Former CIA Chief: If Not Handled Properly, Relations With China Could Turn Into A Catastrophe

Former NSA/CIA Director Michael Hayden (Reuters / Larry Downing) / Reuters

The Guardian: America’s former CIA chief: ‘If we don’t handle China well, it will be catastrophic’

General Michael Hayden oversaw the NSA’s bulk surveillance programme and helped turn the CIA into a militarised force carrying out drone attacks. Why does he now think the obsession with counter-terrorism obscures more serious threats?

General Michael Hayden – the former chief of the US’s two most powerful and controversial intelligence agencies – is fearful of his legacy. The only person to head both the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) now wonders if the US’s preoccupation with terrorism he helped shape since 9/11 has caused the country’s intelligence services to take their eye off more serious threats down the road. “The danger is we become so focused on the urgent that we don’t pay enough attention to the really important,” he says.

The urgent, says Hayden, is a terrorist trying to get a bomb on a plane. He understands the political imperative of throwing huge resources into preventing the next 9/11. But he says, carefully, that a terrorist attack “is not an existential threat to the United States”. What keeps him awake at night is what the CIA isn’t paying enough attention to.

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WNU Editor: Unfortunately, China is not helping the situation .... China able to project 'substantial offensive power' from Spratlys in months: U.S. (Reuters). What's my take .... Michael Hayden's concerns are justified, but China is going to do what they feel is critical for their national security and stability .... even if it means raising tensions with the U.S., and exacerbating relations with its neighbours. On a side note, Michael Hayden's remarks in the Guardian post on the rise of radical Islam raised my eyebrows.