NEWS AND ANALYSIS:
China poses existential threats to the U.S. and Congress needs to take greater efforts to counter the dangers, a panel of experts told lawmakers on Wednesday.
The Chinese Communist Party is an “existential threat” working aggressively to weaken and ultimately replace the U.S.-led democratic system with its totalitarian model of governance, former FBI and CIA counterintelligence official William Evanina testified.
“This comprehensive threat posed by the CCP is the most complex, pernicious, strategic and aggressive threat our nation has ever faced. It is an existential threat to every fabric of our great nation,” Mr. Evanina told a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee.
Several of the witnesses testified about large-scale Chinese cyber penetrations and data theft under code names such as Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon. Other damaging threats disclosed during the hearing include large-scale technology theft, planned infrastructure sabotage, espionage, recruiting academics and business people for expertise, spying through port facilities, and disinformation operations.
“We have to catch up, mitigate and inflict costs on China in an expedited fashion,” Mr. Evanina said.
Rush Doshi, a former Biden administration China policymaker, said Beijing’s plans for sabotaging U.S. critical infrastructure in a crisis and its role in spreading fentanyl to kill Americans are the most significant threats.
Mr. Doshi said China’s government is preparing the operational environment for war through its cyber intrusions. The goal is to conduct destructive cyberattacks during a major crisis or conflict that would disrupt gas pipelines, pollute water facilities, sever telecommunications and crush transportation systems.
The operations are to designed to create chaos and panic throughout the country and deter the U.S. ability to marshal military force and citizens’ will, Mr. Doshi said.
“China’s ambitions are not limited to Taiwan or to dominating the Indo-Pacific,” he said.
To counter the threats, the U.S. needs to reduce the attack surface and conduct offensive operations against the PRC to establish deterrence, Mr. Doshi testified.
“The PRC is directly complicit in the flow of fentanyl to the United States,” he said.
Michael Pillsbury, a longtime China watcher, criticized Congress for failing to take decisive legislative action for years to counter threats — despite recognizing the growing dangers.
“Yes, it is generally recognized in Washington that China is a threat, but that has translated to little concerted governmental action,” said Mr. Pillsbury, now with the Heritage Foundation.
Currently, there is no shortage of policy ideas for how to deal with the threats.
“The problem is these ideas are often not relevant, filled with loopholes, or may never be implemented,” Mr. Pillsbury said. “The challenge we face is that 10 years of complacency may stretch into 10 more years.”
Mr. Pillsbury said part of the problem is congressional support for Beijing. For example, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer opposed new tariffs on China and was seen posing in photos with Chinese officials who spread propaganda and denied repression of minority Uyghurs in western China, he said.
“Key politicians on both sides of the political aisle are hesitant to take decisive action that would harm their relationship with the CCP,” Mr. Pillsbury said.
U.S. military supply chains need to be blocked from China, and Beijing must not be allowed to steal advanced artificial intelligence know-how, Mr. Pillsbury said.
Mr. Pillsbury said another shortcoming has been the failure of the U.S. to fuel internal debates among hard-line and reform-oriented Chinese leaders.
“Our strategy must be tailored to the internal dynamics within China, or else we risk missing opportunities to be more forward-leaning in our approach when reformers are more prominent in the CCP’s leadership,” he said.
Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said Chinese pre-positioning of sabotage software in U.S. networks is a major problem.
“Chinese actors and companies are relentlessly penetrating U.S. networks and critical infrastructure,” he said. “Hacking campaigns like Salt, Volt, and Flax Typhoon demonstrate how state-sponsored entities are infiltrating our digital ecosystems to steal sensitive data and embed themselves in our communications, industrial, and defense networks,” he said. “The mere possibility of sabotage can induce self-imposed restrictions, effectively degrading America’s crisis response.”
Greater U.S. proactive defenses put into law by Congress will better safeguard critical infrastructure from Chinese attacks, he said.
Rep. Mark E. Green, chairman of the committee, said in an opening statement that China poses a generational threat and that the first step in countering that is to understand the nature of the adversary.
“We cannot afford wishful thinking or willful ignorance about the nature of the Chinese regime, its aims, and its ongoing efforts to undermine the United States,” the Tennessee Republican said.
Trump shipbuilding initiative welcomed
President Trump’s announcement Tuesday night that the White House is setting up a special office for U.S. shipbuilding is an urgently needed step to confront China, said retired Navy Capt. James E. Fanell, a former Pacific Fleet intelligence director.
“The president’s announcement of the creation of the Office of Shipbuilding is a visible reflection of the existential threat that the PRC’s 30-year naval and maritime modernization program represents to America’s national security,” Capt. Fanell told Inside the Ring.
Mr. Trump said the office will bolster the defense industrial base and “resurrect the American shipbuilding industry” — both commercial and military.
“We used it to make so many ships,” Mr. Trump said. “We don’t make them anymore very much, but we’re going to make them very fast, very soon. It will have a huge impact.”
Beginning in 1995, when the Navy dispatched two aircraft carrier groups in a show of force near Taiwan, the Chinese regime has been engaged in a large-scale maritime modernization that transformed the People’s Liberation Army from a coastal defense force into the world’s largest navy. The transformation, fueled by a dramatic surge in investments in shipbuilding, produced a major shift in the balance of power between the Navy and its PLA rival.
The Office of Naval Intelligence revealed in a report that the Chinese shipbuilding industry is over 200 times the size and capacity of that of the U.S., which has atrophied since the end of the Cold War.
Capt. Fanell compared the creation of the new office to the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940 led by then-Sen. Carl Vinson, a law that was critical for the Navy’s preparations to fight Japan after the Pearl Harbor attack.
“Not only does this action provide critical support to America’s national defense, it also provides Americans a new sector for new jobs. This truly is a win-win announcement,” he said.
The Pentagon’s annual report on the Chinese military said the PLA navy is numerically the largest in the world, with over 370 warships and submarines, including more than 140 major combatants.
Adm. Sam Paparo, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said recently that the Chinese navy deploys about 83 “truly relevant combatant surface vessels, cruisers, destroyers.”
Better U.S. naval firepower and joint war fighting experience of Navy warships mean the U.S. naval forces “continue to have overmatch” over the PLA navy, he said.
U.S. indicts, sanctions Chinese hackers
The Justice Department and State Department announced indictments and sanctions against Chinese hackers and related supporters that authorities say are waged large-scale cyberattacks linked to Beijing’s intelligence services.
The action is the first major effort by the Trump administration to counter Chinese cyberattacks that have involved both cyber theft of data and pre-positioning sabotage malware inside critical infrastructure.
Two of the indicted hackers are said to be members of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, a political police and intelligence agency. Others were contractors for the Ministry of State Security, the civilian spy agency, the Justice Department said in a statement.
The indictments also identified a Chinese company called Anxun Information Technology Co. Ltd., that are linked to a hacking group known as Advanced Persistent Threat-27 (APT-27).
“The MPS and MSS paid handsomely for stolen data,” the statement said. “Victims include U.S.-based critics and dissidents of the [People’s Republic of China], a large religious organization in the United States, the foreign ministries of multiple governments in Asia, and U.S. federal and state government agencies, including the U.S. Department of the Treasury in late 2024.”
The contract hackers in China identified target computers that were then penetrated and the stolen information then sold to the Chinese government.
The eight contract hackers and two MPS officials were active from 2016 to 2023 in hacking email accounts, cellphones, servers, and websites, according to an indictment unsealed in federal court in New York City.
“For years, these 10 defendants — two of whom we allege are PRC officials — used sophisticated hacking techniques to target religious organizations, journalists and government agencies, all to gather sensitive information for the use of the PRC,” said acting U.S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky for the Southern District of New York.
The defendants are believed to be in China or outside the U.S. and the State Department is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information about them.
Also on Wednesday, the State Department announced it is imposing sanctions on a Shanghai-based hacker and his company Shanghai Heiying Information Technology Company.
“Zhou Shuai illegally acquired, brokered, and sold data from highly sensitive U.S. critical infrastructure networks, including in the defense industrial base, communications, health and government sectors,” the department said in a statement.
Contact Bill Gertz on X @BillGertz.
