China will "take down everything we have" if action is not taken to protect the United States from the growing threat of cyberattacks on its vital systems, China expert and author Gordon Chang warned on Newsmax Sunday.
"They're going to take down our grid," Chang told Newsmax's "Sunday Report." They're going to take down everything we have. We are going to be like an 1850s country without the things that we've been accustomed to, that operate our country."
The growing threat, he added, is a "question of American failure" to take defensive measures as much as it can be blamed on "China's maliciousness."
"We have known for decades that China has been hacking the United States throughout this century," Chang said. "Chinese hacks go back into the 1990s, and we do not erect the defenses that we can against these."
That is a "failure of political will," as it's also a failure to impose costs on China for its hacking activities, he added.
"Those costs don't need to be cyberattacks back," said Chang. "As a matter of fact, we don't want to show our capabilities until we absolutely have to."
Still, tariffs and other measures could be used, but "we don't do it," he said.
Retired U.S. Army Col. John Mills, also on Sunday's program, said that President-elect Donald Trump, once he enters office, must punch back at China in another way rather than through cyberattacks.
"We are facing an absolute full-blown Chinese blitz that has been characterized as preparation for war," said Mills. "It's an intelligence blitz with agents. It is cyber. And the only way to give us some breathing room is by attacking the flow of the capital investment market. We cannot let the capital market give access to China. That will slow them down."
Chang agreed with Mills that China is preparing for war, and the United States must be ready.
"The way we do this is the president of the United States uses his emergency power to force utilities, telephone companies, and all the rest to put in robust cyberdefenses," said Chang. "This is something that is easy for the president to do. It's a stroke of the pen, but the political will hasn't been there. So it's been hard from a political point of view, not from a technical one."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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