U.S. Intelligence Director Says China Is Top Threat To America

[IceWizard]

U.S. Intelligence Director Says China
Is Top Threat To America


By Deb Reichmann






WASHINGTON (AP) —

China poses the greatest threat to America and the rest of the
free world since World War II, outgoing National Intelligence
Director John Ratcliffe said Thursday as the Trump administration
ramps up anti-Chinese rhetoric to pressure President-elect
Joe Biden to be tough on Beijing.

“The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the U.S.
and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically,”
Ratcliffe wrote in an op-ed published Thursday in The Wall Street
Journal. “Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent
companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of
the Chinese Communist Party.”

“I call its approach of economic espionage ‘rob, replicate and replace,’”
Ratcliffe said. “China robs U.S. companies of their intellectual
property, replicates the technology and then replaces the U.S. firms
in the global marketplace.”

In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying dismissed
the editorial as a further move to spread “false information, political
viruses and lies” in hopes of damaging China’s reputation and
China-U.S. relations.

“It offered nothing new but repeated the lies and rumors aimed at
smearing China and playing up the China threat by any means,”
Hua said at a daily briefing on Friday. “It’s another hodgepodge of
lies being produced by the relevant departments of the U.S.
government for some time.”

Trump administration officials have been stepping up their anti-China
rhetoric for months, especially during the presidential campaign as
President Donald Trump sought to deflect blame for the spread of
the coronavirus . On the campaign trail, Trump warned that Biden
would go easy on China, although the president-elect agrees that
China is not abiding by international trade rules, is giving unfair
subsidies to Chinese companies and stealing American innovation.

The Trump administration, which once boasted of warm relations
with Chinese President Xi Jinping, also has been ramping up sanctions
against China over Taiwan, Tibet, trade, Hong Kong and the
South China Sea. It has moved against the Chinese telecoms giant
Huawei and sought restrictions on Chinese social media applications
like TikTok and WeChat.

Ratcliffe, a Trump loyalist who has been accused of politicizing the
position, has been the nation’s top intelligence official since May.
In his op-ed, he did not directly address the transition to a Biden
administration. Trump has not acknowledged losing the election.

Ratcliffe said he has shifted money within the $85 billion annual
intelligence budget to address the threat from China. Beijing is
preparing for an open-ended confrontation with the U.S., which
must be addressed, he said.

“This is our once-in-a-generation challenge. Americans have
always risen to the moment, from defeating the scourge of
fascism to bringing down the Iron Curtain,” Ratcliffe wrote in
what appeared to be call for action to future intelligence officials.

Biden has announced that he wants the Senate to confirm Avril Haines,
a former deputy director of the CIA, to succeed Ratcliffe as the next
national intelligence director.

“This generation will be judged by its response to China’s effort to
reshape the world in its own image and replace America as the
dominant superpower,” Ratcliffe wrote.

He cited several examples of Chinese aggression
against the United States:

The Justice Department has charged a rising number of U.S.
academics for transferring U.S. taxpayer-funded intellectual
property to China.

He noted the theft of intellectual property from American businesses,
citing the case of Sinoval, a China-based wind turbine maker,
which was convicted and heavily fined for stealing trade secrets
from AMSC, a U.S.-based manufacturer formerly known as
American Superconductor Inc. Rather than pay AMSC for more
than $800 million in products and services it had agreed to purchase,
Sinovel hatched a scheme to steal AMSC’s proprietary wind turbine
technology, causing the loss of almost 700 jobs and more than
$1 billion in shareholder equity, according to the Justice Department.

Ratcliffe and other U.S. officials have said that China has stolen
sensitive U.S. defense technology to fuel Xi’s aggressive military
modernization plan and they allege that Beijing uses its access to
Chinese tech firms, such as Huawei, to collect intelligence,
disrupt communications and threaten the privacy of users worldwide.

Ratcliffe said he has personally briefed members of Congress
about how China is using intermediaries to lawmakers in an
attempt to influence legislation.



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SOURCE

Real Clear Politics

>https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/12/04/us_intelligence_director_says_china_is_top_threat_to_america_144787.html