The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Kimberly Lehn – executive director and head of national security, Pacific Forum International, in charge of the Honolulu Defense Forum – is the 509th in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”
Identify the key themes of the 2026 Honolulu Defense Forum.
The overall theme of the 2026 Honolulu Defense Forum (HDF) was centered on how we operationalize Indo-Pacific readiness and deterrence. The conversation was not just about identifying threats, but about how to turn urgency into practical capability now. HDF themes on strengthening credible deterrence in the near term; moving from networked concepts to real multi-domain and multi-nation architectures; hardening critical systems against cyber, space, and conventional threats; using information, AI, and data for operational advantage; and revitalizing the defense industrial base through stronger partnerships and investment reflected that objective.
What stood out most was that deterrence was treated as much broader than just military power. HDF emphasized that economic resilience, supply chains, energy security, data integration, and public-private coordination all sit inside the deterrence equation now. There was also a strong sense of urgency tied to China’s timeline and the narrowing window for preparation.
How can deterrence in the Indo-Pacific be integrated across multiple dimensions?
While HDF centered on military deterrence and readiness, one of the clearest takeaways from the forum was that deterrence in the Indo-Pacific must be integrated across military, economic, technological, information, and diplomatic dimensions. In essence, deterrence cannot be achieved through military means alone. It also requires whole-of-government coordination, deeper interoperability with allies and partners, public-private sector cooperation, and investment that can provide alternatives to the region, develop new innovative technologies and capabilities, and foster broader societal resilience so infrastructure and populations can withstand pressure in a crisis.
So practically, that means a few things. First, it means forward posture, visible presence, and realistic combined exercises that show combat credibility. Second, it means integrating data, AI, and secure information sharing so coalition forces can operate faster and with a common picture. Third, it means resilient logistics, energy, ports, undersea cables, and distributed stockpiles so the force can sustain operations across distance. And finally, it means economic and industrial coordination that reduces dependency on China and strengthens the coalition’s ability to produce, repair, and surge under pressure. That is what integrated deterrence looks like in real terms.
Examine how U.S. and allied partnerships are deterring China’s advances in defense and technology as a peer competitor.
The Honolulu Defense Forum underscores that alliances are a core source of strategic advantage. U.S. alliances with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and relationships with other partners are the bedrock of deterrence because our combined efforts make us much stronger together when we have the geographic access needed, industrial capacity to maintain and surge capability, and the capital and technology to out-innovate and compete in areas that China cannot easily replicate.
That matters in two ways. On the defense side, allied partnerships expand access, posture, exercises, missile defense coordination, and coalition planning. On the technology and industrial side, they help create diversified production networks, shared standards, and co-development pathways across advanced areas like AI, cyber, undersea systems, and manufacturing. HDF findings demonstrated the need for allied industrial integration for munitions development, shipbuilding and ship sustainment, stronger common standards, and faster implementation of multilateral mechanisms.
The broader point is that China may be formidable in scale, especially in manufacturing and civil-military integration, but the United States and its allies still possess a decisive collective advantage if they act together. HDF’s message was that deterrence is stronger when it is coalition-based, operationally integrated, and institutionally durable beyond any one initiative.
What are the top five key findings of the Forum?
If I had to distill the results of HDF into five major findings, I would frame them this way:
First, geography still matters enormously. The Pacific’s scale means deterrence depends on forward posture, distributed capabilities, and pre-positioned assets. Presence is not symbolic there and as one speaker noted during the forum, “presence is deterrence.”
Second, scale matters as much as sophistication. HDF stressed that production capacity and magazine depth are decisive, especially given China’s manufacturing advantages. The United States cannot rely only on exquisite systems in limited numbers.
Third, logistics, data, and AI are now central to combat effectiveness. Logistics was described as combat power, and the report argues that whoever deploys AI fastest and integrates it with usable data and human adoption will hold the advantage.
Fourth, alliances remain the center of gravity, but current interoperability, information sharing, and combined planning are still not where they need to be. The coalition advantage is real, but it has to be operationalized much more quickly.
Fifth, resilience is now part of deterrence. HDF highlights energy infrastructure, cyber vulnerability, commercial incentives, and economic resilience as core security issues, not side issues. In the Indo-Pacific, fragile grids, exposed infrastructure, supply-chain dependencies, and coercive economic pressure all create openings that adversaries can exploit. Private equity and venture capital play a huge role in this ecosystem to support the buildout of capability and initiatives needed to scale.
Assess the core recommendations for operationalizing Indo-Pacific defense and deterrence.
The recommendations are practical and action-oriented, which I think is one of the real strengths of the forum; each year’s forum is meant to build off the other and offer actionable solutions for policymakers and industry to implement. Broadly, they fall into four buckets.
The first is posture and combat credibility: more visible forward presence, more realistic combined exercises, faster integrated air and missile defense, better use of space-enabled capabilities, and plug-and-play architectures that allow allies to connect faster and more securely.
The second is operational resilience and sustainment: resilient ports, protected undersea cables, distributed energy generation, microgrids, forward-positioned stockpiles, and stronger medical supply chains. These recommendations reflect the reality that in the Indo-Pacific, the ability to sustain the fight may determine whether deterrence holds in the first place.
The third is information, AI, and cyber resilience: building fused information systems, developing enterprise-wide data architectures, accelerating AI-enabled maritime domain awareness, red-teaming AI, improving AI literacy, and creating common cyber standards with allies. This is really about compressing decision timelines and making coalition operations more effective and more resilient.
And the fourth is industrial and allied technology integration: scaling munitions and autonomous systems production, revitalizing shipbuilding, creating strategic reserves of critical components, protecting supply chains from Chinese influence, and deepening allied co-development and co-investment. The underlying message is that deterrence will fail if the U.S. and its allies and partners cannot produce and field capability at speed and at scale.
While there has been meaningful progress, the reality is we still have significant work ahead to build the infrastructure, industrial capacity, data architecture, and coalition habits required to act before a crisis – not in response to one. That’s exactly why HDF 2027 will focus on “operationalizing solutions,” highlighting real-world vignettes of what’s working – and where we need to move faster.
