China has the capacity to execute a covert strike on the U.S. not unlike Israel’s recent use of weaponized drones inside Iranian territory, defense experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
China has multiple potential avenues of subterfuge in the U.S., including its ownership of farmland around military bases, its surveillance of American energy infrastructure and its frequent presence in America’s shipping docks. Experts told the DCNF that China putting together an operation is not out of the realm of possibilities given the nation’s existing foothold in the U.S.
“China is pre-positioning its own capabilities, [but] not necessarily to go after our military assets,” Michael Sobolik, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the DCNF. “They are working to have the capability to sabotage our own critical infrastructure…they are laying the foundation now to cripple us, paralyze us at home and send us back to 19th-century lifestyle without the modern conveniences of functioning electricity and functioning internet.”
Chinese nationals own farm lands around at least 19 military bases, while other Chinese nationals have, on multiple occasions, been caught trying to infiltrate military bases. The second largest foreign owner of farmland in the U.S. is Chinese billionaire Chen Tianqiao, chairman and CEO of global investment firm Shanda Group.
“China’s ownership of land and other assets around military bases produces a broad threat,” Michael Lucci, CEO of State Armor, told the DCNF. “And so at a more basic level, there’s the threat that through signals collection and other espionage, they would be able to develop pattern of life recognition for key commanders who serve on that base. And then you can scale that up all the way to, kind of the Israeli-Ukrainian example of being able to execute against objectives on that base in the event of China going for Taiwan, so that proximity produces peril.”
In addition to farmland, China has made efforts to survey and potentially sabotage American energy centers, with the U.S. reportedly finding devices in May capable of remotely triggering blackouts on many Chinese-made solar panels. Moreover, cybercriminals tied to China have targeted federal officials and agencies, telecommunications companies and other utility infrastructure since the beginning of 2023.
Additionally, lawmakers have long had concerns with Chinese drones made by Da Jiang Industries (DJI) potential to spy on Americans, with the company lifting its geofencing restrictions on its products that prevented them from flying over military bases, airports and other locations. Sobolik said that the drones can already be used to potentially survey energy infrastructure.
DJI alone produces an estimated 70% of the world’s drones.
The Israeli strikes last night kneecapped Iran significantly, taking out key assets and leadership.
The months-long, clandestine operation, which reportedly involved U.S. cooperation and covert bases on Iranian soil, just changed the game in the Middle East. @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/vgMLAwHWiQ
— Wallace H. White (@WallHWhite) June 13, 2025
“The warnings that the U.S. government has put out about them are about their ability to surveil from an aerial vantage point the U.S. electrical grid, and then to send that surveillance back to China,” Sobolik told the DCNF.
Drones have often been weaponized in warfare as flying explosive devices, which have been utilized to devastating effect on the modern battlefield.
Most notably, Ukraine smuggled drones into Russia territory over the course of months before launching an attack on Russia’s strategic bomber assets. Israel both used drones and missiles smuggled into a secret base in Iran to strike at air defense targets deep behind enemy lines, paving the way for the Israeli Air Force.
China has also made intrusions into America’s shipping docks, with a Congressional investigation in 2024 finding peculiar communications devices on shipping dock equipment sourced from China. Moreover, Chinese company COSCO operates within American shipping yards despite having ties to the Peoples’ Liberation Army.
Sobolik also warned that China could easily conceal something like a missile or drones in a cargo container and position it miles off American shores.
“It would not be difficult to put a missile on top of a big tanker,” Sobolik told the DCNF. “That’s easy, and it would be fairly easy to conceal it and have that big cargo vessel sitting off the coast of the United States. That is definitely a threat vector, and that is a problem.”
While American companies also exert considerable influence in China, the government keeps a much closer eye on their activities compared to the U.S. government’s stance on Chinese entities, Lucci told the DCNF.
“The Chinese government is far more suspect of anything American on its shores, many times those American production companies that offshore to China, in order to access the Chinese production market and to get that cheaper labor and things like that, they have to create a joint venture with a Chinese company,” Lucci told the DCNF.
China has made military hardware capable of launching drones from a covert location, with one model designed to look like an innocuous truck only to house 48 kamikaze drones inside. Such technology is relatively novel, and has rapidly evolved since drone warfare came into vogue on the battlefield during the Russia-Ukraine conflict starting in 2022.
“There are threat vectors that the CCP is cultivating in many different directions and many different domains, and it’s like we don’t have the luxury of a simple, one silver bullet solution here,” Sobolik told the DCNF. “This is why these vulnerabilities were not exploited overnight, and they will not be resolved overnight.”
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