Above: Taiwan’s Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion 101 (Photo by Wendell Minnick)
China In Arms
Podcast and Newsletter
Wendell Minnick (Whiskey Mike) 顏文德
China In Arms is a subscription based podcast/newsletter focusing on China/Taiwan military modernization issues.
US $5 Month/US $30 Annual:
For the past 35 years, as a military journalist, I have covered military affairs in the Middle East, India and throughout Asia, including five Zhuhai Airshows.
CORRESPONDENT POSITIONS:
North/East Asia Correspondent – European Defense/Security (October 2018 to Present)
Senior Asia Correspondent – Shephard (October 2016 to October 2018)
Asia Bureau Chief – Defense News (June 2006 to October 2016); this was a staff position - not stringer.
Taiwan Correspondent – Jane’s Defence Weekly (June 2000 to June 2006)
Freelance Journalist (1988 to 2000)
ABOVE: Press Card. Address and phone redacted.
I often use a “transgressive writing style” to demonstrate ideas, which can often be offensive.
I have written over 20 monograms on various weapon systems manufactured by China and Taiwan and these are available on Amazon. These are technical brochure bundles, not analysis, but the data is difficult to find on the Internet.
There is also a Gift Shop on RedBubble.
Above: Minnick with female member of the Aviation and Special Forces Command.
A few years ago, I walked into the office of a North Korean front company in Taiwan to write an article for Asia Times. After receiving threatening phone calls, I responded by publishing all the documents about the company in a book: Unicorn: Anatomy of a North Korean Front just to fuck 'em.
Above: Minnick at North Korean front company in Taiwan: Korea International Chamber of Commerce.
JOURNALISM INFLUENCES
My focus on the military and the spooky world over 30 years has produced the much predictable outcome so many complained about after Vietnam: I am unable to have normal conversations with people; the normal world has become a dull gray over the decades.
But it was not always like that. When I began, like all youngsters with pipe dreams (being a foreign correspondent), it appeared I had no chance of ever pulling it off.
Particularly, my early days. I did not start my career in a big newsroom (not until staff at Defense News).
While at Western Kentucky University (1985), one of those state universities with great professors, I worked part-time for the now-defunct Kentucky Farmer Magazine. It was a perfect fit at the time. Growing up in the corn fields of Indiana, I had worked on farms as a youth and our family stabled horses. The Kentucky Farmer gave me a crash course on paste-up, photographing events, and some editing; insights into how to construct a publication from the bottom up.
I was somewhat embarrassed later to mention the early influence, as so many foreign journalists seemed to have elite credentials. But too many of my gilt-edged peers lacked any edginess at all. They reinforced the cognitive frameworks about a world that simply did not exist beyond those in policy think tanks in the Washington Beltway.
Muscular labor was an alien concept to many of them. Noticing this, I focused on kinetic warfare, not policy, and discovered that no one in the journalism community was aware that violence was a natural part of life; too many of them thought it abstract and passé. In a farming community, you learn that mother nature is red in tooth and claw.
My earliest and still number one journalistic influence was the late Neil Sheehan whom I have tried to model my discipline and philosophy on pushing the envelope. He was one of three journalists covering the early days of the Vietnam War. In 1971, he published the Pentagon Papers for the New York Times; later made into a movie. He won a Pulitzer for his book - A Bright Shining Lie (1988). I finally met my hero in 2010 in Washington during a book promotion tour - A Fiery Peace in a Cold War.
Above: Author and Neil Sheehan in 2010 in Washington, DC. Author photograph.
If Sheehan was the man that influenced my journalism, there was also a book that served as my bible.
A cultural anthropologist wrote a book on the insanity of the civil wars of Central America during the 1980s by focusing on foreign correspondents. These were conflicts of savagery, secret agents, scribes.
I read Mark Pedelty’s War Stories: The Culture of Foreign Correspondents (1995) so many times that the binding broke. There is nothing in the book that I have not witnessed amongst my peers in journalism.
It is all there - the arrogance, debauchery, infantilism, told with love as a testament to our human imperfections. No book has prepared me better for my career in journalism than Pedelty’s classic study.
I have no illusions about the discomforts posed via the dilemmas and paradoxes of reporting: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse,” wrote Janet Malcolm in her 1990 book: The Journalist and the Murderer.
The book was a pivotal work on the psychopathology of journalism. A shock to the system that my chosen profession was mentally ill.
Malcolm continues to pull the mask off journalists who feign integrity and self-esteem: “Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and ‘the public's right to know’; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living.”
Malcolm shattered my thinking. Is journalism psychopathy? What happened to the Hegelian dialectic of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis? Journalists celebrate Hegel’s model to no end.
Would poetic Aporia be more honest, even though it would be an arrogant inversion, like the upside down crucifix of a horror movie. What conclusion comes from that, whether Synthesis or not? After all, the most delusional trope in this business is “a good journalist asks the tough questions.”
Though twisted, Aporia does send a message.
Exempli gratia: Perhaps psychologist Carl Jung was wise in keeping a loaded pistol next to his bed? Everyone, including monsters, deserve a good night’s sleep.
To reduce my own fears and regrets I avoid politics. For I abide by the old folk wisdom of gnarly bar flies and ornery barmaids: "Grape or grain, but never the twain."
So Whiskey, only.
JOURNALISM CAREER:
Above: 1992 interview with author in Hong Kong. Vivian Chiu, “Secrets of CIA War on China.” South China Morning Post. 1 August 1992. See: I Was a CIA Agent in India (2015).
Below is my CV for transparency requirements:
WENDELL MINNICK, BS, MA. (顏文德)
Show Coverage:
o Aero India – 2007, 2009, 2011
o Association of United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting (2006)
o China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition (Zhuhai Airshow) - 2006, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016
o Defence and Security 2017 (Bangkok) - 2017
o Defence Services Asia (DSA-Kuala Lumpur) - 2008, 2014, 2016, 2018
o Defence Technology Asia International Conference and Exhibition (Singapore) - 2007
o Dubai Airshow - 2007, 2009
o Global Security Asia - 2007
o International Defence Exhibition (IDEX - Abu Dhabi) – 2007
o International Maritime Defense Exhibition (IMDEX – Singapore) – 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017
o Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition (Malaysia) - 2017
o Singapore Air Show – 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018
o Seoul Air Show – 2009, 2017
o Shangri-la Dialogue (Singapore) – 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018
o Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition – 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2023.
o U.S.-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference – 2006 (Speaker)
PUBLICATIONS:
o Afghanistan Forum
o Asian Thought and Society
o BBC
o C4ISR Journal (aka - Command, Control, Communications, Computers (C4) Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR)
o Chicago South Asia Newsletter
o Defense News (Staff – Asia Bureau Chief)
o Jane’s Defence Upgrades
o Jane’s Missiles and Rockets
o Jane’s Navy International
o Jane’s Sentinel Country Risk Assessments
o Japanese Journal of Religious Studies
o Journal of Chinese Religions
o Journal of Political and Military Sociology
o Journal of Security Administration
o Journal of the American Academy of Religion
o Kentucky Farmer Magazine
o Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin
o New Canadian Review
o South Asia in Review
o Towson State Journal of International Affairs
BOOKS:
Spies and Provocateurs: A Worldwide Encyclopedia of Persons Conducting Espionage and Covert Action, 1946-1991. North Carolina: McFarland, 1992. The book was well received in the U.S. intelligence community, including positive book reviews in Cryptolog, Cryptologia, Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, Periscope (AFIO) and The Surveillant. The book was also profiled in the 1995 release of the Whole Spy Catalog: A Resource Encyclopedia for Researchers.
Editorial projects include the following published under my name and available on Amazon:
China Market Outlook for Civil Aircraft, 2014-2033 (2016)
China’s Unmanned Sea Vessels (2025)
Chinese Air-Launched Weapons & Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Targeting Pods (2019)
Chinese Aircraft Engines (2016)
Chinese Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles (2019)
Chinese Army Vehicles: Armored Personnel Vehicles, Trucks and Logistics Support Vehicles (2019)
Chinese C4I/EW (Vol. 1) (2022)
Chinese C4I/EW (Vol. 2) (2022)
Chinese Fighter Aircraft (2016)
Chinese Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (2016)
Chinese Land-based Air Defense Systems (2019)
Chinese People's Liberation Army: Analysis of a Cold War Classic (2015)
Chinese Rocket Systems: Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (2016)
Chinese Rotary/VTOL Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (2016)
Chinese Seaplanes, Amphibious Aircraft and Aerostats/Airships (2016)
Chinese Space Vehicles and Programs (2016)
Chinese Submarines and Underwater Systems (2019)
Chinese Tanks and Mobile Artillery (2018)
Directory of Foreign Aviation Companies in China (2014)
I Was a CIA Agent in India: Analysis (2015)
List of Foreign Companies and Identities of Taiwan Local Agents (2019) [Military]
More Chinese Fixed Wing UAVs (2019)
More Chinese Rotary & VTOL UAVs (2019)
Taiwan Army Weapons and Equipment, including Marine Corps (2022)
Taiwan Cyberwarfare: Government and Military Documents (2018)
Taiwan Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (2019)
Unicorn: Anatomy of a North Korean Front - Casinos, Immigration, Trade Sanctions and Violations (2019)
ABOVE: My only cover for the magazine via the World Games. Mike Tuchscherer was a U.S. Air Force officer assigned at the time to Minot Air Base. I also wrote up a corresponding article for Air Force Times for him.
