Tag: china

Spies were ‘gagged’ from objecting to new Chinese mega embassy plans

British spies were ‘gagged’ from raising objections to a new Chinese embassy in east London, documents suggest.

The revelations about the proposed embassy – dubbed a ‘spy campus’ – are likely to increase concerns about the development on the site of the Royal Mint buildings near the Tower of London.

A final decision on whether to approve the plan, revived by No 10 despite being blocked by the previous government after warnings from MI5 and Scotland Yard in 2022, has been deferred while the row about the collapsed Chinese spy trial continues.

Now unearthed documents show inspectors were denied access to key secret documents by Labour when approving the ‘mega embassy’ which will be ‘crawling with spies’.

The documents include a critical assessment from security services – the contents of which have been redacted. 

Ministers refused to allow a private inquiry, which would have allowed secret evidence to be considered.

Critics have accused ministers of trying to ram the application through and shut down any dissent or security concerns which might jeopardise it.

Officials in the Communities Department, which is handling the planning case, are preparing to announce the October 21 deadline will be pushed back. 

The department declined to comment.

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Anduril Founder Urges Rapid Reindustrialization As U.S. Defense Supply Chain Remains Alarmingly Reliant On China

China’s latest decision to expand rare earth export controls, adding holmium, erbium, thulium, europium, and ytterbium to the restricted list just days ago, serves as yet another wake-up call for the Trump administration and Washignton as a whole. The U.S. remains dangerously dependent on China, the world’s largest producer of rare earths, for these critical minerals that are essential inputs into the manufacturing of drones, humanoid robots, EVs, and advanced weaponry. 

Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey sat down with Bloomberg on Friday to discuss how America’s defense supply chains are dangerously reliant on China. He said the U.S. must urgently “reindustrialize” and rebuild its capacity to produce rare earths, semiconductors, and advanced computing hardware domestically if it wants to survive the 2030s. 

“I mean, the reality is that our interests are relatively divergent at this point,” Luckey said, referencing President Trump’s late tariff threats (read here) against Being. “We need to make our own chips, our own computers, our own products downstream. China has a lot of leverage right now, and that makes it very hard to negotiate. They do have a lot of leverage right now, and so it’s very hard to make deals with them. I think it’s actually healthy for the US-China relationship for it not to be so dependent on China right now.”

Luckey noted that Anduril, one of the fastest-growing defense technology startups in the U.S, has been heavily sanctioned by China, forcing it to eliminate all supply chain exposure in China. 

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Inside the Hunter Biden-linked proposal to sell off land around the US Embassy in Romania

Future first son Hunter Biden was tied up in an eyebrow-raising proposal to sell off land around the US embassy in Bucharest, Romania to a group that included a Chinese company — as part of an effort to help a local real estate tycoon beat corruption charges.

The scandal-scarred former first son — whose ties to Romania date back to when his father, Joe Biden, was vice-president — became involved in the proposal after he agreed in 2015 to help the developer, Gabriel Popoviciu, fight criminal charges, according to a forthcoming book by New York Times reporter Ken Vogel.

The would-be land deal, which came about shortly after Biden left office as vice president in January 2017, was floated in an apparent attempt to convince Romanian prosecutors to drop the real estate fraud case against Popoviciu.

The proposed deal centered on Popoviciu potentially handing over a portion of his land holdings around the US embassy to CEFC China Energy — a Beijing-linked firm that paid Hunter and his uncle James Biden millions in 2017 and 2018.

Under one apparent deal structure, CEFC would own as much as 47.5% of the joint venture, according to Vogel’s tome “Devil’s Advocates: The Hidden Story of Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden, and the Washington Insiders on the Payrolls of Corrupt Foreign Interests.”

In an effort to sway prosecutors, it was suggested that the Romanian government could go on to collect revenue from the arrangement.

Hunter, now 55, acknowledged being involved in the potential deal in multiple ways — including as Popoviciu’s attorney and as part of the “purchasing group.”

The deal ended up folding in 2017 as Hunter and his partners battled it out.

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Ukrainian Intelligence Says China Helping Russia Target Western-Funded Facilities In Ukraine

Ukrainian Foreign Intelligence Agency official Oleh Alexandrov has told the state news agency Ukrinform that China has been directly assisting Russia with intelligence for use on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Specifically he said China is providing foreign intelligence to target those sites in Ukraine which benefit from foreign investment, meaning Western-backed and funded facilities, likely such as weapons production sites.

“There is evidence of a high level of cooperation between Russia and China in conducting satellite reconnaissance of the territory of Ukraine in order to identify and further explore strategic objects for targeting,” said Alexandrov. “As we have seen in recent months, these sites may belong to foreign investors.”

The Kremlin on Monday responded by rejecting the allegation, saying that it possesses all capabilities to not have to rely on any outside country or ally.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov when specifically asked about the new allegation from Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Agency said as follows:

“We have our own capabilities, including space capabilities, to accomplish all the tasks the special military operation poses,” he told reporters.

But the last year of the war has seen Moscow deepen its cooperation both with the Chinese and North Korean militaries.

The presence of North Korean troops within Russian forces is well-known, but Kiev has more recently alleged Chinese troops are fighting alongside Moscow forces as well.

There’s also reported to be training programs between Russian and Chinese militaries. For example, Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate has told local media, the Kyiv Post, that “The Kremlin has decided to allow Chinese military personnel to study and adopt the combat experience Russia has gained in its war against Ukraine.”

Also, Iran has factored into the equation given it has established a drone production facility within southern Russia.

Beijing has additionally in the past issued statements calling out NATO for its constant expansion, and activity which has even been lately introduced in the Pacific region, and growing ties to Japan.

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Trump Administration’s Multi-Front Counter-China Campaign

Since returning to office in 2025, Republicans have prioritized countering the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through legislative, economic, military, and law enforcement initiatives. A key step in these efforts came in February 2025, when Senator Rick Scott introduced the Protect America’s Innovation and Economic Security from CCP Act to reinstate and codify President Trump’s CCP Initiative within the Department of Justice’s National Security Division.

The bill targets CCP-linked trade secret theft, economic espionage, and cyberattacks while strengthening enforcement of foreign investment regulations and improving coordination between the DOJ, FBI, and other federal agencies. It also ensures independent, well-funded operations dedicated to addressing CCP-related threats to U.S. technology, infrastructure, and supply chains.

Senator Scott called the CCP one of the greatest threats to America’s national security, criticizing President Biden for ending Trump’s original China Initiative, which had uncovered dozens of espionage cases. He said the revived program would help President Trump confront Beijing’s economic and technological aggression and “Make America Safe Again.”

Representative Lance Gooden, co-sponsoring the bill in the House, added that China has long stolen from U.S. businesses, infiltrated institutions, and undermined the economy, stressing that the legislation sends a clear message that the United States will no longer tolerate the CCP’s sabotage of American interests.

President Trump has taken a series of trade and economic actions to counter the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and protect U.S. national security. He imposed a range of tariffs from 10 to 125 percent on all Chinese imports, citing Beijing’s unfair trade practices and the CCP’s failure to curb the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals to criminal cartels. To further combat the opioid epidemic, President Trump signed an executive order eliminating duty-free treatment for low-value imports from China, closing the de minimis loophole that had been the lifeblood of Chinese e-commerce companies.

In parallel, the administration expanded U.S. export controls to restrict CCP-backed subsidiaries, applying sanctions to any entity at least 50 percent owned by companies already on the Commerce Department’s Entity List.

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Deterring The Next Quasi-World War: China–Russia–North Korea Versus US

Russian planes recently flew into Polish and Romanian airspace to test NATO’s resolve while the world veers toward a conflict in Asia—one that could be far worse than the situation in Ukraine—where true deterrence and resolve remain largely absent.

Let’s backtrack a little.

On Sept. 3, Beijing staged a military extravaganza to parade a full suite of fearsome weapons. Many journalists were awed, and some defeatist experts advocated Chamberlainian appeasement. Others, mostly China observers, tried decoding the seating plan of senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials atop Tiananmen Square for clues about the power struggles in Zhongnanhai.

However, what is often overlooked in the discussion about the event is that it represents the financing and support mechanisms behind a new type of quasi-world war. The ongoing Russia–Ukraine war is one example, and the potential invasion of Taiwan by the Chinese regime is another. Let’s explore this further.

The Xinhua images of the Sept. 3 event, featuring Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un consorting in solidarity, should be interpreted as a calculated response to the new tripartite model the West has devised for militarily supporting Ukraine. That model conveys that Kyiv identifies its military hardware needs, European allies provide the financing, and the United States produces and delivers the hardware.

The Beijing event showcased a parallel model: Moscow requests war materiel, including troops, China and North Korea supply them in exchange for cheap Russian energy, with India and a few other countries dipping in. Thus, even though the war’s actual fighting is confined within Ukraine and Russia, its financing involves a much wider array of adversarial states. The coalitional symmetry in this financing mechanism can prolong the bloody conflict indefinitely, which Russia and Ukraine, if left to their own devices, cannot achieve.

A way to stop the war is to break that symmetry, which seems to be the goal of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “secondary tariffs.” On Aug. 6, he doubled the headline tariff on India to 50 percent for buying cheap Russian oil. It is showing results. India reportedly bought much less Russian oil in August. Notably, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Tianjin from Aug. 31 to Sept. 1, quietly skipped the Sept. 3 military parade.

Now, Trump is pressuring Europe to immediately end its remaining reliance on Russian energy and join him in a similar effort against Beijing, and has called for imposing up to 100 percent additional tariffs on China for buying Russian crude oil. The EU leadership is not yet entirely on board, but has proposed to advance its target of ending all energy imports from Russia from 2027 to 2026 or even sooner.

But whatever happens to the war in Ukraine, the world would not be okay even when Putin agrees to call it quits, because Xi has all the intentions to do a sequel. Xi’s primary interest in supporting Russia lies in an expected reciprocation from Moscow if China invades Taiwan. What would a China–Taiwan war look like?

The Russia–Ukraine war is already a quasi-world war. Despite the combat space being narrowly confined, it nevertheless involves the participation of approximately 50 countries on four continents in various capacities.

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China is starting to talk about AI superintelligence, and some in the U.S. are taking notice

Early last week in the Chinese tech hub of Hangzhou, a slick, larger-than-life video screen beamed out four words that would drive tech giant Alibaba’s stock to historic levels and signal a shift in China’s approach to artificial intelligence: “Roadmap to Artificial Superintelligence.”

During his 23-minute keynote address at the flagship Alibaba Cloud conference, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu charted out a future featuring artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI). These terms point to a theorized era in which AI becomes roughly as smart as humans (AGI) and then much, much smarter (ASI).

While these terms have been tossed around Silicon Valley for years, Wu’s presentation was notable: Alibaba is now the first established Chinese tech giant to explicitly invoke AGI and ASI.

“Achieving AGI — an intelligent system with general human-level cognition — now appears inevitable. Yet AGI is not the end of AI’s development, but its beginning,” Wu said. “It will march toward ASI — intelligence beyond the human, capable of self-iteration and continuous evolution.”

“ASI will drive exponential technological leaps, carrying us into an unprecedented age of intelligence,” Wu said, highlighting ASI’s ability to help cure diseases, discover cleaner sources of energy and even unlock interstellar travel.

The U.S. and China are the world’s leading AI powers, each with immense computing capabilities and top-tier researchers developing cutting-edge systems. Yet observers have framed the countries as having different approaches to AI, with perceptions that China focuses more on real-world AI applications.

For example, commentators recently argued that Beijing is currently “winning the race for AI robots” against the U.S., as China is home to much of the world’s most advanced robotics supply chains and a growing network of robotics, or embodied AI, labs.

“There’s been some commentary in Western media recently about how the U.S. is missing the point by pushing for AGI, while China is focusing solely on applications,” said Helen Toner, interim executive director of Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. “This is wrong.”

“Some Chinese researchers and some parts of the Chinese government have been interested in AGI and superintelligence for a long time,” Toner said, though she noted this view was primarily held by smaller startups like DeepSeek.

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Immortal Monkeys? Not Quite, But Scientists Just Reversed Aging With ‘Super’ Stem Cells

In a discovery that may have profound impacts on aging, scientists in Beijing have taken a dramatic step toward what once seemed impossible: making old animals biologically young again. The study was published last month in the journal Cell.

By fortifying human stem cells with a gene long linked to longevity, they rejuvenated aged monkeys – improving memory, protecting bones, calming inflammation, and restoring youthful activity across dozens of organs.

The work, while still in animals, is among the most compelling demonstrations yet that aging in primates might be reversible.

The Science Behind the Breakthrough

At the heart of the study are mesenchymal progenitor cells (MPCs) – a type of stem-like cell found in bone marrow and connective tissues. These cells act as the body’s maintenance crew, capable of turning into bone, cartilage, fat, and muscle cells, while also secreting factors that help nearby tissues repair themselves.

But like all cells, MPCs age with us and eventually succumb to senescence  a state of permanent retirement. Senescent cells don’t divide anymore. Worse, they pump out inflammatory molecules, scar tissue signals, and other “toxic chatter” that accelerate aging in neighboring cells. In effect, senescent cells spread decline.

Upgrading the Repair System with FoxO3

To overcome this exhaustion, researchers turned to FoxO3, a protein known as a longevity gene regulator. In healthy young cells, FoxO3 acts like a switchboard operator, turning on DNA repair pathways, antioxidant defenses, and stress-resistance programs. In older cells, FoxO3 activity wanes – leaving them vulnerable to damage.

Hydra, a freshwater organism capable of regenerating indefinitely, rely heavily on FoxO to keep their stem cells active. Humans share this same protein, and genetic studies link variants of FOXO3 to exceptional longevity in people.

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Plot to disrupt New York cell service larger than initially thought: Federal agents

A foiled plot to cripple the telecommunications system in New York was bigger than investigators first realized. Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office, Matt McCool, released a video in late September, sharing that federal agents were first tipped off about what the Secret Service says was a China-linked plot last spring.

But it was only recently uncovered during an investigation into threats to three people, including one with direct access to President Donald Trump.

The U.S. Secret Service began a protective intelligence investigation to determine the extent and impact these threats could have on protective operations,” McCool said in that September video posted on the U.S. Secret Service’s YouTube page.

Secret Service personnel, along with officers from multiple agencies, seized hundreds of servers and over 100,000 cellphone SIM cards from around New York. Enough equipment to send 30 million anonymous texts every minute, which would collapse the telecommunications system.

They found empty apartments with servers and server walls capable of making millions of phone calls in and around New York City,” said Donald Mihalek, an ABC News Contributor who was formerly with the Secret Service.

But this week, that number expanded. Law enforcement sources told ABC News that agents from Homeland Security Investigations found an additional 200,000 SIM cards in New Jersey.

These devices allowed anonymous encrypted communications between potential threat and criminal enterprises,” said McCool.

The U.S. Secret Service is still working to figure out a motive and whether or not there was a specific target. It’s also still not clear if the equipment was supposed to be triggered during the United Nations General Assembly, which took place in New York during the last full week of September.

So far, no arrests have been made but McCool did mention that forensic examination is underway. He also indicated there was cellular communication between foreign actors and individuals known to law enforcement.

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Chinese Flag Raised Over Philadelphia

On September 30, the flag of China was raised over the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The flag was raised by Philadelphia’s Office of Immigrant Affairs to commemorate the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, in what was advertised as a harmless gesture of goodwill honoring the Chinese immigrant community.

Not surprisingly, the move drew sharp criticism, including from Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), who pointed out that the flag is not merely a national symbol, but represents China’s oppressive totalitarian regime, which not only broadly persecutes and oppresses its own citizens, but is America’s avowed enemy besides.

Honoring Diversity

The flag-raising ceremony, which has been done at least twice in the recent past, was approved by the Philadelphia Honors Diversity Flag Raising Program, which was established in 2018. According to Philadelphia City Solicitor Renee Garcia, speaking with Newsweek, “In accordance with First Amendment precedent, the City of Philadelphia’s flag-raising policy applies objective, viewpoint-neutral criteria, specifically, a foreign nation’s flag may be raised if the country maintains a Consulate or Embassy in the United States or is recognized by the U.S. Department of State. The People’s Republic of China meets both criteria.”

Disgrace to Our Values

Congressman Moolenaar, by contrast, said, “Raising the flag of the People’s Republic of China over Philadelphia is a disgrace to our nation’s founding values and flies in the face of all the courageous dissidents and human rights advocates who tirelessly work to bring freedom to the Chinese people.” And Rushan Abbas, advocate for China’s oppressed Uighurs, said that “Philadelphia, the birthplace of the U.S. Constitution, should not be used as a platform for authoritarian propaganda.”

Alas, these are the kinds of needless moral dilemmas that arise when we continue to allow our political and industrial leaders to have it both ways: to benefit economically from continued engagement with communist China, even as that regime continues to turn our own resources against us and works to subvert and destroy us. With the deadliest regime in human history, there can be no middle ground.

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