Talk of
the potential danger
China poses to the United States.
Beijing is a top focus
of the
annual Senate Intelligence Committees
hearing on worldwide threats
That hearing offers
a rare opportunity
for the public to hear directly
from the US intel leaders,
and their message was simple
and aggressive.
China will not back down
The People's Republic of China,
which is increasingly challenging
the United States
economically, technologically,
politically and militarily.
Around the world, remains
our unparalleled priority.
President Xi
Jinping will continue efforts
to achieve Xi's vision of making China
the preeminent power in East Asia.
And a major power on the world stage.
To fulfill Xi's vision,
however, the CCP
is increasingly convinced
that it can only do
so at the expense of U.S.
power and influence.
And joining me now is CNN global affairs
analyst Kim
Dozier and retired Lieutenant General
Mark Hertling.
He's a military
analyst and former
commanding general of the U.S.
Army Europe and Seventh Army.
So, Kim,
that quote,
China remains our unparalleled priority.
That's really significant,
especially in the context
this week of China
basically warning the United States
to tone down the rhetoric.
But it almost seems as if both sides
are denying their role
in kind of the spiraling of tensions
between the two.
And the U.S.
intelligence community
is not backing down
Absolutely.
The U.S.
intelligence community
years back felt like nobody was listening
to their repeated warnings
about Beijing's expansion and intentions
of expansion in terms of military,
their military intelligence
and also things
like their influencing operations,
trying to influence
what Americans think about China,
but about their own government.
And that's where they really got
into the hole.
You know, warnings about TikTok
and how it can feed certain messages
to U.S.
audiences to influence opinion.
And now the intelligence community
really feels like,
okay, we've got your attention
The spy balloon helped.
And we're going to lay out for you
all the different ways that this is
a national enterprise for China
to eventually become
the premier world power.
And that means taking back
Taiwan eventually,
hopefully not by force
from Beijing's perspective,
but that it's something
that bears watching
and that it is their job
to keep watching
and warning the White House about it.
And General Hertling,
the tensions between the U.S.
and China,
it would be no exaggeration to say
it's the highest it's
been in many, many years.
The director
of National Intelligence, Avril
Haines, said
that China will continue its efforts
to undercut the United States
But as a military person, how concerned
are you that that actually could spiral
into a kinetic conflict,
a military conflict between these
two countries?
Well, you know,
what I would
suggest is the report
that the DNI puts out
is relatively short.
It's unclassified.
It's ten chapters and 40 pages
and they address that.
In fact,
there's a great line from the report,
if I can remember,
off the top of my head,
it said Beijing is increasingly combining
their growing military power
with an economic, technological
and diplomatic influence
to not only strengthen
the party in China, but to pursue
regional preeminence and pursue
global influence.
That, to me is problematic.
Director Haines has a very good point.
With all the other intelligence officials
saying that it should be the priority.
But truthfully, Abby,
what I'd also say
is it's a short and long term priority.
We have to address some of the key issues
now that China is doing there.
Advances in wireless
communications, semiconductors,
quantum
is synthetic biology,
which I had to look up to understand.
But at the same time,
I was commander in Europe in 2011
when the Obama administration said
we need to pivot our attention
to the East, to Asia, to China.
And what happened
was we started paying less attention
to countries like Russia.
And we see where that got us in 2014.
So this DNI report,
which is relatively short,
really addresses
all the key factors
that the intelligence community
has to watch.
And truthfully,
I've been reading these for years.
This is the most complex
and complicated one
I've seen because of
the amount of challenges
and threats that the United States faces
today, more so than ever before.
And can you keep this up?
Just a moment ago,
the FBI director, Chris Wray,
raised his national security concerns
about ticktock. Take a listen.
Could the
Chinese government,
through its ownership of bytedance
that owns bytedance us
if they wanted to
and bytedance us
were willing to cooperate
or forced to cooperate,
could they
could they use TikTok to control data
on millions of users?
Yes.
Could they use it to control
the software on millions of devices,
given the opportunity to do so? Yes.
Could they use it to drive narratives
like to divide Americans
against each other, for example,
let's say China wants to invade Taiwan to
make sure that Americans
are seeing videos arguing
why Taiwan belongs to China, why the U.S.
should not intervene.
Yes,
I think a lot of Americans
who have TikTok on their phone wonder,
is this being blown out of proportion
I think a lot of people
don't realize that
President Xi,
he did
what may sound like a very boring thing.
Back in 2017,
he changed Chinese law
to give the government access
to all private companies, data
programing, etc.
So that means
and also he made all Chinese companies
cooperate with
military companies and technology
if needed.
So that means that Beijing can ostensibly
tell bytedance
you're going to show us your code,
you're going to show us your data,
you're going to change your code,
and you're going to let us send
certain messages out.
Even though I know
the owners of Bytedance
pushed back against that.
That is still technically the possibility
under this 2017
policy change that you made.
And you heard also there
the FBI director making the point
that in China, the line between public
and private entities
is just not the same
as what we're used to here
in the United States.
We have to leave it there.
Kim Dozier and General Mark Hertling,
both of you, thank you very much.