How might China's scientific, information, and commercial activities in the Arctic contribute to the country's broader security goals by enabling the collection of intelligence, allowing access to critical infrastructure, or providing other types of military advantages? China's activities in the Arctic have increased, and China's overall approach to strategic competition, which fuses the public with the private and the civilian sphere with the military, has heightened U.S. concerns that China might be on its way to becoming a security and military actor in the Arctic and that Russia is enabling this pathway. In this report, the authors present an analysis of China's economic, scientific, and information activities in the Arctic and call special attention to the intelligence collection and military risks that they might present, including the threat signals for these risks. The authors explore five categories of activities: natural resource exploitation, knowledge development, access to infrastructure, data transmission, and public diplomacy.

The authors assess trends in how U.S. allies and partners view the evolving competition with China and Russia and identify opportunities that the United States and the Department of the Air Force (DAF) can leverage for cooperation and coalition-building. Although many countries share U.S. concerns, their perspectives of the threat posed by China and Russia vary depending on their region, history, economy, and other factors. Current U.S. and DAF security cooperation (SC) planning efforts focus on how countries can align their policies, priorities, and investments with those of the United States. Ensuring that DAF organizations also incorporate these countries' perspectives into planning can help the DAF more effectively direct its SC activities and resources in an era of strategic competition. This research was completed in September 2022. It has not been subsequently revised.