NSA crafting new China strategy as spies shift gaze toward conflict in Asia

The National Security Agency is developing a new strategy to counter China, with the goal of preventing war with the communist power and ensuring a fair fight over emerging tech that will determine the global balance of power.

David Frederick, the NSA’s China chief, said Tuesday that his agency is undertaking a “big shift” from prioritizing the counterterrorism mission and pivoting toward America’s competition with China.

America’s spies are not expecting China to start a war in Asia imminently but recognize that the communist country wants to prevent the U.S. from intervening in an invasion of Taiwan, Mr. Frederick said during an Intelligence and National Security Alliance event.

“We’re not beating the drums of war here and thinking that China is going to attack anytime soon or anything,” Mr. Frederick said. “Our number one goal is to support our policymakers, our diplomats and our warfighters to ensure deterrence because a conflict in the Pacific would be very damaging for everyone involved and really for the world.”

The shifting focus at the codebreaking and codemaking agency will produce a new China strategy from his team soon, said Mr. Frederick, the assistant deputy director for China at NSA. An NSA spokesperson told The Washington Times that the strategy will be made final this fall but likely will not be shared publicly. 

Alongside discouraging the People’s Republic of China from starting a conflict, Mr. Frederick said his agency wants to ensure a fair competition with China over innovation that will help shape the global balance of power for years to come.

“I don’t think the U.S. is afraid of competing with China, and we’ve got a strategy focused on that — how do we, though, ensure that we really understand the PRC’s intentions and develop a proactive approach,” Mr. Frederick said. “That’s what policymakers are focused on and the demand signals that we’re getting as intelligence professionals is helping us to shape and focus in on those topics.”

As part of the spies’ new fixation on China, Mr. Frederick said the NSA is coordinating with others across the intelligence community and is working to form a new innovation pipeline.

The new collaboration will probably launch early next year, according to Mr. Frederick, who said people could expect to hear about America’s spies reaching out to industrial base partners soon.

“We’ll be kicking off a new innovation pipeline called Red Ventures that’s meant to reach out to industry and also internally to our workforce to look for a whole range of solutions to our hardest problems,” Mr. Frederick said. 

Among those problems are the evolution of China’s hackers. As an example of China’s increasingly sophisticated tradecraft, Mr. Frederick pointed to an advisory from the NSA, federal cyber officials and their international allies earlier this year warning of China exploiting small office and home office routers to breach networks.

Cyberattackers linked to China were also spotted compromising Microsoft customers’ networks earlier this year in a sprawling hack that rippled through the Departments of Commerce and State.