon’s annual assessment of Chinese power, which describes how the People’s Liberation Army has been retooled for high-intensity conflict. The latest report outlines a force that is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal, fielding long-range precision missiles, and building the logistics to sustain operations far from its shores. A companion analysis of the Department of Defense’s 25th China Military Power underscores that the overriding theme is simple: China’s military is advancing even as it churns through internal purges and reforms.
Across several years of U.S. reporting, The PLA’s modernization is tied to explicit political timelines. One synthesis of those documents notes that The PLA’s 2027 development goals are linked directly to improving its chances of forcibly unifying Taiwan if ordered, with long-range strike systems reaching 5,000 to 8,000 kilometers. A separate Washington Report assessment bluntly concludes that China’s military modernization poses a direct and growing threat to U.S. security and is geared toward displacing the United States by 2049, a warning that anchors its judgment in a detailed Washington Report on China’s trajectory.
From Taiwan to the Pacific: a regional war plan with global stakes
At the operational level, the centerpiece of Beijing’s planning remains a potential assault on Taiwan, backed by a layered anti-access strategy across the Western Pacific. U.S. assessments describe how The PLA continues to make steady progress toward its 2027 goals, which include the ability to achieve “strategic decisive victory” in a Taiwan contingency and to hold adversary forces at risk out to 2,000 nautical miles from China, a reach detailed in a recent Pentagon report. Another synthesis of U.S. reporting from 2020 to 2025 stresses that The PLA’s 2027 benchmarks are explicitly framed around improving its odds of a successful forced unification with Taiwan, backed by long-range conventional strike systems that can threaten U.S. bases and carrier groups.
On the maritime front, commercial imagery has offered a rare glimpse of the hardware that would underpin such a campaign. Satellite photos highlighted by one investigation show a secretive submarine facility in China’s Guangdong province, with six advanced boats visible in port, a snapshot that fed into wider analysis of China’s undersea buildup. That same reporting framed the question “Why does China want to invade Taiwan?” and argued that And Beijing has already shown signs of preparations for a potential war, pointing to intensive work on hardened naval infrastructure and missile fields that would be central to any attempt to keep U.S. and allied intervention forces at bay.
Nuclear coercion in a world 89 seconds from midnight
Overlaying the regional picture is a nuclear posture designed to raise the global stakes of any clash. Analysts who have reviewed the Department of Defense’s latest China Military Power note significant progress in nuclear posture enhancement, long-range conventional strike, and the resilience of command and control. A separate financial analysis of the same Pentagon findings stresses that China’s military buildup, including its nuclear expansion, is making the United States more vulnerable, even as internal probes and removals of senior officers “very likely risk short term disruptions in the operational effectiveness” of some units, a tension laid out in detail in a Bloomberg account.
These developments are unfolding in a broader strategic environment that is already on edge. A risk assessment from early January notes that 2026 begins with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock moved to just 89 seconds to midnight, a symbolic measure that reflects intensifying Great-power competition and the emergence of what some experts describe as a third nuclear era, a warning captured in a detailed risk survey. A parallel version of that assessment reiterates that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set the Doomsday Clock at 89 seconds to midnight and warns that Great-power rivalry, particularly between nuclear-armed states, is pulling the world deeper into a dangerous third nuclear era.
The invisible front: data, disinformation and the war against American minds
China’s war planning is not confined to missiles and submarines. It also envisions a contest over information, identity, and political cohesion inside rival societies. A forward-looking threat assessment from a U.S. military think tank warns that “the war against American minds will open a new front in 2025,” arguing that the convergence of China’s massive personal data collection efforts with artificial intelligence will enable industrial-scale influence operations that can microtarget and manipulate U.S. citizens, a scenario laid out in the Institute of Future’s 2026 Threat Horizon Report. That document frames the challenge as a race between American resilience and China’s ability to industrialize psychological operations at a scale democracies have never faced.
On the front line of this information struggle, Taiwan is already living with the daily reality of Chinese disinformation. A broadcast titled Report Warns of China’s Disinformation describes how Taiwan’s National agencies are tracking coordinated campaigns that blend fake social media accounts, manipulated news, and cultural narratives to undermine trust in institutions and erode support for self-rule, a pattern highlighted in the Report Warns of coverage. A separate version of that segment, labeled Report Warns of China’s Disinformation, reinforces that Jan briefings from Taiwan’s Nationa-level institutions see these operations as a prelude to coercion, not a side show, a warning carried in the YouTube description.
Washington’s scramble to catch up
In Washington, the response to this emerging war plan is taking shape in both public reports and classified guidance. A leaked internal directive, described in detail by national security reporters, shows how a secret Pentagon memo on China and the homeland has Heritage fingerprints and calls for the expansion of U.S. nuclear forces and homeland missile defenses, while also urging more aggressive tracking of civilian ships that could be used as Chinese navy vessels, a set of recommendations outlined in the secret memo. That story also notes that those details were previously reported by CNN and NBC News, underscoring how the debate over China policy is bleeding into domestic political fights.
On the legislative front, President Donald Trump has already signed a $900 billion defense bill that seeks to choke off the flow of American capital into China’s war machine. The 2026 National Defense Authorization Act restricts U.S. investors from putting money into China’s military and strategic sectors and reflects a bipartisan judgment that Wall Street should not be bankrolling potential adversaries, a shift spelled out in the National Defense Authorization. A parallel financial briefing on the same law emphasizes that the National Defense Authorization Act’s investment restrictions are aimed squarely at China’s military and strategic sectors and notes that the U.S. Senate approved a related measure to tighten oversight of American exposure to those sectors.
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