WASHINGTON – A 27-page report released before the testimony by the president’s top intelligence officials identifies China as the biggest threat to US global influence.
The annual threat assessment report, which summarizes the best assessments of intelligence analysts from the 18 different agencies within the intelligence community, ‘focuses on the most immediate, serious threats to the United States over the next year’, and looks at all of the ongoing COVID -19 pandemic and climate change to cyberattacks and technological competitiveness.
Senior intelligence officials, including the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, are expected to answer questions about the report before the House and Senate intelligence committees this week. The hearings were temporarily suspended under President Donald Trump after intelligence officials testified about facts that contradicted Trump’s public statements, which angered him and led to him firing his director of national intelligence, Dan Coats.
In contrast, President Biden told his senior intelligence officials that he expects them to speak honestly, regardless of how the reviews affect his political goals.
According to the new assessment, released Tuesday morning, Beijing will continue its push to “subdue” Washington’s global influence, despite intelligence officials predicting that Chinese leaders will seek tactical opportunities to reduce tensions with Washington when such opportunities suit their interests. ‘
While senior officials from Biden, including Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, have already met with their Chinese counterparts in Alaska, climate representative John Kerry plans to travel to China to address climate change. , Beijing has not hesitated to engage in public saber-rattling when faced with US challenges.
In the near term, intelligence officials expect China to continue to exert global influence through ‘vaccine diplomacy’, as well as its success in responding to the pandemic, although public news reports suggest that Chinese vaccines are far less successful than they used to be. made the US. versions.
Intelligence officials also expect that Beijing will continue to increase tensions with its neighbors in India, intimidate competing plaintiffs in the South China Sea, increase military activities around Taiwan, and cooperate with Russia in areas such as economics and defense. According to the assessment, China will also “continue the fastest expansion and diversification of the platform of its nuclear arsenal”, ignoring efforts at international arms control alliances.
In the realm of technology, space and digital espionage and attacks, the intelligence community expects Beijing to remain a top competitor, and perhaps even surpass the US. It is perhaps most disturbing that the intelligence community, apart from Beijing’s use of surveillance and espionage technology, has determined that Beijing ‘could launch cyber attacks that could cause at least temporary disruption of critical infrastructure in the United States. ”
The intelligence community also says that Moscow, Tehran and Pyongyang will continue to provoke and threaten Washington, each with unique and evolving threats.
As for Moscow, the community judged that Russian officials would continue to undermine US influence “through continued influence and cyber-operations, although analysts concluded that Moscow” probably does not want a direct conflict with US forces. have not ‘.
Among the threats posed by Russia are its continued efforts for ‘military modernization’, information warfare, involvement in Syria and Ukraine, the expansion and storage of its nuclear and other weapons, and the continuing target of critical infrastructure through cyber operations, including ‘submarine cables’. and industrial control systems’ ”In both the US and allied countries.
The report warns that Iran could take risks and increase tensions in the coming year, depending on its own assessments of the US willingness to respond to attacks and concessions it believes the US could negotiate in exchange for its return to the US. Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the Iran Agreement. “Iran remains committed to countering US pressure, although Tehran is also wary of engaging in a full-scale conflict,” the report said.
The report says that Iran may not currently undertake a nuclear project to develop nuclear weapons, but it is possible that it will continue to improve these activities, especially “if Tehran does not receive sanctions relief.”
The report predicts that Iranian officials will consider options, including ‘further enriching uranium to 60 percent’. The release of the report coincided with made an announcement Tuesday by Iran’s deputy foreign minister, a few days after an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment plant in Natanz, that the country would enrich 60 percent of uranium.
Analysts also concluded that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had not changed his view that nuclear weapons were the “ultimate deterrent to foreign intervention”, a long-standing conclusion that Trump refused to accept. because of his confidence in his diplomatic outreach with Pyongyang.
While global terrorism has consistently been listed as a major threat in intelligence assessment following the 9/11 attacks and al-Qaida’s global growth, the intelligence community considers that groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda now have the capabilities based on is on ongoing U.S. and related terrorist operations.
The intelligence community noted that domestic violent extremists in the U.S. as well as similar groups in Europe, from white nationalists to neo-Nazis, are “an increased threat to the United States” that has been “flowing and flowing for decades, but has increased since 2015” has’ . ”
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