CIA Director William Burns on April 15 called out China as a “silent partner in Putin’s aggression,” warning that the war in Ukraine would proceed with continued bloodshed.
The Chinese regime poses the “greatest challenge” and “most profound test” that the agency has ever faced, Burns warned in his first public speech as CIA director at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
He highlighted that “the rise of an increasingly adversarial China and a pugnacious and revisionist Russia” has turned the world into a more complicated and contested one.
The CIA Director pointed to the “immediate threat posed by renewed Russian aggression against Ukraine,” and to the “longer-term problem posed by China’s ambitious leadership,” calling it “the single most important geopolitical challenge” of the 21st century.