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Washington approaching Beijing's advances all wrong: Former US intelligence offical

News Agencies | Updated on: 15 November 2021, 0:35 IST
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China's recent military rise has alarmed US security experts but according to a former US former Defense Intelligence Agency official, no one in President Joe Biden's administration has the right approach to keeping China at bay.

The recent news that China is believed to have been testing hypersonic missiles has left current and former American officials citing it as the latest example of the US falling victim to its own errors, according to physicist and former Defense Intelligence Agency official Michael Sekora.


"They think we're in an R&D foot race with China," Sekora told Fox News. He also pointed to how the US has supposedly been out to find a "silver bullet" solution that would give it an edge over Beijing.

"Probably the only way to succeed at defending ourselves against [China] will be through artificial intelligence capabilities," said former Air Force chief software officer Nicolas Chaillan and added that US "is running out of time" to catch up in that race with China.
Former US Air Force officer also said the US will not be able to catch up to China, no matter how much money is poured into research and development, until the administration adopts a different national technology strategy.

This rebuke of the Biden administration comes after media reports the last month stated that China carried out its first-ever hypersonic missile test which took US intelligence by surprise.
Multiple reports stated that China carried out a test in the month of August. According to the reports, the missile flew through low-orbit space before cruising toward its target. It missed the target but the test is said to show "astounding progress" by China on hypersonic missile technology that "caught US intelligence by surprise".

China had described reports of the first-ever test of a "nuclear-capable hypersonic missile" as a routine experiment to test the technology of spacecraft reusability. Responding to a question during a presser, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian had said that Bejing conducted "a routine spacecraft experiment to test the technology of spacecraft reusability."

Later this month, a new Pentagon report revealed that China is constructing the infrastructure necessary to support its nuclear expansion over the next decade.

The Pentagon's report titled "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China (PRC) 2021", said that "the accelerating pace of the PRC's nuclear expansion may enable the PRC to have up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027.

The PRC likely intends to have at least 1,000 warheads by 2030, exceeding the pace and size the DoD projected in 2020."China is investing in, and expanding, the number of its land-, sea-, and air-based nuclear delivery platforms and constructing the infrastructure necessary to support this major expansion of its nuclear forces, according to the report.

(ANI)

First published: 15 November 2021, 0:35 IST