The US intelligence community believes that China is actively building a military force capable of capturing Taiwan, even with US support for the island.

The threat to Taiwan through 2030 remains acute, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, CNN reports.

"It's our view that (China is) working hard to effectively put themselves into a position in which their military is capable of taking Taiwan over our intervention," Haines said, declining to publicly provide further details on the intelligence community's timeline.

But as Haines and the head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, have warned, the US does not yet know what lessons Chinese President Xi Jinping will learn from the war in Ukraine. How Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party interpret the events of this crisis could affect his timeline and approach to Taiwan, they said.

Haines and Berrier also noted that the US believes that China would rather avoid a military conflict over Taiwan.

Taiwan is also drawing important lessons from the Ukraine conflict that could help it better defend itself against China, Berrier added.

On Saturday, CIA Director William Burns also said the conflict in Ukraine has affected China's calculations when it comes to how and when it will attempt to take control of Taiwan.

The New York Times reported Saturday that the Biden administration is quietly pushing the Taiwanese government to order American-made weapons such as missiles and small arms for asymmetric warfare, which it believes are better suited to defend against a Chinese invasion.

A US State Department spokesman said on Monday that strengthening Taiwan's self-defense is an urgent task, and the most effective approach to address it is to invest in asymmetric capabilities that are reliable, resilient, mobile, and cost-effective.

The spokesman said that assessment was echoed by members of the Biden administration, many credible experts as well as Taiwan itself.