Editor’s note: Pay special attention to DNI Director Dan Coats’ statement and consider whether our issues with China are confined to trade.
[Mark Kelton | February 5, 2019 | The Cipher Brief ]
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats briefed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week about the comprehensive threat that China poses to U.S. national security.
While there were a number of areas where the IC assessed a serious national security threat, including in the areas of cyber, counterintelligence, space and counterspace, just to name a few, the DNI also laid out the threat based on China’s expanding global reach and predicted a coming ideological battle between the U.S. and China.
“We assess that China’s leaders will try to extend the country’s global economic, political, and military reach while using China’s military capabilities and overseas infrastructure and energy investments under the Belt and Road Initiative to diminish U.S. influence,” reads Coats’ Statement for the record. The statement also includes the IC’s prediction of a coming ideological battle. “Chinese leaders will increasingly seek to assert China’s model of authoritarian capitalism as an alternative – and implicitly superior – development path abroad, exacerbating great-power competition that could threaten international support for democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.”
Cipher Brief Expert and former CIA Deputy Director for Counterintelligence, Mark Kelton examines the roots of The Coming Chinese Storm.
