In his 1940 book, “Why England Slept,” John F. Kennedy examined England’s failure during the 1930s to respond effectively to the emerging threat from Nazi Germany. Like England, the U.S. today keeps hitting the snooze button instead of facing the challenge from China now on our doorstep.

A small sampling of China’s recent activities exposes its hostile intentions.

Just two months ago, in what the U.S. Treasury Department called a “major incident,” Chinese state-sponsored actors hacked into employee workstations and accessed important records, including highly sensitive records in Treasury’s Foreign Assets Control office.

Other large-scale cyberattacks by China on our water, energy and telecommunications infrastructure reveal what intelligence officials describe as “pre-positioning,” so that China can disrupt the U.S. ability to respond in the event of a conflict.

China’s acquisition of farmland near critical U.S. military installations could also be used to monitor and disrupt U.S. military communications responding to Chinese aggression.

Without China’s financial and material backing, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may have faltered long ago.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, recently declared that China is now “on a dangerous course,” with its military forces continuously rehearsing for the “forced unification” of........

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