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China’s control over US military supplies leaves the West at the mercy of Beijing in the event of an all-out war, a former army general has warned.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, retired US Army Major General John G. Ferrari said he had “serious concerns” about the US’ continued dependence on China to equip its military.
Chinese manufacturers are deeply embedded in American defense systems, providing critical technology and raw materials used in everything from air-to-air missiles to fighter jets.
General Ferrari, who served as NATO deputy commander in Afghanistan, admitted that Beijing could cripple the United States’ ability to arm itself by cutting supply lines.
“If we were at war with China and they stopped supplying us with parts, we wouldn’t be able to build the planes and weapons we needed,” he said.
In 2022, the Pentagon suspended deliveries of its flagship F-35 fighter jets after they were found to contain a component made from a banned Chinese alloy.
In 2012, the Senate Armed Services Committee found that counterfeit parts from China were being integrated into the US military’s Stryker mobile weapon (pictured above).
Retired US Army Major General John G. Ferrari told DailyMail.com he had “serious concerns” about the US military’s continued reliance on China to equip its military.
His stern warning comes amid growing fears of a military confrontation with China over Taiwan.
The former general, now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, added: “We have to start preparing our supply chains now for a possible war.”
No quick fix
A surprising report released earlier this year revealed that Chinese companies have a stranglehold on 12 critical technologies that are vital to US national security, including nuclear modernization and hypersonic and space technologies.
The study, conducted by the data analysis company Govini at the request of the Pentagon, presented a damning indictment of the American arms industry.
“America’s domestic production capacity is a withered shadow of its former self,” the report said.
“In any of the 50 states, industrial categories crucial to the national defense of the United States are no longer being built.”
Perhaps most concerning, Govini discovered that more than 40 percent of the semiconductors powering the Department of Defense (DoD) weapons systems now come from China.
Advanced semiconductors are crucial components of missile guidance systems, cyberware, and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.
It has raised fears that Beijing has been left with a range of tools to sabotage US defenses, from putting faulty chips in air-to-air missiles to embedding spyware into Defense Department systems.
Ferrari, however, warned that there was no quick fix.
In anticipation of a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the US military has been conducting ominous war exercises in the Philippines (pictured during a joint exercise with the Philippine military on May 6, 2024).
Chinese President Xi Jinping has made no secret of his desire to reunify Taiwan with mainland China, but has kept rivals in the dark about when he might deploy a surprise attack.
“You can’t turn around in the blink of an eye because there is no (manufacturing) capacity here,” he said.
He added that it could take the United States 10 to 15 years to disentangle itself from China.
But the former general, who was also a strategic planner for a Combined Joint Task Force in Iraq, criticized Washington for reacting slowly.
‘We are in our third administration trying to solve this problem. The Obama administration raised the alarm, but didn’t know what to do about it.
‘The Trump administration took a tough approach to the issue of tariffs and trade restrictions.
“Then Biden came in and built on that. Now we have a kind of bipartisan consensus.
‘But we are still not pushing hard enough. With both Trump and Biden, you hear “America first.” I don’t think it’s a good solution.
“It should be ‘Buy allies,’ because the United States does not have the ability to solve the problem alone.”
The Biden administration has been criticized for its sclerotic response to the crisis, with experts citing a ‘non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms’ to provide $162 million in federal funding to support the offshoring of semiconductor technology as demonstrating a lack of urgency in this regard.
General Ferrari has also said that the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act of 2024 “hardly affects” the timeline for eliminating the Pentagon’s dependence on China.
Driven by profits
The Defense Department has long known that American supply chains are dominated by Chinese manufacturing.
In 2012, the Senate Armed Services Committee found that counterfeit parts from China were being integrated into several critical systems, putting national security at risk.
These included AI capabilities in the Air Force’s Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft, the Navy’s Integrated Underwater Imaging System, and the Army’s Stryker Mobile Gun.
A decade later, the Pentagon suspended deliveries of its flagship F-35 fighter jets after they were found to contain a component made from a banned Chinese alloy.
The Air Force eventually resumed supplies after determining the parts would not impact security, but the scare underscored concerns about how the complexities of the military supply chain could allow Beijing to introduce defective parts or spyware without detection.
Counterfeit parts from China were also found in the artificial intelligence capabilities of the US Air Force’s Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft (pictured above)
The United States increased its dependence on Chinese manufacturing during an era of relative harmony between the two nations after the 1990s.
American contractors were encouraged to do business with China, which could offer cheap manufacturing and easy access to raw materials.
But defense officials are increasingly uncomfortable with integrating supply chains in the wake of rising tensions with Beijing.
However, the Defense Department’s dependence on Chinese equipment has continued to grow. Between 2014 and 2022, American dependence on Chinese electronics increased by 600 percent, according to Govini.
Courtney Manning, a research scientist at the nonpartisan American Security Project, said the trend has been “profit-driven.”
“US defense contractors have been awarded extremely lucrative contracts that are difficult to escape,” he told DailyMail.com.
‘They are given a lot of freedom and who they can work with. For many of them, sourcing their components from China or Taiwan is a lucrative way to meet their high-tech needs without spending a fortune on labor here in the United States.’
There are no alternatives
But contractors have pointed to a shortage of domestic options, with U.S. manufacturing in terminal decline.
Jeff Ferry, chief economist at the nonprofit Coalition for a Prosperous America, said drone makers were desperately but largely unsuccessfully seeking American components.
“There are possibly a few hundred parts that go into a drone,” he told DailyMail.com. “Most of them are manufactured in large volumes in China.”
The drones run on lithium, a mineral over which China has a monopoly.
Semiconductors, meanwhile, require materials including gallium, arsenic and neon, many of which are produced in Russia, China and Ukraine.
The United States does not produce gallium, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cut the world’s supply of semiconductor-grade neon in half.
The war in Ukraine has exposed widespread problems in the American arms industry.
American weapons inventories have fallen to dangerously low levels after sending billions of dollars in military equipment and supplies to Ukraine.
But defense companies are not equipped to replenish them quickly.
A study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies has said the conflict in Eastern Europe has highlighted how quickly the US military would run out of ammunition in a potential conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific.