On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe stated that China’s penetration into American government networks is “significant and growing every day.”
Host Tucker Carlson said, [relevant exchange begins around 3:00] “[G]ive us a sense of China’s penetration into our networks, government networks.”
Ratcliffe responded, “Well, it’s significant and growing every day. And Tucker, you made a great point in your opening about Russia. Listen, they’re a dangerous adversary. I don’t mean to minimize them, but you made the point correctly about economically, Russia can’t compete the way China can. The largest economy in the world is the United States. The second-largest is China. Russia’s not in the top ten. Italy, Brazil, and the state of Texas have a larger economy than Russia. So, as dangerous as Russia can be, they cannot compete with us the way China is, and China has a very specific plan to do that. And one of the ways that China has made their way to the top is they understand that information is the key to their dominance. So, they’re going to get there any way they possibly can. That’s what subsidizing Huawei and ZTE is all about. Those are Chinese companies that are run by the Chinese government. They know that they can steal more information if they run the telecommunications networks over which our information travels. That’s one of the ways that China has gotten so good in terms of getting into our networks and into our information society.”
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