CIA chief warns US politi­cians to ‘get their act togeth­er’ to best Chi­na

U.S. polit­i­cal “dys­func­tion” is ham­per­ing the country’s options to exploit Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jinping’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, accord­ing to the CIA chief.
“Even with all its ambi­tion, even with all its expand­ing capa­bil­i­ties, and a real­ly seri­ous mil­i­tary mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram, [China]’s not 10 feet tall,” CIA direc­tor Bill Burns said this week at the George W. Bush Pres­i­den­tial Cen­ter. “If we can get our own act togeth­er in this coun­try, not just in terms of the econ­o­my, but in terms of our polit­i­cal sys­tem, over­come some of our own dys­func­tion some­times, there’s every rea­son to think we have a bet­ter hand to play than the People’s Repub­lic of Chi­na does today.”
Burns offered that remon­strance amid an acri­mo­nious debate in Con­gress over sup­ple­men­tal defense fund­ing for aid to Ukraine, a mea­sure that hard-right House Repub­li­cans have stalled by threat­en­ing to oust Speak­er …