The new director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, wants to tighten the focus on China.
“You have people who have been at the different intelligence agencies for so long and focused on the Russia threat…legitimately, because Putin is a bad guy and a regime with a huge nuclear stockpile that we need to talk about. But yeah, the intelligence community has been slow to adjust to the fact that China is the primary geopolitical threat we face,” Ratcliffe told Breitbart in the second installment of its interview with him (“Exclusive: CIA Director Ratcliff: ‘Day-One Thing’ to Get to Bottom of Chinese ‘Origins of COVID,’ Wuhan Lab Leak,” January 24, 2025).
Inescapable?
China’s economy “is the second-largest…and they compete with us across the board on a peer-to-peer basis in a way that Russia can’t. And I think there are reasons for that that are unfortunately—there’s a financial aspect to that.
“From Washington DC to Wall Street to Silicon Valley to Hollywood, there has been a desire to keep China from being labeled a bad guy because a lot of people make a lot of money from China and in China, and China has a lot of influence in all of those places. But our intelligence is clear—I saw that as DNI and now it’s inescapable for people to not see—on how sinister and nefarious the People’s Republic of China and its various arms of the Chinese Communist Party have been. So, we’ve been slow to adjust the focus, and it’s one of the things that the president needs and wants from us.”
COVID-19
One of Ratcliffe’s priorities in “addressing the threat from China on a number of fronts” pertains to solving various mysteries of the pandemic, including “why the Central Intelligence Agency has been sitting on the sidelines for five years in not making an assessment about the origins of COVID….
“I think our intelligence, our science, and our common sense all really dictates that the origins of COVID was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But the CIA has not made that assessment or at least not made that assessment publicly. So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure that the public is aware that the agency is going to get off the sidelines.”
Ratcliffe’s view of the threat of China is shared by the new secretary of defense, Peter Hegseth (pictured above, right, with John Ratcliffe). Hegseth has just been confirmed by the Senate 51 to 50, with Vice President Vance breaking the tie.
Last week, during his confirmation hearing, Hegseth “affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait…. He called China ‘the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security’ and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region.”
He also said although it’s important to listen to China’s words, its actions speak louder.
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: “On Courage: Our Ultimate Weapon Against the Chinese Communist Party”
