Tag: china

Saber Rattling Toward Tragedy: The High Stakes of US-China Tensions

The confirmation of US Army Special Forces’ deployment to strategic locations in Taiwan is a harbinger of the United States inching closer to a precipice, one that overlooks a potential conflict with China—a scenario fraught with peril not just for the involved states but for global peace.

This development, while emblematic of the US’s commitment to Taiwan’s defense, inadvertently amplifies the saber rattling that has come to define US-China relations. The stakes of this brinkmanship are alarmingly high, risking a catastrophic conflict that serves no nation’s true interest, save for the military-industrial complex that stands to profit at the cost of countless innocent lives.

A Dangerous Game

The decision to station US Green Berets in Kinmen and Penghu, areas perilously close to mainland China, is not merely a strategic military maneuver but a bold political statement. It represents a significant escalation in the US’s show of support for Taiwan, a move that, while intended to deter Chinese aggression, equally serves to provoke it. This saber rattling—a display of military might under the guise of deterrence—edges us closer to a conflict that, once ignited, could spiral out of control, drawing in multiple global powers into a confrontation nobody wants.

The True Beneficiaries of Conflict

Amid these tensions, it’s crucial to ask: Who truly benefits from such brinkmanship? The sad answer lies in the military-industrial complex, a conglomerate of defense contractors and associated industries whose fortunes swell with the drums of war. For them, the escalation of tensions is not a harbinger of tragedy but an opportunity for profit, achieved at the expense of human lives and global stability. This stark reality underscores the need to scrutinize the motives behind our foreign policy decisions and question the narrative that military escalation equates to deterrence.

Keep reading

CIA Further Discredits ‘Uyghur Genocide’ by Admitting Covert Influence Campaign

On March 14, Reuters released a bombshell report: in 2019 the Donald Trump White House began a clandestine CIA influence campaign to smear China’s international reputation.

According to three former U.S. officials with direct knowledge, “the CIA created a small team of operatives who used bogus internet identities to spread negative narratives about Xi Jinping’s government while leaking disparaging intelligence to overseas news outlets.” The information releases “targeted public opinion” both internationally and in China itself. Along with influencing public opinion, the campaign sought to “foment paranoia among top leaders [in China]” as they tried to trace the leaked information.

The report specifically stated that CIA operatives “promoted [corruption] allegations” against Chinese government officials and “slammed as corrupt and wasteful China’s Belt and Road Initiative.” Although these specific efforts were identified, the former U.S. officials declined to name additional narratives that were advanced.

Reuters did not confirm that the campaign has continued into the Joe Biden presidency however two “unnamed intelligence historians” told Reuters that such “presidential findings” often remain in place across administrations.

The existence of this CIA influence campaign is probable given the broader historical context.

The Trump Administration marked the extreme acceleration of the United States’ new cold war against China. This began when the Pentagon issued its 2018 National Defense Strategy, which declared a refocus from Middle East “counter-terrorism” to “Great Power Competition” with Russia and China.

Subsequently, 2019 was a banner year for Western escalation against Beijing. In October 2019, the Department of Defense created a new office focused solely on confronting China, called the “deputy assistant secretary of defense for China.” In December 2019, NATO named China as an emerging “challenge.” In 2019 and 2020, the Trump administration doubled U.S. naval transits of the Taiwan Strait over previous years and conducted approximately 1,000 reconnaissance flights over the South China Sea. Of course, when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in 2020, it was immediately blamed on China.

The above efforts notwithstanding, the main thrust of America’s new cold war against China was informational. America sought to isolate China on the world stage by shredding its international reputation, justifying sanctions, and inhibiting trade. This was clear even before the CIA’s new revelation.

Aside from blaming that nation for COVID-19, the “Uyghur Genocide” narrative was the most prominant vehicle for achieving that goal. But just what focus, if any, does the CIA’s revelation provide to the facts of that narrative as we already know them?

Well, the CIA was there every step of the way.

2019 is the same year that an NGO called the “China Tribunal” began petitioning the UN Human Rights Council, accusing the Chinese Communist Party of conducting an industrial organ harvesting operation that preyed upon Chinese dissidents and Uyghur muslims.

In January 2021, the Trump administration weaponized this claim when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, fresh off his post as CIA director, formally accused China of committing genocide against Uyghur muslims in its Westernmost provice, Xinjiang. To back this claim, Pompeo referred to the findings of a 2020 report written by a German sociologist named Adrian Zenz. The report was titled “Setilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang.” In March 2021, Zenz published an additional report, “The Uyghur Genocide: An Examination of China’s Breaches of the 1948 Convention.”

News outlets the world over declared that these reports were being made by “independent third parties.” Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Keep reading

Beijing’s military hacked U.S. nuclear firm before Hunter Biden aided Chinese bid to acquire it

U.S. officials were acutely aware that Beijing was trying to obtain America’s premiere nuclear reactor technology, including through illicit hacking, months before Hunter Biden and his business partners sought to arrange a quiet sale of an iconic U.S. reactor company to a Chinese firm, according to court records and national security experts.

Hunter Biden’s unsuccessful efforts to help CEFC China Energy acquire Westinghouse, one of America’s most famous electricity and appliance brands, and its state-the-art AP1000 nuclear reactor began in early 2016 while Joe Biden was still a sitting vice president, memos published Wednesday by Just the News show.

Just 20 months earlier, his father’s Justice Department charged five members of a Chinese military hacking unit for breaching the company’s computer systems in search of intellectual property and internal strategy communications, according to a copy of the indictment.

In May 2014, the five operatives of the People’s Liberation Army’s Unit 61398 were charged with hacking into the systems of six U.S.-based companies across different industrial sectors, including Westinghouse Electric Co., SolarWorld, United States Steel Corp., and a union. The attorney general at the time, Eric Holder, called the breach a classic case of “economic espionage.”

One operative gained access to Westinghouse’s computers in 2010 and “stole proprietary and confidential technical and design specifications related to pipes, pipe supports, and pipe routing” pertaining to the company’s advanced AP1000 nuclear reactor design, according to an indictment filed by the Department of Justice.

“Among other things, such specifications would enable a competitor to build a plant similar to the AP1000 without incurring significant research and development costs associated with designing similar pipes, pipe supports, and pipe routing systems,” the indictment reads.

File

Criminal No. 14-118 USA vs. Wang Dong et al.pdf

National security experts said Thursday they were floored that the son of a sitting vice president would be involved in trying to help a Chinese firm get a leg up on the United States in the race for nuclear energy and that Hunter Biden’s involvement with CEFC almost certainly would have been detected by U.S. intelligence and prompted concern. 

Documents previously released by Congress in the Biden impeachment inquiry show the Biden family appeared to be acutely aware that CEFC was tied directly to the communist government in China.

While there is no evidence at the moment that Hunter Biden was aware of or involved in the hacking efforts by the Chinese, Hunter Biden wrote in one text message in 2017 that he believed one of the CEFC officials he worked with, Patrick Ho, was the “f—ing spy chief” of China (Ho was lated indicted in the U.S. and charged with corruption) while Joe Biden’s brother James told the FBI he believed CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming had a relationship with China’s communist president.

“It’s beyond outrageous that Hunter Biden would be involved in any such deal with Communist China while his father is the sitting vice president,” former Trump-era Deputy National Security Advisor Victoria Coates told the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. “I mean just the glaring conflicts of interest are hard to wrap your brain around. But particularly with Westinghouse.”

Keep reading

Two weeks after the first “covid death” in China, 33 “vaccines” were already in development according to WHO document

Seventeen days after the first covid death worldwide was reported and before the first “covid death” outside China, the World Health Organisation (“WHO”) published a document that showed 33 covid “vaccines” were already under development.

On 11 January 2020, Chinese state media reported the first known death from an illness caused by a novel virus.  Seventeen days later, on 28 January, WHO published a document showing that 33 covid “vaccines” were in development.

According to WHO’s document, two of the vaccines were already in Phase 1 trials and were being tested in humans: a DNA vaccine developed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (“NIAID”) and an inactivated virus vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

This was 5 days before the first reported covid death outside China.

Keep reading

TIKTOK THREAT IS PURELY HYPOTHETICAL, U.S. INTELLIGENCE ADMITS

THE PURPORTED THREAT of TikTok to U.S. national security has inflated into a hysteria of Chinese spy balloon proportions, but the official record tells a different story: U.S. intelligence has produced no evidence that the popular social media site has ever coordinated with Beijing. That fact hasn’t stopped many in Congress and even President Joe Biden from touting legislation that would force the sale of the app, as the TikTok frenzy fills the news pages with empty conjecture and innuendo.

In interviews and testimony to Congress about TikTok, leaders of the FBI, CIA, and the director of national intelligence have in fact been careful to qualify the national security threat posed by TikTok as purely hypothetical. With access to much of the government’s most sensitive intelligence, they are well placed to know.

The basic charge is that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, a Chinese company, could be compelled by the government in Beijing to use their app in targeted operations to manipulate public opinion, collect mass data on Americans, and even spy on individual users. (TikTok says it has never shared U.S. user data with the Chinese government and would not do so if asked. This week, TikTok CEO Shou Chew said that “there’s no CCP ownership” of ByteDance, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.)

Though top national security officials seem happy to echo these allegations of Chinese control of TikTok, they stop short of saying that China has ever actually coordinated with the company.

Typical is an interview CIA Director William Burns gave to CNN in 2022, where he said it was “troubling to see what the Chinese government could do to manipulate TikTok.” Not what the Chinese government has done, but what it could do.

What China could do turns out to be a recurring theme in the statements of the top national security officials.

Keep reading

Chinese Scientists Implant First Pig Liver Into Brain-Dead Human

Who says nothing interesting ever happens in the world anymore? This week, in a “first of its kind” operation, a brain-dead human subject was implanted with the world’s first gene-edited pig liver transplant, according to SCMP. 

In what could be a pioneering move, Chinese scientists have transplanted a gene-edited pig liver into a human, aiming to potentially mark a solution to organ shortages, the report says.

The liver was modified to reduce rejection risks and was implanted into a brain-dead recipient, showing no rejection signs four days post-operation, as per the Air Force Medical University. SCMP writes that this procedure could significantly aid those with end-stage liver disease, possibly revolutionizing liver transplants. 

Gene editing advancements in China also promise to enhance efficiency and accessibility in plant modification, reflecting broader strides in medical innovation, the report continues.

Keep reading

CIA allegedly made fake social media accounts to troll the Chinese government

The CIA allegedly launched a secret operation to troll Chinese officials and turn public opinion against them through leaked intelligence and negative news on social media. 

Reuters reports the operation began in 2019 and was also aimed at causing paranoia within Xi Jinping’s government. CIA agents reportedly made fake social media accounts to spread rumors, such as allegations that Communist Party members hid ill-gotten wealth outside the country, and criticize Chinese government initiatives, like saying a program financing infrastructure projects in other countries was corrupt.

The CIA declined to comment to Reuters, which could not confirm whether the program is still in place. Reuters said the operation, authorized by then-President Donald Trump, operated beyond China and used social media to influence public opinion in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the South Pacific. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which gave grants and loans for infrastructure projects, operates in developing countries in those regions. This initiative was one of the CIA program’s targets. 

Keep reading

The U.S. Wants to Ban TikTok for the Sins of Every Social Media Company

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives will likely vote to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok, which sets the stage for a possible full ban of the platform in the United States (Update: it did). The move will come after a slow but steady drumbeat from politicians on both sides of the aisle to ban the platform for some combination of potential and real societal harms algorithmically inflicted upon American teens by a Chinese-owned company. 

The situation is an untenable mess. A TikTok ban will have the effect of further entrenching and empowering gigantic, monopolistic American social media companies that have nearly all of the same problems that TikTok does. A ban would highlight, again, that people who use mainstream social media platforms run by corporations do not actually own their followers or their audiences, and that any businesses/jobs/livelihoods created on these platforms can be stripped away at any moment by the platforms or, in this case, by the United States government. 

Bytedance and TikTok itself have been put into an essentially impossible situation that is perhaps most exemplified in a 60 Minutes clip from 2022 that went viral this weekend, in which Tristan Harris, a big tech whistleblower who has turned the attention he got from the documentary The Social Dilemma into a self-serving career as a guy who talks about how social media is bad, explains that China is exporting the “opium” version of TikTok to American children. 

Keep reading

Banning TikTok is a Power Grab for the Deep State 

Legislators have made exceedingly clear that the intent of the bill they’re currently fast-tracking through Congress is “to finally ban TikTok in the United States,” as Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), chair of the House Republican conference, proudly put it.

“TikTok must be banned,” concurred Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), the Republican chief deputy whip.

“I applaud the strong bipartisan effort to ban TikTok,” added Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“No one is trying to disguise anything,” clarified Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX). “We want to ban TikTok.”

Some of the bill’s proponents, like Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), have been less forthcoming than their colleagues. Sherrill strangely repeats the common yet obviously specious claim that the bill “doesn’t ban TikTok,” which is just pure politician sleight-of-hand: No, the text does not specifically provide for an immediate, automatic, blanket ban of TikTok, but it does provide for a fatal ultimatum to effectuate the ban of TikTok within six months, requiring TikTok to comply with U.S. demands for divestiture from its parent company, ByteDance, or face federal prohibition. So while the legislation would not impose the ban right away, it does create the exact statutory mechanism by which TikTok is named and targeted for banning in the very near future.

Ultimately, the desired end-result is the same one that has been long sought by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the bill’s leading sponsor: “To ban TikTok … before it’s too late.” The forced divestiture is merely a mechanism to achieve this predetermined outcome.

Keep reading

China is Now Building our FBI Offices Inside the U.S.?

Molasky Construction of Las Vegas, Nevada cites its success in building U.S. Government Facilities, including several FBI field offices.

For our special and secure U.S. Government Facilities we need trustworthy companies that can deliver the best construction and renovation to make sure no foreign threat fills that building and network connectivity with different tricks of the trade to see, hear, and read everything going on in that facility.

It’s important that everyone, especially the key personnel in a construction company working sensitive programs are trustworthy themselves.  From experience, getting an insider is the most effective way of break into an organization.

Why try a Mission Impossible break and enter when you can have someone on the inside do the work for you? Now why would one of the individuals of this company performing sensitive construction also be a big advocate for the EB-5 Immigration Program?

Nothing necessarily wrong with being an advocate of EB-5.  But EB-5 advocacy and building of sensitive Government facilities should be an immediate screaming alarm of incompatible activities.  The EB-5 program has been fraught with fraud and abuse.  The EB-5 advocate in Molasky seems to have a strong intersection with EB-5 applicants from China.

Keep reading