The river would have a bit of salt in it, and any healing comes first through hurt before it makes it to peace. That was a terrible thing, she knew. Yet there was nothing truer. She knew it was why so many people saw no point, didn’t have the resolve to make it through, and got stuck. A sucking mud. The sinking kind. There were a lot of people there. Knee-deep. Some submerged. Some clawing their way to solid ground. How few would make it.

In Military Misfortunes, historians Eliot Cohen and John Hooch describe how the United States tried to stem U-boat attacks by imitating British solutions, including using sonar and destroyer escorts, which were operated by specialists.

The story of the USS Benfold provides an important example of how to recognize and overcome blind spots.

The Benfold was one of the worst-performing warships in the entire US Navy. Commissioned in 1996 for duty in the Pacific Fleet, it housed one of the Navy’s most advanced arsenals of missiles and technology at the time. Its radar system was so advanced that it could track a bird from fifty miles. But it was falling short.

The quantitative disparities between the United States and China are stark. In 2022, China had nearly 1,800 ships under construction, and the United States had 5. US support of Ukraine against Russian aggression also exposed the paltry state of its domestic munition capacity. In two days, Ukraine could fire as many shells as the United States makes in a month. At the very end of the Biden administration, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said bluntly that the United States will experience “exhaustion of munition stockpiles very rapidly” if it were ever to face the Chinese military.

Chapter Five: Complacency Trap

1. John Clarke, “A Twenty-First-Century Shipwreck,” New Yorker, December 10, 2014, www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/twenty-first-century-shipwreck.