China’s Paths to Global Domination | Rising Chinese Cyberthreats | Deindustrialization Means Disarmament, and more

In the New Cold War, Deindustrialization Means Disarmament (Jacob Helberg, Foreign Policy)
Chinese security threats offer the chance to rethink the U.S. economy.

Chinese Network of Fake Accounts Targets Trump with English-Language Videos (Craig Timberg and Shane Harris, Washington Post)
A network of fake Chinese accounts has been posting videos bashing President Trump, criticizing his recent closure of China’s consulate in Houston, his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his threats to ban the popular social media app TikTok, according to research published Wednesday.
The network is technologically advanced — using artificial intelligence to create faked faces for profile images — and nimble, producing videos at a pace of roughly one per day since mid-July. One video responded directly to a speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling for an Internet “clean” of malign Chinese influence less than 36 hours after he made the speech last week.

A Rising China Could Mean Rising Cyberthreats Worldwide (Nick Espinoza, Forbes)
Historically, what accelerates this erosion of the guardrails of a political system is foreign interference. Competition for world dominance today can lead to espionage at the government, corporate and even personal level within society. This is the backdrop we live in, and while no government could probably claim total innocence in this arena, China (as a world power) is rising and could be a major threat to democracies globally.
Consider that through China’s Belt and Road Initiative, it’s making inroads into dozens of countries where it’s not only bringing infrastructure like roads and hospitals but also the infrastructure for the internet. By virtue of these efforts, China is creating its own technological ecosystem globally that mirrors the vast surveillance state it’s created at home.
Many writers, including myself, have been sounding the alarm on this growing threat. As China expands, its desire to move beyond the Belt and Road countries by undermining its perceived adversaries is increasing. Its biggest target by far appears to be the United States.

How Far Will China’s Surveillance State Stretch? (Hal Brands, Bloomberg)
American lawmakers are the latest to find that Beijing is increasingly aiming to clamp down on critics in the democratic world.

To the Brink with China (Richard Haas, Project Syndicate)
The chances of a Sino-American cold war are far higher today than they were just months ago. Even worse, the chances of an actual war, resulting from an incident involving the countries’ militaries, are also greater.

China’s Growing Stake in DoD Supply Chains (Marcus Weisgerber, Defense One)
The coronavirus pandemic has shown just how much the Pentagon relies on globally sourced parts for even American-made weapons.
Defense leaders, who have long been content to let contractors worry about supply chains, have started playing closer attention.Two years ago, the Pentagon took some initial steps to get Chinese parts out of American weapons, butnow the pandemic has upped the urgency of developing more “supply chain illumination tools,” says Ellen Lord, defense undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment.
“[W]e do not want adversaries in our supply chain,” Lord said Thursday at a Professional Services Council conference. “We don’t want further theft of intellectual property.”
Among Lord’s concerns: Chinese companies gobbling up companies that make critical weapon parts. New data from Govini, an artificial intelligence-driven analysis firm, shows China’s increasing presence in the Pentagon’s supply chain.