The Pentagon’s recent decision to downgrade China as America’s primary threat arrives at a strange moment. As officials refine their rhetoric in Washington, Chinese operatives continue to map the nation’s nervous system: power grids, water plants, phone networks, hospitals, and railways.
It’s a sustained and serious threat, and it receives far less attention than it should.
Over the past decade, Chinese hackers have siphoned off personal data from tens of millions of Americans. Medical files, financial records, home addresses — all collected, catalogued, and stored. That alone should have forced a national reckoning. Instead, it passed through the news cycle and was quickly forgotten.
Attribution takes months, while damage compounds each day.
Yet data theft is only the tip of the iceberg. The deeper issue is placement. These intrusions bypass the marketplace for secrets to exploit their military application, learning how our systems work and where they fail. Which switches feed electricity to entire cities. Which valves deliver clean water to millions of homes. Which servers keep emergency rooms alive. Which signals move trains and manage traffic. China has built a strategic database that confers massive leverage.
And lest we think only our machines and infrastructure are at risk, there’s also a biological dimension, one that could eclipse every national security threat since Pearl Harbor. Chinese-linked research laboratories operating on American soil pose a risk that few have fully assessed. Cyberattacks leave traces. Biological threats move differently. A lab accident or deliberate release could devastate crops, overwhelm health care facilities, and unleash panic long before a cause is identified. For those who think this is exaggerated, 2025 alone saw multiple cases of Chinese nationals caught attempting to bring dangerous biological materials into America.
Disease can be even harder to trace, track, and cordon off than viruses online. A fungus in Iowa cornfields looks like blight. A respiratory illness appears to be a bad flu season. Ambiguity chews up precious time. Attribution takes months, while damage compounds each day. Farmers lose harvests without knowing they are under attack. Hospitals overflow with what only seems natural. Supply chains creak. Prices rise. And the central question — was this intentional? — remains an unsolved puzzle, delaying or paralyzing any coordinated response.
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This is a conflict without uniforms or airstrikes. No invasions, nor any other moment when peace visibly becomes war, give us the tipoff. In its place, a steady erosion, deniable and extremely effective.
The timing could hardly be worse. America is more divided than it has been in generations. The left despises the right, and the right returns the favor. Such division is fertile ground for hostile actors. Disorder takes hold where common ground has disappeared.
In a divided country, mixed messaging carries real risks. Yet America’s approach to China has become strangely contradictory. Officials warn allies about the risks of economic dependence on Beijing. Those warnings are sensible; strategic reliance carries costs. But downgrading China’s threat at home while cautioning others abroad creates confusion. Are the warnings sincere or symbolic? This is a vital question that requires a clear, concrete answer. Without it, fatalism and a false sense of security quickly set in.
America may no longer rank China as its top threat, but the country’s Communist Party would gladly see its chief rival brought to its knees. And in the modern age, that doesn’t require armies. A blackout can plunge millions into darkness without a single soldier crossing a border. A telecommunications failure can paralyze emergency services. A poisoned water system can force evacuations and put tens of thousands of lives at risk. A hospital network crash can replace treatment with trauma. A pathogen released in farm country can wipe out an entire season’s yield, kill livestock, and leave farmers on the edge of ruin.
Each episode chips away at government capacity without crossing the line that would trigger traditional retaliation.
To be clear, a steady stream of individually minor incidents have already accumulated, testing the edges, building the dataset. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in 2021 showed how a single breach could ignite fuel shortages and consumer panic. Now imagine disruptions across several sectors at once. Not criminal mischief, but coordinated pressure from a sophisticated state actor with cyber reach and biological presence inside American borders.
The answer is neither despair nor denial but preparation. America must develop critical infrastructure through sustained investment, tighter cooperation between public and private sectors, a trained workforce, and systems designed to absorb shocks. It must also establish firm oversight of biological research, especially when foreign entities are involved, and build early-warning networks for agricultural and health threats.
It’s a question of priorities. Civilian life shouldn’t be our weakest link. Power grids, water systems, hospitals, food supply, and transportation deserve the same strategic focus as aircraft carriers and missile shields. Infrastructure security, including biosecurity, shouldn’t be a political football or a budget afterthought. It should be the base that supports everything else.
The issue isn’t whether China poses a serious threat. The answer couldn’t be clearer. The issue is whether America will act before vague vulnerabilities become lurid disasters. There is still time to secure essential systems and reduce exposure across all domains. But the clock is ticking, and Beijing is plotting. America remains a superpower. It still stands tall, but China is working toward a moment when only one giant casts a shadow.
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