China ranks atop worldwide threats, US intelligence chiefs tell lawmakers

China’s power and ambitions for influence are bleeding into nearly every threat that U.S. intelligence agencies are tracking, and the Chinese Communist Party remains America’s top concern, the five directors of the most senior intelligence agencies told lawmakers on Wednesday.

Leaders of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency presented an annual summary of global risks to Americans. 

“In brief, the CCP represents both the leading and most consequential threat to US national security and leadership globally,” said Avril Haines, director of ODNI, in her opening statement to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. 

“And its intelligence-specific ambitions and capabilities make it, for us, our most serious and consequential intelligence rival.”

Haines’ remarks are part of an intelligence community annual Worldwide Threat Assessment. The presentation of it allows the select group of Democrat and Republican lawmakers in the Senate and House to raise questions and concerns over assessments and priorities on work that is largely conducted in secret.

China wants to prevent spiraling relations with the U.S.

Chinese President Xi Jinping lashed out at the U.S. in a major speech to lawmakers on Monday, accusing Washington of trying to contain Beijing. But the U.S. intelligence community says Xi is actually intent on managing mounting pressures.

“Despite this more public and directly critical rhetoric, however, we assess that Beijing still believes it benefits most by preventing a spiraling of tensions and by preserving stability in its relationship with the United States,” Haines said. 

“He wants a period of relative calm to give China the time and stability it needs to address growing domestic difficulties,” the intelligence head continued, saying the Chinese economy is slowing down because of structural issues like “debt demographics, inequality, over reliance on investment and suppressed consumption.”

Still, Xi’s ambitions include pressing for unification with Taiwan and undercutting U.S. influence and will aim to drive a wedge between Washington and its allies and partners.

No ‘love affair’ between China and Russia, despite deepening relationship

Even as China has supported Russia throughout its war in Ukraine – with diplomatic cover and economic support – Haines said there are key limitations on the binding ties between Beijing and Moscow. 

“I hesitate to characterize it as a love affair,” Haines said. 

China is growing uneasy with its support to Russia, the ODNI director said. That follows the Biden administration’s public warnings that Beijing is thinking about sending lethal assistance to Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

“We see them in a situation in which they’ve become increasingly uncomfortable about the level of assistance and not looking to do it as publicly as might otherwise occur,” she said.

Without a major third country replenishing its artillery, and if Putin holds off on instituting a mandatory mobilization, Russian forces may shift from offensive operations to trying to hold and defend the territories it occupies in Ukraine, Haines continued. 

And even as U.S. intelligence assesses that the Russian military is unlikely to recover enough this year to make major territorial gains, Putin is calculating that time is on his side and prolonging the war, “may be his best remaining pathway to eventually securing Russia’s strategic interests in Ukraine, even if it takes years.”  

Frustrations over COVID-19, Chinese spy balloon and Havana Syndrome

While lawmakers applauded the intelligence heads for declassifying intelligence, in particular in warning the world over Putin’s plans to invade Ukraine, they pressed the top officials on the failures to identify the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the responsibility that China bears for the outbreak.

“We know, as your statement says, that Beijing continues to hinder the global investigation [into COVID-19], resist sharing information and blames other countries. Those are not the actions of an innocent party,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). 

Collins’ line of questioning homed in on divergent assessments among intelligence agencies that equally favor two pandemic origin theories: that it was the result of natural transmission from an animal to human or was leaked from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

But Haines emphasized that the intelligence community “remains divided,” citing Chinese obstruction to investigate the source of the outbreak.

“I share your frustration with the fact that China hasn’t been more cooperative on this issue to provide intelligence that would be of use to the scientists and others who work on these questions,” she said. 

And Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) brought up the discovery and the military takedown last month of a Chinese spy balloon and other flying objects that are still unidentified, without referencing them by name, but criticizing the intelligence community as failing to prioritize these threats and risks.

“As recent events have shown, we need more and better sharing between the intelligence community and our military and the stigmatization of the service members and personnel who come forward with this data is unacceptable,” Gillibrand said. 

The New York senator helped establish last year the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), focused on increasing communication between the IC and military over unidentified aerial, marine and other phenomena which could pose a risk to U.S. forces, military bases or spying on sensitive U.S. facilities – and called for it to be fully funded at ODNI. 

“Can you make sure, because it was left off last year from both the [Department of Defense] and Intel’s budget,” Gilibrand noted. 

Gillibrand also raised concern over the intelligence community’s recent assessment that it could not identify a foreign adversary as responsible for mysterious health incidents affecting State Department, intelligence and other U.S. personnel, so-called “Havana Syndrome” since the first public cases to emerge among American diplomats working in Cuba. 

“I do concur with the assessment, but I also think our work is not done there,” Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lieutenant General Scott Berrier said.

TikTok doom and data concerns 

Of major concern for lawmakers are debates surrounding efforts to ban the ubiquitous social media app TikTok – with its parent company Byte Dance based in China – over concerns that Americans’ data stored on the app is vulnerable to access from the Chinese Communist Party.

“If you were to ask Americans, would you like to turn over all your data, control of your devices, control of your information to the CCP? Most Americans would say ‘I’m not down with that,’ as my kids would say,” FBI Director Christopher Wray. 

CIA Director Bill Burns added that failure to protect data privacy allows “enormous opportunities” for adversaries to spy, steal intellectual property, access sensitive technologies.

And Berrier, responding to a question over the imperative for the U.S. to be a leader in technological innovation as a counter to the threats posed by the CCP, said “the Chinese are advancing very, very rapidly in every warfighting domain that exists,” including cyber, space and military to include infantry and command and control.

“They are making very, very rapid advances and the Defense Intelligence Agency is taking note of that and watching it very carefully.”