Blog

China’s Defense Budget Is Bigger than You Think

During the Cold War, the United States never trusted its adversaries’ claims about their capabilities. Instead, it always sought to verify them through intelligence analysis. Today, China’s impressive and aggressive military expansion, allegedly achieved on a shoestring budget, should raise eyebrows, even from typically credulous consumers of official CCP reports. Specifically, China reported at the National People’s Congress (NPC) earlier this month that its defense budget included total expenditures of only $245 billion.

Historically, these reports are intentionally vague and conveniently oversimplified. This year’s announcement is no different. It’s hard to know what the real numbers are. Still, it’s even harder to believe China’s officially reported military budget of $245 billion, which would equate to an implausibly low 1.5 percent of GDP.

The U.S. Defense Department’s 2024 China Military Power Report estimated that China’s 2024 military budget was publicly understated by at least 40–90 percent. The DOD has not yet released its 2025 China Military Power Report, but we can infer from perennial experience that the same is true again this year; China’s real military expenditure, accounting for all (or at least some) “off-budget spending,” probably amounts to between $330 and $450 billion. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) has estimated the real Chinese defense budget is as high as $700 billion—and that was last year.

The CCP has expanded its military budget by at least 7.2 percent for two consecutive years. However, that figure itself also comes from official CCP reports and should be regarded with skepticism.

Consider the People’s Liberation Army’s substantial gains in hypersonic missile technology, stealth fighters, and ballistic missile submarines, as well as its exponential increase in nuclear weapons production. Most—if not all—of these involve close relationships between state-run and private enterprise, making military-industrial investments all the harder to ascertain. After all, this sort of fusionism often assumes subtle forms (such as talent and logistics pooling between public and private sectors).

More obvious examples of this include Chinese companies providing the PLA with drones, AI companies (like Baidu) possibly working with CCP defense corporations in shared laboratories, and Chinese shipping companies participating in “cross-sea transport drills” that would be executed in an invasion of Taiwan.

The Defense Department warns that the PRC “has mobilized vast resources for…espionage activities” and to “acquire dual-use military grade-equipment,” and that it has “substantially reorganized its defense-industrial sector to improve weapon system research, development, acquisition, testing, evaluation, and production.” To what extent China’s development, testing, and production is obscured by its civil-military fusion, and what percentage of China’s GDP is dedicated to military spending, our own spy agencies will have to reveal.

Keep reading

Two Mexican Nationals Busted in Colorado With 180,000 Rounds of Ammunition

Two Mexican nationals were arrested in Colorado last month after authorities found them transporting 180,000 rounds of ammunition during a traffic stop, federal officials have announced.

Caesar Ramon Martinez Solis, 41, and Humberto Ivan Amador Gavira, 24, were pulled over on March 26th in Cañon City, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado.

Detectives from Fremont County stopped their white Chevrolet van after it failed to dim its headlights, didn’t signal a turn, and had a broken license plate light, according to an arrest affidavit.

Inside the van, authorities found around 150 boxes of .308 ammunition and 30 boxes of 7.62 ammunition, with each box labeled as holding 1,000 rounds.

Martinez Solis waived his right to an attorney and spoke with Homeland Security agents.

He explained that he and Amador Gavira, whom he identified as his brother-in-law, had traveled from Mexico to Denver the day before to look at a vehicle.

They then drove to Salt Lake City, where they stopped at a gun shop, and Amador Gavira bought the ammunition, according to the affidavit.

“[Martinez Solis] further explained that he did not know the intent with the ammunition but that he believed it was destined for Pueblo,” the affidavit stated.

He added that the exact location was saved on Amador Gavira’s phone. Authorities have not publicly disclosed the destination.

Both men have been charged with unlawful possession of ammunition by an alien admitted under a nonimmigrant visa.

The case is being investigated by Homeland Security Investigations, the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

Keep reading

Climate Nutjobs Target Pet Dogs for Being ‘Environmental Villains’

Full disclosure before going any further: I love dogs. Have three myself. I fully subscribe to the “man’s best friend” moniker when it comes to canines.

(But no, I never celebrated Father’s Day until I had actual human children.)

In a soon-to-be-related note, I am not against preserving this planet, at all. This is the only earth that God gave us, and it would behoove us to be good stewards of it.

With that being said … When is enough going to be enough with these idiotic eco-zealots?

It’s one thing to want to be good stewards.

It’s another thing entirely to place every human being’s wants (let the people eat a freaking hamburger) and needs (like transportation and energy) last in comparison to the planet. That’s the antithesis of empathy and humanity, something the far left supposedly specializes in, especially compared to us conservative brethren.

What a farce. And it’s a farce that continues to self-parody itself more and more every day.

Look no further than this recent drivel from leftist rag Mother Jones: “Bad News for Man’s Best Friend: Dogs Are Environmental Villains.”

Since when did Fido become a James Bond villain? Citing recent “new research,” the outlet’s Donna Lu typed out — presumably with a straight face — that, “Dogs have ‘extensive and multifarious’ environmental impacts, disturbing wildlife, polluting waterways and contributing to carbon emissions.”

Apparently, the hall monitors in Australia reviewed various studies to determine that “the environmental impact of owned dogs is far greater, more insidious, and more concerning than is generally [recognized].”

The Australian argument almost devolves into leftist memes like (and these are real points made, though perhaps not with this level of dripping sarcasm): “Oh, won’t someone think of the Tasmanian penguins?!”, “But the bobcats will be LESS ACTIVE with dogs around!”, and “The entire multi-billion dollar pet food industry is equivalent to the 60th — 60th — most pollutant country!”

Thankfully, nobody died and made the likes of Greta Thunberg queen, so this utter nonsense was met with the derision it so scornfully deserved.

Keep reading

Southern California mayor’s twisted plan to wipe out homeless people sparks widespread condemnation

A Southern California mayor has sparked mass condemnation after revealing he’d give homeless residents ‘all the fentanyl they want’ in an effort to wipe them out.

R. Rex Parris, the mayor of Lancaster, made the remarks in front of stunned residents and councilmembers at a city council meeting earlier in the year but footage of his speech has just emerged.

Huge swathes of California have been gripped by a fentanyl crisis as the highly addictive and deadly drug becomes more accessible and affordable on the streets.

Just a tiny, two milligrams dose of the drug is enough to kill a human.  

Most of California is also in the grips of a housing crisis, as home costs soar and new developments stagnate – made exponentially worse by the devastating bushfires which tore through Los Angeles in January.

The Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count registered as many as 6,672 people experiencing homelessness in Lancaster and its surrounding areas in 2024.

Asked about his vision to tackle the crisis, the 73-year-old Republican mayor did not mince his words.

‘What I want to do is give them free fentanyl,’ Parris told the February 25 meeting, to the bewilderment of everybody else in the room.

‘I mean, that’s what I want to do. I want to give them all the fentanyl they want.’ 

Keep reading

Sick Leftists Blame JD Vance For Pope’s Death

Pope Francis has died aged 88. He had been battling severe illness including a double pneumonia for weeks, which obviously took a massive toll on his health. Yet somehow twisted leftists are blaming Vice President JD Vance.

Yes, really.

Vance visited with the Pope on Easter Sunday, just hours before his death.

He thanked the Pope for seeing him and told him “I know you have not been feeling great, but it’s good to see you in better health.”

Francis had been in hospital for over a month and given that he was now out and conducting meetings and giving speeches, it seemed he might be on the mend, but it was not to be.

Just because Vance was there hours earlier, it’s somehow his fault according to these complete morons.

Keep reading

Pentagon Denies New York Times Report with Anonymous Sources Accusing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of Leaking Yemen Strike Details in Second Private Signal Chat with Wife, Brother, and Lawyer

In yet another desperate attempt to undermine President Trump’s administration, The New York Times published a baseless report accusing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of leaking sensitive Yemen strike details in a private Signal chat.

The Pentagon has swiftly and forcefully denied these allegations, with Chief Spokesman Sean Parnell labeling the story as “fake news” driven by disgruntled former employees with clear motives to sabotage Hegseth and Trump’s agenda.

This latest attack comes on the heels of the firing of three former Pentagon officials—Dan Caldwell, Darin Selnick, and Colin Carroll—accused of leaking unauthorized information.

The Times claims Hegseth shared details of a March 15 Yemen strike in a Signal group chat named “Defense | Team Huddle,” which included his wife, Jennifer, his brother, Phil, and his personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore.

The article further alleges that Hegseth shared similar details in another chat that mistakenly included The Atlantic’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg.

These accusations, sourced from four anonymous individuals, lack any concrete evidence and reek of political vendetta.

The New York Times reported:

Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic was mistakenly included, the newly revealed one was created by Mr. Hegseth. It included his wife and about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle in January, before his confirmation as defense secretary, and was named “Defense | Team Huddle,” the people familiar with the chat said. He used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat.

The continued inclusion following Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation of his wife, brother and personal lawyer, none of whom had any apparent reason to be briefed on operational details of a military operation as it was getting underway, is sure to raise further questions about his adherence to security protocols.

[…]

Mr. Hegseth created the separate Signal group initially as a forum for discussing routine administrative or scheduling information, two of the people familiar with the chat said. The people said Mr. Hegseth typically did not use the chat to discuss sensitive military operations and said it did not include other cabinet-level officials.

Mr. Hegseth shared information about the Yemen strikes in the “Defense | Team Huddle” chat at roughly the same time he was putting the same details in the other Signal chat group that included senior U.S. officials and The Atlantic, the people familiar with Mr. Hegseth’s chat group said.

[…]

In the case of Mr. Hegseth’s Signal group, a U.S. official declined to comment on whether Mr. Hegseth shared detailed targeting information but maintained that there was no national security breach.

But according to the Pentagon, the entire narrative is nothing more than a politically motivated smear campaign aimed at derailing the Trump administration’s bold military leadership and undermining Secretary Hegseth’s credibility as he continues to clean house at the Department of Defense.

Keep reading

Is This Why the Supreme Court Halted the Tren de Aragua Deportation Flights?

Over the weekend, the Supreme Court halted the deportation flights of Tren de Aragua members. It was a 7-2 decision. Only Justices Alito and Thomas dissented. The liberal media will once again overplay their hand here, as they’ve done on the Abrego Garcia case, the MS-13 gang member who got deported back to El Salvador. The Supreme Court never ordered Trump to bring him back.

On this issue, the initial ruling was that the president has the authority to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport these illegal alien terrorists—members of Tren de Aragua. Still, they had to give ample notice of their deportation and the ability to challenge it in court. For this group in Texas that was about to be shipped out, they claim no options to challenge was afforded to them. The American Civil Liberties Union raced to block these deportations. Ed Whelan at National Review claims one reason the court issued this temporary pause is because they don’t trust the Trump administration.

It’s ridiculous that no due process shenanigans were brought up when Joe Biden was importing criminal illegal aliens, but now they’re being deported and Democrats are crying, we must go through them on a case-by-base basis.

Keep reading

CIA mind control never ended – it evolved and went mainstream

Space, we are told, is “the final frontier.” And you can bet your bottom dollar that where there’s a frontier, there’s a gaggle of oligarchs looking to stick their snoot into it.

That’s why it didn’t come as much of a surprise when the laughably named “North Atlantic” Treaty Organization declared in 2019 that outer space is now one of the alliance’s “operational domains.”

… or when the NATO gang pledged $1 billion last year to “improve the sharing of intelligence from national and commercial reconnaissance satellites.”

… or when the “vice chief of space operations” [<–actual title!] of the U.S. Space Force [<–actual branch of the Department of Defense!] warned last month that “China is practicing ‘dogfighting’ satellites as part of its expanding capabilities in space” [<–actual neo-Red Scare propaganda!].

READ: UK Supreme Court rules ‘woman’ means biological female

All of this outer space hype might lead you to believe that the real battles of the 21st century are going to be taking place above Earth.

But, with all due respect to Captain Kirk and his crew, space is not the final frontier, and whatever fireworks are taking place up in the night skies is simply a distraction from the real battle taking place down here on Earth.

Yes, as it turns out, outer space isn’t the next great battlespace. Inner space is.

The great war of our times is not the war for the galaxy; it’s the war for the mind. That war has been going on for a lot longer than most people believe, and recent technological developments have made the battle for your brain much more literal than most people comprehend.

Today, let’s peel back the layers of deception and reveal the primary battleground of this fifth-generation war on us all: the space between your ears.

Keep reading

FSU Students Lobbied for Gun Control Before Mass Shooting and Completely Missed the Point

Days before the mass shooting at Florida State University in Tallahassee, students at the school advocated against a Senate bill that would introduce temporary sales tax cuts on firearms and ammunition from September 8 until December 31.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the bill earlier this year when he declared there would be a “Second Amendment Summer.”

The South Florida Sun Sentinel documented testimony from some of the students.

Dakota Bages, 20, is a college sophomore from Weston and one of many young people from Broward and Palm Beach counties who attend Florida State University, where the latest school shooting occurred Thursday.

She and others went to the Capitol last Tuesday to register their strong opposition to a Senate bill whose purpose is to get more people to buy guns.

As part of an array of tax cuts, Senate Bill 7034 exempts guns and ammunition from the 6% statewide sales tax for four months this year, from Sept. 8 until Dec. 31.

Bages said she believes in responsible gun ownership, and that her boyfriend’s stepfather, a retired Broward firefighter, safely owns and maintains firearms.

The students do not believe that it’s a good idea to put more guns into more and more hands in Florida.

“Until serious mental health reform is made in our state, we cannot make weapons any more accessible to people who seek to use them for the wrong reasons,” Bages told members of the Senate Finance & Tax Committee.

Bages said rural Putnam County near Jacksonville, which declared itself a “Second Amendment sanctuary,” had four times as many gun-related suicides as the state average in 2022 (the data is from the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University).

Keep reading

“It Dwarfs COVID”: RFK Jr Says Autism Is an “Epidemic”

Autism is an “epidemic” that “dwarfs COVID,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy has said.

In an interview with radio host John Catsimatidis, RFK Jr. said autism is a “debilitating” condition that should be taken more seriously than COVID because of its effects on the young.

“This is an epidemic. It dwarfs the COVID epidemic and the impacts on our country because COVID killed old people. Autism affects children and affects them at the beginning of their lives, the beginning of their productivity.”

“And it’s absolutely debilitating for them, their families, their communities,” he added.

RFK Jr. went on to talk about the massive economic cost of autism, in addition to its emotional toll.

“For our country, just the pure economic cost of autism is, will be by 2035, $1 trillion a year. That’s just the beginning because many of these kids are aging out and their parents worry every day. And I’m talking about people with severe autism, what’s called profound autism, which is about, which is about 26 percent of the total people who are diagnosed with autism,” he said. 

“Those families, those children are nonverbal, they’re non-toilet trained. They have all the stereotypical features of autism, head-banging, toe-walking, stimming, agonizing gut pain and head-banging. Those kids are kids that will not hold jobs. And many kids with autism, many of the higher functioning autism actually can, have tremendous potential to live independently, to get jobs, take care of themselves,” he continued. 

Secretary Kennedy also spoke about new research he has commissioned to identify the real causes of autism. He said he believes the focus on genetic causes is misguided, and that environmental factors need to be addressed.

“The problem is that NIH and CDC have blocked all the studies that would determine the environmental exposure. So we don’t know. And instead they’ve studied genes and genes contribute to autism, but they, you know, like I said, you need an environmental toxin. And that’s what we’re, that’s what we are now going to look for,” Kennedy said.

“And we’re going to identify it and using AI [artificial intelligence] and the best scientific protocols, all of it, very transparent. We’re deploying 15 teams to look at all the potential exposures and that could be mold. It could be food additives. It could be pesticides. It could be vaccines. It could be ultrasound.” 

Earlier last week, RFK Jr. was on the receiving end of sharp criticism for comments he made at a press conference, when he said “autism destroys families.”

Among those winging blows at Secretary Kennedy was Gwen Walz, wife of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

​​“This is deeply upsetting, especially coming from our nation’s highest-ranking health official,” Gwen Walz said in a post Thursday on X.

Keep reading