MESOPOTAMIA NEWS : Top of the Agenda DONALD TRUMPS TRUSTEE – U.S. Director of National Intelligence: China Is the Greatest Security Threat

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said China is the biggest threat to the United States and to freedom and democracy around the world.

Ratcliffe’s broadside comes as the Donald J. Trump administration continues to put pressure on Beijing. The administration yesterday tightened visa rules (WaPo) for members of the Chinese Communist Party and added more companies (Reuters) to a blacklist of firms with alleged ties to China’s military. In his op-ed, Ratcliffe said China is trying to achieve economic, military, and technological dominance by stealing American intellectual property and supplanting U.S. companies—an approach he called “rob, replicate, and replace.” He also warned of China’s growing cyber capabilities and efforts to influence U.S. lawmakers, as well as threats posed by Chinese tech firms such as the telecommunications giant Huawei.

 

Analysis
“The United States can craft a strategy that much more effectively deters China’s most problematic behavior. But to do so, Washington must endeavor to upend Chinese leaders’ assumption that the United States is inexorably declining,” CFR’s Julian Gewirtz writes in Foreign Affairs.

“The arrival of an external competitor has often pushed the United States to become its best self; handled judiciously, it can once again,” Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi write in Foreign Affairs.