Chad Wolf is Executive Director at the America First Policy Institute. He is the former acting Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.
Federal Newswire
Tell us about the strategic action plan you implemented while you were at DHS?
Chad Wolf
It was interesting during my time at DHS as we looked across the landscape of the department … and the different challenges and threats that the country was facing. We kept seeing China pop up time and time again.
A lot of those threats and our solutions in particular were getting siloed. Customs and Border Protection was thinking about China as far as counterfeit goods and duties, whereas our cyber security agency and Secret Service were looking at China from a cyber perspective. At some point I said wait, for us to take a comprehensive look at the threat and the maligned influence from China we really need to do that holistically.
So [I] gathered up folks as a working group [and] said, we need to step out of what you do day in and day out and think of China as a more strategic threat. We need to pull all the resources of the department.
[It had] never really been done that way at DHS before. Why we did it that way was we couldn't aggressively or comprehensively address the threat unless we came together as a team. We were sharing intelligence as a team and then trying to find solutions as a team, not only within DHS but within the entire federal government.
So we did that in conjunction with [the] State Department and a few other key agencies and so I'm very proud about that.
You know I got asked many times, “you know what's the greatest threat to the homeland” and I never like to answer because there are a lot of competing threats. But at the top of that list was always China.
Federal Newswire
How are the various missions of the Department organized?
Chad Wolf
I'll just give you a sense of the breadth of it. Immigrations and customs enforcement have what we call homeland security investigations. These are investigators [by] law enforcement personnel who are looking at any type of transborder crime and activity. A lot of the fentanyl precursors are coming from China into Mexico and then across the southern border, and these are investigators that are going to look at that pathway. [They’ll] be trying to understand that they're going to work with DEA and other agencies to try to curtail, capture, and then eventually prosecute individuals who are involved.
So that's one aspect of it. There is a lot of cyber threats coming from China, and they range from just nuisance [such as] cyber intrusions, to some of the more sophisticated stuff that we were concerned about.
Our cyber security and infrastructure security agency, or CISA, does that in combination with other agencies that have cyber responsibilities throughout the country. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) look at the visas we were granting to Chinese citizens, students specifically. What we came to find is they would abuse student visas, and so USCIS took a number of actions to curtail that.
Intellectual property theft [is another issue] we were very interested in. That's just a handful, there's certainly others within the Department, so we sort of saw all these different threats.
Then the big one is the investment in critical infrastructure that China is making. We had something called the CFIUS review, which [relates to] foreign investment in the United States. It's a governmental body that takes a look at foreign investment to see if there are any national security concerns.
I would say during my four years at DHS, every year more and more of those concerns [were] emanating from China and Chinese-backed deals.
They're buying up more and more land and critical infrastructure inside the United States, so the threat is not overseas. It's not just militarily and it's not just diplomatically. It's economically, and that's really what I was focused on at DHS–making sure that they're not going to defeat us economically, that we're going to push back and we're going to do that pretty aggressively.
Federal Newswire
Did you face obstacles or resistance when attempting interagency operations?
Chad Wolf
At a leadership level we were all on the same page. We understood what China was trying to do. A lot of us were reading the sort of the same intelligence every day, so we understood the threat. I think there was pretty much good buyoff on that and at the senior levels, good working relationships.
Once you get into the career bureaucracy, there was some resistance. It's not a shock to anyone. Particularly at the State Department, it was, ‘we can't take this action. You're going to upset them.’
My response is, ‘why do I care about that?’ During my tenure we didn't really do a lot of conferences with other countries. I didn't feel thrilled to be sitting in a room with 10 Chinese officials, knowing that my phone was probably being hacked. There were a lot of protocols that we went through; you left all your equipment outside even if you're in a State Department building. There were things you just didn't do around the Chinese because we understood them for what they are. Which is [an] adversary.
Other people look at them differently. Particularly in Congress… Some good members there understood, but there were others who would shake their head, say yes that they're a threat, but then decide not to do anything about it. Not that they disagreed with me. They just showed no interest in it… for years, and we're still there today.
I guess there's an element out there that doesn't want to upset them, because they want to continue to have commercial products. But what I saw from a security standpoint and the welfare of the country, we need to be a little bit more aggressive.
Federal Newswire
What acts led you to believe the CCP is adversarial, which led you to release your action plan?
Chad Wolf
We were working on it for some time. COVID hit and priorities got different. We had to put some of this on the back burner, but as the summer and then the fall came in 2020, I wanted to make sure as we were on the way out that we put a marker down at the Department, to say here are some threats that may not be top of mind for a lot of people.
So as you go through that strategic action plan, I think people will shake their head and they'll say ‘... yes I understand what's going on, I didn't think about that.’ That's the idea, to bring some stuff up that may be bubbling under the surface.
I would always say that economic security is national security and homeland security. The only way to make us truly safe at home is to make sure that our economic vitality and well-being and health continues to be on the upswing. That's really the threat from China.
I don't think they want to go head to head with us on a military front. But they are doing a variety of things to knock us off as the premier economic power of the world. So that's where I focus a lot of attention. You'll see in the strategic action plan, that's where we focus a lot of time and attention.
As they attack us a little bit, it's like a pinprick. [They are] attacking us a little bit here and there because they have a much longer view. They're looking at 50, 100, 150 years, [whereas] we look at two years.
That's where we came up with that action plan, and I was pushing the team to get it out before the administration concluded. We issued that in early January of 2021. I don't think the Biden administration has done much with it.
Federal Newswire
The Department of Justice had a China initiative that was launched under the previous administration, and it was closed during the transition. Have you seen evidence of backsliding, or is there some evidence of continuity against any of this China Challenge?
Chad Wolf
The Biden administration withdrew a lot of rules, regulations, and policies that the Trump administration had. I haven't seen that they've actually rescinded or pulled back anything that we've done on China, but at the same time I haven't seen them do anything new.
Maybe it's a treading water kind of state of paralysis. It's a philosophical view that I think the Biden administration holds, [similar to the] Obama administration, which is you don't want to poke the bear. They would rather be more accommodating. They'd rather have talks and negotiations.
Why do we continue to accommodate them when we don't receive the same [treatment] in kind? We said we've had enough, and we took a number of steps. Unfortunately the [Biden] administration pulled back a lot of them because they have a different outlook.
Federal Newswire
What are some of the policies lawmakers should pursue?
Chad Wolf
I think there's a number of things that Congress and policymakers can look at when we talk about China. It goes back to this theme of reciprocity.
Let's look at the student visas they give Americans to study in China. It's every six months or it's every nine months, and then you have to go in and talk with a communist official. They’re going to ask a hundred questions to try to get some intelligence out of you. Why aren't we doing the same?
I think Congress can look across the board. Let's just apply some reciprocity to these issues, whether it's the cyber security cooperation, student visas, or the amount of investment in critical infrastructure. When we see Chinese companies buying dry cleaners that are a couple of miles away from an air force base in the middle of America, [we should ask], why do they want to do that? It's not difficult.
[The] Chinese government [would never] allow that to occur in China.
Federal Newswire
What else should we be looking at, including at the state level to put us in a better position?
Chad Wolf
I think it starts with the youth. Going back and studying US history and then world history, there's very little that we actually study about China. It's mostly European history, it's the Middle East, and it's things like that.
Young folks coming up are going to be making our decisions. We really need to start educating them on not only the history of China, but also about the Communist party.
From a DHS perspective, I saw we didn't have a lot of China experts. It was concerning. I think the majority of experts that you do have are probably in the intelligence community and at the Department of State.
We need to think about making some investment in the next generation so they understand what we're up against. Then there needs to be a little bit more of a national campaign to make sure that the American people understand it. [This includes] companies and organizations like the NBA and others that are doing business with China yet won't say anything about what's going on with the Uyghur [Muslims}.
Federal Newswire
How does the China initiative fit in with your work at AFPI?
Chad Wolf
At AFPI, what we do is to make sure that we are putting America First principles and policy in play. And what do I mean by that? We have a lot of ideas, a lot of us practiced these ideas in the previous administration as well as other administrations, and so we want to bring some of that practical knowledge into that policy making apparatus.
So that's what we're doing across 20 different centers and initiatives at AFPI, and it ranges from a lot of domestic issues to national security issues.
Our national security team is not only looking at traditional threats, such as how do we preserve stability and peace in the Middle East, but also looking at the war in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Our China Policy Initiative is a big [focus] of our national security team. All of our policy centers are dealing with [China’s malign influence], and so that's why we created the China Policy Initiative.
[It’s] to make sure that we're taking a comprehensive look at what's going on. How are we protecting Americans and putting Americans first in … the work around China. [It] is our number-one existential threat.
