PLA's new Information Support Force; Blinken to PRC; TikTok; Swimming scandal; UK and Germany espionage arrests
Summary of today’s Essential Eight:
1. PLA reorg creates Information Support Force - The Strategic Support Force, created in the massive PLA reforms announced January 1, 2016, is no more. On Friday Xi conferred a flag on a new Information Support Force (ISF), and the readout from the ceremony stated that the “the official designation of the Strategic Support Force (SSF) is canceled”. It sounds like the SSF has been broken up into the ISF, an Aerospace Force and a Cyberspace Force, though there has not been a flag presentation ceremony or announcement of new leadership for the latter two. According to CCTV “the Force must provide strong support for combat operations, adhere to information dominance and joint victory, ensure smooth information links, integrate information resources, strengthen information protection, deeply integrate into the joint combat system of the entire military, implement information support precisely and efficiently, and serve and guarantee military struggles in all directions and fields”.
A PLA Daily commentary said that “Victory in modern warfare is dictated by information dominance. Modern conflicts are competitions between systems and structures, where control over information equates to control over the initiative in war…The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasizes the coordinated development and application of the network information system [网络信息体系]. Network information technology has become the "biggest variable" in the development of the era and an important increment in enhancing the combat effectiveness of the troops. The Information Support Force, as a newly established strategic service, is key to the coordinated development and application of the network information system, playing a crucial role in promoting high-quality development of the military and winning modern wars”.
So why this change, eight years after the massive PLA reforms and the creation of the Strategic Support Force (SSF)? My guess is that eight years on from the 2015/2016 reforms, and as technology and have warfare have changed so much since then, as shown by the Ukraine war, Xi et al realized that they needed to do another reorganization to be more effective and efficient. The ongoing corruption problems in the PLA may have played a role, and it make sense that smaller bodies reporting directly into the CMC are easier to control from a corruption perspective, but I would be surprised if that was the primary driver of this change. Bi Yi 毕毅 is commander 司令员 of the the head of the new ISF and previously he was deputy commander of the Strategic Support Force (SSF). Li Wei 李伟, the political commissar of the ISF was previously the political commissar of the SSF. If this restructuring were mainly about corruption issues would senior leaders of the SSF be moved into the top two positions of the new ISF?
What exactly will the new Information Support Force (ISF) do? Will it have an intelligence role like the old 2/PLA? Will it be responsible for the massive amount of technical intelligence the PLA now collects? Someone needs to collect, process, analyze and distribute all the info they are collecting. Whatever is going on, I lean towards seeing this change as another sign that Xi can mostly do what he wants with the PLA, not as a sign of weakness.
