After an unidentified flying object violated American airspace last month, conspiracies swirled wildly. Was it a hobbyist’s weather balloon? Did our own government launch it? Could it have been some kind of alien craft?

After an American fighter shot the UFO down on Feb. 4, the Department of Defense confirmed that it was a Chinese spy balloon designed to surveil the United States. The balloon was likely part of a larger intelligence-gathering program targeting dozens of countries on every continent, according to defense officials.

The balloon incident and its aftermath present a real opportunity for the Biden administration to build broad public support for the kind of policies the U.S. needs to implement to compete with China. They should start by educating the public about the threat China poses to both our economy and national security.

Most Americans already understand that the Chinese Communist Party is the enemy. One recent poll found that over 60% of Americans are “extremely” or “very concerned” about the danger China poses to the United States. The efforts of China hawks to shape public opinion have been highly successful.

But the Biden administration can be doing much more to explain the stakes of our competition with China. With the ongoing war in Ukraine and growing Chinese threats to Taiwanese sovereignty, it is plain that international relations are approaching a crisis. For the United States to prepare for the difficult road ahead, our leaders should clearly communicate the risks we face and what it will take to overcome them.

One group attempting to do this important work is the Forum for American Leadership . Members of their Intelligence Working Group recently put out an excellent report detailing several ways leaders in Washington can respond to the crisis sparked by the Chinese spy balloon.

At the heart of FAL’s recommendations is a plea to strategically declassify more material related to the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to undermine the West. “Full transparency is important to the American public,” the experts said, so that we can “fully understand China’s intentions and capabilities, uncover China’s global intentions, and refute China’s bogus claims.”

FAL’s recommendations dovetail nicely with a bill recently reintroduced in the House by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and several other leading Republicans. The legislation would declassify intelligence related to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gallagher also chairs a new Select Committee on China, which aims to raise awareness about the rising great power conflict.

At the moment, so many of the CCP’s activities are shrouded in secrecy. The motives, methods, and goals of our new communist adversaries are far more inscrutable than those of the Soviets. What FAL, Gallagher, and other China hawks realize is that strategic declassification can help build a broad public consensus in support of the measures that will be necessary if the U.S. hopes to beat the CCP.

For example, we will need to build dozens more ships. The Chinese navy has been steadily outgrowing America’s, and now numbers around 340 ships to the U.S.’s 300. Shipbuilding is expensive and time-consuming, and we will need to majorly increase defense spending if we want to keep pace. And that’s not even to mention restoring weapon and ammunition stockpiles depleted due to our continued support of Ukraine.

But competing to win means investing massive resources. Biden’s top priority should be persuading Americans of this reality and building up support for the necessary investments in our national security. He should be giving prime-time addresses from the Oval Office outlining Chinese communist aggression and a strategy to counteract it.

Unfortunately, Biden has mostly avoided talking about foreign policy from the biggest stages. In his most recent State of the Union address , for instance, Biden mostly avoided discussing foreign policy in any great detail.

The good news is that Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are reaching a genuine consensus regarding the threat of the CCP. In no small part, though, this cross-partisan convergence is a result of access to highly classified material outlining very specific ways the CCP is undermining or attacking American interests. The broader public does not have the same kind of access — unless the administration decided to strategically declassify information to help build their case against the CCP.

In the build-up to World War II, Winston Churchill was a voice crying out in the wilderness for rearmament. He was derided as a crank and cast into the outer darkness for telling the truth about Nazi Germany. But in hindsight, all of Churchill’s warnings were vindicated.

“I am afraid that if you look intently at what is moving towards Great Britain, you will see that the only choice open is the old grim choice our forebears had to face,” Churchill said in one 1934 radio broadcast , “namely, whether we shall submit or whether we shall prepare, whether we shall submit to the will of the stronger nation or whether we shall prepare to defend our rights, our liberties, and indeed, our lives.”

The same choice which faced Churchill’s Britain faces Biden’s America. The genocidal, hegemonic ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party are eerily similar to the ambitions of the Nazi Party. By telling the truth about those ambitions and the threat they pose, this administration could leave the United States much more prepared to face the coming crisis.

Michael Lucchese is the founder of Pipe Creek Consulting, a communications firm based in Washington, D.C. Before that, he was a communications aide to Sen. Ben Sasse. He is a Hillsdale College graduate and a former political studies fellow at the Hudson Institute.