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

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

Published: 1:19am, 2 Jul 2023Updated: 12:00pm, 2 Jul 2023

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.

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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.