During Senate confirmation hearings this week, senior members of the incoming Trump administration named China as the “biggest threat” facing the US, which has been the official position of the Pentagon for several years.
“The Communist Party of China … is the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted,” Sen. Marco Rubio, the incoming secretary of state, said during his hearing on Wednesday.
“They have elements that the Soviet Union never possessed. They are a technological adversary and competitor, an industrial competitor, an economic competitor, a geopolitical competitor, a scientific competitor now in every realm,” Rubio added.
Rubio claimed China seeks a world where the US is completely reliant on it and expressed support for more screening of US investments in China. “If we stay on the road we’re on right now, in less than 10 years, virtually everything that matters to us in life will depend on whether China will allow us to have it -– everything from the blood pressure medicine we take to what movies we get to watch,” he said.
John Ratcliffe, who Trump nominated to head the CIA, described China as a “once-in-a-generation challenge” and discussed steps he took to focus on China when he was the Director of National Intelligence in the previous Trump administration.
“As DNI, I dramatically increased the intelligence community’s resources devoted to China. I openly warned the American people that, from my unique vantage point as the official who saw more US intelligence than anyone else, I assessed that China was far and away our top national security threat,” Ratcliffe said.
Ratcliffe said he would continue the “good work” of the current CIA director, William Burns, who created a new mission center within the agency in 2021 that solely focuses on China.
Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who Trump nominated to be secretary of defense, also named China as the top threat facing the US, though his hearing was mostly focused on his past and personal issues.
Hegseth claimed that the Biden administration had not followed the 2017 National Defense Strategy, which called for the US military to pivot away from the Middle East toward the Asia Pacific. However, the Biden administration has taken many steps to increase its military footprint in Asia, including deals to expand bases in the Philippines, Australia, and several Pacific Island nations.
The Biden administration also took significant steps to boost support for Taiwan, including by providing US-funded military aid for the first time. US military officials under Biden have also been openly preparing for war with China despite the risk of the conflict quickly turning nuclear.
US officials say the buildup in the Asia Pacific is needed to “deter” war with China, but the steps have only increased tensions, making conflict more likely. Beijing has repeatedly warned the US that Taiwan is the “first red line” in US-China relations that must not be crossed, but the Biden administration ignored the Chinese concerns.
