Daily Brief: 02 January 2026
Xi dismantles succession norms while setting Taiwan's 2027 deadline. Russia's $50 jammers neutralize NATO's $100,000 precision shells.
Indo-Pacific | China | Xi’s political architecture may compel Taiwan escalation despite strategic costs
Situation
Xi Jinping has systematically dismantled China’s leadership succession mechanisms while setting 2027 as the PLA’s readiness deadline for Taiwan operations. The date represents capability achievement, not invasion timing, but Xi’s political consolidation may eliminate peaceful alternatives.
Recent military purges, including the complete removal of Rocket Force leadership in 2023, reveal a pattern of terror-based loyalty rather than strategic confidence. Xi has purged both inherited officers and those he personally elevated, creating decision paralysis within military leadership.
The Anti-Secession Law provides legal flexibility for both action and restraint, but Xi’s explicit linkage of Taiwan reunification to national rejuvenation creates ideological dependencies that may override strategic calculation.
Context
Traditional CCP legitimacy mechanisms are weakening as economic growth slows and youth unemployment exceeds 20 percent. Xi has shifted toward nationalist legitimacy to compensate, making Taiwan central to his ideological project. However, this creates a trap: logical dependency on reunification without clear temporal requirements.
Xi’s consolidation mirrors Mao’s dangerous concentration of authority that Deng’s reforms were designed to prevent. The dismantling of collective leadership, term limits, and factional balance removes systemic correction mechanisms that historically prevented catastrophic decisions.
Unlike diversionary war theory suggests, Xi’s position may compel escalation not from weakness but from the elimination of institutional alternatives to his rule.
Trajectory
Xi faces a succession crisis with no designated heir at age 72, making Taiwan action potentially necessary for regime survival rather than strategic gain. The system has lost its ability to course-correct, making escalation the default option.
The 2027 capability deadline creates pressure even without invasion orders, as military readiness combined with political inflexibility may trigger conflict through miscalculation rather than design.
China’s political architecture now resembles a one-way mechanism toward confrontation, where the costs of backing down may exceed the risks of military action in Xi’s calculation.
Ukraine | Defence | Russian jamming reduced $100,000 GPS-guided shells to 10% accuracy but NATO maintains precision-strike doctrine
Situation
Ukrainian forces stopped ordering Excalibur GPS-guided artillery shells in May 2024 after Russian electronic warfare reduced their accuracy from 70% to below 10%. The $100,000 rounds became operationally worthless against systematic jamming.
Despite this demonstrated vulnerability, NATO’s 2024 Washington Summit pledged to enhance “precision strike capabilities.” Defence contractors continue booking record orders for GPS-dependent weapons while the anti-jamming market grows at 10.5% annually—not because solutions exist, but because vulnerability has become a product category.
GPS signals arrive thirty decibels below thermal noise, making them inherently vulnerable to ground-based jammers that can overwhelm satellite transmissions with minimal power.
Context
This represents a fundamental breakdown in Western military planning. NATO has built its entire warfighting doctrine around precision-guided munitions that Russian forces have learned to systematically defeat. The alliance’s legal framework for authorising strikes assumes GPS accuracy levels that no longer exist in contested environments.
The Pentagon has spent two decades developing jam-resistant M-code GPS signals, but deployment remains years away. Meanwhile, software-defined radios allow adversaries to adapt jamming techniques within weeks while Western defence acquisition takes 7-15 years from concept to deployment.
Four structural factors prevent correction: profitable vulnerability for contractors, legal frameworks dependent on precision assumptions, NATO interoperability requirements, and institutional phantom limb syndrome that refuses to accept capability loss.
Trajectory
The temporal mismatch is decisive. Russian investments in jamming from 2015 pay dividends today, while NATO responses initiated now might reach deployment by 2032. Ukrainian forces adapt tactically in weeks, but workarounds cannot substitute for strategic resilience.
This creates cascading vulnerabilities across alliance planning. Smaller NATO members trained exclusively on GPS-dependent systems cannot easily revert to alternatives without rebuilding doctrine and logistics chains.
The Defence Science Board’s May 2024 assessment was explicit: GPS availability “may not be guaranteed at all places and times.” NATO continues planning as if Ukraine’s lessons don’t apply elsewhere.
Yesterday’s Assessments
Until tomorrow.
