How the Pentagon is adapting to China's technological rise

Over the past three decades, Hicks has watched the Pentagon transform--politically, strategically, and technologically. She entered government in the 1990s at the tail end of the Cold War, when optimism and a belief in global cooperation still dominated US foreign policy. After 9/11, the focus shifted to counterterrorism and nonstate actors. Then came Russia's resurgence and China's growing assertiveness. Hicks took two previous breaks from government work--the first to complete a PhD at MIT and joining the think thank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which she later rejoined to lead its International Security Program after her second tour. "By the time I returned in 2021," she says, "there was one actor--the PRC (People's Republic of China)--that had the capability and the will to really contest the international system as it's set up."