Consider This from NPR - China Poses A National Security Threat Unlike Any The U.S. Has Seen Before

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

This week's virtual summit between President Joe Biden and China's President Xi Jinping may have restored a tone of respect between the world's two largest powers, but U.S. intelligence is telling a different story. NPR's Greg Myre reports on a national security conference held in Georgia last month where former and current U.S. intelligence officers were surprisingly candid about what they see as the biggest growing threat: China. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Good evening to everyone here in the United States and good morning to you, Mr. President of Beijing. On Monday night, Joe Biden had his first formal meeting with China's President Xi Jinping. It's our first meeting in video. Good to see you, Mr. President, and your colleagues. It's the first time for us to meet virtually. Although it's not as good as a face-to-face meeting, I'm very happy to see my old friend. The two of them struck a congenial tone. But the fact that it's taken 10 months for a sit-down like this speaks to a deeper reality in their relationship. Previous presidents

met their Chinese counterparts a lot sooner. NPR China affairs correspondent John Ruich. Part of it is the pandemic. The other part is probably the state of relations, which is really bad between China and the U.S. There's friction across the board. China had hoped that the Biden administration would take a different approach than Trump's tariff-heavy agenda. But Ruich says they've been disappointed. We saw that reflected in the first few meetings of senior diplomats from both sides. They were very rocky. There was a lot of finger wagging. Biden's been rebuilding alliances with an eye on China. That stoked mistrust in Beijing.

So it's all part of why this has taken so long to get a summit like this going. It seems to me our responsibility as leaders of China and the United States... So with all of that friction as the backdrop, Biden's message was this. Just because there's inherent competition between the world's two largest economies doesn't mean there has to be conflict. Just simple, straightforward competition. For his part, Xi said a sound and steady U.S.-China relationship was necessary for both countries, and agreed that global issues such as the pandemic and climate change

require communication and cooperation. I now look forward to a wide-ranging and comprehensive discussion with you, Mr. President, on overarching issues. Thank you. Thank you. Now, in contrast to this public display of camaraderie are growing national security concerns. China is employing a whole of nation effort. Paul Colby is a former CIA officer. He now runs the intelligence project at Harvard. They have both the internal surveillance capability to keep their own population in control and on an industrial scale are employing an A to Z methodology of collecting secrets on the U.S. Colby says China has both the manpower and the skill to, quote,

exquisitely target the U.S. government in ways no other country ever has. Very precise, very sophisticated intelligence operations, which have penetrated U.S. intelligence agencies and caused grave damage. Consider this. This week's virtual summit may have restored a tone of respect between the world's two largest powers, but U.S. intelligence is telling a different story. Coming up, why the country's top spies are targeting China more than ever before. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Tuesday, November 16th. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Webflow.

On November 17th and 18th, join Webflow and thousands of designers, developers, and marketers for the free and online-only NoCodeConf. Register now at NoCodeConf.com. It's Consider This from npr most of yesterday's virtual summit between biden and xi jinping happened behind closed doors but at a conference in georgia last month former and current u.s intelligence officials were surprisingly transparent about their thoughts on china thank you sue um i've got to tell you all and i know many of you are in the same boat it's so odd after 27 years of being in clandestine service to see your picture and your bio pop up.

That's former CIA officer Cynthia Saddy speaking to a full ballroom at an event known as the Cipher Brief Threat Conference. One ex-CIA director, Michael Hayden, set the tone for the conference when he shared his advice to the current CIA chief, William Burns. And I said, first of all, you got to go to China. And then second of all, you've got to go to China. And the third one was, you've got to go to China. And he said, OK, I got it. Now, it's rare for U.S. spies to gather like this and speak openly about national security threats. That's exactly what they did. NPR correspondent Greg Myrie was one of the few journalists there to see it. The U.S. intelligence community focused on the Russians for decades.

Then the priority was Middle East terrorism. Now a new era is underway. I call this entering the third epoch of intelligence. Sue Gordon spent four decades in the intelligence community. She briefed five presidents. Gordon held a series of senior jobs before stepping down two years ago as deputy director of national intelligence. Weirdly, we kind of woke up out of our counterterrorism stupor to realize that the world had become digital and that we hadn't been focusing on all the things we needed to. The rise of China happened during those years, and now you see us talking about great power competition.

CIA Director Burns has embraced this advice. After reviewing the CIA's priorities, his first big move was to establish a China mission center in order to focus more on the principal U.S. competitor. The CIA's number two official, David Cohen, says this means more resources will be devoted to China. The different parts of the agency will closely coordinate their work on China, and Burns will host a weekly meeting devoted entirely to China. What we've come to realize is that we need to really enhance and synchronize our efforts around China. This comes as U.S.-China competition is heating up. The U.S. intelligence community wants to know what Chinese leader Xi Jinping is thinking about Taiwan as tensions escalate. And China's recent test of a hypersonic missile seemed to catch the U.S. by surprise. Then there's the ongoing race for cutting-edge technologies, like artificial intelligence.

Critics say this constant drumbeat of warnings about China can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The result could be inflamed tensions with Beijing, while the U.S. may overlook other potential flashpoints from Russia to Iran to North Korea. David Cohen had a response to this. I will hasten to add that we are the Central Intelligence Agency. We are not the China Intelligence Agency. Still, the conference was a vivid demonstration of how the U.S. intelligence community is making a pivot to China. Officials say that no country, not even the Soviet Union at its peak,

spied on the U.S. in such a comprehensive way as China does now. Larry Pfeiffer is a former CIA chief of staff. They've got more people than we could ever dream of having. They're going to collect as much data, if not all the data they can get, put it in a big data pool, and use artificial intelligence, use machine processing to then, you know, exquisitely target us. I mean, it is scary. China goes after traditional spying targets like government and military secrets.

But Beijing is after much, much more. It has pursued an unprecedented effort to collect valuable technology from U.S. companies, universities, and research labs. Ana Puglisi is a former intelligence official who focused on China. She's now at Georgetown University and says to protect itself, the U.S. faces a major challenge. Our system is really set up to fight a nation-state. It focuses on things that are illegal, things that are direct military application, and what we're seeing now, and especially the focus in academia, in commerce, it's a very, very different threat than we had in

the past. Bill Evanina led many government investigations into the theft of intellectual property. He says the U.S. should keep bringing in top-flight students from China and elsewhere. But he adds, universities need to be aware of the risk. After leaving government this year, he set up a company that helps colleges protect their most valuable technology in the STEM fields. It's the small proportion amount of people that we have to be concerned about in the postgraduate STEM world where they're looking to obtain research and intelligence that's going to help garner their military and academic world. And I think that awareness can help academia and research development do self-compliance.

Of course, the U.S. also aggressively spies on China. But China is a notoriously hard target and is getting harder with its sweeping surveillance carried out by the Ministry of State Security. Again, the CIA's David Cohen. The way that we operated, you know, 25 years ago, you know, with alias, stocks and hard copy, you could, you know, pick up a passport and show up somewhere and be someone complete. That is harder to do, you know, whether it's China or Russia or any number of countries. China uncovered many spies working for the U.S. a decade ago, setting back American intelligence operations. Paul Colby says spying on China takes time and patience. You can't flip a switch and suddenly have a stable of Chinese assets, great penetrations of the inner sanctums of government. You have to develop officers who

know the language, culture, and that can establish deep relationships of trust that are required to do agent operations. It won't be easy to recruit and train these new officers. The ideal candidate would be a fluent Mandarin speaker with a degree in artificial intelligence and a willingness to work for a government salary. So that is quite a unicorn, right? A person who speaks the language, understands the culture, has a deep technical competency as well. It's not easy, but they're out there. Cynthia Strand retired last year after 35 years at the CIA. She's now at a private company called Primer. It works closely with the intelligence community. Using artificial intelligence,

Primer's computers sort through massive amounts of data, find specific information, and then translate it from, say, Mandarin to English. Imagine if you had a large cadre of good interns, hard workers, diligent. You want to put them on the tasks that are rote, that are repeatable, where they can cut their teeth and learn and leave the higher thought work to people who have been trained and practicing for a long time. Strand says human intelligence remains critical, but technology keeps leaping forward. No one, no human being, no matter how exceptional they are,

can consume and make sense of the volumes of data that are available. Machines can do that beautifully. It's just one example, she says, of how technology is redefining spycraft for a new era, an era that's here to stay. That's Greg Myrie, NPR's National Security Correspondent. And you're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish.