Decoupling from China foolish, says spy chief

Central Intelligence Agency director William Burns says decoupling from China would be foolish given the deep economic interdependence, so the United States should try to diversify its supply chains.

"China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and increasingly the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do so," Burns said in a lecture in Oxfordshire, England.

"The answer to that is not to decouple from an economy like China's, which would be foolish, but to sensibly de-risk and diversify by securing resilient supply chains, protecting our technological edge and investing in industrial capacity."

Burns said the CIA has established a mission center focused on the Asian power and more than doubled the budget on China activities.

Burns also said the armed mutiny by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was a challenge to the Russian state that had shown the corrosive effect of President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine.

Putin has thanked the army and security forces for averting what he said could have turned into a civil war, and has compared the mutiny to the chaos that plunged Russia into two revolutions in 1917.

For months, Prigozhin had been openly insulting Putin's most senior military men that shocked top Russian officials, but were left unanswered.

"It is striking that Prigozhin preceded his actions with a scathing indictment of the Kremlin's mendacious rationale for the invasion of Ukraine and of the Russian military leadership's conduct of the war," Burns said.

"The impact of those words and those actions will play out for some time."

Burns, who served as US ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008 and was appointed CIA director in 2021, cast Prigozhin's mutiny as an "armed challenge" to Russia.

Since a deal was struck a week ago to end the mutiny, the Kremlin has sought to project calm, with Putin, 70, discussing tourism, economic development and meeting crowds in Dagestan.

Russia will emerge stronger after the failed mutiny so the West need not worry about stability in the world's biggest nuclear power, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

But Burns said the war had been a strategic failure for Russia by laying bare its military weakness and damaging the Russian economy for years to come, while the Nato military alliance grows stronger.

Burns said Russia's "future as a junior partner and economic colony of China" was being shaped "by Putin's mistakes."

He added that disaffection in Russia with the war in Ukraine was creating a rare opportunity to recruit spies.

"That disaffection creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us at the CIA ... we're not letting it go to waste."

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