O paroxismo da paranoia americana - Foreign Policy

 A paranoia míope — eu até diria a cegueira estúpida — atinge um novo paroxismo nos EUA: que os militares a exibam, pode-se até entender. Mas que analistas políticos e acadêmicos partilhem da visão conspiratória. Eis aí uma nação que vai torrar bilhões de dólares dos contribuintes para ficar muito à frente da China em todos os terrenos da capacitação militar, deixando em segundo ou terceiro plano saúde, educação e infraestrutura.

A China não se considera adversária dos EUA, mas estes sim. São paranoicos, e por isso vão errar muito nos próximos anos. 

Quanto tempo isso vai durar?

O tempo dos EUA se tornarem dependentes da China em diversas tecnologias, mais civis do que militares, mas estas também. 

Que pena para o povo americano e para o mundo...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

REPORT

U.S. at Risk of Being Outpaced by China, a New Intel Committee Report Finds

An assessment by the House Intelligence Committee says the United States will be hard-pressed to meet China’s multidimensional challenge if it stays in a counterterrorism mindset.

BY AMY MACKINNON

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Foreign Policy, SEPTEMBER 30, 2020, 11:00 AM

Paramilitary police officers wear face masks and goggles amid COVID-19 concerns as they march outside the Forbidden City, the former palace of China's emperors, in Beijing on May 1.  GREG BAKER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Unless the U.S. intelligence community is overhauled to meet the complex threat posed by China, the United States is at risk of being unable to protect the nation’s health and security and compete with Beijing on the world stage, according to a new report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee.

The stark assessment comes amid a wider rebalancing of U.S. national security priorities to contend with renewed great-power competition with Russia and China, as well as ongoing threats from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. But the report also stressed the need for U.S. intelligence officials to become more adept at analyzing nonmilitary threats, such as health, the economy, and climate change.

“The Committee’s central finding of this report is that the United States’ intelligence community has not sufficiently adapted to a changing geopolitical and technological environment increasingly shaped by a rising China and the growing importance of interlocking non-military transnational threats, such as global health, economic security, and climate change,” the committee stated in the report. 

The committee began its review of U.S. intelligence capabilities with regards to China last spring out of concerns that the United States’ laser focus on counterterrorism after 9/11 had let other intelligence capabilities atrophy and amid growing concerns that China poses a “unique and growing strategic challenge to U.S. national security.” 

“After 9/11, we reoriented towards a mission to protect the homeland and were very successful. But after two decades, the [intelligence community’s] capacity to address hard targets like China has waned,” said committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff. “Absent a significant and immediate reprioritization and realignment of resources, we will be ill-prepared to compete with China—diplomatically, economically, and militarily—on the global stage for decades to come.”

The committee’s review found that intelligence agencies have not paid sufficient attention to “soft” threats such as infectious diseases and climate change and the knock-on economic effects that could undermine U.S. national security. 

“COVID-19 cropped up as a very real world example while we were drafting and finalizing this report. At least for us it really does crystallize some of the nontraditional threats that can emanate out of China,” said a Democratic intelligence committee official, speaking on background. 

This year, the committee began another assessment looking specifically at how the intelligence community responded to the emergence of COVID-19. One problem: The intelligence community is biased toward using clandestine information, while the monitoring of pandemics and other soft threats is well suited to open-source analysis. “There’s going to need to be somewhat of a cultural shift there,” a second committee official said. 

Last year, the intelligence committee held a hearing on the national security implications of climate change, a sign of growing concern among lawmakers—and plenty of former military leaders—over the security risks of famine, mass migration, and resource competition. “These are things that we’re going to have to look at in far greater effort over the next few years,” the second official said. 

Another important finding in the report: China’s threat is multidimensional, using industrial espionage, predatory trade and lending practices, and subtle overseas influence operations. That requires an intelligence community that widens its lens beyond defense capabilities and can support the work of other agencies in the federal government involved in health monitoring, trade negotiations, or immigration policy, the report found. It also recommended nurturing a future generation of China experts with expertise in public health, economics, and technology.