WASHINGTON -- Growing US competition with China may lead to a second Cold War, a US military intelligence officer said Wednesday.

Rear Adm. Mike Studeman, director for intelligence at the US Indo-Pacific Command, also argued other US adversaries such as North Korea consider every day a war with the US for the upper hand.

"You can avoid the word 'Cold War' and that's fine, but the degree of action that we need to take is of the magnitude of what we applied in the previous century," Studeman said of the US-China rivalry.

He, however, said the US has yet to assess how to best deal with the growing competition from China.

"We are not there yet as a nation in understanding how to best employ our energy, our treasure to be able to grapple with it," he said in a webinar hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a nonprofit organization based in Arlington, Virginia.

The Joe Biden administration says its relationship with China will be competitive when necessary but also one of cooperation when possible.

Studeman insisted for countries like China and North Korea, every day brings conflict with the United States.

"For the Chinese, Russians, North Koreans, Iranian, every day is a day of war in terms of the continuous struggle for advantage and disadvantage for influence," he said, adding, "And this is where we may be failing to see the real danger." (Yonhap)