OPINION:
The extraordinary U.S. military operation in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of dictator Nicolas Maduro would not have been possible without U.S. technological superiority over China.
The Maduro regime deployed Chinese mobile anti-stealth radars, which Beijing claimed were capable of detecting the most sophisticated U.S. fighter aircraft, including F-22s and F-35s. Instead, the U.S. military defeated China’s air defense system with intensive electronic jamming, enabling strikes against Venezuelan military targets and clearing secure space for U.S. Special Forces to achieve mission success.
Yet threats to our national security loom on the horizon because China is ruthlessly focused on controlling the global production and supply of polysilicon, a critical ingredient in the manufacture of semiconductor chips on which the U.S. military relies for the most consequential and challenging operations, just like the one in Caracas last month.
Following its aggressive mercantilist playbook, China is deliberately flooding the global market with artificially low prices. By selling polysilicon at less than 15% of true market rates, China seeks to eliminate all commercially viable non-Chinese sources of polysilicon, thereby gaining a state-run monopoly on polysilicon and a stranglehold on future maintenance and production of weapons systems, cyber defense and communications.
Dependent for now on the U.S., Taiwan, South Korea and Japan — all geopolitical rivals — for their semiconductors, China wants to suffocate U.S. and U.S.-allied polysilicon producers financially, gaining leverage and limiting the capability of the U.S. to project power in its hemisphere and beyond.
If China were to control the market for polysilicon, then Beijing would shift the balance of power for global defense and security.
Ruthlessly focused on gaining superiority in chip manufacturing for civilian and military applications, China deploys computing power for internet control, censors and its “great firewall” to buttress an oppressive police state. China wants to dominate cyberspace to achieve its authoritarian objectives at home and abroad.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has been driving this century’s cold war against the U.S. It has done this by militarizing the South China Sea, using its Belt and Road Initiative as cover for debt trap diplomacy to expand its global throw weight, counterfeiting U.S. products and pilfering U.S. trade secrets through espionage, requiring U.S. companies to share their technology in return for market access, stealing billions of dollars of U.S. intellectual property each year, expanding and modernizing its nuclear forces faster than any other nation in history, and brazenly hacking into our critical infrastructure.
U.S. steel and aluminum production was the driving force behind the Allies’ victory in World War II. Technological superiority, especially in semiconductors, will determine whether communist China achieves its goal of displacing the U.S. as the world’s dominant superpower.
Mr. Trump plans to meet with Mr. Xi in the coming months, and bilateral trade issues are expected to be high on their agenda. Negotiating commercial relationships even between adversaries has always been necessary and can be beneficial to our national security. Yet let’s remember that for China, trade serves the Communist Party’s dictatorial regime, not its people.
Consider China’s 2023 anti-espionage law, which requires that all Chinese citizens report any suspicions of espionage to China’s ruthless security agencies. U.S. businesses must assume that all Chinese nationals, including their business associates, will cooperate with China’s intelligence agencies because they have no choice but to enable communist China to conduct intrusive surveillance of foreign companies and their employees to steal as much information, especially high technology, as possible.
Navigating international trade through the Chinese Communist Party minefield will require the Trump administration to avoid any of Mr. Xi’s Faustian bargains, which would weaken U.S. national security in return for ephemeral trade deals.
The Trump administration took a major step in the right direction with a semiconductor trade tariff late last year, but we need to build on that momentum with further action. The Trump administration should lose no time in enacting a pending 232 trade action, which would levy appropriately priced duties on Chinese-sourced polysilicon.
Working in concert with Congress, the Trump administration must act with the greatest alacrity to ensure we have the laws and policies to protect the secure supply and production of polysilicon. Nothing less than our nation’s defense industrial base is hanging in the balance.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. He can be reached at danielhoffman@yahoo.com.
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