Nury Vittachi: THE EMBARRASSED U.S. is gradually discovering that it has outsourced key elements of the coming war against China … to China. 尷尬的美國逐漸發現，它已經把即將到來的對華戰爭的關鍵要素……外包給了中國.

Key elements of warfare, from fighter-bombers, Hellfire missiles, nightvision goggles, etc, are being made by the very citizens set to be attacked.

RAYTHEON IN CHINA
In 2023, the head of America’s giant military manufacturer Raytheon slammed US talk of separation from China. The company has “several thousand suppliers in China and decoupling . . . is impossible,” Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes told the Financial Times. The same was true for other US companies in the same sector, he said.

“Think about the US$500bn of trade that goes from China to the US every year. More than 95 per cent of rare earth materials or metals come from, or are pro¬cessed in, China. There is no alternative,” he added.

Raytheon has about 2,000 employees in China, he admitted.

NEED FOR EXEMPTIONS

• In 2012, the Pentagon warned that its program to build the F-35 fighter bomber jet would come to a complete halt because US laws prohibited the use of Chinese materials—and asked the government to issue legal exemptions to allow the building program to continue.
• In 2013, it was noted that the glass in US-made night vision goggles used a soft metal called lanthanum, which came from China.
• In 2014, Chinese items were found in the list of assembly gear for the Boeing B-1B bomber and Lockheed Martin’s F-16 military jets.

HUGE COST OF CHINA BAN
Also in 2013, CNBC reported that “chief U.S. arms buyer Frank Kendall allowed two F-35 suppliers, Northrop Grumman and Honeywell International, to use Chinese magnets for the new warplane’s radar system, landing gears and other hardware”.

“In one case, it would cost US$10.8 million and take about 25,000 man-hours to remove the Chinese-made magnets and replace them with American ones,” CNBC reported.

The magnets worked fine. The ONLY issue was that they were made by Chinese people.

EXPENSIVE TO FIX
In another case, the US Government Accountability Office issued a report saying that the military had for years obtained the chemical Butanetriol, used in the Hellfire air-to-surface missile, from China.

The US military eventually had to fund the creation of an entire factory in 2014 to make its own supply.

U.S. DEFIES THE WORLD
In 2018, the US became concerned that most of its military solid rocket engines used a substance called Dechlorane. It was purchased from a Belgian company that made it using materials from China. This had to stop.

But the issue became more complex when the latest version of the substance, Dechlorane Plus, was banned globally as deadly to humans and nature.

Stockholm Convention signatories agreed that the additive should be prohibited from use worldwide.

Most countries in the world signed and ratified the convention, including China – but the US chose not to do so. (The US is statistically the superpower least likely to ratify the treaties, or “rules-based order”, that keep the world safe. China has a mixed record.)

CHINESE TECH
Also in 2018, the US realized that 90 per cent of the world’s printed circuit boards came from mainland China and Taiwan. This triggered an uptick in the stale, decades-old US propaganda presenting the Chinese as permanently on the verge of “invading” its own land.

One New York tech company made a fortune by selling Chinese-made equipment to the US military by falsely claiming it was built domestically, according to a 2019 court case.

Aventura Technologies, slipped up when Chinese writing was found in some of its circuit boards.

In September of 2022, the Pentagon had to halt deliveries of the F-35 after finding that a magnet in a component made by Honeywell International for the aircraft’s engine contained a rare cobalt and samarium alloy from China. A US govt waiver was needed.

TWO MINDSETS
What is extraordinary is the different mindsets of these two communities.

The US has a top-down focus on using weapons to maintain global dominance. China has a bottom-up focus on development and trade to produce goods for the world, irrespective of political gamesmanship.