What is known about NATO's newest China-intelligence chief

The American-German Politico journal has presented what is known about NATO's newest intelligence Chief, Scott Bray, who is an expert on China. Caliber.Az reprints this article.

"NATO is about to get a new intelligence chief who is ready to bring decades of experience collecting data on China.

The person tapped to lead the alliance’s intel analysis is Scott Bray, currently the acting director of Naval Intelligence at the Pentagon. That’s according to a Wednesday post by the official he’ll be taking over from, and confirmed Thursday to NSD by NATO.

'Scott Bray is a highly-respected leader in the intelligence community, with a wealth of experience across major files of importance to NATO', the alliance said in an emailed statement. 'We look forward to welcoming him as Assistant Secretary-General for Intelligence and Security later this year.'

Bray has carved out a long career focused almost entirely on Beijing — even spending a year in the US Embassy working with the military attache in the Chinese capital in 2007-08.

With a war raging in Ukraine that has occasionally seen air defense missiles and Russian drones fall into NATO territory, why pick a China and East Asia hand to run the alliance’s intel shop in Brussels?

There are a couple reasons, ranging from Washington’s traditional lock on the intel job to NATO’s pre-Russian invasion push to keep a closer eye on what is happening in the Indo-Pacific and concern over China’s breakneck military modernization efforts.

Let’s get into some background first.

The intel position at NATO is generally an American job, partly because 'we’re the ones that have most of the intel assets', said Jim Townsend, who spent years working on NATO and European security issues at the Pentagon and NATO HQ.

'It’s hard enough to get intel from the US, even on a good day, so if you have an American who’s running that intel shop, who is from the US intelligence community', American intelligence offices 'feel a little more comfortable giving information to an American at NATO', added Townsend, who’s now an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

There’s also the more obvious reason that China’s influence, both military and economic, is unavoidable, whether you’re sitting in Vancouver or Vilnius.

While he’s got two decades focused intently on China, Bray has also been the deputy director of Naval Intelligence since 2000, giving him a more global focus.

That double punch might be attractive to NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, who has long said he wants to expand the alliance’s view beyond Europe. The desire was obvious in the China-centric reports that came out of the alliance prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 'They’re trying to kind of maintain that focus which got derailed by Russia, but I still think they want to have that element' in their wider policy discussions, said Bryan Clark, a retired Navy officer who worked with Bray at the Pentagon.

Bray will most likely take over in November from David Cattler, a Naval Academy grad and retired Navy officer who also worked in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and at the White House’s National Security Council. While Cattler also held Indo-Pacific focused jobs before heading to Brussels, his career wasn’t as focused on the region as Bray’s.

Bray will actually be the second China hand the Biden administration has sent to Brussels.

In November 2021, Biden also sent David Helvey, a longtime DOD official who spent years working Asian security and defense issues to NATO to act as the deputy defense advisor to US representative to NATO Ambassador Julianne Smith.

The appointment of Bray has raised some questions over the alliance’s focus on the war in its own backyard, however.

'Everyone’s acknowledged by now that NATO is not going to play a big role in a China contingency', Townsend said.

'This isn’t the Biden transition where you’re being clever by sending a China hand to NATO headquarters. Now we’ve got a big, long war going on in Europe, and we’re still sending China people there?"