The News
The United States’ National Security Agency has launched a new program focused on economic security and emerging technologies, including setting up an “innovation pipeline” to fix any areas of vulnerability that could be exploited by China, according to an NSA official speaking to the press on Friday .
The announcement came as US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan visited Beijing and met President Xi Jinping, where economic security and China’s impact on the global supply were high on the agenda.
Analysts believe that while Sullivan initially sought to assure China that the US will not adopt more measures to contain its economic expansion, the new program “sent out a different message” and that “is not going to change” regardless of the results of the US presidential elections in November.
Recent Pentagon reports have also stoked fear that China may have overtaken the US in certain key areas of new technology, though experts told the South China Morning Post that these reports are “exaggerated” and China still “lags far behind the US.”