US Vulnerability Growing, Allies and Foes Note: Chinese General Warns Space "to be Weaponized"

In a timely and well researched commentary yesterday , UPI Editor at Large Arnaud De Borchgrave concisely portrayed China’s growing international economic, political, and technological capabilities while also warning that even our perceived allies are convinced the US cannot win in Iraq largely due to partisan discord in America. Truly China’s reputation is shining more brightly than America’s, and in that light America’s vulnerabilities are illuminated for allies and foes alike to examine closely.

The commentary echoes concerns about intelligence estimates on China expressed in a recent post here at Spy the News! The description of China’s powerful cyberwarfare capabilities lends further credence to concerns that the US intelligence community has underestimated China, to the detriment of our military preparations to combat a foe with equal or perhaps superior technological capabilities, as China’s recent successful test of an anti-satellite missile demonstrated. De Borchgrave delves deeper into the financial strength of China, which is increasing at the expense of America’s former dominance in world markets. While America fights global terrorism, China, unfettered by such drains on its economy, is investing in raw materials and international trade alliances that will ensure sustained growth far into the future.

The entire UPI article is valuable reading, but I wanted to highlight certain portions that will be of interest to Spy the News! readers:


1. US allies, such as Pakistani President Musharraf, are intently watching “the defection of some of President Bush’s Congressional supporters” and see eventual defeat in Iraq because of America’s internal politics.

2. World leaders will perceive premature US withdrawal from Iraq as a defeat for the US.

3. De Borchgrave quoted the following from the Financial Times: "As authority drains from Mr. Bush, so Washington is losing its capacity to determine outcomes elsewhere. Iran is the principal beneficiary."

4. Musharraf and other allies in the War on Terror are “reappraising” their commitments to the US and NATO because US debate on troop withdrawal from Iraq is also convincing them that neither the US nor NATO will complete the mission in Afghanistan, in which Musharraf has invested his political capital and personal safety.

5. America’s dependence on satellites for civilian and military communications and navigation is a largely undefended vulnerability that could fall prey to the so-called E-bomb or Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP), which would cripple US communications except for small handheld self transmitting/receiving radio units. [Consider that in 2004, a panel appointed by Congress tasked with evaluating the threat of EMP attack on the US concluded, “While the US military has grown increasingly dependent on computers, electronics and information systems, it has relaxed requirements for EMP-hardened systems since the end of the Cold War and its overall record of adherence to its guidelines for such robust equipment ‘has been spotty’ . . . . This trend continues ‘in the wrong direction’.”]

The US should take at face value the statement of one-star general Yao Yunzhu, director of China's Asia-Pacific Office at the Academy of Military Science in Beijing: “Outer space is going to be weaponized in our lifetime.” As De Borchgrave advises, Yao is 52 years old. Clearly China recognized long ago the need to develop space weaponry, offensive and defensive, and, with enormous economic reserves to invest, has developed them much faster than intelligence analysts predicted.

China’s growing global influence, combined with its cozy import/export oil for weapons trade alliances in the Middle East, particularly Iran, provide ample reason for the US to reevaluate favored nation trade status for China and other economic leverage until that nation ceases funding and equipping the state sponsors of terrorism that the US is spending heavily to defeat.

While John “Pariah” Kerry was in Davos, Switzerland bashing America and the Bush Administration at the World Economic Forum, General Yao Yunzhu attended the same forum and proudly declared China’s primacy in the rush to weaponize space. Democrats and a growing number of Republicans criticize President Bush for concentrating on Iraq and allegedly taking our focus off of the War on Terror. Such critics are guilty of waging war so intensely on President Bush that they are incapable or unwilling to recognize how that internal conflict is affecting world perception of American vulnerability. Our allies and enemies have noticed and are making plans to abandon or attack us accordingly.

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Intelligence Analysts Consistently Underestimate China, North Korea, Iran

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s merely a Chinese satellite-killing warhead successfully tested earlier this month. While publicly assuring the world its intentions in space are benign (much like Iran assuring its nuclear program is solely for electricity), the Chinese military demonstrated new warfare capabilities US intelligence analysts incorrectly assumed China would not possess for another 10 years. The ability to destroy enemy satellites places China in position to directly confront the US successfully if necessary, but the more likely scenario, particularly in the near future, would involve China utilizing anti-satellite technologies to aid nations such as Iran or North Korea in the event the US and its allies attempt to dismantle the nuclear programs of either nation through military action.

An overlooked aspect of this development is the intelligence failure that underestimated Chinese capabilities. For analysts to estimate that China was 10 years behind US space warfare capabilities is puzzling, given the fact that in September 2006, National Reconnaissance Office Director Kerr confirmed that China had “painted” a US satellite at least once with a ground-based laser, a beam capable of illuminating the satellite for laser-guided warheads or damaging the satellite’s reception/transmission functions.

Intelligence analysts have a responsibility to be sensibly paranoid when assessing an enemy’s capabilities, and should approach such threat assessments from the perspective that erring on the side of caution is the safest course. Perhaps the American attitude of technological superiority holds too much sway within the intelligence community. To calculate that China, a nation that produces (and “acquires” the technology for) more electronics than any in the world would be 10 years behind the US military is truly a supreme act of cultural utopian arrogance by American intelligence analysts. China has proven most adept at infiltrating government agencies and contractors (and their databases) and have spirited away some of our most critically sensitive military technology, including designs for multiple warhead nuclear delivery systems.

China is far more advanced in the art of stealing our military technology than America is at noticing the theft or implementing measures to prevent it. For example, the Chinese theft of W-88 warhead technology occurred in the mid 1980s but was not discovered by US intelligence until 1995. Analysts would argue that such an example merely shows that even when possessing the stolen technology it took China nearly 10 years to successfully test the warhead, thus validating the predicted 10 year gap theory. However, considering that network intrusion is the gravest risk to our military technology and China is masterful in that craft, analysts should actually base their Chinese capability assessments on the assumption that American technology in the design phase 10 years ago has likely been acquired and developed by China along similar time lines as American development.

One wonders, given this incredible underestimation of China, a nation we know much more about and can monitor more closely than Iran, how accurate are analysts’ assessments that Iran will not have nuclear weapon capabilities until 2015? That estimate was made after a “major US intelligence review” in 2005, and analysts concluded that Iran was 10 years away from possessing the capability to produce a nuclear bomb.

These analysts were wrong about North Korea, wrong about China’s space weaponry, and it is prudent for current and future administrations to assume that the 10 year prediction for Iran is another dangerous underestimation. Ahmadinejad refuses to allow IAEA inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities, and he openly challenges America, the only obstacle to the goal of Iranian nuclear weaponry, to try to stop him. With the technological assistance of North Korea and the UN Security Council vetoes of China and Russia confidently in pocket, Iran will surely produce a deployable nuclear weapon much sooner than analysts predict.

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