THE United States is a step behind China as the eastern superpower is using cyber warfare to weaponize American culture, former acting defense secretary Christopher Miller told The U.S. Sun.
In his new book, Soldier Secretary: Warnings from the Battlefield & the Pentagon about America’s Most Dangerous Enemies, Miller outlines what he considers should be the new American strategy of defense.
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“We are a step behind in what’s going on against China,” Miller explained.
“They’re using modern technology to foment unrest. There are a lot of gaps in a lot of things we need to be doing better.
“I can validate that they are doing that at volume with chatbots and an organized effort to destabilize and use what is, in our case, the fundamentals of our democracy, freedom of speech and freedom of expression – they’re weaponizing it against us.”
Miller explained that the US should stop focusing on military equipment and capabilities and use more resources towards nontraditional engagement.
“Let’s compete differently against them. Let’s not do what they expect us to do,” he said.
“They expect us to build these huge weapon systems, these aircraft, and fleets of planes.”
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party knows it can’t beat the US militarily, so it has moved its aggression to other fronts, Miller explained.
“They’re operating in what I would describe as an indirect approach where they’re cyber warfare and using psychological warfare against us.
“I think those are the tools that we should be striking back with as opposed to this really in-your-face behavior.”
Still, Miller said if tensions between the US and China hit boiling point, the US still has the military upper hand – something China may be forgetting, according to the former Pentagon acting chief.
He said: “How many, competitors have underestimated the United States as feckless, weak, and distracted?
“That all we care about are our phones and our happiness and our comfort?
“Al-Qaeda seriously misunderstood the psyche and the character of American people.
“We pretty much want to be left alone. We like to make money. We believe in the free enterprise system.
“We’re not looking to fight, but we’re kind of like a Saint Bernard, that’s slow to anger, but when you get him riled up, he’s a force to be reckoned with.
“I think the Chinese are probably [underestimating Americans] again.
“It’d be better if the Chinese would study history a little more and just leave us alone and go compete economically and not militarily because there’s no way they’re gonna prevail on that environment.”
