Tag: china

REVEALED: Here Are the Mainstream Journalists on China’s Payroll

The identities were buried.

Foreign-agent filings reveal that operatives working for a Chinese Communist Party-linked influence organization planned free trips for American journalists based on the potential for “favorable coverage” and sought to “effectively disseminate positive messages” about Beijing.

But the filings did not plainly identify the reporters who received the access.

By cross-referencing the filings with archived newsletters, annual reports and contemporaneous accounts, this investigation has uncovered the names of prominent American journalists who participated in China trips organized or funded by the China-United States Exchange Foundation, or CUSEF.

The roster includes current and former journalists from The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, NPR, the Associated Press, Vox, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and other major American news organizations.

In several cases, the trips were followed by columns and reports defending Chinese government policies, attacking President Trump’s confrontation with Beijing or presenting the decline of American manufacturing as unavoidable.

CUSEF was founded by Tung Chee-hwa, a former vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a central component of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front system.

A bipartisan congressional report explains that the United Front seeks to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority” of the CCP. Its targets include foreign governments, universities, businesses, media organizations and other institutions capable of shaping public opinion.

CUSEF’s own foreign-agent records reveal how that strategy was applied to the American press.

Washington lobbyists and public-relations firms working for the organization described plans to recruit influential journalists, generate “favorable coverage” and “effectively disseminate positive messages to the media, key influencers and opinion leaders, and the general public” regarding China.

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The US-Saudi Nuclear Deal Makes No Sense

A few points on the shocking U.S.–Saudi nuclear deal announced.

1. This reflects a weaker American bargaining position, not a stronger one.

The broader context is China. The Biden administration pursued a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, as part of a broader expansion of Trump’s Abraham Accords, in part to pull Riyadh closer to Washington and away from Beijing. But Washington’s position has deteriorated since then. The credibility of the U.S. security umbrella has weakened, GCC states have become more strategically autonomous, and Saudi Arabia has gained leverage by diversifying its partnerships.

The result appears to be that Washington had to offer substantially more to try to keep Saudi from drifting further toward China, while getting substantially less in return.

2. By any historical standard, this is an extraordinary Saudi victory.

Compared to previous negotiations, Riyadh has secured remarkable concessions. It no longer appears to have to normalize relations with Israel as part of the package. It is reportedly not required to sign a traditional Section 123 agreement that would deprive KSA of enrichment technology. And there are no comprehensive IAEA safeguards comparable to those Washington has long insisted upon elsewhere.

If these reports hold, Saudi Arabia has achieved what few thought Washington would ever accept.

3. Biden was going down the same path…

The Biden administration reportedly considered similar arrangements, but its efforts were derailed by the repercussions of the October 7 attacks.

Biden officials also understood the risks, although it did not prevent them from pursuing it and signalling willingness to offer Saudi major nuclear concessions. Some of the contingency ideas reportedly discussed bordered on the surreal: having American troops physically guard Saudi enrichment facilities from the Saudis themselves, or designing systems that would allow the United States to disable – or even destroy remotely – the facilities if necessary.

The fact that such safeguards were seriously contemplated should itself have been a warning. If your proposal requires extraordinary mechanisms to prevent your own ally from using the technology you are providing, perhaps the proposal is fundamentally flawed.

4. This may prove a stepping stone toward an even greater disaster: Security Guarantees for Saudi

As Rosemary Kelanic points out, this deal provides Riyadh with leverage it can use in the future to force Washington to provide it with security guarantees. Saudi Arabia can threaten to build nuclear weapons unless the U.S. offers it Article 5-level security guarantees – a disastrous move that would further entangle the US in the region militarily instead of allowing America to come home from the Middle East.

As Kelanic argues, there is ample historical precedent. South Korea and West Germany both advanced nuclear programs that alarmed Washington. Rather than allowing them to acquire nuclear weapons, the United States ultimately strengthened its military commitments and security guarantees in exchange for abandoning those programs.

As a result, this nuclear deal may prove to be a prelude to an even more damaging concession to Saudi down the road.

5. This likely weakens Washington’s negotiating position with Iran.

If there is eventually another U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement, today’s decision establishes an entirely new benchmark.

It becomes impossible to argue that Saudi Arabia may enrich uranium while Iran cannot, although Tehran was never going to accept zero enrichment in the first place. But proposals that earlier had been entertained – such as a 5- to 10-year moratorium on enrichment – may now also be out of reach.

Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, it becomes harder to insist on intrusive international inspections for Iran while accepting a far lighter non-IAEA inspection regime for Saudi Arabia. And it becomes much more difficult to portray enrichment itself as an unacceptable proliferation risk.

Washington has made the type of deal it wants from Iran more complicated.

6. Israel has every reason to be deeply unhappy.

Much attention will focus on the loss of the Saudi normalization card, which has been one of Israel’s strategic objectives.

But the more consequential issue may be that Saudi Arabia now appears to have a far more credible pathway toward a nuclear weapons capability should it ever choose to pursue one.

That represents a fundamental shift in Israel’s long-term strategic environment.

7. Is this about widening the war with Iran?

Possibly. One interpretation is that Washington made these concessions to secure greater Saudi cooperation in the current (or a future) confrontation with Tehran.

But Tehran itself does not appear particularly alarmed.

Saudi Arabia’s direct military contribution to a war with Iran would likely remain limited, and the Kingdom’s participation does little to alter Iran’s fundamental geographic advantages in the Persian Gulf. More importantly, Saudi leaders have spent years trying to reduce—not increase—the risk of becoming a battlefield in a U.S.-Iran conflict.

If that remains Riyadh’s strategic priority, this agreement is unlikely to fundamentally change the military balance in the war.

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The Documents Washington Never Wanted Released

The White House has now released a series of declassified election-integrity documents that the administration says expose what it describes as the largest compromise of American voter data in history. The release followed President Trump’s heated nationally televised address Thursday night, where he argued that China systematically acquired sensitive voter information during the 2020 election cycle and that intelligence surrounding the operation was buried inside the bureaucracy rather than presented honestly to elected leadership.

For years, the focus has been on Russia while China quietly expanded its economic, technological, and intelligence footprint throughout the West. China does not think in election cycles. It thinks in decades as the ancient culture understands cycles. Every major strategic objective is pursued patiently through economic leverage, technology, data collection, academia, corporations, and political influence. Elections become merely another avenue for intelligence gathering and long-term strategic positioning.

According to the newly released material highlighted by the White House, Chinese actors allegedly obtained information on roughly 220 million American voter records. The administration claims the information included voter registration data, addresses, party affiliation, and other identifying information that could be used to map voting populations across the United States. President Trump described it as “the largest compromise of election data in history” and ordered further investigations into both the alleged intrusion and the government’s handling of the intelligence.

The administration further alleges that portions of this intelligence never reached the President in full during the 2020 election cycle and that internal disputes inside the intelligence community resulted in information being minimized or withheld. Those claims are now at the center of renewed investigations following the release of the declassified files.

Whether every allegation ultimately withstands scrutiny is now the question investigators must answer. It is important to distinguish between allegations contained in newly released documents and conclusions that have been independently established. Previous U.S. intelligence assessments issued after the 2020 election concluded they did not find evidence that China successfully altered votes or election infrastructure, although there has long been bipartisan concern over Chinese cyber activity and influence operations. Those earlier conclusions are directly challenged by the current administration’s interpretation of the newly declassified material.

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Catherine Herridge Uncovers Shocking Revelations About The Biden Family

Investigative journalist Catherine Herridge has uncovered records pointing to Chinese blackmail efforts targeting the Biden family – documents that sat in plain sight for the legacy media, the FBI, and the CIA, only to be met with willful blindness.

In a recent appearance discussing declassified materials related to China’s 2020 election influence operations, Herridge described finding references to blackmail by China that were prepared for inclusion in the president’s daily brief.

“I found these records which are talking about blackmail by China,” Herridge explained, adding “It was for President Biden’s daily brief. I can conclude, I think, that it was probably about targeting his family.”

She noted that the findings, along with broader evidence of suppressed intelligence on Chinese influence, were ignored and buried in order to protect Democratic power, stating tghat “in the media or legacy media there was kind of a willful blindness. They didn’t want to look at the records. All you had to do was spend a couple of hours.”

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ARRESTED: Intern at NATO Headquarters Faces Charges of Espionage in Belgium – Canadian Woman With Chinese Origin Also Suspected of Links to Criminal Organization

NATO infiltrated.

In Belgium, home of the military headquarters for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), police made an arrest with geopolitical significance.

A ‘Canadian woman ​of Chinese origin’, an intern at ‌NATO’s military headquarters, has been detained on spying charges, Belgian prosecutors said today (25).

Reuters reported:

“’She is suspected of spying ​on behalf of a third country and of ​being a member of a criminal organization’, the ⁠Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.

The woman ​worked as an intern at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied ​Powers Europe (SHAPE) in the Belgian city of Mons, the statement said. It did not provide further details of her identity or the country ​or organization she is suspected of spying for.”

NATO’s headquarters do the planning and carrying out all operations of the transatlantic military alliance.

“The suspect had come to the attention of SHAPE’s security services, who reported ​her to Belgian ​intelligence officials, ⁠according to the prosecutors’ statement. Investigators searched the suspect’s home and her workplace at SHAPE, and ​she was placed under arrest on Friday.

A ​SHAPE spokesperson said ⁠there was no indication that NATO or SHAPE operational readiness, command and control arrangements or ongoing tasks had been affected.”

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Democratic Socialists Think America Is Somehow Worse Than Mass Murderer Mao Zedong

We’re hearing more and more from the Democratic Socialists of America about all of the sins of America and very little of the good things we’ve done to ourselves and to the world at large on our 250th birthday. 

What is it, the nature of this DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, and the diversity, equity, inclusion criticism that we were racist, sexist, nativist, cruel, ruthless, etc., etc.  

But my question is, compared to what? 

Mao Zedong? He killed 70 million people. He was the greatest mass murderer in history, and that government is still communist in an unbroken chain from [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] all the way back to Mao. Do we ever talk about that or the million people who are in concentration camps in China? 

Compared to historically to the Aztecs? We’re told the Aztecs were great people. They had an empire, but they crushed over a million people to create their empire. Some years, they sacrificed up to 10,000, maybe 15,000 a year of conquered tribes of fellow Indigenous people. 

Do we remember Shaka Zulu, the 19th-century creator of the Zulu nation? He was responsible for a genocide in crushing his enemies that probably cost over a million lives. 

Do we really think that the Native Americans were living in paradise until Europeans came? The story of Native Americans was conquest, enslavement, butchery of rival tribes. 

So, what is going on? 

We have a tradition in the West of self-criticism. That’s what makes us different. Rationalism, self-criticism, improvement. But when that goes to an extreme, it ventures from self-criticism and self-reflection to nihilism, and it’s quite destructive. 

So, let’s just take a look at where the United States is compared to the rest. 

Look at immigration. Why do a million people, or 2 million people, 10,000 a day under Joe Biden, from very poor countries, most of them from what we would call the former Third World that were victims of socialism, why do they risk their lives coming here every year? 

Why do all these critics of the United States … [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], why did her parents want to come here? Why did [Rep.] Ilhan Omar’s father want to come here? Why did [Rep.] Rashida Tlaib’s father want to come here? Why did [New York City Mayor] Zohran Mamdani’s parents want to come? Was it so bad? 

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DHS used anti-China funds on World Cup security

Congressional Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act included $170 million for efforts to counter the national security threats posed by China’s illegal fishing operations worldwide.

But the Trump administration didn’t spend the money on that.

Instead, the Department of Homeland Security diverted the vast majority of that funding to security measures for FIFA World Cup matches, America250 celebrations and other major sporting events, according to a senior congressional official and an administration official who were briefed on how the money was allocated.

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) secured the $170 million as part of the OBBB for “maritime domain awareness” technology that helps track the Chinese vessels.

Cruz told us he has “sought to provide resources for those programs, but unfortunately the bulk of the funding has not gone where it needed to go.” But Cruz didn’t say where the money went.

The funding diversion occurred under then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. The department, now led by Secretary Markwayne Mullin, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Approximately $155 million of the $170 million funding pot was spent on counter-drone technology for events like World Cup matches and America250 tributes, including sensors that monitor and track drones in their vicinity, the officials said. The rest was used for Coast Guard communications technology and a Merchant Marine credentialing system.

In a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday, a bipartisan group of senators led by Cruz called on the Trump administration to impose sanctions on 29 supply vessels that facilitate Beijing’s illicit fishing activities.

The letter reads in part:

“Anyone linked to the vessels, including through beneficial ownership, will be exposed to reputational and financial crime risks. The vessels would switch from being assets to liabilities, greatly complicating the ability of the CCP to continue their IUU fishing activities.”

Cruz’s committee handles the annual Coast Guard authorization bill. Cruz said he intends to continue pushing the issue so that the Coast Guard has enough resources to counter China’s illegal fishing.

The nine senators who signed the letter to Bessent said China is carrying out these activities “at a scale that constitutes ecocide conducted via gross human rights abuses.”

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The CCP Is Inside the Fed: Shocking New Evidence of Chinese Infiltration at America’s Central Bank

Most Americans have heard about Chinese spies targeting our military or hacking private companies. But there’s another front in this quiet war, one that’s gone largely unreported—and it may be the most dangerous of all: China’s long game to infiltrate and manipulate the United States Federal Reserve.

A 2022 Senate investigation offered a rare glimpse into this operation, but even that barely scratches the surface. What’s playing out behind closed doors isn’t just a few bureaucratic missteps or naïve collaborations—it’s a full-blown economic espionage campaign.

This is warfare without bullets.

The Fed: A Prime Target for Chinese Espionage

The Federal Reserve is the engine of the U.S. economy. Its decisions move markets, shape global capital flows, and set the tone for the world’s monetary system. Infiltrating the Fed doesn’t just give China intelligence – it gives them influence.

Over at least a decade, the CCP has targeted Fed employees through a mix of coercion, recruitment offers, unauthorized data access, and propaganda partnerships, mostly hidden behind Chinese academic institutions and think tanks.

According to this damning Senate report, the Fed’s own counterintelligence team identified a group of 13 employees across eight regional banks—internally referred to as the “P-Network”—who exhibited serious red flags linked to the Chinese government.

This pattern could be replicated at scale.

Hard Evidence of Espionage and Infiltration

Here are some documented examples that received little attention from the mainstream media:

1. Detained and Surveilled in China (Individual A)

    •    In 2019, a Fed employee was detained four separate times by Chinese authorities during a visit to Shanghai. He was threatened, told his family would be harmed, and coerced into handing over sensitive U.S. economic data. Chinese agents accessed his Fed laptop, phones, and internal contact lists. He was ordered to “tell a good story about China” back in the U.S. This employee returned to his post with full access to confidential monetary policy data.

2. Secret Data Transfers to Chinese Institutions (Individual B)

    •    Another employee sent modeling code and restricted Fed data to a university linked to China’s central bank (PBOC). He proposed deeper collaboration between his Reserve Bank and Chinese state institutions while maintaining access to Class II FOMC data, which includes sensitive internal forecasts and deliberations.

3. Coordination with Chinese Propaganda Outlets (Individual C)

    •   Another Fed employee took a paid visiting professorship in China funded by the CCP and subsequently acted as a liaison with Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese government’s propaganda arm. He even helped Chinese journalists and officials gain access to Fed contacts, often bypassing formal Fed communication channels.

4. Suspicious Talent Recruitment Programs (Individual D)

    •    Another Fed employee attempted to transfer large U.S. data sets to Chinese institutions. He was found to have joined the Thousand Talents Program, China’s premier foreign recruitment tool for stealing scientific and economic research. This affiliation was never disclosed and the employee continued working at the Fed.

A Named Case: John Harold Rogers

The Justice Department indicted John Harold Rogers, a former senior adviser in the Federal Reserve’s Division of International Finance, for allegedly passing sensitive U.S. economic data to agents tied to the Chinese government  .

Rogers served at the Fed from 2010 to 2021, holding access to confidential materials related to FOMC deliberations, economic forecasts, and tariff policy analysis  .

He allegedly began working with Chinese co‑conspirators posing as university students starting around 2013, and intensified the misconduct after 2018, using personal email and printed documents to transfer restricted Fed data  .

In 2023, Rogers is accused of receiving approximately $450,000 from a Chinese university while teaching and meeting with these supposed “students” in China, including hotel rooms where he shared Fed trade secrets.

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Days after Biden inauguration, FBI shielded Wuhan lab collaborator from investigation after China trip

Joe Biden’s presidency began and ended with the shielding of individuals linked to decades’ worth of dangerous gain-of-function experiments.

Biden concluded his presidency by issuing former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci a blanket pardon, going back all the way to Jan. 1, 2014 — around the time the Obama administration supposedly halted funding for gain-of-function research that makes pathogens more deadly and/or more transmissible.

Years earlier — days after the geriatric Democrat was sworn in as president and at the height of the COVID pandemic — the Biden FBI requested special treatment for Peter Daszak, the disgraced British zoologist who funneled American funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

According to documents released on Monday by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the National Targeting Center — a division of U.S. Customs and Border Protection responsible for catching travelers and detecting cargo that threaten American security — alerted other groups within the Department of Homeland Security to Daszak’s planned trip from Qatar to New York on Feb. 5, 2021.

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Inside California’s Battle With The Marijuana Black Market

A convoy of sheriff’s deputies heads into a vast network of illegal marijuana grow operations in the foothills of Mount Shasta in California’s Siskiyou County.

They drive into a dusty encampment strewn with garbage and piles of empty plastic fertilizer containers, a blight on the otherwise scenic landscape.

The morning raid is nothing new for Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue.

Thousands of makeshift greenhouses known as “hoop houses” – each one containing hundreds of illegally grown cannabis plants – are operating in the county at any given time, LaRue told The Epoch Times, as his deputies scoured the Mount Shasta Vista subdivision, a 20-minute drive northeast of Weed, Calif.

The sheriff’s office has counted 2,732 hoop houses using satellite and aerial imagery in the subdivision alone.

By the time he arrived at the scene on June 4, all the occupants had fled.

Spotters at these illegal grow sites – sometimes armed with AK-47s and rifles, according to nearby residents – alert laborers to leave the camp when they see sheriff’s deputies approaching.

Except for a few roosters, an older German shepherd, and a couple of curious pups, the site was abandoned. The occupants had already cleared out when an advance team of investigators approached the camp earlier that morning.

They know the drill.

About 430 flowering marijuana plants were found in each of two 30-by-100 foot hoop houses. Agents from the regional North State Marijuana Investigation Team weighed about 900 pounds of freshly cut marijuana plants that were hanging to dry in another slightly larger greenhouse.

All the marijuana was destroyed. No one was arrested, according to the sheriff’s office.

The team had served a search warrant on the same property last August and arrested the property owner, Haizhou Wang, then 56, who was on-site at the time.

Cannabis industry experts estimate that more than 30 million pounds of illicit marijuana are grown in the United States annually.

Siskiyou County alone produces about 17.8 million pounds of illegal marijuana every year, with a “low-end” estimated local street value of about $3.6 billion based on sales at $200 a pound, according to the sheriff’s office.

A typical pound of processed black-market marijuana may sell for a couple hundred dollars in California, but can sell for $1,500 in Midwest and East Coast markets and much more in other countries, according to both the sheriff’s office and the California Department of Cannabis Control.

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