MCKAY MCFADDEN

When did you write the piece that you submitted? What drove you to write this piece, and how long have you been working on it for?

I wrote this article in the Fall of 2022, it’s part of a term thesis in the Chinese flagship program. It took me the full duration of the semester, about 12 weeks.

What do you believe is one of the most important issues regarding U.S.-China affairs? Do you believe it’s what you wrote about on EMP technology or do you think there is another topic more worth considering?

I think the topic I wrote about is a part of the most important topic which, regarding U.S.-China affairs, is militarization. I think open displays of military power are contributing to rising tensions within U.S.-China relations more than any other factor. For example, both China and the U.S. increasing their military presence in the South China Sea, mostly Navy, and as far as EMP technologies go, we don’t see as much of that on the news, and it’s hard to know exactly what both militaries are capable of, and that’s something I actually talk about in my paper, but they do exist and to sum it all up, militarization is the most important issue right now. It is contributing to most of the tension.

Could you explain the significance of your article as it relates to the future of U.S.-China relations? What would an increase in EMP technology indicate? What would information warfare look like in the coming years? Do you think that there will eventually be more publicly available patent databases?

EMP technology is powerful. I also talked about this in my paper; it has the potential to wipe out the electronic grid for vast areas of land. In the present state of U.S.-China relations, it is really important for each nation to develop robust EMP defense systems, and we actually see that happening already. In my paper, I talk a lot about how there are way more EMP defense system patents than EMP attack systems out there. I think this trend is already happening, which is a good thing, in my opinion, because that shows that countries want to protect their electronic infrastructure, which is crucial to everything that we do. Our data, communications, transportation–everything relies on electronics nowadays, and so that’s the key to the significance of what my article discusses. I think what I found when I talk about in the thesis of my paper is EMP defense systems are being made, people are filing patents, and that’s only the ones we see. There are plenty more that we don’t see, and that just shows that there are EMP weapons out there. And so, both nations are preparing for, potentially, EMP attacks… which I think is a good thing because we both need the protection and in a lot of ways, a stalemate is better than one side having the advantage. This is a different situation, but considering the Cold War when we had the Mutually Assured Destruction Doctrine, I think it’s similar. Both sides have a relatively equal amount of technology and weapons, I think that can contribute to peace in some ways.

How did you hear about IUCJ and why did you decide to submit this work?

IUCJ reached out to the [Chinese] flagship program at my university, BYU, and sent in a request for papers. I was really excited about the opportunity. I hadn’t at that point published anything as a first author, specifically in Chinese [studies], and I thought it would be really fun, and I think the goals of the IUCJ are extremely important. I have a lot of respect for the mission of IUCJ and I was excited to participate in that discussion; I think it’s a discussion that really needs to be had, especially right now.

What were your thoughts and opinions about IUCJ when you first started working with us, and how did they change as you worked more closely with our editing team, among other team members?

From the get-go, I resonated with the mission of IUCJ, and as I worked with editors, my sense of respect for what they were doing only increased. I saw editors from China and the U.S. collaborating to produce a journal that will hopefully get people thinking about important topics. It’s not easy for a lot of people, including governments, to have peaceful discussions while talking about difficult subjects, so watching the editing team do that was very… it gave me a lot of hope, seeing that they could produce this work amidst tensions and differing opinions on politics and everything. I just think it takes a lot of humility and effort to understand the other side’s point of view. And… most of you are students, right? Yeah, I think it was very professional with timely responses, and I was very impressed.

Give our future authors some words of encouragement and inspiration, or really any honest takes that you have that could draw them into working with IUCJ.

Find something that you’re passionate about to write about, and spend enough time researching before you begin writing. I think the more research, the better the research, the better the writing will be. Enjoy it! It’s really fun. There’s so much of your research that you don’t end up writing out, but the fact that you find the pearls of information in there–that you wouldn’t have found had you not taken the time to read a bunch and… all those piles of data–it just makes all the difference.