Inside the Shangri-La Dialogue, Where Military Titans Meet

When I arrived early on a Friday morning, the world’s men and women of war were already collecting their keycards.

For 22 years, the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore has hosted what’s become Asia’s biggest defense summit, which ran this year from May 30 to June 1. The Shangri-La Dialogue is an annual mass gathering of military leaders, with generals and ministers from 47 countries flooding into the 792-room hotel this year.

There, the war chiefs of five continents spent three days in elaborate, carefully choreographed diplomacy. Defense contractors dipped in and out of conference rooms on the sidelines, hoping to catch customers amid the flurry of closed-door bilateral meetings.

Security outside was simple but tight. One road leads into the Shangri-La, and one road leads out. Pairs of assault rifle-wielding men stood watchfully at checkpoints on every street corner.

But inside the building, security was surprisingly low-key. A freely accessible mezzanine opened up to a sprawling lobby where suits and one-stars mingled. In the lounge, sunlight spilled through the floor-to-ceiling windows as ministers held court.

There were no checkpoints at the hotel’s entrance, where regular guests were still allowed to enter. Several asked me for directions as they wandered by with flip-flops and shopping bags. A few feet from where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with the Thai delegation on Friday, two people were playing tennis.

“This would never happen in D.C.,” an American reporter who flew in with the Pentagon press corps told me.

Past the metal detectors, generals and chiefs filed into meetings in the half-dozen or so private rooms upstairs. The Dialogue, bringing together leaders from Europe and Asia, is a rare chance for many to talk face-to-face.

Reuben Johnson, a defense journalist who’s covered the event for 13 years, said attendance is a major sign of legitimacy on this side of the world.

“If you’re not here, then you’re left out of the game,” he said.

Hegseth swung hard at China

It all comes together in the Shangri-La’s Island ballroom, which requires a security check to enter. There, heads of state and top ministers addressed crowds of the military elite.

French President Emmanuel Macron opened the event, but the entire hotel was itching to hear what Hegseth, who announced his arrival days before, had to say.

“No one really knows what to expect,” one staffer from a European embassy said of Hegseth, as we waited among a sea of delegates holding wine glasses in the foyer.

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The speech was a chance for the second Trump administration, and a new face like Hegseth, to lay bare their intentions for the Asia Pacific, a region still reeling from some of the White House’s steepest tariffs.

Hegseth’s slot was on Saturday morning. In the first few sessions, the ballroom was so packed that staffers, colonels, and majors were stuck outside watching giant displays while their bosses sat within.

Some filtered into nearby viewing rooms, where aides scribbled furiously on notebooks and whispered to each other.

Hegseth spent much of his 35-minute address praising President Donald Trump and slamming Beijing, naming China over two dozen times.

“It has to be clear to all that Beijing is credibly preparing to potentially use military force to alter the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific,” Hegseth told the audience.

Beijing was given an opening to strike back during a Q&A, but it threw a soft punch, asking Hegseth a rhetorical question about regional alliances.

When a Malaysian delegate quizzed Hegseth about the tariffs, the latter said he was in the “business of tanks, not trade.”

After answering a few more questions, the secretary left the stage unscathed.

Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told me in the lobby that he felt Hegseth handled his talk “generally well.”

“I think the bar was very low, and I think Hegseth passed. People expected him to come in with a fairly nationalistic speech, and he did that, but I think people also expected him to struggle in the Q&A session,” he said.

Beijing barely put up a fight

A day before the forum opened, Beijing announced that, unlike previous years, its defense minister, Dong Jun, would not attend. Instead, a delegation from its military academy, led by Rear Adm. Hu Gangfeng, arrived at the hotel.

It was a major snub. A central part of the Dialogue is the chance to see the US and China face off in front of the military world’s top dogs. Susannah Patton, the director of the Southeast Asia Program from Adelaide’s Lowy Institute, described it to me as “gladiatorial.”

“It’s an opportunity missed,” said Andrew Yang, a former national defense minister for Taiwan.

With Dong not showing up, the Dialogue’s organizers discreetly deleted Beijing’s plenary from the schedule. Hu instead spoke at a smaller panel just before dinner on Saturday.

Most of Beijing’s defense was left to scholars at the event.

“China’s forces have always been strengthening quickly, that is a fact,” Da Wei, the director of Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy, said of Hegseth’s accusation that China’s military build-up signaled an intention for war.

The Chinese foreign ministry released a statement at midnight condemning Hegseth’s speech.

“The remarks were filled with provocations and intended to sow division,” it said.

China showed its teeth on Sunday

Though attendees waited for a potential US-China clash, the weekend’s dramatic moment came after Hegseth flew home.

The Philippine defense chief, Gilberto Teodoro, was speaking at Sunday morning’s plenary when he fielded barbed questions from two Chinese senior colonels.

The officers had publicly suggested that the Philippines could become, or already was, an American proxy state.

“If the proxy war in Europe needs to be ended, are you concerned that a proxy war in Asia might be launched?” Zhang asked.

Distracted aides looked up from their phones. China was taking a swing.

Teodoro dropped the diplomacy in his answer.

“Thank you for the propaganda spiels disguised as questions,” he said.

The ballroom laughed and applauded. It was a rare moment of frankness amid the slow waltz of the last two days, where everyone, from lieutenant to minister, had danced around each other to the tune of defense-speak alliance acronyms and diplomatic buzzwords.

By early Sunday afternoon, when the Dialogue closed, many of the senior ministers and CEOs had already departed the Shangri-La for their next big appointment. Aides and officers traded their suits and dress uniforms for cargo shorts and sandals, speeding off in cabs to explore the city.

There was an air of disappointment among some of the journalists and analysts emptying out of the Shang. Dong’s absence and the lack of a Chinese meeting with Hegseth, they said, had robbed much of the wind from the Dialogue’s sails.

Johnson, the veteran defense journalist, wrote me a message before his flight back to Warsaw, telling me about what had changed in the last 13 years. He remembered the late Sen. John McCain, whom he said would attend the Dialogue and hold impromptu press conferences, speaking candidly to reporters about big-ticket issues like Teodoro had on Sunday morning. At the forum, Johnson said, no one had stepped in to fill McCain’s shoes.

“His presence is sorely missed and even more sorely needed in these times,” Johnson said.