U.S. Intelligence Community Ill-Prepared to Respond to China, Bipartisan House Report Finds

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has released a partially-redacted summary of its “China Deep Dive” report on the U.S. intelligence community’s capabilities and competencies regarding the People’s Republic of China. The report explores China’s rise to power and examines how the U.S. intelligence apparatus “meets the challenge of China’s arrival on the global stage, as well as the continued potential for highly disruptive transnational crises that originate within our competitors’ borders, the profound technological change transforming societies and communication across the globe, and the international order’s return to near-peer competition.”

Rep. Adam Schiff commissioned the report in May 2019. On a bipartisan basis, committee staff reviewed intelligence practices, assessments and facilities. Their findings resulted in 36 public recommendations and over 100 classified recommendations to further bolster the intelligence community’s ability to collect, analyze and deliver intelligence products on China to American leaders. Issue areas covered include Chinese military capability, disinformation efforts, technological advancements and counterintelligence and influence operations in the United States, among other security threats.

The committee concludes with a “central finding” that the intelligence community is “not sufficiently adapted to a changing geopolitical and technological environment increasingly shaped by a rising China,” and further states that “absent a significant realignment of resources, the U.S. government and intelligence community will fail to achieve the outcomes required to enable continued U.S. competition with China on the global stage for decades to come, and to protect the U.S. health and security.” (emphasis in original)

You can read the report here and below: