“Now, it is up to the Department to get to work,” Austin said after issuing an internal directive to the giant Pentagon bureaucracy.
The directive, details of which are classified, comes after an assessment by a task force established by the new Biden administration in February to study the Defense Department’s strategy towards China.
“The initiatives I am putting forward today are nested inside the larger US government approach to China and will help inform the development of the National Defense Strategy we are working on,” Austin said.
A senior defense official said the task force had identified a “‘say-do’ gap between the stated prioritization of China and what we saw in…
Keep on reading: US defense chief tells Pentagon to sharpen focus on China