Retired U.S. Army Major General John G. Ferrari warns that the U.S. military is dangerously reliant on China for crucial supplies, including parts for missiles and fighter jets. This dependence could cripple America’s defense capabilities if China decided to cut off these supplies during a conflict. Despite efforts across multiple administrations, the U.S. still struggles to reduce this reliance, with over 40% of essential semiconductors coming from China. As tensions with Beijing rise, particularly over Taiwan, the urgency to address this vulnerability grows, highlighting the precarious state of America’s military readiness.
A retired army general has warned that China’s stranglehold on US military supplies leaves the West vulnerable to Beijing in the event of an all-out war.
In an exclusive interview, retired US Army Major General John G. Ferrari expressed ‘grave worries’ about America’s continued reliance on China to supply its military.
Chinese firms are heavily integrated into the United States defense systems, providing crucial technology and raw materials for everything from air-to-air missiles to fighter aircraft.
General Ferrari, who served as NATO’s deputy commander in Afghanistan, admitted that Beijing may undermine America’s ability to arm itself by shutting off supply lines.
‘If we were in a war with China and it stopped providing parts, we wouldn’t be able to build the planes and weapons we needed,’ he said.
His stern warning comes as fears increase of a military conflict with China over Taiwan.
The retired commander, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, added: “We need to start to prepare our supply chains now for a potential war.”
No quick fix
A frightening assessment published earlier this year found that Chinese corporations had a grasp on 12 crucial technologies critical to US national security, including nuclear modernization, hypersonic, and space technologies.
The Pentagon-commissioned report, conducted by data analytics firm Govini, presented a harsh condemnation of the American armaments sector.
“U.S. domestic production capacity is a shriveled shadow of its former self,” the report stated.
“Crucial categories of industry for U.S. national defense are no longer built in any of the 50 states.”
Perhaps most concerning, Govini discovered that more than 40% of the chips that power Department of Defense (DoD) weapons systems are now sourced from China.
Advanced semiconductors are critical components of missile guidance systems, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.
It has raised concerns that Beijing has been given a slew of weapons to undermine American defenses, ranging from implanting faulty chips in air-to-air missiles to inserting malware in DoD systems.
However, Ferrari warned that there would be no easy remedy.
‘You can’t just turn around on a dime because [manufacturing] capacity doesn’t exist here,’ he explained.
He also stated that it could take 10 to 15 years for the United States to detach itself from China.
However, the former general, who also served as a strategic planner for a Combined Joint Task Force in Iraq, chastised Washington for its tardy response.
“We’re into our third administration of trying to solve this problem. The Obama administration sounded the alarm, but they didn’t know what to do about it.
“The Trump administration went hard at the problem with tariffs and trade restrictions.
“Then Biden has come in and built upon that. We now have something of a bipartisan consensus.
“But we are still not pushing hard enough. Both Trump and Biden say “America First”. I don’t think that’s a good answer.
‘It should be “Buy Allies” because the United States cannot handle the situation on its own.
The Biden administration has been chastised for its slow response to the crisis, with experts citing a mealy-mouthed ‘non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms (PMT)’ to provide $162 million in federal funding to support the onshoring of semiconductor technology as evidence of a lack of urgency on the matter.
General Ferrari has also stated that the newly passed 2024 National Defense Authorization Act ‘barely affects’ the timing for reducing the Pentagon’s reliance on China.
Driven by profit
The Department of Defense has long acknowledged that Chinese manufacturing dominates US supply chains.
In 2012, the Senate Armed Forces Committee discovered that counterfeit Chinese parts were being integrated into multiple vital systems, putting national security at risk.
These included artificial intelligence capabilities in the Air Force’s Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft, the Navy’s Integrated Submarine Imaging System, and the Army’s Stryker Mobile Gun.
A decade later, the Pentagon halted supplies of its iconic F-35 fighter fighters after learning that they contained a component made from a forbidden Chinese alloy.
The Air Force later restarted deliveries after deciding that the parts would not jeopardize safety, but the incident raised questions about how the complexity of the military supply chain could allow Beijing to sneak in defective equipment or spyware undetected.
The United States increased its reliance on Chinese manufacturing during a period of relative harmony between the two countries following the 1990s.
American contractors were encouraged to do business with China, which could offer low-cost manufacturing and easy access to raw materials.
However, defense officials have been more apprehensive about the integration of supply networks in the context of heightened tensions with Beijing.
However, the Department of Defense’s reliance on Chinese equipment has increased. According to Govini, American dependence on Chinese electronics surged 600% between 2014 and 2022.
According to Courtney Manning, a senior research scientist at the nonpartisan American Security Project, the tendency has been ‘driven by profit’.
“American defense contractors have obtained extremely lucrative contracts that are hard to break out of,” she stated.
‘They are given a lot of agency and who they’re able to work with. For many of them, sourcing their components from China or Taiwan is a lucrative way to get their high-tech needs met without spending a fortune on manpower here in the US.’
No alternatives
However, contractors have pointed to a scarcity of local possibilities, citing the terminal loss of US industry.
According to Jeff Ferry, chief economist of the non-profit Coalition for a Prosperous America, drone manufacturers are desperately looking for American components, but have been mostly unsuccessful.
‘There are probably a few hundred parts that go into a drone,’ he explained. ‘The majority of them are produced in large quantities in China.
Drones run on lithium, a material that China has a monopoly on.
Meanwhile, semiconductors require elements such as gallium, arsenic, and neon, most of which are produced in Russia, China, and Ukraine.
The United States does not produce gallium, while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has half the world’s supply of semiconductor-grade neon.
The conflict in Ukraine has highlighted broad issues in the American munitions industry.
Following the delivery of billions of dollars in military equipment and supplies to Ukraine, US arms inventories have plummeted to dangerously low levels.
However, military industries are not geared to refill them quickly.
According to a study conducted by the think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the crisis in Eastern Europe has emphasized how rapidly the US military would run out of ammunition in a possible conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific.
Recently, GreatGameIndia reported that on June 20, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced the formation of a bipartisan Fentanyl Policy Working Group. The group is led by Rep. John Moolenaar and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, aimed at addressing China’s role in America’s fentanyl epidemic.
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Back in the mid-twentieth century our government had laws which stated, no part of any military machinery can be purchased from a foreign country, for the very reason we now have articles like this exposing the criminality of greedy corporations who broke that law to make sure their stockholders will continue to receive their quarterly payout AT OUR GD EXPENSE. This corporatism must be stopped because it was their greed which has put us in the position we now find ourselves in.
The only thing which will stop this is a civil war, because the proletariat are fed up with the criminals running our government.
This info. is even more proof that America is now a banana republic; this is unfixable because political leaders condone turning us into a third world and will do nothing except sell us out.