https://kesq.com/news/national-politics/cnn-us-politics/2021/07/14/biden-administration-looks-to-set-up-red-phone-to-china-for-emergency-communications/
Published July 14, 2021 3:00 AM
Biden administration looks to set up ‘red phone’ to China for emergency communications
Hewwo….is the big man there?
>https://kesq.com/news/national-politics/cnn-us-politics/2021/07/14/biden-administration-looks-to-set-up-red-phone-to-china-for-emergency-communications/
A hotline to Beijing would let President Joe Biden, or top officials on his national security team, immediately send encrypted phone calls or messages to President Xi Jinping or those around him, according to the two sources. For example, urgent information could be shared about sudden military movements or warning messages sent about cyber hacks.
The idea of setting up a hotline with Beijing dates back to at least the Obama administration, though the concept wasn’t codified into a classified national security memo until the final year of the Trump administration, according to a source familiar with the memo.
Biden administration officials have continued to pursue the idea, sources said, but there remain numerous details to work out, including whether the Chinese would even agree to use the device. There have long been issues with securing rapid responses from Beijing when it comes to urgent matters, current and former US officials told CNN. The top-down nature of the Chinese political system means that most contact beyond leader-level engagement is disincentivized.
A similar hotline to China already exists at the Pentagon and is supposed to be used exclusively for military matters but rarely is.
“We do have a hotline. It’s known to have, the couple of times we’ve used it, just rung in an empty room for hours upon hours,” said Kurt Campbell, the senior National Security Council Indo-Pacific coordinator, earlier this year during a conversation about US-China diplomacy and Taiwan.
The issues with the current system coupled with China’s increasingly offensive military have led to mounting concerns among US national security officials about the potential of miscalculation with China, and a feeling that more needs to be done to increase communication.
“There is a worrisome shortage of tools for incident management in the US-China relationship. It is pretty urgent that the US government pursues working lines of communication which allow them to respond to a crisis or to prevent a crisis. We need a 911 operator so to speak,” said Danny Russel, a former assistant secretary at the State Department. Russel added that it is imperative to also consider tools “that can be integrated into a wider crisis communication strategy, with the focus on broad risk reduction.”
A senior administration official declined to discuss the device when asked about it but did say that “generally speaking, of course we have an interest in ensuring that competition with China is managed in a responsible way. We have been clear this relationship will be defined by competition and we welcome that stiff competition, but we will also continue to work to ensure this competition doesn’t veer into conflict.”
Officials at the State Department and the National Security Council are still working on how the device would technically work, sources told CNN. The next step would be developing the overall concept and working it into the Biden administration’s plan for engagement with China. Then the device would need approval from the White House and from Chinese officials before being implemented.
While the “red phone” between the US and Russia was viewed as a useful tool that increased communication during the Cold War, its recent effectiveness is questionable. For example, the Obama administration used the hotline to the Kremlin to warn Russia not to interfere in the 2016 US elections, a warning that was not heeded.
The efficacy of a new hotline with China would be highly dependent on Beijing’s commitment to using it and placing it in a position where Xi would have regular access to it.
“There would be advantages to setting up this kind of tool for high-level messaging with China on strategic cyber concerns, but you have to make sure it is connected to the right place in the chain to connect with leadership effortlessly and quickly,” said Chris Painter, former State Department coordinator for cyber issues under President Barack Obama. “You may not get information back that you want, but it could be used to send messages back and forth to put people on notice.”
maybe everyone in the bidan admin is looking to go to china to escape death penalty for treason.
hey Xi, do you have an extra bedroom i can lay over in for a while