Washington, July 22 (IANS) The United States faces a new generation of security threats led by China and accelerated by artificial intelligence, cyber operations and attacks on critical infrastructure, national security experts told Congress, nearly 25 years after the September 11 attacks.
The warnings came at a House Intelligence Committee hearing examining whether the US intelligence community has adapted since the 2001 attacks. Lawmakers and witnesses said terrorism remained a danger, but the threat landscape had expanded to include hostile states, disruptive technologies, espionage and foreign influence campaigns.
H.R. McMaster, a former White House national security adviser, described an “axis of hostile aggressor states” centred on China and Russia. He said they were working to replace existing international rules with arrangements favouring authoritarian governments.
McMaster also cited artificial intelligence, quantum computing, bioengineering, hypersonic weapons, cyber capabilities and autonomous systems among the technologies being developed for hostile purposes.
Seth Jones, a national security expert, told the committee that China presented the most serious state-based threat to the United States.
“China and the Chinese Communist Party presents the most serious state based threat to the United States, including in the homeland,” Jones said.
He said Chinese intelligence agencies were conducting extensive collection activities inside the United States and expanding their overseas capabilities. These included signals intelligence platforms in Cuba and ground facilities in Argentina, he said.
Jones warned that the US was witnessing “an end or largely an end to sanctuary” as China, Russia and North Korea possessed intercontinental missile capabilities and advances in drones made long-range attacks easier.
Frank Cilluffo, a homeland security expert, said America’s principal adversaries were increasingly trying to weaponise the systems on which modern society depends. He listed energy, communications, transport, finance, space-based assets and undersea infrastructure.
“The homeland itself has become a contested operating environment,” Cilluffo said.
He warned that cyber operations had become a key instrument of strategic competition below the threshold of armed conflict. Artificial intelligence would further compress decision-making time, expand cyber operations and lower the barrier to sophisticated weapons, he said.
Benjamin Buchanan, a former White House special adviser for AI, said the technology was advancing faster than government institutions could adapt. Its development was also being driven largely by private companies, leaving the government less able to understand or shape it.
Buchanan said AI had already been used in automated cyberespionage, malware operations, ransomware and attacks on critical targets. Major US technology companies planned roughly $700 billion in capital spending this year, overwhelmingly on AI infrastructure, he said.
–IANS
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