The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will hold a hearing Wednesday to discuss the threats posed by China to U.S. national security.
Watch the hearing at 2:45 p.m. ET in the video player above.
Witnesses testifying at the hearing include Bill Evanina, founder and CEO of Evanina Group and former director for the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC); Anna Puglisi, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University; and Matt Pottinger, distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institute and former Deputy National Advisor for the White House.
Researchers at the Federation of American Scientists estimate that China has approximately 250 underground missile silos under construction after they used satellite imagery to identify a new field being built in western China.
U.S. Strategic Command tweeted a link last week to a story in The New York Times on the federation’s findings, which were published this week.
“The public has discovered what we have been saying all along about the growing threat the world faces and the veil of secrecy that surrounds it,” said Strategic Command, which oversees America’s nuclear arsenal.
The field in the Xinjiang region is the second one reported this summer. In June, researchers at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California identified another field under construction in neighboring Gansu province.
China has not commented on the reports. Asked about the latest one, the Foreign Ministry said Friday that it was not aware of the situation.
The reports come at a time when relations between the U.S. and China have plunged to their worst level in decades. The two nations remain sharply at odds over a range of issues, including trade, technology, cybersecurity, human rights and China’s increasingly assertive foreign policy under President Xi Jinping.
The PBS NewsHour will update this story as it develops.
