Tag: china

Florida Wins Court Battle on Law Limiting Homes, Land Purchases by Chinese Citizens

A U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday that Florida can restrict home and land purchases by Chinese citizens, dismissing claims that the 2023 law is discriminatory.

It comes after a court dismissed a challenge to a similar law in Texas that restricts the ownership of properties by Chinese individuals or entities.

The 2–1 ruling by the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for Florida to enforce SB 264, or the Interests of Foreign Countries Act, which bans individuals who are domiciled in China from buying property in the state unless they already owned all or part of a property before July 1, 2023.

The ruling could also encourage other states to adopt so-called alien land laws, which were once common but fell out of favor a century ago.

The court said the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the law’s purchasing restriction because they failed to show an imminent injury.

According to court documents, three of the individual plaintiffs are domiciled in Florida, and the fourth, who’s “at least arguably domiciled in China,” already has a home in Florida and has no plans to buy another. The last plaintiff, a real estate brokerage firm primarily serving Chinese and Chinese American clients, also failed to establish an imminent injury, circuit judges said.

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China’s technocratic surveillance state, brought to you by American Big Tech and designed for global application

Daniel Corvell has an excellent analysis of the U.S.-China collaboration on what amounts to the creation of a coming globalized surveillance state. Of course it all hinges on countries adopting biometric digital IDs, tied to our bank accounts and tokenization. Once that’s in place, it’s game over for freedom. Below is an excerpt from the article, at The Conservative Playbook, which is a must read for understanding the symbiotic relationship between communist China, Silicon Valley, and “democratic” Washington.

China’s surveillance regime is often depicted as a uniquely authoritarian system — a dystopian fusion of cameras, algorithms, and totalitarian ambition. But a growing body of evidence shows that the foundation of Beijing’s digital panopticon was not built in isolation. It was quietly funded, equipped, and technologically enabled by the very institutions that claim to defend freedom: American corporations and the U.S. government.

According to a recent report by the NGO C4ADS and the Intercept, American tech giants and defense-linked suppliers have been directly feeding China’s expanding surveillance apparatus through sophisticated biometric, semiconductor, and AI technologies.

The report maps out how dozens of U.S. companies, some operating through intermediaries or “shell” distributors, have supplied the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance infrastructure — from facial recognition components to data-processing software that powers state monitoring of its 1.4 billion citizens.

At the center of this web are biometric technologies — tools that scan faces, track movements, and identify individuals in real time. Many of these systems were originally designed for security or retail analytics but have been absorbed into China’s “public safety” network, a euphemism for omnipresent state surveillance. In regions such as Xinjiang, these tools have been weaponized to monitor and detain Uyghur Muslims, tracking everything from gait patterns to smartphone activity. But the scandal is not only what China has done with the technology — it’s how easily American firms helped make it possible.

Researchers discovered that many U.S. suppliers, including major chipmakers and sensor producers, continued selling hardware and software to Chinese entities long after Washington imposed export restrictions. They did so indirectly — by routing shipments through subsidiaries or rebranding products under “neutral” names. Some contracts were even facilitated through government-backed programs encouraging “U.S.-China technological collaboration,” showing that the American national security establishment has, at times, spoken out of both sides of its mouth.

It is a hypocrisy that runs deep. Publicly, Washington condemns Beijing’s human rights abuses and warns about “digital authoritarianism.” Privately, many agencies and corporations have viewed China as too profitable to restrain. The result is a moral paradox: American taxpayers fund defense and intelligence programs to “counter Chinese influence” while their own technology firms supply the infrastructure for the CCP’s surveillance state.

Unfortunately, it’s far worse than just hypocrisy that’s affecting the Chinese people. The same tech deployed in China is quickly integrating with America’s burgeoning Surveillance Industrial Complex. It’s as if they’re testing it in a known authoritarian state ahead of becoming our own authoritarian state.

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Scientists Use Novel Materials That Mimic Wormholes and Multiple Realities to “Transcend the Limitations of Physical Dimensions”

In Erwin Schrödinger’s most famous thought experiment, a cat is seemingly able to be alive and dead simultaneously, as it exists in superposition within a closed box alongside a radioactive atom, a detector, a hammer, and a vial of poison.

Now, reaching into similar mind-bending territory that blurs the lines between practical science and science fiction, researchers in China report in a new study that they have successfully used nonlocal artificial materials to create what they call “photonic parallel spaces,” emulating the effects of wormholes, and even multiple realities.

At the heart of the new research are optical systems, in which a single material is able to perform the role of two distinct optical devices at the same time—not unlike the bizarre “superposition” of Schrödinger’s cat—whereby light is able to display multiple properties at once.

The experiments, detailed in a new paper in Nature Communications, allowed the researchers to produce invisible pathways and other optical effects that could pave the way toward the creation of a range of new technological applications in the coming years.

Photonic Parallel Spaces

“The concepts of the multiverse and wormholes in dimensions beyond our physical space have long captivated curiosity and imagination,” the authors of the new paper write. However, demonstrating such ideas in an experimental setting has long been challenging.

To overcome such hurdles, the research team relied on special artificial materials that allowed them to develop what they characterize as a “photonic analogy” of parallel spaces, which they describe as conditions where “two distinct effective optical media coexist within a single artificial material,” each of which is accessible using different boundaries in the respective material.

The team’s method, which was complemented with machine learning for their study, successfully helped them to create analogies for what they call “photonic wormholes,” which function as invisible optical tunnels, as well as “photonic multiple realities” where the independent function of two different optical devices occurred within a single location. The effect, the researchers describe, produced optical scatterers that functioned “as if they exist in separate dimensions.”

“Higher-Dimensional Phenomena” in the Lab

When light enters one boundary in the artificial materials used by the team, it experiences an entirely different set of optical effects compared with light entering from another boundary. Surprisingly, each of these optical experiences can occur without any interference between them.

The researchers liken this effect to C.S. Lewis’s classic, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where different “doors” could lead to entirely separate worlds located in a single place.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Calls Hakeem Jeffries “Ignorant” Following His False Statements Made About President Trump’s Meeting with Chinese President Xi 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was on “Fox News Sunday” to discuss President Trump’s use of tariffs. He was also optimistic that the Supreme Court would side with President Donald Trump on emergency tariffs.

“What did and didn’t get accomplished when Presidents Trump and Xi met face to face?” Bream asked.

“What do you make of his characterization of what happened in China?” Bream referencing Rep Hakeem Jeffries’ inaccurate comments on President Trump.

“I think it’s ignorant, and I think it’s kind of sad he has no idea how ignorant he is, because I was in the room and I can tell you I was there for the President’s entire trip and it was a tour de force,” Bessent said.

“The President went into Malaysia, signed trade deals, peace deals with Thailand and Cambodia,” Bessent said.

“We moved onto Japan. The President and the new Prime Minister of Japan had great chemistry,” Bessent continued.

“The meeting with President Xi was one of great respect and many accomplishments,” Bessent said.

“What do you make of their characterization of you?” Bream asked regarding a Washington Post article referencing Chinese negotiators that may have upset him.

“Highly inaccurate and look we saw that Chinese manufacturing has been down for 7 months in a row. So, let’s do the math. The liberation day, April 2nd. Where are we today? November 2nd, seven months. Chinese manufacturing has been down every month,” Bessent said.

“Their trade with Europe is up 10 percent, but it’s all discounted. They’ve depreciated their currency and the Chinese economy, they are in the middle of a real estate crisis,” Bessent continued.

Secretary Bessent also talked about the rare earth minerals and explained that it has been a problem for many decades, and that the administration is working hard to become more independent in that area.

“We are going to be moving at warp speed,” Bessent said.

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Trump Says He Won’t Let Nvidia Sell Advanced Chips to China, Other Countries

President Donald Trump said that he would not let China purchase Nvidia’s flagship Blackwell chips in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday.

“No, we won’t do that,” Trump said during the interview, which was taped on Friday, when asked about whether the chipmaker will be allowed to sell its most advanced chips to China.

“We will not let anybody have them other than the United States.”

The “60 Minutes” interview on Oct. 31 was Trump’s first appearance on the show since suing and reaching a settlement with the network’s parent company, Paramount, in July.

During the interview, Trump said that the United States is currently winning the AI race, but giving China advanced chips will provide it with “an equal advantage” in the competition.

“Right now, we’re winning it because we’re producing electricity like never before,” the president said.

On Oct. 31, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang expressed hope that his company will be able to sell its Blackwell chips, its latest generation of AI chips, in China at some point, though there are no plans to do so at the moment.

“I hope so, but that’s a decision for President Trump to make,” Huang told reporters on the sidelines of the APEC CEO summit in Gyeongju, South Korea.

The United States has imposed export controls on the sale of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips to China, aiming to limit its tech progress, particularly in applications that could help its military.

“We’re getting approvals done in two to three weeks. It used to take 20 years. And we are leading the AI race right now by a lot,” Trump added.

On Nov. 2, Trump reiterated this stance when asked about Nvidia’s Blackwell chips aboard Air Force One on his way back to Washington.

“It’s 10 years ahead of every other chip,” Trump said. “No, we don’t give that chip to other people.”

After the Oct. 30 bilateral meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, Trump told reporters that semiconductors had been discussed and China was “going to be talking to Nvidia and others about taking chips,” but added, “We’re not talking about the Blackwell.”

Last week, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle urged caution about selling advanced chips to China.

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Tests Find Chinese Manufacturer Can Manipulate Electric Buses in Norway

Safety tests by a public transport operator in Oslo, Norway, conducted have raised grave concerns over Chinese electric buses.

The operator known as Ruter conducted secret trials a few months ago on an electric bus from a European manufacturer and one from China’s Yutong to determine if there were cybersecurity threats, MENAFN reported Wednesday.

The European bus remained secure but the Chinese-made one had the ability to be manipulated by its manufacturer.

The manufacturer has access to buses’ software, diagnostics, and battery control systems, therefore the manufacturer could stop or render the vehicle unusable, Ruter explained.

The article continued:

Arild Tjomsland, a special advisor at the University of South-Eastern Norway who assisted with the tests, emphasized the risks: “The Chinese bus can be stopped, turned off, or receive updates that can destroy the technology that the bus needs to operate normally.”

He noted that while hackers and suppliers cannot steer the buses, the ability to stop them could disrupt operations or serve as leverage during a crisis.

During former President Joe Biden’s (D) push for green energy, Chinese automakers were looking to flood the United States market with cheap electric vehicles (EVs), Breitbart News reported in 2023. The following year, Chinese companies were testing their autonomous vehicles on American roads, raising concerns about the data they were collecting as they mapped the nation.

In addition, Breitbart News reported in September 2024, “The British government’s open-doors approach to electric vehicles from Communist China threatens to undercut domestic manufacturing and expose the country to national security risks, with a think tank warning that EVs could be ‘weaponized’ by Beijing.”

In regard to the issue in Oslo, Ruter Director Bernt Reitan Jenssen said, “We’ve found that everything that is connected poses a risk — and that includes buses. There is a risk that for example suppliers could take control, but also that other players could break into this value chain and influence the buses,” the Economic Times reported Tuesday.

The MENAFN article said the test results were forwarded to officials at the Ministry of Transport and Communications in Norway.

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Maduro Urgently Seeks Military Aid From Russia & China With US Bulls-Eye On Venezuela

President Trump said on Friday that he’s yet to make a final decision on launching a military attack on Venezuela, but President Nicolás Maduro is not waiting around while taking the US leader’s word on it.

Maduro is reportedly urgently reaching out to Russia, China, and Iran for any possible military aid, including defense items which may have already been negotiated or are in the works. The Washington Post says it’s obtained internal documents showing such recent and high-stakes requests.

“Amid a buildup of American forces in the Caribbean, Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro is reaching out to Russia, China and Iran to enhance its worn military capabilities and solicit assistance, requesting defensive radars, aircraft repairs and potentially missiles, according to internal U.S. government documents obtained by The Washington Post,” the publication reports.

“The requests to Moscow were made in the form of a letter meant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and was intended to be delivered during a visit to the Russian capital by a senior aide this month,” WaPo continues.

And separately, Maduro is said to have sent a formal letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping seeking “expanded military cooperation” between the two countries in order to counter “the escalation between the U.S. and Venezuela.”

Maduro in it seeks to expedite Chinese companies’ production of radar detection systems based on prior deals, in cooperation between Caracas and Beijing which has long been an open secret.

“In the missive, Maduro emphasized the seriousness of perceived U.S. aggression in the Caribbean, framing U.S. military action against Venezuela as action against China due to their shared ideology,” the documents state according to the Post.

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Gates Foundation under fire: Senate Judiciary Committee investigates millions funneled by nonprofit to Beijing-linked entities

U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has launched an investigation into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s alleged funneling of tens of millions in grants to entities tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The probe was revealed in a letter dated Monday, Oct. 27, to Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman. The investigation by Grassley centers on whether these payments violate U.S. tax laws prohibiting 501(c)(3) charities from directly supporting foreign governments. It also serves as a striking escalation of scrutiny over nonprofit transparency and national security concerns.

According to Grassley’s findings, the Gates Foundation in 2023 directed $11.7 million to various CCP-controlled agencies, $2 million to a corporation linked by the Department of War to China’s military and $6.7 million to state-run universities bolstering Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping’s regime. Tax filings from 2022 reportedly showed an additional $23 million distributed to over 20 Chinese entities – some explicitly labeled as “foreign governments.”

While categorized as public health or research initiatives, U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations strictly bar tax-exempt organizations from funding foreign governments without special exemptions. Grassley’s letter demands detailed documentation, including whether grants supported China’s Belt and Road Initiative – a global infrastructure project accused of debt-trap diplomacy. He also questioned whether the foundation obtained required IRS determinations proving funds served charitable purposes, not CCP interests.

Civil terrorism expert Jason Curtis Anderson of One City Rising praised the inquiry. He nevertheless warned: “Without concrete enforcement – audits, sanctions or revoked tax-exempt status – this letter [by Grassley] risks being just a warning.”

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China’s Plan to Sink U.S. Navy Aircraft Carriers Comes Down to 3 Words

China has developed a formidable, multi-layered anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) system, effectively creating a “defensive bubble” designed to deter the U.S. Navy and potentially sink aircraft carriers.

-This system integrates numerous threats, including “carrier-killer” ballistic missiles, new hypersonic anti-ship weapons, quieter submarines, and an emerging “drone wall” of unmanned systems.

-Together, these layers create vast ocean areas that are too dangerous for U.S. aircraft carriers to operate in during a conflict.

-This A2/AD strategy could successfully prevent the U.S. from intervening effectively in a potential invasion of Taiwan.

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How China could use U.S. farmland to attack America

Chinese entities have been acquiring land in key locations near U.S. military bases, sparking national security concerns about possible spying — or even a potential attack.

Former national security official David Feith laid out the potential risk in an interview with 60 Minutes. Feith worked on U.S.-China policy for the State Department in the first Trump administration, and until April, worked in Trump’s second administration on the National Security Council. While there, he grew increasingly alarmed by where China owns America’s farmland. 
 
“The ability to own large tracts of land, especially close to sensitive U.S. military and government facilities, can pose an enormous problem given the nature of technology today, which is that hostile actor from all across the world can very easily exploit access to land, access to buildings and warehouses, access just to a shipping container or two and do enormous damage, either in intelligence terms or in military terms,” Feith told 60 Minutes.

Feith cited Ukraine’s recent drone attack in Russia as an example. In June, the Ukrainian military attacked Russian nuclear-capable bombers with remotely operated drones it had smuggled into the country.

For China, Feith explained, owning farmland in the United States gives America’s geopolitical rival more operating room for potential strikes.

“It’s an entirely new way of war,” he cautioned.

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