Atlanta’s main airport grinds to a halt when drones are seen buzzing in the sky.
Hours later, Chicago goes dark after a power substation mysteriously catches fire.
San Diego officials were already struggling to control an oil spill on the Coronado. Faucets have run dry in Denver due to a contaminated reservoir.
Then, a racist TikTok meme inspires a mass shooting in Minnesota, a cyberattack briefly shutters the Nasdaq exchange, and armed immigrants storm the Eagle Pass border post in Texas.
No, this isn’t the opening sequence to a Hollywood movie — these are the nightmare scenarios in two bombshell reports from America’s top national security think tanks.
Sandor Fabian, at the Modern War Institute, and RAND Corporation’s Ian Mitch, paint a terrifying picture of the growing web of Chinese agents, often passing for students and businesspeople, deployed on US soil.
They’ve been in the US for years, silencing dissidents among the Chinese diaspora. But this ‘secret army’ can be redirected to acts of sabotage if US-China relations turn nasty, the scholars warn.
‘The ways available for China to inflict serious physical and psychological damage on the US homeland and population in case of war are only limited by Beijing’s imagination,’ says Fabian, a former commando.
Another caravan of immigrants heads to the US border, only in this scary scenario, it’s armed and directed by a foreign adversary
The US federal government faces a ‘significant challenge’ because our society is already a tinder box of racial and political differences ready to be lit by foreign psy ops, he adds.
The reports are a clarion call for tighter security at power plants, airports, data centers and other potential targets, and more intelligence officers to counter the growing menace.
China’s embassy in Washington DC in a statement told the Daily Mail that the reports were ‘groundless and malicious smear attacks’, asserting that Beijing is committed to ‘peaceful development’ and does not interfere in other countries’ affairs.
Fabian and Mitch do not envisage an all-out war involving nuclear weapons between the US and China.
Instead, they imagine a conflict playing out between the two superpowers 6,000 miles away in the Indo-Pacific.
In that scenario, China could launch non-conventional attacks from within the US that it could plausibly deny, so as not to escalate into a nuclear war.
The reports come amid deepening tensions between the two economic powerhouses, and credible reports that Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered his forces to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.
The US has defense ties with the self-governing Island, which Beijing views as a wayward province. A Chinese assault or naval blockade of Taiwan could quickly spiral into a conflict between the US and China, experts say.
Still, a US-China war is by no means a certainty, and both countries conduct wide-ranging talks on everything from trade disputes to developing norms on artificial intelligence and combating terrorism.
Fears about clandestine operations on US soil came to a head in June, when a Chinese researcher in Michigan and her boyfriend were charged with smuggling a biological pathogen that ravages crops into the US.
Even small drones flying close to an airport have forced closures that cause millions of dollars of damage
Yunqing Jian, 33, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan and member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), allegedly smuggled a pathogen into the US
The fungus, Fusarium graminearum, is classified in scientific literature as an agroterrorism weapon
Chinese-American academic Wang Shuju posed as a pro-democracy activist while feeding information to Beijing
China-aligned groups launched coordinated raids on anti-Beijing protesters during President Xi Jinping’s 2023 visit to California
An oil spill, like this one in southern California, is among the unconventional attacks that could be deployed
Yunqing Jian, 33, a University of Michigan postdoctoral fellow and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member, and her partner, were caught at an airport with a dangerous fungus known as Fusarium graminearum.
They were charged with smuggling and lying to investigators. FBI Director Kash Patel called it a ‘sobering reminder that the CCP is working around the clock to deploy operatives and researchers to infiltrate American institutions.’
Jian’s arrest raised troubling questions about the roughly 280,000 Chinese students enrolled at US universities, and spotlights a series of shockers on US soil that can be traced back to Beijing.
Chinese-American scholar Shujun Wang was in 2024 convicted of posing as a pro-democracy activist, but in reality gathering information on dissidents and feeding their details to Beijing.
He famously burned down an artwork depicting Xi’s head as a coronavirus molecule at a sculpture park in the Mojave Desert in July 2021.
Chinese operatives have meanwhile been caught running alleged political smear campaigns and monitoring dissidents in the US with spying gear and GPS trackers.
New Yorker Chen Jinping faces jail for running a bootleg police station for the Chinese government in Manhattan, to which he pleaded guilty in December 2024.
During Xi’s visit to San Francisco in 2023, China-aligned groups launched coordinated raids on anti-Beijing protesters, attacking them with flagpoles and chemical sprays, and tossing sand in their eyes.
Chen Jinping and and others were arrested for allegedly operating a Chinese ‘secret police station’ in Manhattan’s Chinatown
The surreptitious ‘police station’ in lower Manhattan was used to monitor and harass US-based dissidents
US authorities meanwhile have tracked dozens of incidents in which Chinese nationals, sometimes posing as tourists, attempted to access military bases and other sensitive sites — perhaps probing security and laying plans for future attacks.
House Republicans took action this week, introducing a bill to end the CCP’s grip on American farmland.
Chinese entities have in recent years bought up 265,000 acres of American agricultural land, official figures show. Some of it is near sensitive military sites, stoking fears that the purchases could be used to stage military operations in the future.
US officials have already quietly busted dozens of espionage rings in recent years. But experts say that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Mitch, a former Department of Homeland Security intelligence officer, says China has built up a ‘deep bench’ of spies, sources, and contacts in the US chiefly aimed at silencing and harassing critics of its government.
All the while, he adds, they are ‘developing the skills to physically sabotage critical infrastructure during a conflict.’
Fabian says the US homeland is far more vulnerable than most people — and policymakers — want to believe.
From drone attacks and cyber sabotage to manipulated mass protests and chaos at the border, he says the nightmare scenarios are endless.
He outlines a disturbing future: one where Chinese operatives exploit deep divisions in US society, weaponize immigration flows, crash critical infrastructure, and use social media to turn Americans against each other.
Overseas Chinese got out their flags to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping during his 2023 visit to California
Homeland security agents prepare for drone strikes on LAX and other major airports
He points to real-world examples — fishing boats cutting undersea cables, drones grounding commercial planes, and malware shutting down gas pipelines — as proof of how low-tech or deniable attacks can cause massive disruption with minimal effort.
Among his most alarming predictions:
- Cyberattacks on healthcare systems, financial networks, and power grids — causing mass panic and long-term service outages.
- Drone incursions over military bases and airports, with the potential for sabotage, surveillance, or deadly strikes.
- Proxies and manipulated protests inflaming racial and political tensions — potentially sparking riots and civil unrest.
- Weaponized immigration, using mass migration flows to overwhelm federal agencies, spark political outrage, and ignite violence.
- Social media manipulation, including deepfakes, fake news, and foreign-controlled algorithms aimed at dividing Americans and paralyzing national unity.
Both researchers warn that America’s intelligence teams are overstretched.
The FBI in 2020 revealed that about half of its caseload of 5,000 counterintelligence probes related to China.
That has likely increased in the past five years, even as agents have been transferred to the immigration enforcement beat.
For Fabian, Washington must not only bolster security at soft targets and expand intelligence operations — but also wake up the American public to the chilling threats their enemies may already be plotting.
‘It is time to begin developing a total defense approach to preparing American society, not just the military, for the realities of a future war,’ he said.
A spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington strongly rejected the claims in the reports.
‘The articles are groundless and malicious smear attacks against China. We firmly oppose it,’ the spokesperson said in a statement.
‘China is committed to the path of peaceful development. We never pose a threat to any country, nor do we interfere in other countries’ internal affairs.’
Instead, added the spokesperson, China and the US have a ‘shared responsibility for safeguarding peace and cooperation, and no reason for conflict and confrontation.’
