CNN: Biden Admin Considers Establishing Emergency Hotline to China

EXCERPT:

ATWOOD: “So, what the Biden administration officials are doing right now is examining this possibility. It’s in the early stages. And the reason for that is because this has been discussed for years. The discussions date back to the Obama Administration, but this idea wasn’t really formalized until it was put into a national security memo during the Trump Administration in the final year. And that’s what launched U.S. officials to start looking at the technicalities here. Could this actually happen? Now, my understanding is that the Biden administration would only really use this if they developed it as part of a grander risk reduction strategy between the U.S. and China. But the problem here, of course, would be is China actually going to engage? Because there have been problems in getting in touch with China at multiple levels from the U.S. side. There’s actually already a hotline, a few hotlines that are established at different levels of government. One is at the Pentagon. And a senior official at NSC, Kurt Campbell actually earlier this year said that that phone line is known to ring for hours and hours in an empty room in China when the U.S. tries to use it. So, there could be issues here, but the bottom line is that this tool would actually allow President Biden to get in touch with President Xi or those around him in an encrypted way that was immediate.”