Former U.S. intelligence chief Ratcliffe first named China as the number one threat to U.S. national security last December. On Monday, he emphasized that China remains the number one threat to the United States when he spoke at a forum at The Heritage Foundation, a U.S. think tank.
Last week, the Biden administration’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its 2021 Annual Threat Assessment, which continues to rank China as the top threat to the United States, reflecting the consensus of both administrations.
“If one really goes to what that intelligence is telling us, it’s actually very clear that China, alone, poses the greatest threat to U.S. national security,” former U.S. intelligence director John Ratcliffe said Monday. “China is trying to displace the U.S. from its world leadership position through improper means such as theft of intellectual property.” China’s threat comes from three major levels: economic, military and technological, with the technological level worrying him the most. This is because “China is investing heavily in artificial intelligence, machine learning, biometrics and these areas, and they know that this will accelerate the closing of the gap with the United States.”
Ratcliffe also highlighted that in the space sector, China and Russia are trying to interfere with U.S. communications systems. For this reason, he accepted the newly formed U.S. Space Force as the 18th member of the U.S. intelligence system while in office to help the intelligence community understand and analyze threats in space.
Regarding threats to the U.S. from Russia, North Korea, Iran and others, he said, “Chinese and Russian missiles, they can shoot out our satellites; lasers can damage the imagery systems of our satellites. In these ways, they can hinder our space capabilities and diminish our space dominance.”
According to Ratcliffe, “The United States is the world’s top economy, China is second, and Russia is not even in the top 10. So Russia is not focusing (on threatening the U.S.) on quantity, but on quality.”
Ratcliffe said European countries seem to be trying to find a balance between China and the U.S. without offending either side, but this is not beneficial to themselves. Europe must join forces with the United States to confront China. “Europe needs to stand closely with the U.S. because they can’t compete with China, they don’t have the volume to compete with China, for example in these areas of artificial intelligence. So the cooperation between the U.S. and Europe needs to get better, and we need to work more closely together.”
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