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CIA drector William Burns at the White House in Washington on June 22. Photo: AFP
WorldUnited States & Canada

CIA chief: US decoupling from China would be ‘foolish’ given economic interdependence

  • ‘China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and increasingly the … power to do so,’ Burns said in a lecture in the UK
  • Burns also said the mutiny by mercenaries in Russia was a challenge to the Russian state that had shown the corrosive effect of Putin’s war in Ukraine
US-China relations
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CIA director William Burns said on Saturday that decoupling from China would be foolish given the deep economic interdependence so the United States should try to diversify its supply chains.
“China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and increasingly the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do so,” the Central Intelligence Agency chief said to Britain’s Ditchley Foundation – a non-profit foundation focused on US-British relations – during a lecture in Oxfordshire, England, UK on Saturday.

“In today’s world, no country wants to find itself at the mercy of a ‘cartel of one’ for critical minerals and technologies,” Burns said.

“The answer to that is not to decouple from an economy like China’s, which would be foolish, but to sensibly de-risk and diversify by securing resilient supply chains, protecting our technological edge and investing in industrial capacity.”

Also at the lecture on Saturday, Burns said the armed mutiny by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was a challenge to the Russian state that had shown the corrosive effect of President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

03:02

Freed Russian convicts took part in Wagner mutiny in Moscow

Freed Russian convicts took part in Wagner mutiny in Moscow
Putin this week thanked the army and security forces for averting what he said could have turned into a civil war, and has compared the mutiny to the chaos that plunged Russia into two revolutions in 1917.

For months, Prigozhin had been openly insulting Putin’s most senior military men, using a variety of crude expletives and prison slang that shocked top Russian officials but were left unanswered in public by Putin.

“It is striking that Prigozhin preceded his actions with a scathing indictment of the Kremlin’s mendacious rationale for the invasion of Ukraine and of the Russian military leadership’s conduct of the war,” Burns told the guests in attendance at the lecture.

“The impact of those words and those actions will play out for some time – a vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin’s war on his own society and his own regime.”

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Burns, who served as US ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008 and was appointed CIA director in 2021, called Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “the most immediate and acute geopolitical challenge to international order today”.
He cast the mutiny as an “armed challenge to the Russian state” and said it was an “internal Russian affair in which the United States has had and will have no part”.
Since a deal was struck a week ago to end the mutiny, the Kremlin has sought to project calm, with the 70-year-old Putin discussing tourism development, meeting crowds in Dagestan and discussing ideas for economic development.

Russia would emerge stronger after the failed mutiny so the West need not worry about stability in the world’s biggest nuclear power, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia on June Friday. Photo: EPA-EFE / Gavriil Grigorov / Sputnik / Kremlin / Pool

But Burns said that disaffection in Russia with the war in Ukraine was creating a rare opportunity to recruit spies – and the CIA was not letting it pass.

“Disaffection with the war will continue to gnaw away at the Russian leadership beneath the steady diet of state propaganda and practised repression,” Burns said.

“That disaffection creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us at the CIA – at our core a human intelligence service.

“We’re not letting it go to waste,” he added, noting the CIA recently posted on Telegram to let Russians know how to reach the CIA via the dark web.

“We had 2.5 million views in the first week, and we’re very much open for business.”

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

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