The United States must respond strongly to the threat China poses

April 25, 2023

In recent months there has been a lot of seriously bad news about China. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has recognized this situation and has responded by devoting a portion of its website to “The China Threat.”

Here is the opening statement by the FBI: “The counterintelligence and economic espionage efforts emanating from the government of China and the Chinese Communist Party are a grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the United States.

“Confronting this threat is the FBI’s top counterintelligence priority.

“To be clear, the adversary is not the Chinese people or people of Chinese descent or heritage. The threat comes from the programs and policies pursued by an authoritarian government.

“The Chinese government is employing tactics that seek to influence lawmakers and public opinion to achieve policies that are more favorable to China.

“At the same time, the Chinese government is seeking to become the world’s greatest superpower through predatory lending and business practices, systematic theft of intellectual property, and brazen cyber intrusions.

“China’s efforts target businesses, academic institutions, researchers, lawmakers, and the general public and will require a whole-of-society response. The government and the private sector must commit to working together to better understand and counter the threat.”

A statement on the website from FBI Director Christopher Wray said: “The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China.”

The website contains a section featuring the photos of more than 30 Chinese fugitives who are wanted by the FBI for a variety of crimes committed against U.S. interests on behalf of China. That section also includes four groups/organizations that are targeted for criminal action.

Another section, titled “The China Threat: Primers,” provides information on the risks to the country. “These resources for businesses, universities, and research institutions provide an overview of the risks partners face from China and how they can protect themselves from threats,” and includes these segments: Executive Summary; The Risk to Corporate America; The Risk to Academia.

There are other serious problems associated with Communist China, like the deadly Covid virus, which killed millions worldwide, and hundreds of thousands in the U.S. It came from China. The story China told was that it came from a wet market, which was initially accepted by many, including some well-known scientists.

The theory that is now more widely accepted is that the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where U.S. dollars had been invested in gain-of-function research. Dr. Robert Redfield, former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is one who believes it came from the Wuhan lab. The debate is whether it somehow escaped, or it was released.

China will not release its lab records that would defend its position.

The Chinese are also purchasing farm land near U.S military bases. These purchases have occurred in North Dakota, Florida and Texas, and include the purchase of 130,000 acres near Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas by a Chinese-controlled company.

In January, the U.S. Air Force said that a proposed Chinese-owned corn mill near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota “presents a significant threat to national security.” 

This story, reported by USA Today, noted that federal law “requires a Defense Department risk analysis whenever a foreign person or country buys property close to sensitive military sites.”

Furthermore, there is the concern that Chinese purchases of American companies such as Smithfield Foods could negatively affect the U.S. food supply. And we must not forget China’s part in the fentanyl coming across the southern border that has killed thousands of Americans.

The spy balloon that entered over our northwestern states, spent days over the U.S., being guided to and traveling over sensitive military bases where, officials have said, it was able to gather intelligence and send it to Beijing in real time. Finally, after the balloon had a leisurely trip across the country, it was shot down over the Atlantic off the South Carolina coast.

The FBI and other agencies shut down a clandestine Chinese “police station” in Manhattan’s Chinatown following the arrest recently of two Chinese men who were operating it. The New York Post reported that there are apparently several other stations in the country. Another one is in New York City, the Post reported, and one more is in Los Angeles.

A Madrid-based non-profit said there are stations in San Francisco and Houston, and also in Nebraska and Minnesota. The mission of these stations is to spy on Chinese nationals who are here and in other places around the world.

China is also building up its military, and has developed an intermediate-range hypersonic missile that can hit targets thousands of miles away and has a “high probability” of penetrating US defenses, according to a report.

Clearly, China is not our friend, and we must respond quickly and forcefully to these threats.

Our military must put its obsession with proper pronouns and diversity, equity and inclusion in the trash, and start focusing on again becoming the strongest, the most efficient and feared military on the Earth.

America is being torn apart from within by bad politics, leftist policies

Watching America collapse or, more accurately, be torn apart from within, is very disturbing. The country has had challenges before. Some of us remember the turbulence of the sixties. The Vietnam War, the hippies and the Civil Rights Movement all had things stirred up. But the country settled down after a while.

Today, the large number of “Americans” who do not know why our system of government is superior to the others, because they were not taught about it, did not learn about it when they were taught, or who just don’t accept it, is truly troublesome.

Barack Obama’s pledge to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” if elected should have started a revolution against that concept. Instead, due to the large number who disagree with and/or don’t understand our nation’s founding principles, it fired up a lot of people who agreed with that idea. Today we are seeing where that mindset has led us.

Our country is divided more than it has been since the Civil War. One political faction wants to change many things, frequently because “times have changed.” Things like doing away with the Electoral College that protects minority interests and getting rid of the Senate filibuster that helps discourage the introduction of highly partisan legislation, and makes it easier to pass one-sided legislation. 

It has also discussed packing the Supreme Court with liberal activists to make laws rather than to correctly interpret laws. This will strengthen and maintain leftist power in Washington for a long time.

And even though Joe Biden won the 2020 election with 81.3 million votes — the most ever — and with the highest voter turnout percentage since 1900, it wants to change election laws to “increase voter turnout.”

The other side, however, wants to protect and defend the brilliant concepts of the Founders that made America superior to every other governmental form yet conceived.

This conservative faction understands that the principles of the U.S. Constitution do not change with the winds of time, or the preferences of political parties. And it understands why they should not change. 

The “conservative” justices on the Supreme Court and other courts work to maintain founding principles, and to save the republic from the suicidal tendencies of the socialist/communist radical left.

Laws that protect people must be followed and protected. And people that cannot or will not live and act in compliance with those laws must be punished. The safety of the populace is of utmost importance in the workings of a good government.

Fortunately, the disastrous results of defund the police, no bail/low bail, and not punishing some crimes are being seen for the irrational blunders they are. Yet millions among us still want to change direction from that which brought us a strong nation, and they are having negative effects on our country.

Education, which has been made far less effective because of the fear surrounding the Covid virus, now is home to a movement, mostly in secret, to improperly change the history curriculum. Some of this occurs at the school board level, some at the school level, and some at the instructor level. And it has spread into other subject areas.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been sneaked into classrooms, and rather than teach children that each of them is a valuable individual, it classifies them as either an oppressed person, or an oppressor. The distinction depends not on individual character, but on skin color. 

Instead of encouraging kids to understand and get along with each other, CRT pits groups of kids against each other, further intensifying the discord we see.

Some school boards deny parents their right to express concerns at meetings, and deny them requested materials. Some board members tell parents “I don’t work for you.” Teachers unions resist the importance of getting back into the classroom, and restoring the learning environment.

Reactions to the Covid variants have had devastating effects on the country, and much of the world. Combined with the other issues, things are truly upside-down.

Advice from the scientists has been all over the board. Some of that is a normal part of learning to deal with a new disease. But two years in, there is beginning to be resistance to the control mechanisms put into effect to protect us. 

Governments and businesses mandate vaccinations. Vaccines are designed to keep people from getting a disease. Vaccines in the past have done that. The Polio, Tetanus and Measles vaccines, for example, prevent contracting those diseases. 

Some people use those vaccines to justify forcing Covid vaccinations. But there is a big difference. Covid vaccines do not prevent catching or transmitting Covid. They reportedly reduce the effects of the virus, but do not prevent catching or transmitting it.

And then there is the selective censorship by social media platforms that impede the free exchange of important ideas. It is aimed primarily at conservative politics, and the “approved” Covid messages.

Comments contrary to the approved message were taken down, labeled as “false information” by the self-appointed media judges. Much of that information, however, proved to be correct.

Free speech is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Without the free expression of ideas — good and bad ideas — we are doomed.

China presents the most serious threat America faces today

President Joe Biden “dropped an ominous note into his remarks to American service members at a Virginia military base last May, telling them that his Chinese counterpart believes Beijing will ‘own America’ inside the next 15 years,” as reported by the New York Post.

“We’re in a battle between democracies and autocracies,” Biden told troops at Joint Base Langley Eustis in Hampton. “The more complicated the world becomes, the more difficult it is for democracies to come together and reach consensus.”

Biden said that China’s President Xi Jinping “firmly believes that China, before the year [20]30, ’35, is going to own America because autocracies can make quick decisions,” although he did not elaborate on what was meant by “own America.” 

A story reported by Fox News in June a year earlier provided some details of what China has been doing, from the American Security Institute, listing five areas where China has focused its attention.

Medicine: China produces 97 percent of U.S. antibiotics and about 80 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients used in American drugs, giving the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) absolute control of potentially life-saving medicine. 

Food: In 2017, the United States imported $4.6 billion in agricultural goods from China. A Chinese firm has also purchased Smithfield, the world's largest pork processor and hog producer. Smithfield provides more than 40,000 American jobs. It partners with thousands of American farmers.

According to the U.S. Agriculture Department, by the start of 2020, Chinese owners controlled about 192,000 agricultural acres in the U.S., worth $1.9 billion, including land used for farming, ranching and forestry.

Education: The Chinese government's theft of intellectual property has been known for decades. More recently, U.S. authorities have discovered China is funding American university researchers, who don't always disclose that support.

Technology: The manufacturing of smartphones and other household items is heavily reliant on China, which controls most of the rare earth minerals that make those items work. China is seeking to build 5G networks in the United States, which could potentially feed sensitive data to the CCP.

Media: Chinese firms have bought control of 8,000-plus American theater screens and other media platforms. Thus, China can project a positive image, and block unflattering depictions of its government, in terms of both creative production and mass distribution.

The story continues, telling us that Chinese firms and investors own a controlling majority in nearly 2,400 U.S. companies. These are in the areas of aerospace, automotive, energy, entertainment, food, health care, machinery, mining, and technology.

Among these are: AMC Entertainment (entertainment), Cirrus Wind Energy (energy), Complete Genomics (health care), First International Oil (energy), G.E. Appliances (technology), IBM—P.C. division (technology), Legendary Entertainment Group (entertainment), Motorola Mobility (technology), Nexteer Automotive (automotive), Riot Games (entertainment), Smithfield Foods (food), Teledyne Continental Motors and Mattituck Services (aerospace), Terex Corp. (machinery), Triple H Coal (mining), and Zonare Medical Systems (health care).

"Under China's Communist Party dictatorship, private companies are forced to bend to the government's will," the report states.

This situation has only grown worse since those stories came out. You may remember some more recent stories about Chinese operatives being caught with their fingers in the pie.

"The first priority is to reclaim our critical supply chains so that we can become self-secure instead of reliant on the Chinese government," Will Coggin, managing director of the American Security Institute, told Fox News.

U.S. lawmakers are acting with increased concern on this issue, and both Iowa and Minnesota have passed state laws restricting foreign ownership of farmland in their states. 

While it is good that the Congress and some states have started to address this situation, it requires much more attention and action than what we have seen thus far. What can be more important to the United States than maintaining ownership and control of these vital areas of our economy, and the jobs and products under their control?

In addition to prohibiting or strictly regulating foreign ownership of U.S. companies, we should intensify efforts to bring domestic manufacturing of many products we no longer produce here, or now produce less of, back into the country.

The possibility of China having developed a heat-seeking hypersonic missile adds to the growing threat from the communist nation. The existence of such a weapon, sources say, would be a significant change in how warfare is conducted.

U.S. officials reacted to strong indications of a Chinese test of such a missile last August with surprise and shock, saying they were unaware that hypersonic missile development had reached this level. And, they suggested that our development of hypersonic missiles is far behind.

Hypersonic missiles travel at low trajectories at speeds over 15,000 mph, making them more difficult to track, and are capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

Chinese officials have denied testing such a missile, and insisted that nuclear weapons would be used only in self-defense, not as an offensive weapon. But the United States, and most other countries, say hypersonic missiles would not be practical, unless nuclear war was on the table.

Even if China does not intend to “own America,” we should not allow any nation to have so much control over our businesses, and especially not to be further advanced militarily than we are.

About Dr. Fauci, and the importance of the marketplace of ideas

Dr. Anthony Fauci is the face and official voice of all that is going on with the Covid pandemic, and how we should respond to it. Depending upon whom you ask, Fauci is either one who walks on water, or one who lives in hell.

I am one of the likely few outside the healthcare and scientific communities who had heard of the man prior to the invasion of COVID-19. That previous knowledge kept me from bowing down to him, as so many have. But at the same time, it gave me reason to give him the benefit of the doubt on the mysteries of, and prescriptions for dealing with the pandemic.

In the 1980s when AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) was a new thing, its causes were being investigated. Two schools of thought existed: one was that a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was the cause; the other was that long-term drug use and other factors that weaken the immune system were the cause.

Another scientist, Dr. Peter Duesberg, was prominent at that time. Duesberg isolated the first cancer gene through his work on retroviruses in 1970, and mapped the genetic structure of these viruses. This, and his continued work on viruses, resulted in his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. He also received a seven-year Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Duesberg had made a name for himself in the scientific world. He is regarded as a specialist on viruses and retroviruses. He was a primary voice among those who argued that HIV is not the cause of AIDS.

One of the better-known opponents of Duesberg and his theory was, and is, Anthony
Fauci, and that is how I came to know who he is. Fauci has an MD degree and has worked in the National Institutes of Health, and as a clinical associate in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he now heads. He no doubt has learned things beyond what a practicing physician knows in some areas. But does he know more about viruses than a virology expert?

Duesberg’s position is that HIV is merely a passenger in AIDS, and not the cause, a position that draws derision from the HIV = AIDS faction.

Through the decades, viruses have been defeated by vaccines. Those include: flu, SARS, measles, hepatitis A and B, mumps, chickenpox, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, and recently COVID-19. However, to date, decades after AIDS came on the scene, there is no vaccine for HIV.

Is that perhaps because, as Duesberg maintains, AIDS is not caused by a virus?

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In his new book, The Case Against the New Censorship: Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech, Progressives, and Universities, liberal Democrat and civil rights attorney Alan Dershowitz makes the case for an unrestricted “marketplace of ideas.”

John Stuart Mill is generally credited with originating the concept of the marketplace of ideas back in 1859. He argued against censorship and in favor of the free flow of ideas, claiming that the free competition of ideas is the best way to separate falsehoods from fact.

However, in certain social media platforms today, the controlling oligarchs, likely unaware of Mills and his position, insist on removing content they regard as false, or perhaps just inconvenient.

But that creates potential problems. Dershowitz wrote: “If Facebook, Twitter and YouTube take down content which they deem to be untrue, then at least some viewers may come to believe that content that is not taken down must have passed the test of truthfulness.”

“So, when social media get into the business of selectively censoring some untruths,” he continues, “it is they who may be promoting false belief in the alleged truth of the untruths they do not censor. It is a no-win situation.”

And then getting to what many believe is the deliberate muzzling of conservative comments, Dershowitz wrote that, “censorship is almost never content-neutral. Codes that purport to ban ‘offensive’ or ‘untruthful’ words are inevitably invoked selectively against politically incorrect words.”

With the free flow of ideas comes the likelihood of false or misleading information being published, which Dershowitz defends by saying “the costs of imposing a regime of censorship outweigh the costs of tolerating dangerous speech and its consequences.”

He describes the present efforts to control speech and thought as “the current regressive war against freedom of speech being waged by ‘progressives,’ social media moguls, university administrators, and other well-meaning but dangerous censors.”

“The marketplace of ideas is the best option for a democracy not because it always produces the best ideas,” he wrote, “but because like democracy itself, the alternatives are far worse.” And then the kicker: “[W]ithout freedom of speech, democracy cannot survive.”

* * *

And then there are these gems from Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy, who has been called the Will Rogers of our time:

“This election in Georgia will be the most important in history. You have nothing to worry about, unless you are a taxpayer, parent, gun owner, cop, a person of faith, or an unborn baby!”

And about some members of Congress: “how did these morons make it through the birth canal?”