Well maybe. The present political structure is unsustainable and will dominate decision making there. At the same time, imitating military expenditures will never be enough to make them competitive anytime soon. Sooner or later the sheer wastefulness will start to grate when it is also so unnecessary.
It is better to position ourselves to assist in the change to superior political structure and to develop an active working alliance that respects each others national interests and rights. Right now they are stealing intellectual knowledge to gain parity. That is now a done deal.
That means they are shifting over to been a potential supplier of such knowledge and will have a mutual interest in such protections.
In short we can be optimistic and need to do more.
..
Ex-spy Chief: White House Ignores Elephant in the Room
Gen. Michael Hayden says focus on Middle East causes US overlook China threat3
(Mandel Nagan/AFP/Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Jens Almroth/Epoch Times)
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2055006-ex-spy-chief-white-house-ignores-elephant-in-the-room/
When Gen. Michael Hayden surprised me by calling me at 7 a.m. New
York time and introduced himself, for a moment I felt like a man of
consequence. This is not what one would expect from a respected and
decorated general. A man who in the last decade was considered America’s
“master spy.” Many hostile countries and terrorist organizations would
like to take a peek, even for a moment, into the secrets hidden in his
head.
But Hayden is unassuming, and during the call I discovered that he is
a very nice man. After commanding Air Force Intelligence (AIA) during
the 1990s, he was promoted in 1999 to be head of the NSA, and after
seven more years he was appointed head of the CIA.
In this role, he was in President George W. Bush’s office daily, and
became his eyes and ears on intelligence. There are few in the United
States with this kind of intelligence experience.
After becoming head of the CIA in 2006, he made drastic changes—the
most noticeable being targeted killings of terrorists by unmanned
drones. This later caused resentment in the United States, as drones
began exploding suspicious cars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“Part of that has been the inevitable claims—exaggerated, but not wholly inaccurate—of collateral damage,” Hayden said.
General Michael V. Hayden is sworn in as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
on Capitol Hill on May 18, 2006. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
Even if Hayden expresses a little regret, he does not intend to ask
for forgiveness. During his tenure, the CIA turned from being an agency
for collecting intelligence outside the United States into something
more reminiscent of its World War II predecessor—the Office of Strategic
Services (OSS), an intelligence agency whose activities included raids
on Nazi targets, assassinations, kidnappings, and sabotage.
He does not apologize, but he stops to reflect on the things done
during his tenure. Especially what he calls the “obsession on the war on
terror”—a policy he himself led and shaped during the past decade,
after 9/11.
It was a policy that, according to Hayden, distracts the American
intelligence agencies and makes them miss an important target that is
threatening in the long term, or in other words—the big elephant in the
room—to which we shall come later.
Epoch Times: During your tenure as head of NSA, you
supplied the Bush administration with circumstantial evidence on the
presence of WMDs in Iraq—evidence that turned out to be wrong—and
reinforced the decision to go to war. Do you regret this?
Michael Hayden: “Of course. And we were wrong. And
that was my responsibility, not the administration’s responsibility; and
I go on further to say—it wasn’t just that we were wrong, but we gave
the administration a sense of confidence, that even we didn’t have in
the information that we had.”
Epoch Times: A man in your position surely sometimes feels that he has “divine power” to rule global affairs and shape the world.
Mr. Hayden: “It does feel like that sometimes.
That’s why an intelligence officer needs to be humble. When he comes to a
meeting with the president, what an intelligence officer is able to do
is to create the left- and the right-hand boundaries of logical policy
discussion.
“To be fair, in intelligence, sometimes circumstantial evidence is
all you have. If you can get something to a degree of absolute
certainty, it’s probably not an intelligence question any more. People
confuse intelligence with making a case in the court system. In the
court system, information is designed to prove something beyond all
doubt. While the purpose of intelligence is to enable action even in the
face of continuing doubt.
“Regardless, besides intelligence there are many other legitimate
inputs in the conversation: the policy of the president, the politics of
the time, the values of your country, financial limitations, etc., that
go into making a final decision.”
Electronic Spying
The National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md., on Jan. 28. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Before taking charge of the CIA, Hayden revolutionized another
intelligence agency—the NSA, which is responsible for intercepting and
processing calls and transmissions from all around the world.
The 9/11 attacks prompted Hayden, with Bush’s support, to initiate in
the NSA unprecedented massive listening and data collection programs.
These programs have made the NSA controversial once Edward Snowden
exposed how it has become a sort of “big brother” that is capable of
seeing and hearing almost everything.
Hayden does not appear bothered by this. On the contrary, in his new
book “Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror”
(2016), he chooses to decisively respond to what he calls a “deep
misunderstanding” of what has actually been happening. As far as he’s
concerned, the media got to “watch the movie” on NSA’s cyber activities
at a very late stage, toward the end, which has led to a basic
misunderstanding.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden speaks to European officials via videoconference
at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, on June 24, 2014. (Frederick Florin/AFP/Getty Images
Hayden’s book does not describe activities of the Jack Bauer or Jason
Bourne style. Rather, it attempts, in a calm manner, with no drama, to
show the public what American intelligence agencies are actually doing.
“We had a theoretical ability to access a large percentage of
incoming and outgoing calls to the U.S.,” he said, but emphasized that
in practice the NSA listened in on incoming and outgoing calls only when
it was clear that either side of the call was related to al-Qaeda.
Over dozens of pages, Hayden not only tries to shed light on the
NSA’s data collection activities and deal with the ignorance he claims
exists on the topic, but also goes on the offensive.
He claims that Snowden, by his acts, assisted countries that wish to
destroy the Internet. Countries that fear the free exchange of ideas and
free trade, and want to enforce their totalitarian regime on the
Internet—like China.
He claims that Snowden gave them ammunition by making the claim that
though the Americans also say that they want a free Internet, it is
actually to hide their true intentions—to spy on everyone.
Epoch Times: What is the difference between China’s espionage and what the United States has been doing?
Mr. Hayden: “We do conduct espionage, but we only do
it to make our citizens free and safe. We do not use the tools of state
espionage for American commercial advantage. And that is all the great
difference in the world.
“So for example, when last year the Chinese stole 24 million records
from our Office of Personnel Management, I did not complain. That’s
legitimate state espionage. If I could do that against the Chinese, I
would do that. Our mistake was that we couldn’t protect our own
information.”
Epoch Times: But when they hack into computers of
commercial companies in the United States to give the information
obtained to Chinese companies, this is for you a different story.
General Michael Hayden, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, on a live taping of
Meet the Press in Washington on March 30, 2008. (Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images for
Meet the Press)
Mr. Hayden: “You asked me what is the difference—that’s the difference.”
Hayden is referring, among other things, to comments by FBI head
James Comey in an interview on “60 Minutes.” Comey said that there are
two kinds of companies in the United States: those that have been hacked
by the Chinese, and those that don’t know they have been hacked by the
Chinese.
According to data from the Commission on the Theft of American
Intellectual Property, Chinese theft is costing American companies
around $300 billion per year, and 1.2 million jobs.
I try to dig deeper into the topic, and ask Hayden about concerns
that Chinese telecom companies like Huawei—a smartphone and network
equipment maker—are spying on us. Hayden confirms that Huawei does
espionage for the Chinese regime, but doesn’t want to get into
specifics.
“I won’t go into details regarding companies like Huawei, ZTE,
Lenovo, and others, also because there are differences among them,” he
said. “But I’ll tell you this, the Chinese industrial effort against the
United States is, to my mind, absolutely breathtaking. I have never
seen anything of such a scale and persistence coming at this country.”
Huawei, a Chinese telecom company, has been accused of forming espionage relationships
with the China’s Ministry of State Security by creating the infrastructure for China to
spy on different countries. (Luis Gene/AFP/Getty Images)
When I press for more information, Hayden said: “Look, when Huawei is
creating the infrastructure in a certain country, it makes it easier
for China to spy on that country, even if there aren’t secret deals or
secret handshakes, or espionage relationships between Huawei and the
Ministry of State Security [a Chinese regime agency similar to the CIA].
That’s as far as I will go on the subject.”
Epoch Times: In Israel there are serious concerns
that the Chinese are intending to steal the technology of Israeli
companies in every major deal that’s being signed, even if they come in
as legitimate partners in a company. What should Israeli companies do?
Mr. Hayden: “I am opposed to the Chinese stealing
technology. I am in favor of the Chinese creating their own technology.
In between those two, you have Chinese companies acquiring technology in
the normal course of their business. If that’s good or bad depends on
the specific circumstances of the technology in question.
“So, I am not saying that the Chinese are an enemy of the U.S. or
Israel, and that we should have no relationship. Rather, that the
Chinese have made it state policy to steal industrial information.”
Hayden writes in his book about a trip he made to China (while head
of NSA) to meet his opposing number, the chief of the Third Department
of the Chinese general staff in the People’s Liberation Army. But
instead of providing details on the meeting, or what was happening
behind the scenes, he chose to emphasize a completely different facet of
it.
“In one instance, a balky Chinese driver would not get out of the way
of our small convoy as we were speeding toward a meeting. When we
finally passed him, I could see in the mirror that police in one of the
trail vehicles had stopped, pulled him over, and were starting to beat
him as they dragged him from the car.
“During a later tour of the Forbidden City, a phalanx of large,
dark-suited escorts shoved Chinese tourists out of the way to clear a
path for us. We feigned fatigue and asked to leave as quickly as
possible.
Former director of the National Security Agency Gen. Michael Hayden, watches President
George W. Bush speak in the Oval Office of the White House on May 8, 2006.(Roger
Wollenberg-Pool/Getty Images)
“It caused me to wonder how the Chinese thought we would react to all
that. Did they know so little about us that they thought we wouldn’t
mind? Or maybe they did know us, and didn’t care. Or maybe they were
trying to send another message. If they were, I didn’t get it.”
Epoch Times: In recent years, the Epoch Times has
exposed serious human rights violations happening in China, like organ
harvesting from innocent prisoners of conscience. Do these things fit
into the equation for the intelligence agencies?
Mr. Hayden: “Yes. We report on the totality of what
is China. We have our intelligence requirements that are prioritized by
our government, and we try to aggressively collect against those
intelligence requirements. The human rights situation in China is part
of that.”
The Big Elephant in the Room
A worker sweeps the floor of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Va.,
in this file photo. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
These days, after years of fighting terror, the former top U.S. spy
sees the activities of the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies
in a wider perspective. Unlike others in positions of power, he is less
bothered by the rise of ISIS or the migrant wave currently sweeping
Europe.
He of course follows events carefully, and sees great importance in
handling them well, but he is also asking himself the following
question: Has this obsession with the war on terror, which he led during
the past decade, made the American intelligence agencies miss the “big
elephant in the room”?
“We have become extremely focused on current threats and in dealing
with them,” Hayden said. “Much of what we call ‘intelligence analysis’
currently done in American intelligence is focused on specific targets:
trying to make sure no one boards a plane with a bomb, for example.
There is a natural tendency to focus on the urgent, the immediate, and I
do think it comes at the expense of the more long-term, strategic
elements.”
Epoch Times: What are the dangerous elements? What is the “big elephant in the room”?
Mr. Hayden: “China, without a doubt. Here I am not
talking just on threats; I am talking about understanding China and
building a relationship with it, based on what China is [already] doing
and what it wants to do.
“Frankly, I think we have lost focus on Russia, and we had better
catch up and better understand Putin, and the dynamics of Russia today.
It appears as if we were so much surprised when Russia pulled back from
Syria, and I think we did not correctly estimate what Russia did in
Crimea (in the south of Ukraine.)
“I think there is general agreement in the American intelligence
community that this is true. The challenge has become how do you change
those things, given that current threats remain so dominant.”
When Hayden talks about Russia, he puts it alongside unstable and
threatening countries like Iran and North Korea. But when he gets to
talk about China, he goes a step further and uses serious language: If
we don’t deal with the China issue properly, he said, it would have
“catastrophic outcomes for the world.”
Epoch Times: What do you mean by “catastrophic outcomes for the world”?
Mr. Hayden: “This is about the long-term view of the
dynamics between us and the Chinese. The dynamics between an existing
power, the U.S., and a rising power, China. This has happened before in
history. Sometimes the emergence of a new power has been handled well
and peacefully: Great Britain, for example, handling the emergence of
the United States 100 years ago.
“Other times, more often than not, it has not been handled well and
has led to significant conflict—like Great Britain and imperial Germany
in 1914. It is simply saying this is a very important thing, and it is
very difficult to handle.”
Epoch Times: What do you foresee if we don’t handle the Chinese issue properly?
Mr. Hayden: “Occasionally there will be
confrontations, I am sure. There will be incidents, and my great fear is
that something might happen that would turn into a big conflict—or at a
minimum, a hardening of positions and creating of divisions like we had
with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.”
Epoch Times: What made you begin to reflect on the intelligence policy that you have led through all those years?
General Michael Hayden, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in Washington on
March 30, 2008. (Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)
Mr. Hayden: “It started while I was still in office.
I began to notice a problem, that the more time goes by, the more our
focus on the war on terror has created deficits in other places. Since I
have left, the deficit has only grown. I told this to David Petraeus
(CIA head between 2011 and 2012) before he took the oath of office as
head of the CIA. I told him: ‘David, you are going to work very hard
every day to remind yourself that we have a much wider responsibility
[than just the war on terror].'”
This article was originally published by Epoch Times Israel. It
has been translated from Hebrew and edited for length and style.
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