Jeremy Fleming, the head of a well-known British intelligence agency, warned that China's digital technology is developing rapidly. Once a war is launched against Taiwan, these technologies can effectively evade or resolve sanctions imposed by Western countries.
The head of a well-known British intelligence agency warned that although Russia's invasion of Ukraine is an urgent threat, China's digital technology has developed rapidly, and its ability to control dissent, attack satellite systems, manipulate digital currencies and track individuals is growing. Once a war is launched against Taiwan, these technologies can effectively evade or resolve sanctions imposed by Western countries.
The New York Times reported that the British intelligence agency "Government Communications Headquarters" (GCHQ), which was famous for cracking the Nazi Ingmar code, specializes in electronic intelligence collection and network technology. Jeremy Fleming, the head of the intelligence agency equivalent to the National Security Agency of the United States, said he doubted the extent to which China would support Russian aggression.
Fleming, who is about to make a speech in the near future, said in an interview, "I don't think this is a relationship without an upper limit." In view of Russia's bleak performance and brutal acts on the battlefield, China "needs to balance the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining close ties with Russia". It is reported that Fleming has worked in the British intelligence service for 30 years, and rarely speaks in public. He said that Russia was a "saboteur" and that "current actions are unpredictable". However, the performance of the Russian army revealed serious weaknesses. Putin's decision was "flawed", the army was "exhausted" and relied on the mobilization of 300000 "inexperienced enlisted soldiers", all of which proved that Putin was "in a desperate situation". And "the Russian people are beginning to understand this," he said. "They see how serious Putin's misjudgment of the situation is."
Fleming warned that the Western allies have already considered themselves in direct competition with the other two major nuclear powers in the world, and Russia is obviously better at dealing with them.
He said that in recent years, most European countries avoided criticizing Beijing publicly because of economic factors, especially Germany. As far as China is concerned, the upcoming 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China may be a moment when China has entered a new stage in its history. The United States and its allies may soon find that they are far behind Beijing in a series of key technologies and cannot maintain their military or technological advantages over Beijing.
He pointed out that China's development of digital currency that can be used to track transactions is a major change, which can "enable China to escape the current sanctions against the Russian Putin regime to a certain extent". This is an example of how China "learned a lesson" from the war in Ukraine. If China decides to take action against Taiwan and urge the United States and its allies to make further efforts to isolate it economically, it may start to apply it.
Fleming also described China's "action of strong anti satellite capability, the principle of which is to prevent other countries from entering space in case of conflict".
According to the report, Fleming's biggest warning is about his dependence on Chinese enterprises, which are closely related to the Chinese government, such as Huawei. The Biden government announced a comprehensive restriction on the sale of semiconductor technology to China, hoping to weaken Beijing's access to key technologies needed for supercomputers, advanced weapons and artificial intelligence applications. This sign shows that the two largest economies in the world are rapidly conflicting in terms of technological advantages. China believes that advanced computer and semiconductor technologies are crucial to its long-term goals. The United States is trying to establish control in these areas.
