Wu Tong-Hsiung's Perspective: The Omnipotent Minister of Defense, One Wronged Incident, A Century of Corruption

Fumai Decoration Company, with capital below NT$20 million, won a NT$590 million Ministry of National Defense RDX explosives procurement contract. When this case was exposed, Defense Minister Ku Li-hsiung reacted with fury and defended it, but recently, the company indeed failed to fulfill the contract. This is not an isolated incident. Considering the past decade of蔡and 賴regime's purging of defense culture, combined with Ku Li-hsiung's 'omnipotent' manipulation across various ministries, the over 200-year-old military staff system—essentially the foundational principles of modern management—has been severely corrupted. The following analysis illustrates this.

First, the Ministry of National Defense carries heavy responsibility, significant authority, and large budgets, making it difficult to avoid strict scrutiny. It may sometimes face excessive satire or be wrongfully accused. For example, a recent viral video clip shows Lai Qingde inspecting the Haima-si rocket system, where the narration states, 'Target destroyed,' creating an absurd impression of 'destruction without launch.' However, this was merely an 'inspection,' not a drill demonstration, so an actual launch was unnecessary, and no voiceover was added.

Second, Lai Qingde reviewed the Ministry of National Defense's 'National Drone Team' during an aerial parade exercise of its latest drones. However, due to heavy rain, the military decided not to look up at the flying demonstration and instead had President Lai view drone flight footage on a smartphone. This is not only an unimaginable absurdity in military history but also a blatant display of incompetence, reflecting a complete lack of staff awareness and even basic management knowledge.

Third, Ku Li-hsiung is known as 'omnipotent.' While omnipotence is not impossible, it should involve cross-domain operations—not in 'professional skills' but in 'common management' across domains. This refers to the origin of modern management science: the 'Six Staff Functions (G1 to G6)': G1 Personnel, G2 Intelligence, G3 Operations, G4 Logistics, G5 Planning, and G6 Communications. The fact that drones cannot fly in the rain reflects a complete failure in operations, logistics, and planning management.

Procuring explosives from Fumai Decoration Company is not an isolated case but part of a series of small, unrelated companies 'jumping industries' to sell military equipment. Even if the buyer were a mid-sized private enterprise, such procurement procedures would be extremely unlikely. In the past two years alone, there have been over 20 major scandals, suspected cases, and mismanagement incidents related to national defense. According to the iceberg theory, the actual number of major cases could exceed 100. Recently, it was revealed that the Keelung-class frigates' air defense spare parts inventory had dropped to zero, and the former Navy Deputy Chief of Staff was involved in a corruption case. These problems did not arise overnight.

Diagnosis: Decline of the 'Six Staff Functions' and Transformation of Defense Culture

The author once taught at the 'School of Industrial and Systems Engineering' at Georgia Tech in the United States. This single-department school has consistently ranked first in the U.S. and possibly the world in its field. Its core competencies are information and statistics, and its primary collaborators are the U.S. Department of Defense and various military branches, providing management applications and evaluation support for the 'Six Staff Functions.'

Against this backdrop, synthesizing known cases, we can diagnose that the Ministry of National Defense's 'Six Staff Functions' management capability has significantly declined over the past 2–10 years. What Ku Li-hsiung has created appears to be a new defense culture driven by ideology, resource allocation, and personal relationships as unwritten rules.

The 'National Team-level' drone failing to fly in the rain and repeatedly procuring major military equipment from unrelated small companies—such rare occurrences even in private enterprises—coexist with an active judicial group that has carried out numerous arrests and detentions over the past two years, imposing harsh sentences for minor offenses, yet remains indifferent to these anomalies. This is no longer just Ku Li-hsiung's personal issue but a structural corruption phenomenon dominated by a Leninist 'New Tide' faction.

Piercing National Security and Exposing Incompetence

The 'National Team-level' drone failing to fly in the rain reflects the complete collapse of G3 Operations, G4 Logistics, and G5 Planning management. Symbolically, this was an exercise meant for the commander-in-chief—how could failure be allowed? Substantively, it poses a grave danger to national security. Exercises are equivalent to combat! If a real war breaks out, will the enemy wait for the rain to stop before attacking? The most basic indicator in current international defense assessments is 'All-weather Capability.' The first issue in 'operations'—why did no one in the entire military raise concerns?

The 'National Team-level' drone has a budget ceiling of up to NT$210 billion, so logistics are undoubtedly sufficient. Given current international drone technology, flying in the rain is a very low threshold—how can such a massive investment fail to overcome this?

Even if we assume the drones purchased by the Ministry of National Defense are indeed incapable, why publicly expose this weakness? According to the Ministry's explanation, flights were canceled 'due to avionics waterproofing limits and flight safety.' Then, during the 'planning' phase, the exercise should have been changed to an indoor flight demonstration in a 'grand hall.' From World War II to the current Russia-Ukraine war, armies have used inflatable models to deceive enemies even without real tanks or aircraft. How, then, can one loudly proclaim, 'My drones cannot fly in the rain!'—have the commander-in-chief witness it, and invite global media to widely publicize it?

The Loss of Scholar-Generals and the Rise of Sycophancy and Shamelessness

Since Taiwan's retrocession, the modern 'Six Staff Functions' management system was introduced, actively cultivating talent and even producing several 'scholar-generals' with advanced domestic and international degrees, establishing a staff system with management as its backbone, enabling genuine cross-domain collaboration.

Twenty years ago, I occasionally accepted military invitations to lecture or evaluate. Any senior officer I knew at the time would never have allowed such an exercise to fail, let alone remain unashamed and defiant after such a humiliating outcome.

The change in military culture cannot be separated from changes in personnel promotion criteria. When strong staff operations and flawless combat readiness and capability are no longer emphasized, but instead replaced by ideological posturing, sycophancy, guessing superiors' intentions to allocate funds to inappropriate recipients, and shameless indifference to failure, the风气 gradually shifts.

Taylor and Shang Yang Built Models; Moltke Added Variable Parameters

Western management thought, as recorded in literature, originated in the early 20th century with Taylor. His core idea was standardizing 'procedures' and 'measurements,' enabling evaluation of previously subjective human behavior, hence called 'scientific management.'

In fact, his core idea is identical to that of Shang Yang of the Qin Dynasty—over 2,000 years earlier. Thus, traditional Chinese wisdom possesses broad insight but was not recorded or promoted in modern language and formats.

The early 19th-century Prussian Revolution simultaneously gave birth to the staff system and became a major source of modern management science. War is paradoxical: it harms many innocent civilians but also produces many technologies applicable to civilian life and peace.

What is now taught in university business schools—Operations Research (OR), PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique), PM (Project Management), Systems Engineering, and many tools taught in MBA programs—can all be traced back to the uniformed staff system.

Field Marshal Moltke of Germany, who created the staff system, famously said: 'No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.' Management systems and procedural standardization establish 'scientific models,' while Moltke's addition emphasizes the need to explore 'variable parameters' in human behavior.

Four Principles for Reviving the International Staff System

This column consistently emphasizes proposals, not just criticism. The proposal for the current defense chaos is not a novel idea but the revival of four principles of the established international staff system:

1. Allow staff to speak the truth: even if their opinions differ from the commander, they can provide professional assessments instead of merely conforming to superior intentions.

2. Commanders must be willing to listen: accept alternative plans and risk analyses without viewing dissent as a challenge to authority. However, the author acknowledges the reality of 'armchair criticism'—it's easy to say, but under the Tsai and Lai regimes, both the judiciary and defense have gradually lost independence, and commanders may want to listen but dare not.

3. Clear accountability: staff are responsible for analysis and planning; commanders are responsible for decisions and their consequences.

4. Continuously revise plans: plans are not dogma but should be updated with information and execution methods based on the holistic interaction of the 'Six Staff Functions.'

These four principles are not only defense management principles but also fundamental to all organizational public affairs management.

DPP Loyalists with Autonomy Can Only Leave the Party

Under the Lai administration's extreme ideological rule, implementing the above proposals is difficult. The recent announcement by former high-ranking official Chang Jing-sen that he is leaving the DPP suggests that loyal, patriotic, yet autonomous party members are departing—possibly due to disillusionment with the anti-democratic nature of the 'New Tide' faction, or awakening to leaders using slogans to obscure facts.

Whether Taiwan can rise again depends on this year's and the 2028 elections—on the people's free choice to think independently!

*Author: Founder of Taiwan Public Opinion Research, Retired Professor of Information and Management in Taiwan and the U.S.