The Chinese regime is on its way to becoming a “near-peer competitor” for the United States and is the “unparalleled priority” for the country’s intelligence community, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) said on April 14. “China increasingly is a near-peer competitor, challenging the United States in multiple areas while pushing to revise global norms in ways that favor the authoritarian Chinese system,” Avril Haines said at a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing in her first public testimony since being confirmed in January. The regime “poses an increasingly formidable challenge to the U.S. role in global affairs,” she added. Haines’ remarks build upon an annual threat assessment by intelligence agencies released yesterday that cast the Chinese communist regime’s push for global power as the leading threat to U.S. national security. The DNI noted the regime’s “substantial” cyber capabilities that if used “at a minimum can cause localized temporary disruptions” to critical …