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Bill Gertz

Bill Gertz

bgertz@washingtontimes.com

Bill Gertz is a national security correspondent for The Washington Times. He has been with The Times since 1985.
He is the author of eight books, four of them national best-sellers. His latest book, "Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China's Drive for Global Supremacy," reveals details about the growing threat posed by the People's Republic of China. He is also the author of the ebook "How China's Communist Party Made the World Sick."
Mr. Gertz also writes Inside the Ring, a weekly column that chronicles the U.S. national security bureaucracy.
Mr. Gertz has been a guest lecturer at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va.; the Central Intelligence Agency in Virginia; the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington; and the Brookings Institution in Washington. He has participated in the National Security Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.
He studied English literature at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., and journalism at George Washington University. He is married and has two daughters.
He can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.

Articles by Bill Gertz

This handout photo provided by the U.S. Navy shows a common hypersonic glide body (C-HGB) launching from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, in Kauai, Hawaii, March 19, 2020, during a Department of Defense flight experiment. The department is working in collaboration with industry and academia to field hypersonic war-fighting capabilities. (Luke Lamborn/U.S. Navy via AP) ** FILE **

U.S. lags China, Russia in hypersonic arms race

Pentagon efforts to rapidly build hypersonic missiles to compete with similar systems of U.S. adversaries took a second hit last week after Russia reportedly used a hypersonic missile in a bomb strike against Ukraine.

March 23, 2022
In this file photo, China's military personnel perform near a display showing the navy's aircraft carrier in a segment of a gala show ahead of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing on Monday, June 28, 2021. China sailed its newest aircraft carrier near a Taiwanese island in the Taiwan Strait on March 18, 2022, in a saber-rattling signal to the United States hours before a video call between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) ** FILE **

China sails carrier through Taiwan Strait in signal to U.S.

China sailed its newest aircraft carrier near a Taiwanese island in the Taiwan Strait on Friday in a saber-rattling signal to the United States hours before a video call between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

March 18, 2022
U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, 7th AF commander, speaks with Airmen assigned to the 51st Logistics Readiness Squadron during an immersion tour at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, Jan. 11, 2019. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Kelsey Tucker) ** FILE **

Pacific general vows ‘robust’ response to China attack

China needs to learn the lessons being taught to the Russian military in Ukraine and the dangers Beijing's military forces will face from any attack on Taiwan or another regional nation, the commander of the Pacific Air Forces said this week.

March 16, 2022
In this file photo, Chinese President Xi Jinping attends an event commemorating the 110th anniversary of Xinhai Revolution at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Oct. 9, 2021. China is engaged in a massive nuclear weapons buildup that includes hundreds of new strategic missiles, and Chinese President Xi Jinping is preparing the military to retake Taiwan, the nation’s most senior intelligence official testified before Congress on March 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

Chinese leader tested by Russian invasion of Ukraine

Chinese President Xi Jinping is being tested by the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the Communist Party chief seeks to support Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime in the face of crippling Western sanctions and the prospect that those sanctions will hit China for any stepped-up support of the Kremlin in the intensifying regional war.

March 15, 2022
A security person moves journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology after a World Health Organization team arrived for a field visit in Wuhan in China's Hubei province on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021. The WHO team is investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic has visited two disease control centers in the province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

DNI: China still blocking virus origin probe

China is continuing to prevent international investigators from tracing the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and has falsely blamed the United States for the deadly pandemic, the annual threat assessment produced by the office of Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines revealed this week.

March 9, 2022
Ukrainians cross an improvised path under a destroyed bridge while fleeing Irpin, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 8, 2022. Demands for ways to safely evacuate civilians have surged along with intensifying shelling by Russian forces, who have made significant advances in southern Ukraine but stalled in some other regions. Efforts to put in place cease-fires along humanitarian corridors have repeatedly failed amid Russian shelling. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

Some civilians escape Ukraine as Pentagon nixes Polish jet offer

Delicate cease-fires held for several hours along humanitarian aid and civilian evacuation corridors in some areas of Ukraine on Tuesday, even as Russian forces pounded other negotiated escape routes and local authorities warned that the number of civilians killed by Russian missile strikes continued to climb.

March 8, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin enters a hall to chair a Security Council meeting in Moscow, Russia, on Feb. 25, 2022. Putin is raising fears that he has become more reckless, more committed to restoring the USSR, perhaps more likely to set off a world-altering war. There's no way to determine from a distance whether the Russian president is becoming unstable or if he is simply preying on the West's fears. (Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

Putin nuclear threat part of new escalation policy

Russian President Vladimir Putin's veiled threats to use his nuclear arsenal if the West comes to Ukraine's aid in the current fighting highlight a new military doctrine called "escalate to deescalate," which calls on the military to resort to nuclear weapons more rapidly in conflicts.

March 2, 2022
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing last week. Mr. Yanukovych's visit is aimed at gaining Chinese support for Ukraine's battered economy. The country's economic malaise has helped fuel ongoing protests in Kiev. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Putin’s war tests China’s nuclear pact with Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin's order raising the alert status of Russia's massive nuclear forces this week in the midst of an invasion of neighboring Ukraine is presenting a test of a 2013 agreement that calls on China to provide a nuclear deterrent umbrella for Kyiv.

February 28, 2022
Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk to each other during their meeting in Beijing, Feb. 4, 2022. China is the only friend that might help Russia blunt the impact of economic sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, but President Xi Jinping’s government is giving no sign it might be willing to risk its own access to U.S. and European markets by doing too much. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

Putin threat tests China’s nuclear umbrella pact with Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Moscow's military to raise the alert status of its large nuclear forces on Sunday, and the threat will test a 2012 agreement that calls on China to provide a nuclear deterrent umbrella for Ukraine.

February 27, 2022