will help Pyongyang defy American attempts to isolate and punish the Kim regime.35
The Russian outreach may be doubly important to North Korea these days, since China, Pyongyang’s principal sponsor in the world—often its only sponsor—has shown increasing impatience with Kim’s refusal to make economic reforms and especially with his continued pursuit of nuclear weapons. Most recently, North Korea test-launched a submarine-based ballistic missile, showing capabilities greater than what most observers had projected and leading analysts to believe that the regime could have a submarine fleet equipped with such missiles within five years.
But what has long caused the most worry around the world is the regime’s nuclear-weapons production capabilities. In a remarkable meeting with U.S. nuclear specialists in April, Chinese nuclear experts warned that Pyongyang’s ability to produce nuclear weapons has advanced well beyond American estimates. The Chinese now believe that the North may have as many as 20 warheads and the capacity to double that count within the next year, via its stocks of weapons-grade uranium.36 Already, the United States is concerned about the North’s ability to mount a nuclear warhead on an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile that, while untested, would have a range of over 5,000 miles—far enough to reach the West Coast of the United States. The U.S. believes that the North has exported nuclear technology to Syria as well as missile components to Iran and Yemen. What’s striking about the recent developments is that the Chinese themselves seem worried; up until recently, they had generally dismissed North Korea’s capabilities. But according to Siegfried Hecker, a Stanford University nuclear scientist who attended the meeting with the Chinese experts, “They believe on the basis of what they’ve put together now that the North Koreans have enough enriched uranium capacity to be able to make eight to 10 bombs’ worth of highly enriched uranium per year.”37
To be sure, we should be skeptical of Chinese concerns. Beijing has long maintained a complicated, good cop–bad cop relationship with its troublesome Communist ally. For example, despite its recent criticisms of the North Korean nuclear program, Beijing—through a secretive, Hong Kong–based business—is providing Pyongyang with massive amounts of foreign exchange, which is critical for the ongoing viability and stability of Kim’s secretive regime.38 The Chinese have an interest in propping up that regime, if only to prevent the chaos—including a likely refugee flood—that would follow any governmental collapse. The Chinese would prefer a more stable government, but North Korea continues to serve Chinese interests as an economic vassal and as a counterweight to South Korea and a threat to the United States. North Korea’s growing nuclear capabilities should motivate Washington to bolster security—including a robust missile defense. We should not count on getting any help from China.
CYBER WARFARE, MILITARY AND NUCLEAR BUILDUPS, ECONOMIC EXPANSION
The Russia-China axis, as we call it in this book, is not just worrisome because of individual military flashpoints, as in Eastern Europe or in the Pacific; and not only because of both countries’ consistent and expanding facilitation of rogue actors. It is also a cause of great concern because, in multiple other arenas, both countries are aggressively fortifying themselves for growth and assertion around the world.
For years, both countries have been eating America’s lunch in the game of espionage and cyber warfare. We devote two chapters of this book to their efforts in these areas. As we went to press, the Obama administration revealed one of the largest breaches of federal-employee data in history, concerning at least 4 million current or former government workers. The breached data was held by the Office of Personnel Management, and the target appeared to be Social Security Numbers. No allegations were made, but intelligence officials believe that the attack originated from China—though they’re unsure whether it was state-sponsored.39 The massive breach of OPM data comes on the heels of a report that last year, Russian hackers penetrated the White House’s unclassified computer systems and swept up some of President Obama’s email correspondence; the hackers also accessed the systems at the State Department40 and the Pentagon.41
To get a sense of what the stakes are here, recall the controversy that erupted early in 2015 when congressional investigators discovered, shortly before Hillary Clinton announced her presidential candidacy, that she had used a private server to send emails when she served as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. That arrangement was unusual enough, but what made it worse was that Clinton revealed that she had culled through the 60,000 or so emails she had received during this period and decided that only about half were public records; she deleted the remaining 30,000 or so. She made the decision unilaterally; an outcry ensued from those who maintain that Clinton herself should not be the sole arbiter of what correspondence belongs in the public record. That’s the political aspect of the issue, and it will play out during the presidential campaign.
But what about the chance that those emails—deleted and undeleted—could have been accessed by hackers from foreign countries or intelligence organizations? On Fox News, Megyn Kelly asked Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, about the likelihood that “the Chinese, the Russians hacked into that server and her email account.”
“Very high,” Flynn said. “Likely. . . . They’re very good at it. China, Russia, Iran, potentially the North Koreans.”42
Flynn isn’t alone in that assessment. Despite Hillary’s confident claims that her server suffered no security breaches, independent systems analysts, bloggers, and hackers probed the server and uncovered serious security lapses.
In short: It may well be that the Russians and Chinese are the only ones who have the 30,000 emails that Hillary deleted. That is a bone-chilling possibility in and of itself. Yet more broadly, as we show in this book, it is clear that in a host of other areas—commercial, military, governmental—the Chinese and Russians have compromised American security in ways that we never thought possible.
Compromising American security seems to be a particular pleasure of Putin’s, as he showed when he let his planes buzz Alaska—part of a pattern of increasing aerial provocations over the last year, in which Russian strategic bombers have intruded into American airspace at twice the normal rate of recent years.43 Some interpret the gestures as warnings from Putin to the United States to stay out of Ukraine; the incursions also reflect Putin’s growing confidence in his military might, which he has been building up in recent years. Putin has embarked on a decade-long modernization of the Russian military called New Look, which has had remarkable success in updating and transitioning the country’s armed forces to a model more in line with today’s war-fighting demands: smaller, more tactical forces; updated, modern weaponry and equipment; and a move away from conscription to a contract-based, professionalized military. Putin has spared no expense in bringing these changes about: “We should carry out the same powerful, all-embracing leap forward in modernization of the defense industry as the one carried out in the 1930s,” he told the Russian Security Council in 2012.44 His military investments have been Russia’s largest since the end of the Cold War, and they show every sign of bearing fruit.
Of possibly even greater concern is Russia’s nuclear posture. Russia holds a 10–1 advantage over NATO countries in nonstrategic nukes, and Moscow has been busy violating the 1987 INF Treaty, most recently with a test launch of a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM), a sophisticated weapon difficult to track. It is “absolutely a tool that will have to be dealt with,” in the words of a NATO commander. “Militarily, a new mobile GLCM with a range between 500 and 5,000 kilometers, which is what the Russians reportedly tested, enables Russia to threaten U.S. allies in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia,” says Senator James Inhofe. “It also puts important targets in China, India, Pakistan, and other countries within range of Moscow’s nuclear force.”45
And yet, the Obama administration negotiated the New START nuclear treaty with Putin while Russia was violating the earlier INF agreement.
China
