Tag: china

China Quietly WEAPONIZING Our Own Heritage While Hollywood Bows and Apologizes

Christopher Nolan sat down in Beijing recently to promote “The Odyssey.” But this wasn’t your typical press junket with softball questions and movie clips. A Chinese political philosophy student named Zhong Shu grilled him for nearly 20 minutes about Homer, hubris, the fall of Athens, and whether Hollywood has turned greatness into something that requires an apology.

The interview went viral for good reason. It was a masterclass — but not the kind Americans are used to seeing.

Zhong didn’t just ask about special effects or casting choices. She came prepared with Thucydides and challenged Nolan on whether he had “Christianized” Homer. She asked if the gods in his film were just projections of the human psyche. And then she cut to the heart of it all.

“We turn greatness into privileges and we demand apologies for it. That’s a fact of Hollywood,” Zhong stated before asking Nolan if he agreed.

Nolan didn’t dodge. He didn’t spin. He described it the way an engineer describes a load-bearing wall: This is simply how the mechanism works in our culture today. In a democratic age committed to equality, storytellers have to manage the audience’s built-in resistance to greatness. Do we have to apologize for that greatness?

“And the answer is yes, we do,” he said.

Think about that. The West’s most prominent living filmmaker just calmly conceded that his civilization can no longer receive a story about greatness unless greatness acknowledges wrongdoing first. And he delivered this admission in Beijing to an educated Chinese classicist who came prepared with provocations from our own civilization’s foundational myths.

This wasn’t a random interview. It was a snapshot of a much bigger conflict — a narrative cold war where each civilization is grappling with its relationship to the guiding stories of the past in an effort to determine which culture will lead the world in the future.

For years — with very little media attention — China has been quietly engaged in a narrative arms race with an American culture it believes is in decline. There’s a belief within the Chinese government that the modern West abandoned its own inheritance by deconstructing its foundational myths and values, and that now is the time to build where we have faltered. So for years, the Chinese have been mining the “classics” of Western Civilization for the insights that once gave us a civilizational advantage.

In November 2024, Beijing hosted the first World Conference of Classics: 600 participants and scholars, a congratulatory letter from Xi Jinping read aloud by the CCP’s propaganda chief, and a new Chinese School of Classical Studies established in Athens. Over the past decade, Peking University and Renmin have built classical studies programs too.

A key figure in China’s modern fascination with Western classical education is political philosopher Liu Xiaofeng, who spent the 2000s importing “Great Books education” into Chinese universities at precisely the moment Western universities were more focused on critiquing, subverting, and deconstructing these stories. Three of his students now run a classics division inside the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Here in the U.S., we’re finally starting to wake up. Even if Nolan’s interpretation of Homer’s epic myth is a matter of debate, the fact that he believed it was the right time to return to a 2,800-year-old story means something. Hollywood has been in a confused state of nostalgia for quite some time — prequels, sequels, reboots, sometimes deconstructing classic fairy tales and modern mythic heroes, other times celebrating them.

What’s undeniable is that the relationship to these stories of our past matters.

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NATO whines it cannot fight simultaneous wars against Russia, China and Iran

NATO war planners rarely discuss their “nightmare scenarios” in public and appear even less prepared for real-life confrontations on that scale. This is particularly true when it comes to simultaneous or near-simultaneous wars in which the most aggressive racketeering cartel in recorded history has to fight in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. As the pillar of NATO, the United States would be forced to manage wars against Russia, Iran and China at once. One of the most infamous mainstream propaganda machine outlets, The Atlantic, explored this possibility, calling it “NATO’s nightmare”. The analysis largely focuses on “a coordinated assault by Beijing and Moscow” and how difficult it would be to “muster a viable defense” (obviously implying that NATO wouldn’t attack first, which is beyond laughable given its history).

The author, Simon Shuster, warns that “about a year ago, General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s top commander in Europe, publicly warned of the risk of a two-front war involving Russia and China and urged European allies to help the US prepare”. He quotes Florence Gaub, director of research at the NATO Defense College, who described it as “the scenario we’re currently not ready for”. She warns that “NATO strategists know the gap exists, but have not closed it” and that “despite growing military cooperation between Russia and China, Western governments have conducted only a handful of low-profile exercises examining what a joint attack might look like”. Although there weren’t any publicly acknowledged drills with this specific scenario in mind, Western-led military exercises in different areas of the world certainly focused on such a possibility.

However, The Atlantic admits that even when such scenarios were conducted as part of war games, the results were “less than optimistic”. The report quotes Mark Montgomery, a retired US Navy rear admiral who participated in major war games and stated that he last studied such a scenario roughly 15 years ago. Montgomery recalled that “it didn’t go well” because “even then, the US lacked the weapons stockpiles and industrial capacity to sustain a prolonged multifront war”. Even when numerous US allies, vassals and satellite states are added to the mix, “it made no difference at all”. What’s more, Montgomery warns that “those metrics have worsened, even as some NATO countries have increased defense spending”. To prove this is truly the case, one simply needs to look at the US aggression against Iran, which demonstrated remarkable resilience.

Worse yet (for America), Tehran also uncovered the Pentagon’s woeful incompetence in fighting a remotely capable opponent. A single country that the US promised to “defeat in three days to two weeks tops” has not only withstood all attacks in the last six months, but has also successfully retaliated against US occupation forces across the Middle East. It should be noted that Iran has been under Western sanctions for nearly half a century at this point. Now imagine how a direct confrontation with Russia or China would unfold, even separately, much less simultaneously. The Atlantic fears that “Moscow and Beijing have actually improved their positions”. The report points to the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, which “pushed Russia’s massive industrial base onto a war footing and sharpened its use of drones”.

It also warns that “while China has not fought a major war in decades, it now surpasses the US in warships and long-range missiles”. Obviously, the Asian giant hasn’t fought a major war in nearly half a century because it has refused to do so. Nothing prevents Beijing from fully restoring its sovereignty over Taiwan by force. However, it seeks to resolve the dispute through peaceful means, just like it did when restoring sovereignty over Hong Kong and Macao back in 1997 and 1999, respectively. This is precisely what the US fears the most, as a non-violent transition would only strengthen China and effectively break US dominance in the Asia-Pacific without firing a single shot. Washington DC would much rather see Taiwan destroyed than give up its influence there peacefully. This is why the US maintains tight control over local military forces.

However, directing “controlled chaos” is not enough for the Pentagon to “feel safe”. Namely, growing Sino-Russian ties are what really makes the political West “shiver” (or should we say, suffer panic attacks). The Atlantic is particularly concerned by the “no-limits partnership” Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping announced back in February 2022. NATO simply has no mechanisms to prevent Moscow and Beijing from building their alliance. On the contrary, its truly unprovoked aggression against the entire world has only strengthened their strategic partnership. The Atlantic thinks that “from Russia’s and China’s perspective, the timing may look favorable”, primarily because “the US is stretched by conflict in the Middle East, has shifted ships and aircraft away from Europe and Asia, and has depleted much of its advanced air-defense missile stockpile”.

Well, nobody forced Washington DC to wage yet another war of aggression. Neither Moscow nor Beijing forced the Trump administration to foolishly attack Iran. However, even the Middle East pales in comparison to how Western forces would fare in a fight against adversaries such as Russia and China, particularly now that the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict has turned the Russian military into the deadliest fighting force on the planet. The Atlantic concludes that “in a two-front war, the side most likely to prevail may be the one that acts with common purpose and stays united”. It would seem NATO didn’t learn from the strategic mistakes of its Axis predecessors, because that’s precisely what’s going to happen if it continues with its aggression against the entire world, which will have no other choice but to unite.

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Robot Reportedly Runs Faster Than Usain Bolt, Jumps Higher Than Any Human Athlete

It’s the fast-approaching dawning of the robot era.

We live in a race to produce the stronger, faster, and more useful robots on the planet – and the Chinese seem to have gathered some pace.

Robot firm Unitree has unveiled a ‘super-humanoid’ that – they are claiming – is faster than Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest sprinter.

The droid also performs other athletic tasks.

The New York Post reported:

“They unveiled the abilities of the cybernetic specimen, dubbed ‘Superman’, in an X video with nearly 950,000 views.

According to Unitree, the robot was developed in just three months but can already high jump 2 meters (6.56 feet) and achieve a top speed of 12.66 m/s (28.3 mph), allegedly eclipsing ‘the records of all humans around the world’.”

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NSA Blocked Reports Of China Interference In US Elections From Reaching Trump: Declassified Docs

Newly declassified intelligence emails reveal that decisions were made by National Security Agency (NSA) leadership to block reports of Chinese influence in American elections from reaching President Donald Trump.

Four pages of emails, all dated March 13, 2020, were released on Aug. 18 by the White House Government Transparency Task Force.

According to one email—written by an unidentified NSA employee following a meeting about intelligence reporting foreign efforts to target the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections in the United States beginning in 2014—internal concerns were raised about the agency’s suppression of the reports.

“We did not know why we were here, trying to defend the election and identify threats to it, if we were unable to actually report what those threats were because of issues like this,” the NSA employee wrote.

According to another email, NSA analysts had proposed releasing the reports in 2018.

Task force officials are digging through files to determine why evidence of the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to influence the elections was not passed on to the president, Congress, and some intelligence leaders, including then Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, now CIA director.

Certain aspects of the reports on the Chinese election influence were censored because “it was judged that some of the details regarding the 2016 election were ‘sensational’ and so required a limited distribution [redacted],” an NSA analyst wrote, noting that colleagues tried for 16 months to get the information published.

“People higher in the chain than us—including but not limited to people at ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence]—time and again failed to make real decisions in a timely manner,” they said.

Intelligence officers were told in February 2020 that the office approved the report, and analysts prioritized its delivery, but the NSA deputy director blocked its release, according to the documents.

George Barnes served as NSA deputy director from 2017 to 2023.

“[The deputy director] explained that he was concerned that releasing the [redacted] at this time—in the current political climate, with an acting [director of national intelligence (DNI)] who had been tasked … to ‘clean house’ in the intelligence community, and with an administration that is suspicious of the [intelligence community] and aggressive in removing anyone who stand in their way—would damage NSA’s credibility,” the analyst wrote, referring to Trump appointee Richard Grenell, who became acting DNI on Feb. 20, 2020.

The analyst said the deputy director was concerned that releasing the information could be viewed as political in nature because of the two-year delay.

“I lacked the courage to point out that we, [redacted], had processed the information in a timely manner, and the delay in releasing it was due in part to decisions and inaction on the part of people in the room,” the analyst wrote.

According to the analyst, the deputy director also sought to keep the NSA’s reputation separate from the CIA, FBI, and ODNI—agencies he perceived “had been tarred as hosting or being part of the ‘deep state.’”

The analyst said the deputy director thought publishing the report would “destroy that trust.”

“He felt the questioning of NSA that would ensue would have ramifications on the credibility of NSA reporting overall and would result in morale problems among the broader NSA workforce, a la when the [redacted],” the analyst wrote.

Other elements of the gathered intelligence were excluded from reporting because it would have been impossible to conceal the identity of members of Congress, the analyst said. Such cases require special approval, as dictated by the “Gates Procedures,” established by Robert Gates, former director of Central Intelligence, in 1992.

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Declassified Files Reveal Eric Swalwell Admitted to Sex with Chinese Spy Fang Fang

Files declassified by President Donald Trump on former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and the Chinese spy known as Fang Fang reveal that the disgraced ex-congressman admitted to the FBI he had a sexual relationship with her  — and that the bureau attempted at one point to recruit her without her knowledge.

The documents prove that the United States government was aware of the suspicious relationship between Swalwell and Fang since at least 2014, years before Axios broke the story in 2020.

A zip file of documents, labeled “Rusty Thumbs” after the FBI’s codename for Fang, was published on the White House Election Integrity webpage on Monday along with the following synopsis:

The FBI developed evidence that a Chinese woman with direct ties to that country’s intelligence service had potentially compromised a Democratic congressman from California with sex, foreign interns and illicit donations while she was being recruited to become a bureau informant a decade ago, according to bombshell memos that expose another threat to America’s political system from Beijing.

The files chronicling the relationship between Rep. Eric Swalwell and the Chinese national Fang Fang – also known by her English name Christine Fang – were declassified by President Donald Trump and released Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force as part of a broader effort to unmask foreign threats to U.S. political and election systems.

According to the explosive FBI files, the bureau had opened a full-scale investigation into Swalwell over the allegations that Fang, a suspected intelligence operative for the Chinese government, had been facilitating campaign contributions for him in exchange for placing interns in his office. At one stage of the operation, the objective was to gather enough evidence to arrest and charge both Swalwell and Fang, who had ties to China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS).

Multiple witnesses described their interactions with Fang to the FBI, including a winery owner who said that Fang told him to “just bring his checkbook” to a campaign event for Swalwell because she would reimburse him, and a wealthy restaurant franchise owner who said that Fang wanted his contribution to Swalwell attributed to her. 

The FBI’s case, codenamed “Freshman Fifteen,” was opened as a “Sensitive Investigative Matter” due to one of its subjects being a sitting member of congress at the time. In June 2014, an FBI memorandum stated that the possible violations included bribery of public officials, conspiracy, excessive campaign contributions, prohibited foreign-national contributions and contributions through conduits. 

In a May 2015 FBI interview, Swalwell said he first met Fang in 2012 when they were seated at the same table at an event celebrating the Chinese-American community. In the interview, he described Fang as a “striking individual,” and admitted that he met her for a drink a couple of weeks later. 

After that drink, he said that their relationship became sexual. 

According to Swalwell, he had “physical relations with Fang on a handful of occasions,” although the relationship did not become romantic. He said their last sexual encounter was in March 2015, just a couple of months before he sat down for that interview. 

While he described the relationship as casual, he stated that he believed that Fang wanted something more romantic. 

“Investigation has revealed that Fang Fang, a Chinese foreign national residing in the United States, is the facilitator of a scheme to trade internships in Congressman Eric Swalwell’s Congressional office in return for campaign contributions,” an FBI memorandum stated. 

The memorandum noted that “in at least two cases,” Fang used middlemen in order to conceal herself as a foreign-national source of political donations. 

When Swalwell was interviewed by the FBI again in March 2016, he brought along legal counsel. He again admitted to once having an ongoing physical relationship with Fang, but reiterated that it never advanced into formal dating. 

The FBI records also stated that Fang was introduced to Swalwell by the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association (APAPA), with Swalwell telling the FBI that anyone Fang recommended for an internship with his office was effectively coming through APAPA. 

One of these referred interns who worked on Swalwell’s campaign was a Chinese national Fang referred to as her sister, though they were not related. 

Another Fang referral, who was a student at University of California, Davis, was given an internship in Swalwell’s office in Washington, DC.

Fang also extended multiple invitations to Swalwell and his family, including his father, to visit China. The Swalwells declined these invitations, with the then-congressman telling the FBI that he did not want to go unless it was an official trip sanctioned by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

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Something Sparked a Technological Revolution in China 146,000 Years Ago—Archaeologists Have Now Linked It to a Mysterious Extinct Human Species

During the harsh conditions that prevailed in ice age China 146,000 years ago, a remarkable survival strategy was being developed by early humans—something that led to one of the region’s earliest technological revolutions.

In a series of recent discoveries at the Lingjing site in Northern China, archaeologists have unearthed evidence of sophisticated stone tools associated with Homo juluensis, an extinct human relative that inhabited parts of East Asia long ago, and which may even have interacted with ancestors of modern humans.

The findings, reported in the Journal of Human Evolution, have now revealed that stone crafting at the site began nearly 20,000 years earlier than previous estimates, placing these ancient toolmakers amid some of the harshest glacial period conditions, rather than the later warmer climate associated with past evaluations of the site.

The findings add to recent discoveries that have revealed surprising features about ancient archaic humans that thrived during this period, which include not only their unexpected size, but also their understanding of complex stone crafting techniques.

Creativity Driven by Cold

“People often imagine creativity as something that flourishes in good times,” said lead author Yuchao Zhao, the assistant curator of East Asian archaeology at Chicago’s Field Museum, in a statement. “Finding out that these stone tools were made during a harsh ice age tells a different story.

“Hard times can force us to adapt,” Zhao adds.

For more than a decade, archaeologists have undertaken excavations at Lingjing, where everything from animal remains to ancient tools has been uncovered.

Something else that the ancient human presence at this site has revealed is a surprisingly sophisticated ice age lithic industry, where the ancient humans who once thrived here employed a technologically complex manufacturing process for their time.

Evidence of this comes in the form of disc-shaped stone cores, which are deceptively simple in appearance. To craft them, their ancient makers had to carefully work them in ways that produced useful cutting flakes. Some of them were shaped evenly on both sides, while other examples reveal asymmetrical designs where one side served as a striking platform, and the other appears to have been prepared for controlled flake removal.

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Apple Trains Custom AI Model For China With Alibaba’s Help

Apple has trained a custom large language model specifically for the Chinese market, utilizing technical support from Alibaba Group, according to Reuters. 

This arrangement would make Apple the first foreign company cleared by Beijing to offer a proprietary AI model in China.

The custom model is expected to power portions of Apple Intelligence when the AI suite rolls out to mainland China via an upcoming iOS update.

This marks a strategic shift from Apple’s earlier plan to rely solely on third-party Chinese models for its regional generative AI features. According to the report, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude – which Apple pairs with its own technology in Western markets – are unavailable in China.

In July, China’s Cyberspace Administration officially registered Apple’s generative AI service, clearing the primary regulatory hurdle that had kept Apple Intelligence off local devices.

Under this approved framework, Alibaba’s Qwen model will integrate into Apple Intelligence across compatible iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Vision Pro headsets sold in China, while Baidu’s technology will separately support search-related features.

It remains unclear exactly how Apple’s proprietary model will divide tasks with Qwen and Baidu, as the technical breakdown between the systems has not yet been disclosed.

China remains one of Apple’s most crucial markets. Until now, the lack of native AI capabilities on Chinese iPhones has put Apple at a distinct competitive disadvantage against domestic rivals like Huawei, which have aggressively marketed AI-equipped handsets.

Apple Intelligence began rolling out globally in October 2024, but Apple said at the iPhone 16 launch that September that mainland China availability was “subject to regulatory approval.” The CAC’s July 15 registration came roughly 22 months later, clearing Apple alongside six other on-device generative AI services from Huawei, Samsung, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE.

The wait proved costly in a market Apple has been winning back. IDC put Apple’s China smartphone share at 18.1 percent in the second quarter, up from 13.9 percent a year earlier on 24.4 percent shipment growth – the strongest gain of any major brand, and enough to move Apple from fifth place to second. Huawei held the lead at 22.6 percent. They were the only two vendors to grow at all as overall shipments fell 4.3 percent to roughly 66 million units, a fifth straight quarterly decline driven by rising memory costs and fading government subsidies.

Apple’s gains came from holding iPhone 17 pricing steady while Android rivals raised theirs, and from signaling second-half price increases that pulled demand forward – mechanics that flatter one quarter rather than establishing a trend. Domestic rivals shipped on-device generative AI features throughout the wait.

Reporting has indicated Apple evaluated Baidu, ByteDance’s Doubao and DeepSeek before settling on Alibaba as its primary model provider. Apple has said nothing publicly about the arrangement – every confirmation to date has come from Alibaba and Baidu, or from the regulator’s own filing. No mainland launch date has been announced.

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Are China’s Surveillance Exports Turning Nations Into Digital Dictatorships?

Is Beijing hoping to turn other authoritarian societies into digital Chinas?

China’s rise as the world’s leading exporter of surveillance technology is yielding some disturbing results. Beijing’s surveillance export packages comprise an entire technological architecture that can give governments an unprecedented ability to see, identify, and track their populations.

Those technologies include cameras, artificial intelligence, telecommunications networks, cloud computing, facial recognition, license-plate recognition, and centralized command systems. Many mid-sized countries are becoming or are already customers.

Turning Other Nations Into ‘Little Chinas’

Turkey is an important case study.

To be clear, Turkey has not yet become a Chinese-style surveillance state. Its political system and institutions remain different from China’s. That said, Chinese technology companies have established a significant presence in Turkey’s digital infrastructure, and they’re not shy about it. In fact, Huawei has explicitly marketed its AI-powered CCTV and “Safe City,” i.e. surveillance technologies, in the Turkish market.

It’s no mystery that China wants to sell as much merchandise to as many trading partners as possible. But is it also possible that China wants as many partners as possible to use and become dependent upon its surveillance technology so that their societies turn into “little Chinas” by deploying Smart City tech?

AI Camera Surveillance

The first building block is the camera.

Chinese companies such as Hikvision and Dahua have become global leaders in video-surveillance equipment. Meanwhile, Huawei has developed AI-powered cameras capable of performing sophisticated image recognition and analysis. CSIS notes that Chinese firms can provide technologies ranging from cameras to AI analytics and centralized deployment.

Huawei’s AI-enabled technology is in Turkey, using cameras with embedded AI chips and deep learning capabilities to perform recognition and identification while feeding information into cloud-based big-data systems. Such systems could operate across enormous numbers of cameras.

That represents a fundamental shift in surveillance capability for nations such as Turkey. A conventional camera records what happened. An AI camera can begin answering who, when, where, and what.

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House Committees Detail Harvard Ties With Chinese Entities In New Report

A report released by House committees on Aug. 13 alleged that Harvard University prioritized financial ties over American national security and received more than $600 million from China, the most of any U.S. university.

The report, released by the House Select Committee on China and the House Education and Workforce Committee, alleged that Harvard created a nonprofit called Harvard Global to circumvent federal requirements for disclosing foreign donations to higher education.

According to the report, Harvard Global initially stated on its website that it could serve as a “proposal applicant and awardee” for awards the university was unable to accept for legal or financial reasons. The nonprofit later removed the language after the committees sent Harvard a draft of the report.

“Harvard created an entity in a blatant attempt to get around federal foreign funding disclosure laws. That’s unacceptable, especially given Harvard’s history of failing to comply with these requirements,” Education and Workforce Committee chairman Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) said in a statement.

The committees identified 140 publications co-authored by Harvard-affiliated researchers and researchers affiliated with Chinese universities, including a “Seven Sons” university, the report stated.

The “Seven Sons of National Defense” is a group of elite Chinese universities directly subordinate to the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which regulates China’s defense sector.

The House committees alleged that Harvard-affiliated researchers have worked with “Chinese universities that, as a matter of policy, conduct extensive weapons research and development and hold top-secret security clearances with the PLA [People’s Liberation Army].”

The report cited a 2023 research paper on magnetic materials co-authored by a Harvard-affiliated researcher and a researcher at China’s National University of Defense Technology – which the U.S. government has placed on its entity list as a threat to American national security.

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CCP Agent Buys a Listening Post Next to the White House

Location, location, location.

According to the Daily Caller, on July 21, a group called the Philip Qiu and Family Foundation paid $8.4 million for a hundred-year-old office building in DC.

What’s the big deal? It’s about 650 feet from the White House. That’s prime real estate… if your business is spying on the White House.

The buyer, Qiu Feili, is a former Shanghai police detective who later enrolled in an executive MBA program complete with a “team-building” wargame. Photos show him in camo, holding a rifle. University materials brag that he personally took out a third of the opposing side and posted the best individual marksmanship score in the group. Cool cool cool.

Since then, Qiu has climbed the ranks of the United Front Work Department, the CCP’s intelligence recruitment machine, eventually chairing the Shanghai Overseas Chinese Foundation. His circle connects straight into China’s actual spy services, the MPS and the MSS.

Qiu’s own assessment of the Party he serves, from 2021: it’s “like a kind, but firm parent.” Sure. The kind of parent who buys the building next door and points a listening device at your bedroom window. If Shelley were writing this newsletter, I’m sure she’d have something to say about that.

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