CIA to create task force to deal with threat from Chinese regime

The United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) announced on Thursday that will form a work unit on China at the highest level as part of a campaign by the U.S. government to in the face of the threat from the Xi Jinping regime.

The group will be one of less than a dozen mission centers run by the CIA, with weekly director-level meetings to develop a strategy on China. The intelligence center also announced that it would seek recruit Chinese speaking people and who on the other hand will create a center dedicated to new technologies and global issues, such as climate change and global health.

The President’s government Joe Biden has denounced what he calls Chinese aggression on a host of economic and security issues., while looking for coincidences on climate change and North Korea and its nuclear weapons, among others.

Senior officials have indicated that there is a resource transfer towards a “great power” competition with China while keeping the fight against terrorism in the foreground.

China is a particularly difficult target for US intelligence given the insularity of the Communist Party (CCP) leadership., its enormous armed and security forces and its development of advanced technologies for counterintelligence.

The director of the CIA, William burnssaid in a statement on Thursday that the Chinese regime “The most significant geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century.”

“Throughout its history, the ICA has met all the challenges that have come before us.Burns said. “And now, facing the most difficult geopolitical test of this era of great power rivalry, the CIA will be at the forefront of this effort.”

As part of an agency reorganization, the CIA will include mission centers on Iran and North Korea in existing groups for their respective regions. Both centers were created under President Donald Trump.

It will also endeavor to resolve any delays in the recruitment, subject to a lengthy process of background checks and security clearances to reduce delays to an average of six months.

In addition, it will for the first time appoint a technical director responsible for the implementation advanced calculation methods.

Washington has publicly accused Beijing of failing to cooperate in efforts to understand the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and of instigating hackers to target critical infrastructure in the United States. China responded by accusing the United States of using the Asian giant as a scapegoat and highlighting past failures of U.S. intelligence services, as well as the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan.

But the two countries are also the two largest economies in the world and the main military and political powers. The relationship has been strained by the fact that China is flying military jets near the autonomous island of Taiwan., which has long been supported by the United States and which Xi Jinping’s regime considers part of its territory. A US official said on Wednesday that Biden and the Chinese president are expected to hold a virtual meeting later this year.

The United States’ turn towards competition from “great powers“Comes after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, as the US military was completing its withdrawal from Afghanistan. The withdrawal meant the loss of key intelligence assets in Afghanistan.

Intelligence officials estimated that Al-Qaeda remains closely linked to the Taliban and could regain the capacity to attack the United States within one to two years.

The senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement he was eager to work with the CIA “To ensure that organizational changes are up to the challenges we face.

“The strategic threat environment has changed, and the intelligence community must adapt to cope with this new environment, ”Warner said.

The senator Marco rubioThe Florida Republican, the committee’s top Republican, praised the new group’s announcement on China. “The threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party is real and growing”he said in a statement. And I add: “Each part of our government must reflect this powerful competition in message, structure and action.”

The democratic representative Adam schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he had urged the CIA for years to “Reorient your priorities and your resources” facing global competitors like China. He also hailed the creation of the China group as a positive step.

“With an autocratic model that aggressively seeks to export and a rapidly evolving technological capacity, China poses a significant challenge to the United States and the future of democratic values.”Schiff said in a statement.

(With AP information)

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