A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
U.S. intelligence agencies are guilty of multiple failures to address threats posed by China over the past 40 years, resulting in current existential dangers to American security, a former Navy intelligence director told Congress on Wednesday.
Retired Navy Capt. James Fanell testified that the ruling Chinese Communist Party employed strategic deception and political warfare to fool both intelligence officials and executive branch policymakers into falsely assuming China posed no threat.
“Over the course of decades, [China] effectively misled our executive branch to ignore the PRC as a rising existential threat,” said Capt. Fanell, former director of intelligence and information operations for the Pacific Fleet. “In particular, the Department of Defense and the intelligence community were deceived by the CCP’s skillful use of elite capture, deception, disinformation and propaganda programs.”
The failures resulted in U.S. leaders unilaterally disarming psychologically, intellectually and militarily, despite what he said was evidence that China viewed the United States as its main enemy, he said.
“Even worse, our leaders help fund and otherwise enable China’s military, economic and technological advances needed to destroy our military forces in the field and destroy our society and economy,” Capt. Fanell said.
SEE ALSO: Chinese Embassy lobbies Hill against DNI report on leaders’ corruption
The testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability came during the committee’s second hearing looking into Chinese political warfare activities against the United States.
Committee Chairman James Comer said the American people are aware that China poses the greatest foreign threat to the U.S. way of life.
Too few federal agencies, however, understand that Beijing is waging “an aggressive campaign of political warfare — a strategy to weaken our nation without firing a shot,” the Kentucky Republican said. “The end goal is clear — to weaken and defeat America.”
Capt. Fanell said that he was pushed out of the Navy 10 years ago after giving a speech approved by his superiors that warned of China’s growing military capabilities in preparation for what he called a “short, sharp war” with the United States. He claimed that a civilian Pentagon official told him after the remarks that he was prohibited from making any similar speeches.
“I had contradicted the unwritten policy of ‘not provoking’ the PRC. Within a few months I was fired,” he said.
The retired intelligence officer said American national security officials, both in intelligence agencies and policy departments, failed to correctly assess the threat from China and also failed to put policies in place to mitigate the danger.
“Now our nation faces a herculean task of confronting and defeating communist China’s existential threat,” he said. “We are not prepared intellectually, ideologically, organizationally, nor militarily.”
Regarding the intelligence failures, Capt. Fanell testified that U.S. intelligence agencies engaged in what he called “threat deflation” in seeking to play down or ignore troubling strategic developments. The greatest intelligence failure was China’s unchecked rise from underdeveloped nation to a peer rival to the United States, he said.
“For a generation, the [intelligence community] failed national security decision-makers, and the American people, regarding the growth of China’s capabilities and intentions,” Capt. Fanell said.
Intelligence analysts for about three decades failed to correctly identify Beijing’s “malign intentions” and did not assess the role played by its communist ideology. Instead, intelligence agencies produced “gross errors” as a result of benign assumptions about Chinese strategic goals and objectives, he said.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Capt. Fanell’s testimony.
Exponential growth
Since the 1980s, China’s military power has grown exponentially, including a once-modest nuclear force that has rapidly expanded to what U.S. nuclear force commanders have called “strategic breakout.”
Capt. Fanell said one example of the intelligence failures involved incorrect assessments as late as 2006 asserting China’s military had no intention of building aircraft carriers.
“Now less than 20 years later we know the results of this threat deflation: The PRC has put three aircraft carriers to sea in just over a decade,” he said. “Unfortunately, this example was repeated time and again, always towards downgrading or denying the PRC’s intentions or emerging capabilities.”
The Pentagon shares the blame for failing to properly address threats posed by China, the captain contended. The U.S. Navy has declined from a 76-warship advantage over China in 2005 to the situation now where Beijing is deploying 39 more warships and submarines than the Navy.
New Chinese hypersonic and supersonic missiles give the PLA Navy a qualitative edge over the Navy, he contended.
“The U.S. Navy flag officer corps devolved from being an institution that had the moral integrity to ‘revolt’ over principled disagreements about our national security strategy and budget allocation in 1949, to a U.S. Navy today that is arguably outgunned by the PLA Navy without one admiral publicly speaking out in dissent or resigning,” he said.
The danger of a conflict with China is increasing, Capt. Fanell said, and will take place on, over and below the high seas and ranging from Okinawa to Guam to Honolulu, from the West Coast and into the American homeland. “This will be a conflict the likes of which the U.S. has not experienced since World War II,” he said.
The retired captain urged the committee to adopt seven recommendations, the first being a recognition that the national security community failed in assessing China.
Pro-China policies also must be replaced and a “Team B” intelligence analysis on China set up to better understand issues related to China.
The United States needs to target the ruling Communist Party and declare publicly to the leadership, the Chinese people, and all global audiences that the regime in Beijing is illegitimate, and that the United States is working with the Chinese people and allies to expel the party from power, he said.
In addition to rapidly building weapons needed to deter and defeat the PLA, the U.S. government must also start countering China political warfare operations that have subverted American defenses. “This must be done immediately,” Capt. Fanell said.
Influence operations
Mary Kissel, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told the committee Chinese influence operations had targeted the State Department.
“I saw firsthand China’s vast influence operations and why they are a threat to our national security,” she stated. Chinese President Xi Jinping “has accelerated China’s influence operations via expansion and empowerment of the United Front Work Department and other party-state apparatus.”
The operations are disguised as innocuous and friendly exchanges such as sister-city agreements, business meetings, think tank conferences, and interviews with Chinese propaganda outlets, she said.
The activities as “all opportunities for ‘grey zone’ influence operations,” Ms. Kissel said.
Chinese influence operations target diplomats and seek to soften their views of the regime in Beijing.
Chinese agents also conduct operations in the United States covertly using civil society organizations or community-based associations that are funded by Beijing and in some cases are controlled by the Ministry of Public Security, the party’s police and security organization.
“We worked to correct these imbalances during the Trump administration using the tools available to the department, such as shuttering China’s Houston consulate for its malign activities and reinvigorating long-standing but long-ignored restrictions on Chinese diplomats’ travel,” Ms. Kissel said.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.