NEWS AND ANALYSIS:
The Chinese Communist Party operates a web of organizations engaged in irregular warfare — conflict below the level of kinetic warfare — targeting the U.S. which is not ready to counter the activities, an expert told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Seth G. Jones, president of the defense and security arm of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, testified Tuesday that the federal government and local authorities are ill-equipped to confront growing “gray zone” warfare threats from China, as well as those from Russia and Iran.
“I don’t believe we do have a comprehensive strategy, either at the federal level, or just talking last week to members of some of our joint terrorism task forces and fusion centers, where there is little activity at the state and local level to understand and operationalize the threat from unrestricted warfare happening, particularly by the Chinese but also the Russians and Iranians inside of our borders,” Mr. Jones said.
Unrestricted warfare is a Chinese military term outlined in a book by two People’s Liberation Army colonels more than two decades ago. It offers a path for the weaker Chinese military to defeat stronger U.S. forces using various non-military means, including financial, trade, cyber, media, law, ecological warfare and even terrorism.
The U.S. military refers to this as “gray zone” warfare, a Chinese military specialty seen in the South China Sea, around Taiwan and against Japan in Northeast Asia.
Mr. Jones said China’s unrestricted military actions include large-scale influence operations, such as its role in triggering public opposition to building large U.S. data centers. Other methods include covert operations to seize opponents of the CCP overseas, conducting large-scale espionage, including at American universities, and aggressive and offensive cyberattacks.
To counter unrestricted warfare, U.S. national security agencies need to broaden the focus of law enforcement and intelligence units across the country to address the threats, Mr. Jones said.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act law could be strengthened to better defeat Chinese influence actors, and the Section 702 electronic surveillance law could be more fully reauthorized to counter the Chinese activities, Mr. Jones said. Removing Chinese communists from access to American financial markets also should be considered, he said.
In prepared testimony, Mr. Jones listed multiple irregular Chinese warfare organizations. They include the coast guard and maritime militia that coerce nations in disputed waters; use of People’s Armed Police forces against dissent; and the use of all PLA forces to engage in low-level warfare.
The CCP United Front Work Department, which congressional investigators say is funded with some $11 billion annually, also serves as Beijing’s major foreign influence tool.
The Ministry of State Security intelligence service and Ministry of Public Security, a political policy agency, also are engaged in unrestricted warfare.
The activities include information and influence operations, including psychological operations and propaganda; electronic and cyber warfare; support for guerrillas and proxy forces; and covert and clandestine intelligence and special military operations, including sabotage and subversion, Mr. Jones stated.
Economic coercion is another tool as seen in Chinese restrictions on the export of rare earth minerals.
China is using “a wide range of tools below the threshold of armed conflict to expand the influence of the CCP and weaken the United States,” Mr. Jones said.
“Chinese intelligence operations are not just pervasive, but they are used to plan and execute all of China’s other irregular warfare activities,” he said.
Influence operations in the U.S. by China have included pressure against the National Basketball Association and Hollywood studios, he said.
“These tools are not mutually exclusive but are overlapping, reinforcing and occasionally even duplicative and competitive,” Mr. Jones said.
“China has several strategic goals in conducting irregular and gray zone activities. The most important is preservation of the CCP’s rule. Another is expanding Chinese influence and weakening the United States as part of balance-of-power competition,” he said.
Rep. Rick Crawford, chairman of the intelligence panel, said asymmetric and irregular warfare, foreign maligned influence, economic warfare, espionage, and gray zone aggression are increasingly common new threat streams.
“We’ve seen China and Russia exploit domestic security gaps and take advantage of our counterintelligence vulnerabilities,” the Arkansas Republican said in opening remarks.
To counter the threats, U.S. intelligence agencies need to be better integrated, adaptive, and capable of detecting threats across foreign and domestic, public and private, physical and digital, and military and economic domains, he said.
Hegseth confirms China, Russia helping Iran with targeting
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Senate hearing on Tuesday that China and Russia were helping Iran in its conflict with the U.S.
“There’s definitely adversary alignment. Attempts to do so, and there are many ways that we deter that, some of which are, and the depth and extent of it ought to remain classified, and it should,” Mr. Hegseth told the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“But there are ways in which both of those countries are, at different levels, enabling some of the things Iran is doing,” he said, without elaborating.
The comments came amid reports that Beijing and Moscow have provided intelligence information and satellite imagery to assist Iran’s attacks.
In March, CIA Director John Ratcliffe stated in Senate testimony that Iran had sought intelligence support from Russia, China and other U.S. rivals.
“The Iranians are requesting intelligence assistance from Russia, from China and from other adversaries of the United States, and whether or not those countries are [providing assistance] is something we can talk about in the classified portion,” Mr. Ratcliffe told senators.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio bolstered Mr. Hegseth’s comments during a press conference in Manila on Wednesday.
Asked if China and Russia are supplying targeting data to the Iranians, Mr. Rubio declined to provide specifics.
“I’m not going to discuss that, other than to say that nothing that’s happened … nothing that China has done has in any way changed the trajectory of what you’re seeing in terms of the conflicts we’re having with Iran,” Mr. Rubio said. “And in fact, in some cases, they’ve actually been quite cooperative.”
Asked how China has cooperated with the U.S., Mr. Rubio said it related to what Beijing “potentially could have done but didn’t do.”
“I think the Chinese — and I’ll let them tell you, but I don’t think they’re big fans of what Iran is trying to do in the straits,” he said. “In fact, they’ve said so publicly, that they oppose tolling or any sort of restraint on freedom of navigation in the straits. And we hope they’ll continue to say that, and it’s important that other countries say that as well.”
Army deploys new hypersonic missile to Guam
The Army’s newest ultra-high speed missile known as Dark Eagle was deployed to the U.S. island of Guam last month during a military exercise, according to Pacific Command.
The Seventh Infantry Division posted an online image Sunday of Adm. Sam Paparo, PACOM commander, walking next to the new Long Range Hypersonic Weapon, the formal name for Dark Eagle, during Exercise Valiant Shield on Guam in June.
The post on Facebook stated that Adm. Paparo watched troops training with Dark Eagle and noted the accomplishments of those assigned to division also known as the Multi-Domain Command-Pacific.
“Exercises like VALIANT SHIELD allow Pacific Command Joint Forces the opportunity to integrate forces from all branches of service and with our allies to conduct precise, lethal, and overwhelming multi-axis, multi-domain effects that demonstrate the strength and versatility of the joint force and our commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the post stated.
PACOM spokesman Army Maj. Jimmy Sheehan told Stars and Stripes, which first reported the deployment that the photos were taken on Guam but did not say if the missile system remains on the island.
The new missile is one of the first hypersonic weapons that Adm. Paparo has called for deploying in his theater of operations to better deter China, which also has deployed hypersonic missiles, specifically the DF-17 road-mobile missile.
Dark Eagle missiles can travel of speeds up to 17 times the speed of sound and have a range of about 2,175 miles, enough to reach targets in China while defeating missile defenses.
The high-speed weapon can strike targets in as little as 20 minutes with a highly maneuverable, unpowered glide vehicle.
Adm. Paparo stated in a private report to Congress on the military needs of his command that the Pentagon is planning to deploy offensive missiles to Guam in addition to a new multi-billion dollar air and missile defense system on the island.
The report disclosed by The Washington Times last month stated that the new defenses will “provide the basis for a future offensive capability,” without providing details of the planned offensive weapons.
Potential missile systems for the deployment were said to include the Dark Eagle and the Army’s Typhon Mid-Range Capability, which can fire 1,200-mile-range Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, the Times reported.
Each Dark Eagle battery typically includes an operations center and four transporter erector launchers with two missiles each.
• Contact Bill Gertz on X @BillGertz.
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