Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe called China the “greatest national security threat” on Thursday and warned a potential Joe Biden administration not to politicize intelligence to downplay the threat China poses.
“People that equate other things, or say, oh, you know, Russia is a greater threat, they are politicizing intelligence,” Ratcliffe said in an interview with Fox News. “I am hoping now that the election is over, now that people have voted, and if there is a Biden administration, that they will get past politicizing intelligence and be honest about China and acknowledge that China, and China alone is the greatest national security threat that we face.”
Ratcliffe caveated “if there is a Biden administration” as many U.S. media outlets have called the election for Biden, but as President Donald Trump is contesting the election results in several key states.
Ratcliffe said China intends to “to dominate economically, militarily and technologically, and is the only country capable of challenging American supremacy across the board.”
He added, “All of the threat streams that we have, from all aspects, militarily, economically, supply chain issues, foreign investment, technologically, cyber issues, cyber warfare, 5G, telecommunications — China is in all of those and they are the only country to be in that space and the only country that threatens America supremacy.”
Ratcliffe previously raised concerns about intelligence being politicized and in August chose to curb congressional intelligence briefings over what he described as a “pandemic” of leaks. At the time, Ratcliffe said members of Congress were leaking classified information “for political purposes.”
Ratcliffe’s latest warning about China comes after an August intelligence report, released by Ratcliffe’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) assessed Russia sought to denigrate candidate Biden to benefit candidate Trump in the 2020 election, while China preferred Trump not win the 2020 election.
In a September interview with CNN, Biden defended his support for allowing China into the World Trade Organization and said, “We want China to grow. We don’t want a war with China.”
Biden also supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) estimated would have cost a minimum of 330,000 U.S. jobs, while outsourcing many of those jobs to countries like China.
With just weeks before election day, Tony Bobulinski, the business partner of Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, brought forward allegations he and Hunter Biden were involved in business dealings with China’s CEFC Bank and that Hunter Biden received a $5 million wire transfer CEFC. Bobulinski also said Joe Biden was aware of his son’s business dealings at the time.
