President-elect Donald Trump's selections to fill out his national security team have emphasized the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party during their confirmation hearings this week on Capitol Hill.
Pete Hegseth, who was tapped to serve as defense secretary, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Trump's selection for secretary of state, and John Ratcliffe, the president-elect's nominee for CIA director, all sat down with the relevant Senate committees on Tuesday and Wednesday. Other Trump national security nominees have yet to sit for their public committee hearings.
Rubio told lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday that the CCP “is the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this country has ever confronted,” and the outgoing Florida senator warned that if “we don’t change course, we are going to live in the world where much of what matters to us on a daily basis from our security to our health will be dependent on whether the Chinese allow us to have it or not."
At the same time, Ratcliffe told the Senate Intelligence Committee that confronting China would be “our once-in-a-generation challenge.”
Hegseth, who faced the most opposition of the three from Democrats, said in written responses to questions that he would review the Defense Department's posture in the Indo-Pacific and "identify ways to prioritize such efforts.”
“We need to accelerate efforts to strengthen our force posture and increase operational capabilities in the Indo-Pacific, given China’s historic and rapid military buildup and the urgent need to reestablish deterrence,” he added.
Trump has picked Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) to serve as his national security adviser, a role that does not require Senate confirmation, and he, too, is known as a China hawk. Earlier this week, Waltz praised the Biden administration's efforts to boost the United States's alliances in the region to counter Beijing.
"Where I certainly give this administration some credit is the trilateral dialogue between South Korea, the United States, and Japan, and then also between the United States, Japan, and the Philippines," Waltz said Tuesday at a "Passing the Baton" event alongside his predecessor, Jake Sullivan, at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
These initiatives were "really helping those countries and those governments overcome historic animosities with a shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific," Waltz added. "So I think all of those things will continue."
The whole of Trump's national security picks indicates that he will be focused on competition with Beijing. The incoming president has said he wants the two major conflicts in the world, in the Middle East and Russia-Ukraine, to end as quickly as possible, which would allow his administration to focus on China.
The U.S.-CCP competition takes several forms, including the stealing of intellectual property, cyberattacks, the expansion of both countries' nuclear arsenals, and increasing consternation from U.S. allies in the Pacific region about Beijing's expanding influence.
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U.S. officials reported a significant breach into several large U.S. telecommunication companies last fall, which Rubio previously called “the most disturbing and widespread incursion into our telecommunications systems in the history of the world.”
Outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray told 60 Minutes that the Chinese government is "prepositioning on American civil critical infrastructure, to lie in wait on those networks, to be in a position to wreak havoc and inflict a real-world harm at a time and place of their choosing.”