New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

by David E. Sanger

we left in 2017, China was largely still a regional player,” one of those officials told me. “When we came back, it was global.” There was an intelligence-gathering base in Cuba, ninety miles from the shores of Florida, where China was improving its ability to collect data on the United States—less worrisome in the cyber age than it was back when the Russians were building bases in the runup to the Cuban Missile Crisis, but worrisome nonetheless. Strange surveillance balloons were showing up around Hawaii and other key strategic areas—a cheap, innovative way to tap into American communications and learn details that couldn’t be obtained by satellite. There were silos appearing on Chinese territory, signs of a potential expansion of its nuclear program, and evidence of preparations for a nuclear test, the first in decades, at the old testing ground at Lop Nor.