Chapters 3 discusses how the Third Front was constructed. It shows that the Party militarized the Third Front by hiding projects in secure locations, speeding up construction in the face of military pressures, and requiring participants to emulate the Red Army’s strategy of local self–reliance. At the start of the Cultural Revolution, Mao intensified the militarization of the Third Front when he urged ousting capitalist roaders who ostensibly supported changing China into a Soviet–style revisionist state. I maintain that this last form of militarization transformed enmity towards Cold War foes into a struggle against domestic forces, a strategy Mao had successfully deployed in previous instances. Assaults on capitalist roaders were undertaken to attain numerous political objectives. Some workers aired grievances about poor living conditions. Others demanded the right to go home. As for Party leaders, they claimed that critics of the Third Front were allied with foreign agents. The CCP made use of this latter assertion to restore political discipline and revitalize the Third Front when the Soviets appeared poised to attack in 1969. The same Maoist discourse created obstacles to the Third Front’s success by attacking experts and slow development.