Winning 'The Shadow War'

Whether it's online, on land, underwater or in space, CNN national security correspondent Jim Sciutto's "The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America" offers ominous insights into how the United States' key adversaries are changing the dynamics of national security.

Sciutto provides context into present day Russia and China military strategies -- from the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and Ukranian political upheaval to foreign meddling in U.S. elections to satellite maneuvering -- how the new game of security is played, and what the United States needs to rethink and execute for these new times.

Key excerpts:

The advent of the Shadow War should have surprised no one. In military terms, hybrid warfare is a natural product of a world with a single superpower and other rising or declining powers eager to challenge that superpower. For China, Russia, and other US and Western adversaries, hybrid warfare is the only way to take on a country such as the United States with otherwise unchallenged military might. In other words, the so-called gray zone is the only field of conflict on which these adversaries believe they stand a chance of winning.

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US defense and intelligence officials now speak openly of the dangers of repeating the errors of the 1930s, that is, observing aggression by adversaries in Europe and Asia while assigning false limits to those adversaries' ambitions. Those fears of repeating the mistakes of history are now fueling calls to defend against the Shadow War now or face the danger of a wider conflict in the years to come. And yet, without a commitment throughout all levels of the US government, the United States faces the alarming prospect of emerging from the Shadow War diminished and defeated.

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U.S. national security officials agree that the United States must find better ways to fight and defend against the Shadow War, to impose costs sufficient to compel Russia and China to change their behavior, and, if possible, to impose costs sufficient to reverse the gains they have already achieved, or to make those gains untenable. The consensus of the current and former national security and intelligence officials I've spoken with is that none of these steps has so far been taken to a degree sufficient to make America safe.