War Lab — Episode: "Fire, Systems, and Surprise: Russia vs. China — Doctrine, Tools, and the Future of High-End War"
How do two of the world’s biggest militaries imagine winning the next great war? In this episode we open the doctrinal blueprints of the Russian Ground Forces (SV) and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and show how very different strategic logics produce equally dangerous results.
We start with the core question: what does victory look like to Moscow and Beijing? For Russia the answer is overwhelming strike — make the battlefield uninhabitable for an adversary before close combat ever begins, and retain a low threshold for escalation (including tactical nuclear, chemical and thermobaric options) to coerce de-escalation on Moscow’s terms. For China the answer is system paralysis — use a whole-of-state approach (Comprehensive National Power) and tightly integrated “system warfare” to collapse an opponent’s command, reconnaissance and sustainment nodes, while shaping the information and cognitive environment around the fight.
What we cover
• Doctrinal foundations — “new generation” Russian ideas vs. PLA system warfare and CNP.
• Force design — why Russia still leverages divisions, echelons and modular BTGs while China built fire-heavy, self-sufficient combined-arms brigades.
• The centrality of fires and C2 — how both doctrines converge on destroying an enemy’s ability to see, decide and act.
• Information, EW and reconnaissance — aggressive Russian Razvedka and counter-reconnaissance vs. continuous PLA information operations and psychological warfare.
• Protection and escalation — layered air defenses, anti-tank approaches, thermobaric and RHBZ capabilities, and the strategic logic behind escalation choices.
• The critical vulnerability both face: massive dependence on automated, networked C2 — what happens if networks fail on Day 1?
Why this episode matters
If you want to understand how future high-intensity fights might begin, what will be targeted first, and how escalation dynamics differ across rivals, this episode lays out the conceptual maps decision-makers and defense planners use — and the blunt tradeoffs those maps create.
Who should listen
Policymakers, defense planners, regional specialists, and anyone who wants a clear, doctrine-level briefing on what a modern large-scale confrontation could actually look like — beyond equipment lists and headlines.
Listen for a focused, source-driven walkthrough of the mechanics that matter in a peer fight — and a final, provocative question: both militaries assume near-perfect information and automated command; how resilient are their plans when the networks that power them start to fail?
Tune in to War Lab — the future of conflict explained in plain terms.