By John Ratcliffe

Dec. 3, 2020 1:20 pm ET

As Director of National Intelligence, I am entrusted with access to more intelligence than any member of the U.S. government other than the president. I oversee the intelligence agencies, and my office produces the President’s Daily Brief detailing the threats facing the country. If I could communicate one thing to the American people from this unique vantage point, it is that the People’s Republic of China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II.

The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically. Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party.

I call its approach of economic espionage “rob, replicate and replace.” China robs U.S. companies of their intellectual property, replicates the technology, and then replaces the U.S. firms in the global marketplace.

Take Sinovel. In 2018 a federal jury found the Chinese wind-turbine manufacturer guilty of stealing trade secrets from American Superconductor . Penalties were imposed but the damage was done. The theft resulted in the U.S. company losing more than $1 billion in shareholder value and cutting 700 jobs. Today Sinovel sells wind turbines world-wide as if it built a legitimate business through ingenuity and hard work rather than theft.

The FBI frequently arrests Chinese nationals for stealing research-and-development secrets. Until the head of Harvard’s Chemistry Department was arrested earlier this year, China was allegedly paying him $50,000 a month as part of a plan to attract top scientists and reward them for stealing information. The professor has pleaded not guilty to making false statements to U.S. authorities. Three scientists were ousted in 2019 from MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston over concerns about China’s theft of cancer research. The U.S. government estimates that China’s intellectual-property theft costs America as much as $500 billion a year, or between $4,000 and $6,000 per U.S. household.

Ratcliffe said he has a “unique vantage point” and the “ability to see more threat information than anyone else.”

“The intelligence is so clear that China is our greatest threat,” Ratcliffe said.

“People that equate other things, or say, oh, you know, Russia is a greater threat, they are politicizing intelligence,” Ratcliffe said. “I am hoping now that the election is over, now that people have voted, and if there is a Biden administration, that they will get past politicizing intelligence and be honest about China and acknowledge that China, and China alone is the greatest national security threat that we face.”

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Ratcliffe told Fox News that China intends “to dominate economically, militarily and technologically, and is the only country capable of challenging American supremacy across the board.”

“All of the threat streams that we have, from all aspects, militarily, economically, supply chain issues, foreign investment, technologically, cyber issues, cyber warfare, 5G, telecommunications — China is in all of those and they are the only country to be in that space and the only country that threatens America supremacy,” Ratcliffe told Fox News.

When asked whether the United States was in an offensive or defensive position with regard to China, Ratcliffe said the U.S. remains in an offensive place.

“Generals will always tell you that you want to fight from the high ground because it is easier to fight downhill than it is to fight uphill,” Ratcliffe said. “The urgency here is, in part, because we still are the dominant superpower. China wants to change that, but right now we have the ability to meet this challenge fighting downhill.”

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“What I don’t want is for us not to take advantage and do that,” Ratcliffe continued. “We don’t ever want to be in a position that we’re fighting uphill. We don’t want to looking up at China.”

The Biden transition team declined to comment on Ratcliffe’s warning.

Biden, last month, announced his appointment of Avril Haines as nominee for director of national intelligence.

Haines, who would be the first woman to serve as DNI, was a former deputy director of the CIA and former deputy national security adviser to then-President Obama.

“To lead our intelligence community, I did not pick a politician or a politician figure,” Biden said, in an apparent swipe at President Trump, who has been criticized for appointing “political” figures to lead the intelligence community. “I picked a professional.”

Biden described Haines as “a fierce advocate for telling the truth and levelling it with decision-makers.”

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“I know because I’ve worked with her for over a decade,” he added. “Brilliant. Humble.”

Haines, upon accepting the nomination, said that she “has never shied away from speaking truth to power” and said “that will be my charge as director of national intelligence.”