Insights from Dr. Craig Albert, a Professor of Political Science and Graduate Director of Security Studies at Augusta University. This article draws on his analysis originally published in HSToday.
What if the United States were already under attack — and most Americans didn’t know it?
That’s not a hypothetical posed by a fringe theorist. It’s the central question being raised by Dr. Craig Albert, Professor of Political Science and Graduate Director of Security Studies at Augusta University, whose research into irregular warfare, cybersecurity policy, and national security threats has led him to a deeply unsettling conclusion about the fentanyl crisis gripping the United States.
“While no missiles have been launched, no bombs dropped, no artillery fired,” Albert writes, “there is absolutely a weapon that is being used, as we speak, that is taking American lives in the tens of thousands, destroying communities, and weakening U.S. society, economy, and infrastructure. That weapon is fentanyl. And the aggressor is China.”
A Different Kind of Attack
Albert opens his analysis with a thought experiment: imagine waking up to headlines announcing a devastating surprise attack on the U.S. by China — tens of thousands of casualties, communities shattered, the nation reeling. The emotional response would be immediate and overwhelming — shock, fear, grief, and a demand for action.
Now consider, Albert suggests, an attack comparable in scale and human cost but executed with such stealth and distribution across time and space that it evades those very reactions. No single moment of impact. No obvious aggressor. No unified national response.
That, he argues, is precisely what is happening. And the mechanism is chemical, not military.
Albert’s conclusions stem from research conducted alongside colleagues Guido Verbeck, Lance Hunter, Monty Philpot, and Karen A. Reyes-Monroy — a team examining the intersection of drug trafficking, geopolitics, and national security. Their findings point toward China not merely as a passive bystander to the fentanyl crisis, but as a deeply complicit — and potentially active — participant in it.
What the Evidence Shows
The basic supply chain facts are not in dispute. Most fentanyl entering the U.S. arrives via Mexican drug cartels, but the chemical precursors used to manufacture it are produced and sold by companies based in China. Albert is careful to distinguish between political narrative and documented fact — but the facts themselves, he argues, are damning enough.
“Technically, it is not China or the Chinese Communist Party itself that is selling fentanyl precursors to Mexican cartels but criminal groups in China,” he acknowledges. “However, and this is key, the Chinese government has long been aware that this is happening.”
Despite a series of legislative gestures — including class-wide scheduling of fentanyl analogues in 2019 and new regulatory laws in 2024 — Albert argues China’s actions amount to little more than optics. “Regulating a class of chemicals is not the same as enforcing those regulations,” he writes plainly. “The reality is that China’s actions amount to PR stunts at best.”
The evidence goes further. A 2024 bipartisan U.S. House committee report cited findings that the CCP subsidizes companies that manufacture and export fentanyl precursors, with those companies eligible for tax rebates and government incentives. Money laundering tied to precursor sales has been directly linked to Chinese government officials and senior CCP figures.
The Opium Wars in Reverse
Perhaps the most striking dimension of Albert’s analysis is the historical parallel he draws. China suffered enormously during the 19th-century Opium Wars, when British-backed opium exports addicted tens of millions of Chinese citizens, destabilized social structures, and left the nation exposed during a period of conflict. The damage was generational.
Albert raises the uncomfortable possibility that China has not forgotten those lessons — and may be applying them in reverse.
“It is not so far-fetched to think that China may have learned painful lessons during the Opium Wars,” he writes, “and is now using the same playbook against the U.S.” He frames this not as settled fact, but as a possibility the U.S. cannot afford to dismiss.
The strategic logic, he notes, is coldly rational. The U.S. is, in the CCP’s own strategic framing, “the country most capable of preventing the CCP from achieving its goals.” Weakening it from within — gradually, plausibly deniably, without triggering a conventional military response — would represent a masterclass in what Albert calls “unrestricted warfare.”
The U.S. Is Not Prepared for This Kind of Fight
Albert is direct about what he sees as a fundamental vulnerability in American defense strategy. The U.S. has invested enormously in conventional military capability — and lags severely when it comes to irregular warfare.
“Despite its vast, sophisticated systems and methodologies in conventional warfare, when it comes to irregular warfare the United States woefully lags behind its aggressors,” he writes.
Closing that gap, Albert argues, is not about escalation. It’s about survival. “A nation cannot effectively defend itself against tactics that it does not understand.” The fentanyl crisis, in his framing, is Exhibit A of what it costs to be unprepared for asymmetric, distributed, deniable forms of attack.
The Verdict Doesn’t Require Certainty
One of the most analytically sharp moves in Albert’s argument is his refusal to let uncertainty become an excuse for inaction. Whether China is actively engineering the fentanyl crisis or simply choosing to look away while it decimates a geopolitical rival, the outcome — and the appropriate response — is the same.
“We do not need to be certain about whether China is actively, deliberately flooding the U.S. with fentanyl or if it is simply a case of willful neglect that conveniently happens to work in their favor,” he writes. “Either way, the outcome is the same.”
His conclusion is a call to reframe the entire conversation. The fentanyl crisis is not merely a public health emergency or a drug enforcement problem. It is, Albert insists, a national security threat that demands the full weight of strategic attention the U.S. would apply to any conventional act of warfare.
“Either way, we must treat it as what it is — a form of irregular warfare — and devote the same attention and focus to it that we would with any overt act of conventional warfare.”
Dr. Craig Albert is a Professor of Political Science and Graduate Director of Security Studies at Augusta University, with research concentrations in international security, cybersecurity policy, cyberterrorism, and irregular warfare.