Is Donald Trump Helping China’s Aspirations for World Domination?

Is Donald Trump Helping China’s Aspirations for World Domination?

“I can’t imagine any American was spared given the breadth of the campaign.” 

Cynthia Kaiser, a former top official in the F.B.I.’s cyber division, who oversaw investigations into Chinese hacking.

So, let me ask a couple of questions? Does China believe that appointing a former Marine Corps major, with no senior military experience, a former Fox New host who is an avowed white Christian nationalist and who does not believe women should be able to vote independently from their husbands, a man who has struggled with alcohol, to head the Department of Defense, make the US military a more formidable foe? Does that answer change when he has fired dozens of very senior flag-ranked officers from their positions to be replaced by vastly less experienced officers?

Does China fear containment of their global hacking initiative, establishment of local PRC “police offices” inside western democracies, their extensive spy networks and their vast scale of industrial espionage, from a former member of Congress who found brutal Syrian dictator Bashir al Assad as misunderstood and not “an enemy of the United States” and that Ukraine was developing biological weapons that could be used against Russia, who described Hillary Clinton as a “Russian asset,” a lover of conspiracy theories, as the new Director of National Intelligence, a the highest ranking cabinet member over our global intelligence operation? Does China feel that Donald Trump had brought order and powerful leadership to the United States, able to mount a consistent barrier to Chinese global aspirations?

You really don’t need to delve much farther into China’s expectations and strategic evaluation of US preparedness to counter China at every level of her aspiration to replace US global influence and power. Simply, China believes the United States is self-destructing as Xi Jinping’s China is laser focused on taking us down, even as Beijing’s own economy is sputtering. Those legally questionable US tariffs, which appear to be facing the practical power of Chinese manufactures on US businesses, are so alienating very powerful nations, notably the most populous country in the world, India, that they are willing to abandon cooperation with the US, turning to China (a traditional Indian enemy) as a viable alternative. Trump’s bully-come-autocracy is not popular anywhere, including within his own country, and is amplifying our isolation from our former allies. Even NATO has distanced itself from the US obligation to protect Taiwan from a Chinese invasion.

China has hundreds of thousands professional, fully trained hackers, using highly sophisticated and state-of-the-art AI analytics, drilling down on Western alliance nations, with a very particular focus on the United States. Their efforts over the last decade have generated exceptionally detailed information on just about every US business, state and federal agencies and, very troubling, probably every American. “[A] sweeping cyberattack by a group known as Salt Typhoon is China’s most ambitious yet, experts and officials have concluded after a year of investigating it. It targeted more than 80 countries and may have stolen information from nearly every American, officials said. They see it as evidence that China’s capabilities rival those of the United States and its allies.

“The Salt Typhoon attack was a yearslong, coordinated assault that infiltrated major telecommunications companies and others, investigators said in a highly unusual joint statement last week. The range of the attack was far greater than originally understood, and security officials warned that the stolen data could allow Chinese intelligence services to exploit global communication networks to track targets including politicians, spies and activists… Hackers sponsored by the Chinese government ‘are targeting networks globally, including, but not limited to, telecommunications, government, transportation, lodging, and military infrastructure networks,’ the statement said.” New York Times, September 4th.

China’s military is less sophisticated than ours, but as the show-off military parade in Beijing on September 3rd illustrated – which even Donald Trump openly expressed as impressive – China is concentrating her forces to repel American countermeasures when (?) China moves to invade Taiwan. The specifics of China’s Peoples Liberation Army’s (her entire military) most recent weapons upgrades should be deeply troubling to us all. Writing for the September 3rd New York Times, Chris Buckley and Agnes Chang, present some of those highlights: “The massive military parade, presided over by China’s leader Xi Jinping, was a warning to his country’s prospective foes.

“The anti-ship missiles seemed tailor-made to menace American forces in the Asia-Pacific region. Long-range rocket launchers magnified Beijing’s threat to Taiwan, the self-governed island democracy. The armored vehicles that can be dropped from planes appeared to extend China’s ability to defend its growing global interests… If one theme stood out, analysts said, it was that the People’s Liberation Army is betting on unmanned systems to gain a potential edge in battle…

“One of the parade’s strongest warnings to U.S. forces was in four new models of anti-ship missiles, three of which were hypersonic, according to state media, meaning they travel at least five times the speed of sound and can maneuver to evade defenses… ‘Beijing’s decision to showcase these weapons sends a not-so-subtle message to Taiwan and Washington that China has the ability to threaten American warships,’ said Timothy R. Heath, a senior researcher at the global policy institute RAND who studies the Chinese military.

“For China, having more advanced hypersonic missiles bearing down at different speeds and angles on enemy warships may make it harder for an enemy navy to avoid or counter attacks… The most notable of the anti-ship missiles might be the YJ-19, a cruise missile that appears to use a ‘scramjet,’ which burns its fuel in an airflow moving at supersonic speed, a design that helps give the missile its high speed.” While not as powerful as our fleet, China’s naval vessels are concentrated in her own region… and, as a whole, more modern. But today, Chinese fleets routinely pair with Russian counterparts, including a growing interest in the Arctic’s Northwest Passage. While, the United States Navy currently maintains seven active numbered fleets, they are scattered across the planet, thus diluting their effectiveness in defending Taiwan. Our intelligence efforts pale by comparison to the Chinese focus, and our military is not as narrow-focused on China as China is narrow-focused on us.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in answer to the title question, the unequivocal answer is an unqualified “YES.”