Tag: china

Chinese National Working as CBP Supervisor at Maine-Canada Border Caught on Camera Swapping Hardware Inside Homeland Security Computers — Then Putting Them Back on the Government Network

A Customs and Border Protection supervisor assigned to the Maine-Canada border has been arrested and charged after FBI agents say he was caught on hidden camera tearing apart government computers, ripping out processors and memory, stuffing in cheaper parts, and plugging the machines back into CBP’s network.

Terry “Jiajia” Liu, 39, of Calais, Maine, described himself as a native of Guangzhou, China. He worked as a CBP supervisor at the Calais Port of Entry, with duties stretching to the Ferry Point and Milltown crossings.

CBP officers are required to be U.S. citizens. According to The Maine Wire, Liu has posted images suggesting he voted in 2020. That does not answer the question every American should be asking: how did a man from Guangzhou end up with after-hours access to Homeland Security computers on the northern border?

According to an FBI affidavit obtained by Steve Robinson at The Maine Wire, CBP IT staff discovered in late 2025 that computers at three Maine border facilities had been modified without authorization. The count grew to 46 machines: 38 in Calais, six at Ferry Point, two at Milltown.

Thirty-nine had their CPUs swapped. Six had RAM changed. Eight had hard drives replaced.

The original hardware included 14th-generation Intel Core i7 processors. What went back in were older, weaker chips, including Pentium-class parts that did not meet CBP specs. Many of those computers were then reconnected to the agency network.

Port Director Theodore Cummings had already told Liu in writing in March 2025: “Please do not move any computers or computer parts.” Stay in your lane. File a ticket. Liu allegedly kept going.

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Telecom Company in Africa Gets $100 Million U.S. Loan to Compete with China’s Huawei

The Trump administration announced on Friday that Africell, the only American-owned telecommunications company in Africa, will receive a $99.6 million loan from the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) to help it compete with Chinese telecom giant Huawei.

The loan from EXIM was intended to “boost the telecommunications sector in Angola and strengthen American technology leadership abroad” by helping Africell acquire the latest American and European mobile phone technology.

“Africell’s fast growth in Angola and DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo), and our long-term market leadership in Sierra Leone and The Gambia demonstrate the unique benefits that high-class American technology, skills and investment can bring to Africa,” said Africell CEO Ziad Dalloul.

“We are pleased to be working with EXIM to introduce more trusted communications infrastructure to our operating markets,” he said. “In doing so, we are flying the flag for American technology leadership and creating secure pathways for future American and allied digital technologies to be deployed in sub-Saharan Africa, including in the Lobito Corridor region.”

“The quality and results achieved through partnerships with the United States and American companies speak for themselves. This is a win for both our countries: American technology and a more prosperous, more connected Angola,” said Shannon Nagy Cazeau, charge d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy to Angola and Sao Tome and Principe.

While these statements did not directly mention China, Reuters noted on Friday that the Trump administration has been working on a “clean network” initiative to get security-threatening Chinese telecom and network equipment out of the U.S. and allied nations, particularly equipment from Huawei. 

The U.S. government has slapped Huawei with heavy sanctions for allegedly spying on users, a charge the company denies, even though Chinese law explicitly requires all companies to hand over information about their customers upon demand from Chinese Communist intelligence services. Huawei has also been implicated in Communist China’s human rights abuses, such as the surveillance and oppression of the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang province.

Huawei currently has about 52% of the 5G mobile data market in Africa, a grip the Trump administration seeks to loosen. Africell, a company that started up in 2001 with a data center in Angola, received a $100 million loan in 2018 from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which has since been renamed to the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). Africell used the funds to expand into the DRC, Gambia, and Sierra Leone. Africell repaid the loan three years ahead of schedule.

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Why are people driving around this city in fake foreign police cars?

When Stella* saw a car parked outside a café in the Auckland CBD on Thursday with Chinese police insignia, she was shocked.

“I lived in China for a number of years and seeing a Chinese police car there wouldn’t raise alarm,” she said. “But seeing it here is quite intimidating.”

Across the side of the white Toyota RAV4 were the characters 公安, meaning “public security” and commonly used by police in China. There was a police-style emblem on the door and blue and yellow markings running along the body.

“It made me immediately think, what are the Chinese police doing here?”

I sent one to Freeman Yu, an outspoken critic of the Chinese government’s influence in New Zealand, to see what he made of it.

“I am aware of this matter. I have already reported it to the 105 police online.”

Yu said he reported it because he believed it could be an offence and a potential public safety risk.

In his report to police in July, which Stuff has seen, he said: “The fact that this car is painted to look like a Chinese police vehicle is disturbing and highly inappropriate.”

But the car Yu reported had a different number plate than the one seen by Stella, and was a different make – a white Tesla Model 3.

Images of the Tesla have circulated on Chinese-language social media.

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Repeat After Media: Data Centers Are Wonderful and Good

If you follow conservative media and Republican politicians, you could be convinced that any opposition to AI data centers is not due to their sprawling footprint, greed for electricity or insatiable need for cooling water. Rather, it’s the result of a Chinese Communist plot.

These data centers are dreadfully unpopular. “Seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed,” according to Gallup (5/13/26). From YouGov (9/1/26): “About half (51%) of Americans say that the construction of new data centers is a bad thing for the country. Only 20% say it is a good thing.”

The reasons for this opposition is that these centers put enormous strain on the electrical grid, need loads of water for cooling, can be extremely noisy and take up lots of space in communities. “The environmental footprint of data centers already rivals some of the world’s largest countries,” AP (6/3/26) reported.

Much like how some liberals have convinced themselves that MAGA and American nationalism are fueled by Kremlin disinformation, the right-wing line is that communities opposing these giant data centers are motivated not by their own interests or common sense, but some unseen Beijing-manufactured psychosis.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) demanded that the Justice Department “investigate foreign influence efforts targeting the buildout of American AI infrastructure,” as he suspected that a “network of foreign actors, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is attempting to manipulate US policy and public opinion on data centers.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in the words of Newsmax (9/2/26), believes “China is helping fuel opposition to artificial intelligence data centers in the United States.” “Beijing has a strategic interest in convincing Americans to slow construction of the infrastructure needed to compete in the global AI race,” the far-right outlet paraphrased.

The Washington Examiner‘s Facebook page (8/30/26) featured a cartoon from A.F. Branco depicting a Chinese data center running a psy-op on Americans who oppose data centers.

The National Interest (9/1/26) said:

Chinese entities have a long history of collaborating with far-left causes, and they have again found common ground in opposing the construction of data centers. They are pushing mutually reinforcing messages that criticize a host of alleged environmental and ethical concerns as reasons to disempower American growth in a critical economic and competitive sector. Officials at the federal, state and local levels should recognize this noxious alliance as they field criticism of data centers.

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Mitch McConnell’s Wife Elaine Chao Allegedly Held Multiple Appointments From CCP-Linked Organizations — Some Overlapped With Her Service in Two U.S. Cabinets

Former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao reportedly received multiple appointments from Chinese government entities and organizations connected to the Chinese Communist Party’s global influence apparatus, including positions that overlapped with her service at the highest levels of the United States government.

The explosive findings were revealed in a new investigation by the Daily Caller News Foundation, which reviewed Chinese government announcements, state-run media reports and archived records.

Chao, the wife of longtime Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, served as Labor secretary throughout the George W. Bush administration and later as President Donald Trump’s Transportation secretary from January 2017 until January 2021.

According to the DCNF investigation, Chinese records identify Chao as having received at least four appointments since 2008 from a municipal government or organizations connected to the CCP’s United Front Work Department.

The United Front is not some harmless cultural exchange program.

A U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report describes the United Front Work Department as the CCP agency responsible for coordinating influence operations intended to co-opt individuals, shape foreign opinion and advance Beijing’s political interests overseas.

In other words, the CCP allegedly was handing titles to the wife of one of the most powerful Republicans in Washington, and, for portions of that time, a sitting member of the United States Cabinet.

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Lobbyist for China-Owned Smithfield Foods Failed to Disclose CCP Ties on Farm Bill Filings

Greenberg Traurig lobbyist Christopher DeLacy spent quarter after quarter telling Congress that no foreign entity had an interest in Smithfield Foods’ Washington work, including Farm Bill reauthorization and “issues related to foreign ownership of agricultural land,” while the company is 86.9 percent owned by China-based WH Group, 万洲国际, whose leadership includes CCP-tied figures and chairman Wan Long, a former PLA soldier.

Independent journalist Laura Loomer exposed the failure to disclose CCP ties in a report on Loomered.

The Center for Responsible Food Business filed a complaint over the foreign ties with the House Clerk and Senate Secretary last month. The form had indicated no foreign ties repeatedly since 2023.

Just over two weeks after the complaint was filed, the firm amended its second-quarter 2026 Lobbying Disclosure Act report, which covered $120,000 in lobbying of the House, Senate, and Treasury.

Smithfield is the largest pork producer on U.S. soil and holds tens of thousands of acres of American farmland.

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Chinese chipmaker CXMT allegedly used a written roadmap to steal Samsung DRAM tech — South Korean court says ‘Project Hefei’ lifted 620-step recipe to build 10% global market share

The saga involving Chinese DRAM maker CXMT’s alleged theft of Samsung’s trade secrets is going strong. The South Korean court case already includes multiple convictions, two of which carry prison sentences for ex-Samsung engineers. The latest chapter is a doozy, though. Korean publication NoCut News spilled the chips on Project Hefei, a purported CXMT roadmap outlining long-term planning about said technology “acquisitions,” personnel poaching, and production tape-out — all key pieces that may have directly led to CXMT’s ascension to 10% of the global DRAM market.

According to leaked court documents, the prosecution says that Project Hefei was CXMT’s entire DRAM development plan and was spearheaded by the firm’s head of development (formerly Samsung’s DRAM development lead), around August 2016 — not much longer after CXMT itself was created in June 2016.

In brief, the purported plan was to nab Samsung’s Process Recipe Plan (PRP) by September 2016, poach key Samsung engineers by October 2016, have R&D complete in July 2017, and start making DRAM wafers by August 2018 at a rate of 10,000 a month. NoCut says the PRP dataset comprises 620 steps in DRAM manufacturing and includes data on equipment, consumables, and production methods.

The report states that in August 2016, CXMT first attempted to make wafers of 18nm chips by relying on the collective memories of the Samsung engineers it had hired away. Those recollections apparently proved insufficient, so after allegedly gaining illicit access to Samsung’s PRP, CXMT prepared its own document in September 2016. The leaked data even included specific equipment suppliers and model numbers.

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The Soft Antichrist Of The AI Age: What Everyone Is Missing About The US-China Arms Race

I. The word

Peter Thiel spent the back half of last year giving private lectures on the Antichrist, and the word has been loose in the discourse ever since. His political reading is the old one. The Antichrist is not a cartoon devil. He is the figure who arrives offering peace and safety, and who uses the fear of catastrophe to install one universal order. In Thiel’s telling that figure is a regulator. He stops technology in the name of survival. The price of the peace is stagnation.

I want the frame. I do not want his conclusion.

The more probable figure is not the one who promises safety. It is the one who promises growth. Most of the world does not lie awake about existential risk from machine intelligence. It lies awake about electricity, logistics, credit, tax collection, and a median citizen who is twenty four and needs work. To that world the universal offer is not a moratorium. It is a stack. Cheap. Financed. Hosted. Present. Already attached to the handsets, the ports, and the power.

That is the soft Antichrist. It does not arrive with a speech about ending history. It arrives as the only AI that can grow your GDP.

I am not writing theology. I am writing underwriting.

II. The comforting story

The market is telling itself a story. The AI race is a contest of models. America builds the best systems. China copies. Europe regulates. Capital therefore clusters around closed labs, chipmakers, and hyperscale cloud. The scoreboard is a benchmark table.

That story is not false. It is incomplete in a way that misprices power. It treats the richest customers as the only customers that matter. It treats evaluations as destiny. It treats national power as a software demo.

I disagree.

The race will be decided by who becomes the default operating system for the economies that still have the most growth left. Those economies will not adopt AI as a lifestyle product. They will adopt it as a growth tool. They will take the stack that is cheap, present, financed, and attached to what they already run. If that stack is Chinese, Beijing does not need to conquer anyone. It only needs to become expensive to leave.

III. Where the mass actually is

When Sargasso maps AI adoption across emerging GDP rather than across model releases, the picture is not the one the market is priced for.

Start with the denominator. On purchasing power terms, IMF projections for 2026 put China at about $44.3 trillion against $32.4 trillion for the United States. India is near $18.9 trillion. Indonesia clears $5.4 trillion and Brazil $5.2 trillion. Turkey is at $4.0 trillion, Mexico $3.6 trillion, Saudi Arabia $2.9 trillion, Egypt $2.6 trillion, Nigeria $2.4 trillion. Nominal dollars still flatter America, and by a wide margin. China’s nominal print is about $20.9 trillion against the same $32.4 trillion for the United States. Both numbers are true. They answer different questions. Nominal tells you who can buy foreign assets. PPP tells you how much physical and administrative activity there is to automate. For an adoption thesis, the second number is the one that matters.

Ray Dalio has been describing the political consequence in plain terms. He calls it a tribute system. A hierarchical order in which leaders travel to Beijing to acknowledge relative power in exchange for access and stability. He ties it to a growing view abroad that American security guarantees will not be honored under stress. I take the framing seriously. I do not treat it as scripture. Ports and rail were the first set of rails. Models will be the next set.

IV. The evidence is already in the download data

This part of the argument is no longer speculative.

Over roughly four years, the American share of model downloads on Hugging Face fell from about sixty percent to the mid teens by late 2025, according to reporting in The Wire China. Hugging Face’s own one year review of the DeepSeek moment is blunt on the composition shift. DeepSeek R1 became the most liked model on the platform in its history. The top of that list is no longer majority American. Baidu went from zero public Hugging Face releases in 2024 to more than one hundred in 2025. ByteDance and Tencent raised their release counts eight to nine fold. Of newly created models under a year old, downloads for Chinese models surpassed any other country, including the United States. Western startups and researchers now routinely fine tune Chinese base models because those are the largest open weights available.

The Wire China’s Southeast Asia reporting puts the commercial logic in local language. A Jakarta lab head said developers will always pick the cheapest one. A Malaysian founder said he wants the biggest model and there is no Western open source offering at that size. Chinese cloud providers were running thirty seven availability zones across six Southeast Asian regions against thirty across four for the Western field.

None of this shows up cleanly in a frontier benchmark table. All of it shows up in switching costs three years from now.

V. The institutional layer

Beijing is not leaving the volume layer to price alone. In July 2026 it stood up the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization in Shanghai, with twenty nine founding members. Public reporting names Russia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, and a broader set spanning Africa and Latin America among the signatories. The five year commitments attached to the body, as reported by Caixin and The Diplomat, are unglamorous and therefore serious. Training placements. Joint application centers with regional blocs. A weather early warning system deployed into dozens of countries.

Read that list as an underwriter. Training placements create the administrators who will write the next procurement. Application centers create the reference deployments. Weather systems create dependency inside a ministry that cannot afford an outage. Standards get set that way. Not with a better model. With a bureaucracy that has already learned one.

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Chinese criminals posed as Holocaust victims’ descendants to get German citizenship

A Der Spiegel investigation published Thursday has uncovered an alleged criminal network that helped people, mainly from China, pose as the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Jews persecuted by the Nazis in order to obtain German citizenship and passports.

According to the report, some of the applicants were Chinese nationals seeking to escape law enforcement in their own country and were able to do so with the help of German authorities that accepted fraudulent family histories linking them to Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.

The adoption of Jewish identities by Germans and others is not new and has sometimes been explained by a desire to distance oneself from the legacy of the nation that committed the Nazi crimes, or to claim moral authority and authenticity when criticizing Israel.

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How Your Amazon Package Was Spying On You Before It Got Here

The crane lowers the container. The forklift moves it to the warehouse. And the whole time, the ship it came off of has been sucking up U.S. military signals from the harbor — and beaming them back to Beijing. For thirty years. In American ports.

COSCO has been conducting the secret signals intelligence collection for Beijing for decades, the two senior officials confirmed. This intelligence collection is designed to support the military communications technologies and encryption developments of countries such as the United States, Europe and others in Asia, the two officials said. Once this intelligence is collected by COSCO it is used by the Chinese government to support its position in territorial disputes, for maritime reconnaissance and to provide early warning of possible military action by foreign forces, the two officials explained.

According to the officials, COSCO is using sophisticated signals intelligence collection equipment to track the communications of other ships and aircraft on the high seas, often to monitor crucial trade routes as well as routes used by military vessels.

COSCO, the world’s fourth-largest ocean carrier, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations published by Reuters. China’s embassy in Washington, however, called the reports “baseless” in a statement published late on Tuesday. “We oppose vilifying China by peddling the so-called ‘intelligence collection’ narrative, which is totally baseless,” said Liu Chang, a spokesman for the embassy. He said that China would never ask a company or individual to “collect or provide data, information or intelligence located abroad against local laws.”

These revelations are highly significant to the upcoming meeting between U.S. President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a Washington summit set to take place later this month. Trade is expected to be high on the agenda as well as other security matters.

A January 2025 listing by the Pentagon of COSCO as one of several companies to be considered to be controlled by the People’s Liberation Army could have significant commercial and reputational consequences for COSCO. However, the listing is not a formal sanction and has not yet been implemented into law. In April 2025 a report by the U.S. Naval War College examined the use of intelligence collection by China’s fishing fleets as well as by its commercial shipping fleet.

COSCO Shipping Company is the world’s biggest ocean carrier, operating hundreds of ships across the globe, visiting major U.S. ports as well as the ports of Europe and other strategic locations around the world including the Strait of Hormuz, South China Sea and around Taiwan.

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