China 'as big a threat to US' as Russia

Chinese efforts to exert covert influence over the West are just as concerning as Russian subversion, the director of the CIA has said.

Mike Pompeo said that the Chinese "have a much bigger footprint" to do this than the Russians do.

As examples he cited efforts to steal US commercial information and infiltration of schools and hospitals - and this extended to Europe and the UK.

Mr Pompeo was a hardline Republican congressman before becoming CIA chief.

Mr Pompeo also said:

-He expected Russia to try to disrupt US mid-term elections in November 2018. There had

been no significant diminishing of Russian attempts at subversion in Europe and the US.

-North Korea may have the ability to strike the US with nuclear missiles "in a handful of months"

-Recent claims in the book Fire and Fury that Mr Trump was not up to the job were "drivel".

Mr Pompeo also challenged the idea that the US had little influence on the conflict in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad is still in power and backed by Russian and Iranian support.

"We're going to work on those complicated problem sets and push back against the Iranians everyplace we can," he told

The CIA director said that Iran firing missiles at Saudi Arabia through a proxy force in Yemen was "unacceptable" and constituted "acts of war".

The US spy chief told the BBC countries could collectively do more to combat Chinese efforts to exert power over the West.

Source: bbc