China Used American Tech to Create Hypersonic Missile: McCaul

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), speaks at a bipartisan news conference on the ongoing Afghanistan evacuations, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Aug. 25, 2021. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

A leading Republican said the Chinese communist regime is using American technology to develop its new weapons systems, and leveraging predatory international deals to secure access to vital trade infrastructure.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said that Chinese weapons, including the hypersonic missile tested by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) last year, have been built using American technology.

“What’s probably the biggest highlighted example of this? The hypersonic missile,” McCaul said during a fireside chat with the Atlantic Council, a D.C.-based think tank. “The weapon that we saw China launch with great precision … and can actually carry a nuclear warhead.”

“When you study it, you realize that that was actually built on the backbone of American technology.”

The US Navy, in collaboration with the US Army, conducts a static fire test of the first stage of the newly developed 34.5" common hypersonic missile that will be fielded by both services, in Promontory, Utah, U.S., in this handout image taken on Oct. 28, 2021. Northrop Grumman/Handout via Reuters

McCaul’s comments follow closely behind the release of a report by intelligence firm Strider Technologies, which found that at least 162 researchers from the United States’ top nuclear facility have since worked for China, many of them in a military capacity, including hypersonics.

Infiltrating the West

McCaul and the report both said that many of the CCP’s foreign outreach programs, such as its 1,000 Talents program, were explicitly designed to harvest intellectual property from the United States.

“What they do is they infiltrate our researchers, and they give them a lot of money,” McCaul said.

“And some, in the 1,000 Talents program, they will give the mothership back in China this research and development.”

McCaul, who is now the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that he first became concerned about the CCP threat back in 1996. At that time, he said, he was a federal prosecutor working on campaign finance cases.

Among those cases, he said, was that of Johnny Chung, who was caught up in a campaign finance lawsuit after giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic National Committee. At least $35,000 of that money, Chung later said, came directly from China’s military intelligence apparatus and was intended to influence U.S. elections.

“It really exposed this plan to influence our elections,” McCaul said.

By interfering in U.S. elections, McCaul said, the CCP sought to ensure that U.S. policies were favorable to China, even at the cost of eroding U.S. national security.

A similar process was repeated in New York City last year, as revealed by a Justice Department lawsuit alleging that CCP intelligence agents plotted to attack or otherwise silence a U.S. Army veteran running for state office.

Global Expansion

Beyond the United States, McCaul said that the CCP has weaponized its diplomatic and economic relationships, creating supply chain dependencies in nations where it does business to exploit the relationship and gain access to new ports and airfields.

“China is in Afghanistan signing leases as we speak and, true to form, I predict they will get access to Bagram Air Base,” McCaul said.

Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers walk inside the Bagram US air base after all US and NATO troops left, some 43 miles north of Kabul on July 5, 2021. Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images

“Give them credit. We can’t just say, ‘They’re bad’,” McCaul added. “They’re very smart and they are a worthy adversary. We just have to compete with them.”

To counter that effort, McCaul said, the United States will need to reinvigorate its diplomatic and economic deals with nations throughout the world, to ensure that those nations know the United States cares more for their wellbeing than the CCP.

By the United States letting the CCP have unmitigated access to do as it pleased on the world stage for the previous thirty years and by not actively maintaining relationships throughout the globe, he said, the Chinese regime has been able to take advantage of the international system.

To that end, McCaul cited the perspective that a senior U.S. military officer gave to him some years ago.

“We really tried to bring [China] into the family of nations, we wanted them to move forward and be more of a democracy,” McCaul recalled the officer as saying.

“It just didn’t work.”