text: Chapter 4
  4-47. The challenge for and requirements on the intelligence warfighting function from deployment to initial
  lodgment and subsequent operations are substantial. Developing effective collection management plans and
  tasking collection assets (in depth and with redundancy) are essential. Intelligence support identifies windows
  of opportunity to counter the threat’s capabilities and enable the joint force to maintain freedom of action
  and gain positions of relative advantage. (The advantage can be a human, information, or physical advantage.)
  (See appendix C for intelligence support to force projection operations.)
  ADVERSARY METHODS
  4-48. Although peer threats mainly seek to obtain their strategic objectives during competition, they will
  engage in armed conflict if they view the rewards are worth the risk. During armed conflict, peer threats
  employ combinations of threat methods to render U.S. military power irrelevant whenever possible and inflict
  unacceptable losses on the United States, its allies, and its partners. Peer threats use diplomatic, economic,
  informational, and military means to facilitate meeting their objectives.
  CHINA
  4-49. China considers three aspects in the country’s view of conflict:
  ⚫ Comprehensive national power comprises hard power (military capability and capacity,
  defense industry capability, intelligence capability, and related diplomatic actions such as threats
  and coercion) and soft power (economic power, diplomatic efforts, foreign development, global
  image, and international prestige). Ultimately, all forms of conflict must enhance China’s
  comprehensive national power.
  ⚫ Deception is essential to China’s tactics to achieve desired perceptions by its opponents. These
  perceptions are ultimately exploited to further China’s objectives. Central to deception is having
  opponents make decisions not based on what is occurring in an OE. When doing so, opponents
  are faced with making decisions and conducting actions regarding situations or circumstances in
  which China has already set the conditions to have an advantage.
  ⚫ The Three Warfares are designed to unbalance, deceive, and coerce opponents to influence
  their perceptions in ways that create advantage. The Three Warfares are universally nonlethal,
  do not involve direct combat operations, and are designed to support and reinforce the traditional
  military operations of the People’s Liberation Army. The Three Warfares are—
  ▪ Public opinion warfare—China’s high-level information campaign designed to set the
  terms of political discussion.
  ▪ Psychological warfare—the deliberate manipulation of psychological reactions in targeted
  audiences designed to create and reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to China’s
  objectives and guide adversary behavior toward China’s preferred outcomes.
  ▪ Legal warfare—the setting of legal conditions to unbalance potential opponents by
  exploiting international or domestic law in order to hinder their military operations, create
  legal justification for People’s Liberation Army operations worldwide, and support Chinese
  interests through a valid framework.
  4-50. During armed conflict, China employs systems warfare in combination with the other threat methods,
  such as preclusion, isolation, and sanctuary. China employs these threat methods throughout the domains and
  at all levels of warfare. Systems warfare involves—
  ⚫ Bypassing enemy systems’ areas of strength, gaining a combat advantage by approaching them
  asymmetrically.
  ⚫ Developing systems that excel at exploiting perceived vulnerabilities in enemy systems, thereby
  offsetting their strengths by undermining their systems’ ability to perform assigned missions.
  ⚫ Undermining international alliances through diplomatic efforts.
  ⚫ Conducting cyberspace attacks to disable air or seaports.
  ⚫ Using special operations forces to undermine civilian morale through covert operations.