The '27 Club
One Year to Go
“At twenty-five, all hope has died
And the glass of my intentions turns to sand
And shatters in my hand”
"25” by The Pretty Reckless
Taylor Momsen, the modern queen of rock and roll, contemplates if and how she’ll make it past 27 and survive the rock star’s curse of self-destruction in her darkest hours on “25”. The accompanying album, Death by Rock and Roll, is about despair, death, and revival after the death of Chris Cornell. I think a lot about that album whenever I have a moment to collect my thoughts. Here we are at the twilight of 2025, watching the clock tick down on the Davidson Window’s final years and I can’t help but hum the lyrics to the Bond theme-esque ballad by The Pretty Reckless. Are we doomed by our own rockstar’s curse? Have we dragged ourselves so far down into the pit we cannot escape? Do we still control our collective destiny as Americans?
I won’t bullshit you: the world’s on fire and the USG is barely holding itself together. So some days I can’t help but feel like Taylor Momsen staring down our dark, collective destiny. How are we supposed to be ready to fight the PLA in the title fight when we can’t get our act together? We’re building ships for ego instead for force design, gutting our cyber defenses, and championing the kind of corruption in our own government that the CIA exploited against the CCP years before. We’re denying the science of vaccines but accepting the cult of personality. We’ve decided grift, rather than grit, is an American value. I’m not the first to say we’ve become numb to the insanity, but this insanity has real consequences whether we feel them right now or not. We’ve known for years what the CCP and the PLA are preparing for: to take Taiwan and unify China, one way or another. We know what the strengths and weaknesses of the CCP are, and we know what we need to do to get the job done.
And instead we caught a once in a millennia case of brain worms.
It’s not like the China fight both during peace and war is some mystery. The policy solutions are real. I’ve been working on and writing about them for years and plenty of others have as well. 4.5 years ago the outgoing commander of INDOPACOM got on television in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee and told them war was coming and we needed to get our act together. 4.5 years later and I gotta be honest I’m not feeling great about it. The CCP may have its issues but it’s still modernizing at a rapid pace. Taiwan is struggling internally, and our friends don’t have the greatest confidence that we’ll come to the rescue. This is no longer some obscure policy issue; a hypothetical to debate in the pages of Foreign Affairs or the policy schools. Two of the most powerful militaries in the history of humanity are spinning up for war. A war which if we lose most certainly ensures permanent decline for the United States and global democracy.
I know what you’re thinking, “Tony, didn’t you infamously declare the death of the Davidson Window?” Yes, yes I did. But as I explained back in 2023, my problem was never with the threat but the public’s fixation on a hard go/no-go date. At the end of the article, I declared that the window was dead but the spirit of the Davidson Window; the sense of urgency it inspired, needed to live on. Since then, I’ve come to explain 2027 as the start of the real marathon between the US and the CCP. When, if the PLA achieves Xi’s modernization goals and our ability to win the fight is in question, the threat to Taiwan and to security in the Indo-Pacific goes from a growing possibility to “we need to watch the Fulda Gap every second of every day.”
2027 marks the transition from “we have time to prepare” to “we need to be ready, tonight.” The time we have to play parlor tricks with defense policies and toy with the defense budget is fading. It is almost 2026, the PLA is only growing stronger, and instead we’ve decided to stage our forces off of Venezuela and threaten…Greenland (again)? All the while saying we’re on good terms with Beijing and clamping down on the USG talking about what the CCP is up to around the world. (Where is the 2025 China Military Power Report?)
World War III knocks at our door, the very balance of power of the world rests on deterrence in the First Island Chain, and we’re….kicking sand castles as the Tsunami builds off the coast.
Since ADM. Davidson’s off the cuff announcement to SASC almost 5 years ago, we’ve had a few wins. Despite the accompanying LinkedIn and conference circuit grift, the defense industrial base has expanded and become flush with cash and motivation. We are building new war machines and technologies in great quantity. We are augmenting our exquisite systems with attritable mass. We are reforming force structure, training, and doctrine for the Pacific fight. We are finally coming around to acquisitions reform. Our allies are waking up to the threat of the PLA, and our relationships with both Manila and Tokyo are quite strong. And yet I fear we have done more harm than good in that same time.
Ideologically, the country failed to consistently connect the Ukrainian fight against the Russians with the fight against the CCP. As I wrote last year, no matter the flavor of authoritarianism it’s all the same virus. You can’t fight one strain and ignore the others. I’ve yet to see a coherent foreign policy from anyone that addresses that. We’ve thrown tariffs and tantrums at allies while playing nice with the bad guys. The most prolific China hawk was run out of Congress and branded a traitor by his own party. The National Security Strategy is uh…one of the documents of all time (to put it nicely). The Congress that spent so much of the early 2020s shaping China policy and pushing the envelope is gone. The new Congress has all but abandoned its role in shaping policy and overseeing the executive branch. When we wrote restrictions on critical technologies we carved out loopholes or let the lobbyists help write them. We’re still inconsistent on demands for industry to produce munitions despite the shouts and screams from the Pentagon and combatant commanders.
Outside of some portions of the DoD, there are few corners of government where fighting the PRC is the priority (something else I warned about a couple of years ago). We’re more concerned with culture wars than the people who actually wish to make war upon us. I was on a panel recently where I told the audience that the best place to do China policy work and fight the PLA was in the defense industry, not government. We need smart people to shape the weapons and CONOPs we’ll use tomorrow. Two years ago, I would’ve been deemed insane for even saying that and yet today it’s the unfortunate truth. The good ones still hanging on and working the problem in government I do not envy.
And despite all that, I believe there’s still hope. Do not let the nihilism consume you. Nihilism is the weapon of the authoritarian. The war is not yet lost, the world has not yet crumbled. Getting ready requires holding the USG accountable and demanding the security of a nation befitting our status and history. It means championing the fight against global tyranny as a ballot box issue, picking candidates who understand that and echo it. It means having a clear strategic vision and executing it. It means doing our jobs, even on the days it feels like all hope has died. It means training, building, and inventing; working with, instead of against, our fellow Americans and friends around the world.
In 2022, I founded Breaking Beijing to get after the hardest problems we faced in the Indo-Pacific. To overcome the bland recommendations and analysis that the think tanks felt comfortable churning out in the latter years of the GWOT. I wanted to shape and advocate for the policies that would ensure victory and democratic prosperity. In that time I’ve covered everything from Pacific logistics and economic foreign policy to battlefield autonomy. These are whole of government, hell these are whole of society problems, and yet we’ve decided to let government crumble and society devolve. We’re short of ships and ammo, we’re short of personnel, we’re short of missiles, coherent strategy, and reliable direction. But the fight’s not decided yet. There are still systems we can build, munitions we can buy, and bases we can build in that time. We don’t need to go out like Hendrix or Cobain. The only way the Davidson Window and our subsequent demise becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy is by our own hand.
So get your guns up, 2027’s just a year away.
If you would like to read more about the future of US-China conflict, the challenges of modern war, or what happens next, check out my novel, EX SUPRA. It’s all about the world after the fall of Taiwan, an isolationist and hyper-partisan America, and World War III. It was nominated for a Prometheus Award for best science fiction novel and there’s a sequel in the works! Don’t forget to share and subscribe!