OPINION:
While the COVID-19 pandemic opened the American public’s eyes to many aspects of governmental policy, perhaps the most striking was the realization that the nation has become too dependent on China for critical goods. From medical to high-tech devices, the American people began to clearly recognize that they could no longer remain beholden to the communist nation for life’s necessities.
As a former up-and-coming member of the Chinese Communist Party before fleeing to the United States and becoming a leading American activist against it, I can attest to the urgent need for the U.S. to divest from China in areas of health and security importance.
China wants nothing more than to be in a position where it can limit America’s access or production of economically and militarily sensitive materials for its own strategic gain. It makes this intention abundantly clear in its closed-door meetings, and the aggressive political blueprints it has laid out make it feasible.
China is quickly becoming America’s most formidable economic and military adversary. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has publicly pronounced his goal to “win the battle” of core technology, a benchmark created with the intention of making China the world’s leading technological superpower.
From artificial intelligence to quantum computing, China is seeking to become the world’s unqualified leader in tech. But it isn’t just in the civilian space that Beijing seeks to lead. For nearly two decades, China has worked to increase its ability to conduct cyber warfare.
China’s military strategy openly describes its objective to increase its cyber capabilities, including but not limited to “cyberspace situation awareness, cyber defense, support for the country’s endeavors in cyberspace, and participation in international cyber cooperation.”
The aggressiveness with which China has pursued these goals has led the United States to fall dramatically behind — and the People’s Republic knows it. As The New York Times reported: “No one yet knows whether China can exploit the breakthrough on a large scale; that may take years. But while Congress debated and amended and argued over whether and how to support American chip makers and a broad range of research in other technologies — from advanced batteries to robotics and quantum computing — China was surging ahead, betting it would take Washington years to get its act together.”
So why is America still relying on China for its microchips today?
As Congress looks to pass the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) before Christmas, Sen. John Cornyn and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are asking Congress to ponder exactly this.
Microchips might be the most important technology used for defense today. The U.S. military uses a vast array of them; in fact, the Javelin missile launching system uses hundreds of microchips in one missile alone. In many cases, these chips are not being produced in the United States; they are being made in China by companies with known links to the CCP — the same CCP that I know firsthand is looking to weaken the U.S. militarily by gaining artificial technological advantages over the Land of the Free.
Fortunately, two members of Congress are saying enough is enough. Sens. Cornyn and Schumer introduced a bipartisan amendment to the NDAA that would bar the U.S. government from contracting to microchip companies with known links to the CCP. It would also give federal contractors incentive to eliminate the use of Chinese chips by effectively giving them an ultimatum: Divest or lose a working relationship with the public sector.
In many ways, it is remarkable that such an amendment even needs to be offered. Defense, intelligence and technology experts across partisan lines have vocally sounded countless alarm bells on China’s anti-American plans, as have the country’s leaders. This consequential problem is staring us right in the face, and yet our sluggish Congress has continued to let the federal government purchase sensitive materials from abettors of this top American adversary as if no problem exists.
Soviet tyrant Josef Stalin once quipped, “when we hang the capitalists, they will sell us the rope we use.” Generations later, the communists are selling us this metaphorical rope in the form of microchips, and while the hanging is getting closer, it’s fortunately not yet complete. That’s why Congress needs to pass the Cornyn-Schumer microchip amendment while it still can. American security depends on it.
• Jianli Yang is founder and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China and the author of “For Us, the Living: A Journey to Shine the Light on Truth.”
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