Blind Eagle
CIA’s Reluctant Pivot to China
China is constantly in the news these days.
It has seemingly come out of nowhere to become an existential threat to the United States.
President Biden even brought up the specter of going to war with the Central Kingdom when he stated that the American military would defend Taiwan if China invaded.
But China didn’t come out of nowhere.
For the past two decades it has pursued the single-minded goal of becoming the superpower that would replace the United States as the global leader.
It wasn’t that China was hiding, it was that the United States was willfully focused elsewhere — on the Global War on Terrorism.
It refused to look.
Looking would mean acknowledging and acknowledging would mean taking action, and American policymakers were loath to do that.
But finally, a new administration took the first step.
In 2018, the National Defense Strategy (NDS) announced that:
“Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.”
While welcome, this pivot was not surprising to the U.S. military. They had witnessed China’s rise firsthand.
A fact proven a scant three months later, when Admiral Philip Davidson testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee about China’s control of the South China Sea via its manmade islands:
“Once occupied, China will be able to extend its influence thousands of miles to the south and project power deep into Oceania. The PLA will be able to use these bases to challenge U.S. presence in the region, and any forces deployed to the islands would easily overwhelm the military forces of any other South China Sea-claimants. In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.”
Absolutely clear to the military.
But not to the CIA.
It would take the Agency another four years to figure it out.
In fact, it was only a month ago that CIA’s deputy director made it clear that the agency’s focus, money and manpower would be increasingly shifted to focusing on China.
So, you might wonder, how over the past twenty years did the CIA manage to miss all of the milestones of China’s rise to military superpower status?
How could it miss or misunderstand the significance of China’s growing capability and dominance in hypersonic missile technology, or the military significance of its world-class anti-satellite capability, or its dominance in AI-assisted surveillance technologies and Quantum encryption, or how China militarized the South China Sea and changed the balance of power in its favor?
The answer is it wasn’t looking. It didn’t care.
Wait, what? The CIA wasn’t spying?
That’s correct.
The telltale giveaway is to whom the CIA’s deputy director made his intentions clear.
He was in a closed-door meeting with the leaders of CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.
Since the 9/11 attacks, the CT Center has been the big dog, the head honcho in CIA’s clandestine service.
The clandestine service has a rigid culture, and power moves from the top down.
After 9/11, CIA made terrorism its primary mission.
Not one of many strategic targets, not first among equals.
The mission!
That means that for over twenty years, the Agency’s budget, targeting, focus, manpower, training, congressional, military, and executive branch relationships and its business relationships were all focused on terrorism.
Traditional espionage against China, Russia, and North Korea took a back seat.
Power in the clandestine service becomes entrenched and not easily dislodged, which is why CIA’s deputy director had to make it clear that CIA was changing.
The CT Center’s intransigence is easily documented by recent developments.
Two years ago, CIA director William Burns stated in his confirmation hearings that he would focus CIA on China:
“…that will mean intensified focus and urgency, continually strengthening its already impressive cadre of China specialists, expanding its language skills, aligning personnel and resource allocation for the long haul and employing a whole of agency approach to the operational and analytical challenges of this crucial threat.”
The National Counterterrorism Center apparently didn’t get the memo from its new boss.
A year ago, Burns created the China Mission Center at CIA to address this key 21st Century threat and designated his deputy David Cohen to “oversee” its implementation.
Still no movement by the CT Center.
A month after the new center was created, China conducted a hypersonic missile test that orbited the globe before hitting its target.
Nobody had done that before. It was shocking.
The U.S. has no defense against this weapon, and General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described it as:
“Very close to a Sputnik moment.”
Still nothing.
Almost a year after that, in Early August 2022, China launched its military operation against Taiwan, and changed the balance of power in the region in its favor and turned the status quo over Taiwan on its head.
The CT Center? Unimpressed.
But apparently for the administration, director Burns, and deputy director Cohen, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and the deputy director felt he had to set the leaders of the CT Center straight behind closed doors.
Time will tell.
For a detailed analysis of CIA’s transformation from the country’s premier strategic intelligence agency into a tactical paramilitary unit, please see CIA, Terrorism, and the Emergent New Cold War.
