WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Mike Waltz (FL-06), member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, led the latest installment of the House Intelligence Committee Republicans’ “Beyond the SCIF” series with his panel on “Countering Chinese Influence Operations on American Soil” in conjunction with the Hudson Institute.
What Was Discussed
The scope of the Chinese Communist Party’s influence campaign in the U.S.
Opportunities for the U.S. and its allies to counter Beijing’s espionage and malign influence
How Washington should respond to Chinese influencers seeking to shape public opinion and manipulate American officials and business leaders into enacting Beijing’s policy preferences
How influence operations that China aims at the U.S. differ from those it directs at our allies
Notable Quotes
“I’m pleased to welcome you here to this excellent discussion on China’s influence operations in the United States and, most importantly, how to counter Beijing’s malign influence. This event is the latest installment of the House Intelligence Committee’s series, ‘Beyond the SCIF’ – an effort to try to talk to the American people in the open about some of the pending and important intelligence issues…I want to commend our chair today, Congressman Mike Waltz, and his colleagues for doing this.”
– John Walters, President & CEO of the Hudson Institute
“Thank you to the Hudson Institute for hosting this. This is part of a broader series that we on the Intelligence Community are calling ‘Beyond the SCIF.’ One of the things our Chairman, Mike Turner from Ohio, fully appreciates is how we make the case for some of these threats and our necessary response not just as a government, not just as a committee, but as a society.”
– Congressman Mike Waltz
“To deal with a country that has been designated as an adversary, the most important thing is we have a higher sense of vigilance. We must have a higher sense of internal security. What is considered national security information, we have to guard very carefully. So, in terms of the employment of foreign nationals, we have existing laws, and those laws must be strengthened. I think this nation has been constantly doing a better job after some disaster happened, you see Pearl Harbor or 9/11, but we have to do this kind of a higher level of vetting and sense of security before some next disaster happens.”
– Dr. Miles Yu
“Everything you do in China with anyone can potentially be used by the CCP to advance its own interests...In Australia, we got to the point where it became obvious to the population and became apparent to the population that when you do business or when you go into collaboration with any Chinese entity, you potentially are inadvertently going into collaboration with the Chinese government.”
– Dr. John Lee
“You really have to understand that Chinese political warfare is aimed at undermining democratic governance. Part of that is eliminating, if not corrupting, alliances between countries like the Philippines, Japan, and the United States. They are constantly pumping information and building out what they call a circle of international media influencers.”
– Craig Singleton
Panel Speakers:
Congressman Mike Waltz, Member, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Dr. Miles Yu, Senior Fellow & Director of the China Center, Hudson Institute
Dr. John Lee, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute; (Non-Resident) Senior Fellow, United States Studies Centre
Craig Singleton, Senior Fellow & Deputy Director of the China Program, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
