As you may be able to tell, this page was created just recently, and is still under construction.  So far, this page is about only one incident:  the flight of a Chinese  weather  surveillance balloon across the continental U.S. in late January and early February, 2023.  This introductory analysis and commentary will be expanded in the next few days as time permits.

There is now an additional section at the bottom of the page about China's influence in general.  For that, click here.)

The 2020 Coronavirus is on a series of pages, with the most recent news and commentary here.)

Recap:
Under Biden, Fake News Soars to Whole New Level.  [Scroll down]  Xi Jinping is the man of the hour, and the notion he "didn't know" about the balloon is ludicrous.  China's high-altitude surveillance device was capable of navigation.  It overflew the Aleutian Islands, passed over Canadian territory and reentered U.S. airspace with no official acknowledgement from China or Biden.  The surveillance device only became public knowledge when a private citizen in Montana spotted the craft and took photos.  China's foreign ministry said the balloon was "mainly meteorological," and the craft had been "affected by the Westerlies," and "deviated far from its planned course."  And China "regrets the unintended entry" into U.S. airspace.  Biden's proclamation that "it was blown off course up through Alaska and then down through the United States," echoed the Chinese position.  While in U.S. airspace, China's balloon overflew missile installations such as Malmstrom Air Force Base.  Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told CNN the balloon passed over "a number of sensitive sites," but did not present a "significant intelligence gathering risk."  Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin advised against shooting down China's balloon while it was over land.

'Conspiracy Theories' Aren't Theoretical Anymore.  A Chinese spy balloon was allowed to cross our continent and collect information from our most sensitive facilities — apparently with the blessing of the Biden administration.  But we're told that the millions of dollars flowing from China to the Biden family had nothing to do with the President's decision to leave the reconnaissance craft unmolested.

The 2024 version:
Another 'spy balloon' discovered off US — CNN.  A group of fishermen have discovered the wreckage of a possible "spy balloon" off the coast of Alaska and it has become the subject of an FBI investigation, CNN reported on Friday.  The shooting down last year of an alleged Chinese spy balloon by the US triggered a major diplomatic incident between Washington and Beijing.  The fishermen brought the suspicious debris onto their boat and will hand it over to FBI agents when they return to port this weekend, the network reported, citing anonymous "sources familiar with the matter."  Based on photographs shared with them by the crew, FBI agents determined that it was "similar enough in appearance to a foreign-government owned surveillance balloon that it warranted further investigation," CNN stated.

Spy Balloon Tracked by Military Not a Spy Balloon After All.  The spy balloon we told you about being tracked by the military this past week wasn't a spy balloon after all.  According to NORAD, the balloon was a hobby balloon.

Pentagon says new high altitude balloon intercepted over US 'likely hobby' craft year after China controversy.  The Pentagon said the latest high altitude balloon detected over the United States is a "likely hobby" craft, about a year after a Chinese spy balloon traversed the continental U.S., sparking controversy.  "After yesterday's fighter intercepts, and in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command monitored the likely hobby balloon via ground radars until it left US airspace overnight," the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said Saturday [2/24/2024] in a statement, reported by ABC News and other outlets.  No further information was immediately available.

High-altitude balloon of unknown origin flying over Western US: report.  The US government is tracking a high-altitude balloon of unknown origin — and officials insist that it is not a security threat.  The balloon, flying at an altitude between 43,000 and 45,000 feet, was determined to be "not maneuverable" and poses no threat to national security, the North American Aerospace Defense Command told The Post on Friday.  The nation's airspace watchdog described it as "small" and said its fighter jets intercepted the balloon over Utah.  "NORAD will continue to track and monitor the balloon," the military agency said in a statement.  "The FAA also determined the balloon posed no hazard to flight safety."  The purpose of the balloon is unclear.

The Editor says...
The latest balloon was apparently a much smaller device, not likely to be a Chinese spy balloon.  Earlier reports were a little too confident that this week's balloon was another Chinese device.  That's the hazard in depending on social media for news reports.

Another Likely Chinese Spy Balloon Spotted Over Colorado.  Another spy balloon, likely from China has been spotted over Colorado!  [Numerous tweets]

The Chinese spy balloon: what's a little national security breach between enemies?  Remember the Chinese spy balloon?  The one that flew the length of America while somehow mysteriously hovering over many sensitive military installations?  The one that could not be shot down over Alaska, Montana or Wyoming, because it might land on a protected toad or snail?  There's not much else out there in large parts of the West.  That Chinese spy balloon, the one as big as two buses, the one that was finally shot down over the Atlantic after it had gathered and transmitted to the Chinese all the data the Chinese Communist Party wanted?  The one that insulted and humiliated America?  That one?  Oh yes, there were earlier balloons the government hid from us.  Now we discover we only know about that particular spy balloon because a few Americans, on commercial airliners, and on the ground, saw it and decided it was something about which Americans ought to know.

China Spy Balloon Used an American Internet Service Provider.  US intelligence officials have said that the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the entire country collecting data earlier this year had used an American internet service provider.  NBC News reported this Thursday, citing two current and one former official familiar with the assessment.  The spy balloon connected to a US-based company to send and receive communications from China, primarily related to the balloon's navigation. [...] The internet service provider's name has not been disclosed, and the company denied that the Chinese spy balloon had used its network.

U.S. intelligence officials determined the Chinese spy balloon used a U.S. internet provider to communicate.  U.S. intelligence officials have determined that the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. this year used an American internet service provider to communicate, according to two current and one former U.S. official familiar with the assessment.  The balloon connected to a U.S.-based company, according to the assessment, to send and receive communications from China, primarily related to its navigation.  Officials familiar with the assessment said it found that the connection allowed the balloon to send burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data over short periods of time.  The Biden administration sought a highly secretive court order from the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to collect intelligence about it while it was over the U.S., according to multiple current and former U.S. officials.  How the court ruled has not been disclosed.

Reasons For Biden Admin Delay On Destroying Chinese Spy Balloon Revealed.  The head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), Gen. Glen VanHerck, and the top U.S. general at the time spoke over the phone on January 27, which set off an eight-day crisis as the Biden administration frantically tried to respond to a new threat from China, according to NBC News.  According to NBC, Biden administration officials privately regretted that the public uproar and fallout for Beijing's reputation that followed the spy balloon's revelation that shocked the world in early 2023 strained ties with China and exaggerated the real threat to national security that the balloon posed.  According to NBC, which cited a number of current and former administration and congressional officials, the administration originally intended to hide the balloon's existence from Congress and the general public.  "Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it," one former senior U.S. official briefed on the situation told NBC.

Fresh Chinese Spy Balloon News Reveals Cover-Up Attempt, Biden Doing China's Bidding.  [Scroll down]  If the goal was to collect intelligence, why would the existence of the balloon need to be kept secret from Congress?  Typically, national security issues are disclosed to the "gang of eight," a select group of lawmakers who offer a bridge between the administration and the broader group of representatives and senators.  There would be no practical reason to hide the matter from Congress, which leaves only a political reason:  Biden and company wanted to avoid the embarrassment of the public finding out that they let a Chinese spy balloon complete its mission without reacting.  Further, the balloon was set to self-destruct anyway. [...] In other words, Biden's supposedly heroic shoot-down was simply doing the bidding of China.  They wanted it to be destroyed after it passed over the United States, likely to conceal whatever technology was being used.

Duke Energy Removes Chinese Batteries From Marine Base Amid Lawmakers' Security Concerns.  Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and more than two dozen other Republican lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin earlier this month, demanding the removal of a Duke Energy-supplied Chinese battery installation at the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and demanding an investigation into whether similar installations have been placed on other bases.  The batteries, which were removed, were manufactured by a Chinese Communist Party-supported company, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co.  Ltd., the world's largest battery manufacturer.  Duke Energy won the $22 million contract to construct Camp Lejeune's microgrid, complete with five megawatts of natural gas and an 11-megawatt battery storage system.  The installation integrated the base's existing solar array with the abilities to start up without an external power source, to receive prompt updates on the power needs of the base, and to remove itself from the region's power grid if necessary.

CCP-Tied Firm Slated To Build Massive Facility Near Sensitive US Military Sites.  The Chinese parent of a firm slated to develop a manufacturing facility near several Midwest military bases has extensive ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation based on research conducted by The Heritage Foundation Oversight Project and Heritage Action.  Cnano Technology USA Inc. (Cnano USA) plans to invest in a 333,000-square-foot facility in Johnson County, Kansas, that will manufacture liquid conductive paste for electric vehicle batteries and other devices, according to an August announcement from the Kansas City Area Development Council, which partnered with the state and other parties to attract the firm to Kansas.  Cnano USA's $95 million facility will be built approximately 35 miles from Fort Leavenworth, and 70 miles from the "only operational base for the B-2," Whiteman Air Force Base.

Threats to the United States now at a Whole New Level.  The recent surge of Chinese males crossing the border into the U.S. border suggests disciplined land-based military operations may be in the offing.  Recently Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) reported that "10,000-plus" Chinese nationals have been apprehended in fiscal 2023, a massive 300% increase from the year earlier.  It is well-known that the U.S. electric grid can be shut down for years by an EMP attack or by destroying just nine critical nodes.  Just fifteen years ago spies from China and Russia were found on a mission to map the U.S. power grid — its infrastructure and nodes.  So, it's essential to deploy the American military to protect the American electric grid — now.

The Editor says...
I have doubts about the effectiveness of an EMP attack — which has never been tried, as far as we know, yet everyone's absolutely sure it will be devastating.  Sabotage is another matter, but it should only take weeks, not years, to make electricity great again.

America's Armageddon.  [Scroll down]  Given we now have 1.5 million illegal got aways, plus thousands of Chinese nationals — across our country — we must acknowledge we could have an army of over 30,000 such insurgents in each of our fifty states.  Even if we imagine only 1% (300) of these illegal got aways and Chinese nationals are insurgents, if they decided to undertake either a coordinated or uncoordinated actions to sabotage and subvert our country, they could cause extreme harm, disruption, and destruction.  A mere 300 insurgents would suck up most of the any state's law enforcement and emergency response resources to handle, address, and stem complete chaos, panic, and anarchy.  We could split the difference, and imagine 10% or 3000, of the fuller 30,000 being insurgents.  Why?  Because these individuals were aided by the cartels, who are working with China, and therefore have a mission, a purpose, to their entry.  What is it?  And let's not forget, they're still coming over the border!

Milley, who previously vowed to warn Chinese communists ahead of American attack, claims Chinese spy balloon collected no evidence.  Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed in an interview over the weekend that the infamous 200-foot Chinese spy balloon, which flew across the continental United States before ultimately being shot down over the Atlantic Ocean on Feb. 4, 2023, hadn't actually done any spying.  Milley, who has previously attempted to put Chinese communists' nerves at ease — even at the potential expense of an American advantage — told "CBS News Sunday Morning" that the spy balloon likely hadn't fulfilled its singular purpose while darting across the very superpower China seeks to replace.  "The intelligence community, their assessment — and it's a high-confidence assessment — [is] that there was no intelligence collection by that balloon," said Milley, invoking the confidence of the same community that continues to cast doubt on the Wuhan lab origins of COVID-19 and whose top alumni suggested the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.

Chinese 'spy balloon' wasn't spying — US military chief.  A so-called Chinese "spy balloon" shot down off the east coast of the US in February did not actually collect any intelligence, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told CBS News on Sunday.  Beijing insisted from the outset that the balloon was not a surveillance craft.  "The intelligence community, their assessment — and it's a high-confidence assessment — [is] that there was no intelligence collection by that balloon," Milley told the American broadcaster.  The balloon in question appeared in the sky over Alaska in January, before drifting south and crossing the US. Its high-altitude flight ultimately ended when it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina in early February.  Throughout its journey and for months afterwards, US officials claimed that the balloon was sent across the US to gather intelligence for Beijing.

Republicans [want] to find out if [the] Secretary of State 'obstructed' sanctioning China after [the] spy balloon incident.  After the State Department repeatedly failed to comply with documents requests, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul is subpoenaing the materials related to the Chinese spy balloon incident.  McCaul is alleging that Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not use sanctions and export controls to properly counter 'growing aggression' by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  The Foreign Affairs chairman is demanding the Department hand over documents related to 'reported obstruction' for using these national security tools.

Ri-i-i-ight.
Chinese spy balloon used American-made parts, did not transmit data: Officials.  The Chinese spy balloon that was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean in early February was built — at least partly — using American off-the-shelf parts, a U.S. official has confirmed to ABC News.  A second U.S. official was also able to confirm that the balloon did not appear to have transmitted any of the data it collected on its journey above North America, as was initially reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The Editor says...
It is far more believable that the Chinese spy balloon was shot down after it had finished its mission, that all the government cover stories are lies, and that Joe Biden exchanged the balloon's safety (while it was over the continental U.S.) for substantial bribes.

Another "Balloon" [is] Flying Over Montana.  Another "balloon", probably another Chinese spy balloon is flying over Montana and once again the China owned Biden regime is refusing to shoot it down.  The Democrats are America's version of the CCP.  [Tweets]

Report: Joe Biden Spills 'Sensitive' Intelligence about Chinese Spy Balloon to Campaign Donors.  President Joe Biden spilled "sensitive" United States intelligence about China to campaign donors at a recent event in California, according to a report.  At the fundraiser in California, Biden revealed to attendees what the U.S. intelligence agencies had learned about the Chinese spy balloon incident earlier this year, reportedly surprising U.S. officials.  The New York Times reported that at the fundraiser, Biden "set off into what appeared to be an unplanned riff" about the spy balloon incident, "revealing what United States intelligence agencies had learned about the internal confusion in Beijing during the incident."

Biden Claims Chinese Spy Balloon Was "Unintentional".  I certainly hope Joe Biden is on Communist China's payroll.  It would be embarrassing if he were spouting Chinese Communist propaganda this shamelessly blatant free of charge. [...] China has claimed that its spy balloon just accidentally ended up in Montana.  Biden appears to be echoing its dishonest lies.  It's also the opposite message of the one that Secretary of State Blinken claimed to be sending on his visit to China.

Joe Biden: Our First Chinese President.  Recall that earlier this year, Beijing flew a spy balloon right over US territory, including sensitive military installations.  It crossed the entire continent, during which time it was gathering sensitive intelligence and presumably phoning all of it home to its communist masters in China.  Biden waited til it had flown from coast to coast before allowing it to be shot down.  Then this past weekend while on a trip to visit our closest allies, who are threatened by Xi Jinping's ambitions, he downplayed the whole thing as "silly," practically apologizing to China.  China's reply was curt as usual, asking the whole world if Biden's words mean anything at all.  The media, for its part, won't make all of this what it is — which is the weakest performance on the world stage by an American president in decades if not ever.  Even Jimmy Carter probably would've shot that balloon down before it beamed its intel back.

Misplaced Biden Priorities in the Dept of Defense.  Consider these actions, all of which have made America much weaker: [...] [#3] The Chinese balloon caper.  The Chinese balloon story first broke on 2 February when the Billings Gazette exposed the Biden administration's political gamble to ignore the balloon's intrusion into US airspace (a direct violation of US sovereignty).  Speculation is rampant about the balloon's mission payload:  surveillance (PHOTINT, multi-INT, etc.), a simple test-run for other types of balloon missions, collecting data on US surveillance and communications systems, and a psychological warfare mission.  The latter involves testing our resolve, showing the world that China "owns" Washington, exposing the weakness of the current administration in the face of foreign pressure, psychologically conditioning Americans to "eventual Chinese hegemony," etc.  The most likely mission was surveillance, and giving that Chinese balloon free access to traverse the continental US to collect data on US bases is just the latest indication that Biden et al could care less about US national security.

Biden Dismisses Chinese Spying as "Silly Balloon".  The Biden administration tried to cover up China's espionage.  It was only discovered because of a viral video out of Montana.  Once the scandal broke, the Biden administration put on a show of "taking it seriously."  Since then it's been confirmed that it was staged for the benefit of the American public. [...] The diplomatic relationship with China is managed by Bejing saying, "Jump" and Biden sending emissaries to carefully negotiate how high he will be expected to leap.  After several weeks, China finally agrees to state the exact height of the jump as a non-negotiable set of statements.  But contrast this moment of relative honesty from Biden with his previous butch address and posturing about the spy balloon.  It was all lie.  Like everything else.

Biden Capitulates to China.  Bizarrely, the flight of the Chinese military spy balloon over the U.S. may be the occasion for U.S. concessions to Beijing, rather than the other way around.  According to a new report from Reuters, the State Department's "China House" team was ordered to stand down on some long-planned measures targeting the Chinese Communist Party's malfeasance, so that Secretary of State Antony Blinken can secure the trip to China that he had to cancel after the balloon incident.  Citing four State Department sources and internal emails, Reuters reveals that Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman ordered this shift to a policy that favors "engagement" with China.  The head of China House, the department's new China-policy coordination cell, told State Department staff members in March that Sherman said the department would "move on" from the balloon incident.

Emails Show Biden State Department Sought to Protect China During Spy-Balloon Fiasco.  With so much domestic rancor going on as the next election season heats up, it's worth remembering that there are serious foreign policy issues to deal with.  It's also worth remembering that the Biden administration is doing its level best to screw every single one of them up.  A new report backed by leaked emails and inside sources is shedding light on a shocking policy Joe Biden is pursuing in regard to China.  According to Reuters, during the Chinese spy balloon fiasco that captivated the nation in early 2023, embattled Secretary of State Antony Blinken was actually seeking to protect the communists.

We're apparently out of the balloon-shooting business.  It's been a while since we had a good mystery balloon passing through US airspace story, so we might as well touch on this one while we have the chance.  Something has once again passed over the Hawaiian Islands at an altitude of roughly 36,000 feet.  It reportedly looked like a balloon, but the Defense Department once again can't say what it was with any certainty.  But even without knowing, they felt confident in saying that it was not being controlled by any "foreign or adversarial actor."  In fact, it didn't appear to be demonstrating any controlled movement.  They sent some fighters up to check it out, but we're not even being told how big it was.  Since it reportedly didn't pass over any sensitive military installations, and it's currently heading toward Mexico, it was determined that it wouldn't be shot down.

Leaked U.S. intelligence reveals military was aware of FOUR more Chinese spy balloons.  Top-secret intelligence documents allegedly leaked by Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira reveal that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of up to four more Chinese spy balloons in addition to the one that flew over the country earlier this year.  One balloon flew over a U.S. carrier strike group, another, code named Bulger-21 by U.S. officials, circumnavigated the Earth from Dec 2021 until May 2022, a third named Accardo-21 is also mentioned in the documents and a fourth is said to have crashed in the South China sea.  The documents also identify the balloon that crossed the continental U.S. in January and February before being shot down off the coast of South Carolina was code-named Killeen-23.

This is why the balloon should have been shot down over Alaska.
Chinese spy balloon gathered intelligence from sensitive U.S. military sites, despite U.S. efforts to block it.  The Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites, despite the Biden administration's efforts to block it from doing so, according to two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official.  China was able to control the balloon so it could make multiple passes over some of the sites (at times flying figure-eight formations) and transmit the information it collected back to Beijing in real time, the three officials said.  The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images, the officials said.

Biden Regime Now Releasing Hordes of Chinese Illegal Aliens Into US.  The Biden Regime is now releasing hordes of Chinese illegal aliens into the United States with NTAs (notice to appear).  Fox News captured the Chinese illegals being released to an NGO in Brownsville, Texas on Tuesday.  The illegals were given NTAs because there are so many crossing into the US and no more space to house them, according to Fox News.  Border Patrol says the number of Chinese nationals illegally crossing the border has recently spiked.  Border Patrol has encountered over 4,300 Chinese illegals in 2023 — up from 2,176 in 2022 and 450 in 2021.

TikTok is being investigated by Justice Dep't for spying on journalists.  The United States Department of Justice is investigating ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, for spying on American citizens, including several journalists.  ByteDance is based in Beijing, headquartered in the Cayman Islands and said to be close with Communist Chinese government.  The company admitted in December it had inappropriately acquired the data of American TikTok users, including at least two reporters, according to the New York Times.

Twelve reasons things are not going well in America.  [#7]  In 2018, there were estimated 2.5 million Chinese people in the US.  There is a Chinese statute called the National Intelligence law mandating that all Chinese nationals anywhere in the world must obey any orders from Chinese intelligence.  This means that all Chinese nationals, whether tourists or students, anywhere in the world, are statutory spies awaiting orders from home.

Space Force chief says Beijing is developing anti-satellite missiles, electronic jammers and lasers.  China has launched dozens of satellites in the past six months and the People's Liberation Army now has 347 orbiting craft that can gather intelligence on American armed forces, according to the head of the U.S. Space Force.  Gen. Chance Saltzman told senators that Beijing was the 'most immediate threat' to U.S. operations as it develops lasers to disrupt satellite sensors, electronic warfare jammers and even builds craft that could grab and move rival orbiting platforms out of position.  It is all part of its plan for a fully modernized, world-class military designed to achieve China's 'Space Dream' of being the most powerful nation in space by 2045, he said.

Chinese satellite gathering intel for Pearl Harbor-style hypersonic missile attack by using green lasers, claim experts.  China used green lasers fired from satellites to gather intelligence for a surprise hypersonic missile attack on Hawaii, it has been warned.  The satellite was recorded flashing lasers for a fraction of a second by a livestream camera attached to a telescope on top of a mountain on one of the islands.  Initially the lights were thought to come from a NASA satellite before it was finally established it was a Chinese pollution monitoring satellite the Daqi-1.  But questions immediately began to be raised about why the Chinese would feel it necessary to monitor pollution in Hawaii, given the large US military presence there.  And it comes just weeks after China flew a giant balloon over the US — which was widely understood to be a spy tool even as Beijing claimed it was a civilian weather airship.

'Anonymous' Biden Official Who Lied to Press About Trump-Era Spy Balloons Is Exposed.  Remember the Chinese spy balloon fiasco?  President Joe Biden allowed his nation's top geopolitical foe to fly a massive spy-craft over the entire continental United States.  In the end, the only retribution exacted was to shoot it down after it had completed its mission and transmitted its data.  It was an embarrassing scene, with the president's indecisiveness on full display, and that meant the White House had to do something to change the subject.  That came by way of a Pentagon official speaking on background to a group of reporters, claiming that three Chinese spy balloons traversed the United States during the Trump administration.  The suggestion was clearly that Trump was a coward who had let the Chinese run over him.  It was only later that it was revealed that the balloons in question were only over US territory for a matter of minutes (one of them off the coast of Hawaii) and that their presence wasn't even discovered until years after Trump left office.  The Pentagon refused to identify the official who gave the misleading commentary to the press, but two Republican senators have discovered who he is.

Biden Official Leaked Classified Info About Trump-Era Chinese Spy Balloons To Deflect Criticism of Admin, Senators Say.  Pentagon official Colin Kahl leaked classified information about the Chinese spy balloon to deflect blame about the Biden administration's mishandling of the situation, according to two Republican senators.  Kahl, whom President Joe Biden appointed his under secretary of defense for policy, provided reporters with classified information — disclosing that CCP spy balloons may have infiltrated the United States during the Trump administration — Sens. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) allege.  This is the first time that Kahl has been named as the source of these leaks, which were provided to reporters and appeared in news stories at CNN, Bloomberg, and the Washington Post, in an apparent attempt to shift blame away from Biden after the administration allowed the Chinese spy balloon to traverse the entire United States before shooting it down.  While doing so, he omitted the fact that the prior Chinese balloons were only discovered much later and the Trump administration did not have an opportunity to respond at the time.

Just how unjust is our system of justice?  China is our most dangerous adversary, not Russia.  Biden is a controlled asset of the CCP.  That should be obvious to everyone by now.  The American president is doing China's bidding but he owes those Ukrainian oligarchs a great deal for all the millions they funneled to the Biden family.  We American citizens are toast unless the squishy Republicans develop a spine.

Canada Discovers 'Chinese Buoys' In The Arctic That Could Be Tracking US Nuclear Submarines In The Region.  The Canadian military discovered and retrieved Chinese monitoring buoys from the Arctic as part of 'Operation Limpid,' which is a continuous effort to provide early identification of threats to Canada's security by its military forces, The Globe and Mail reported.  The revelation would likely put Beijing's surveillance activities under the scanner again, as it comes weeks after the US Air Force shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon with the support of the Royal Canadian Air Force.  The balloon had flown over Alaska and Canada before entering US airspace.  The Canadian military or government has not admitted that the retrieved buoys were being used for surveillance.  However, as soon as the announcement was made, it triggered a wave of speculations that the dual-use monitoring buoys could have been planted for spying.

Federal agencies have 30 days to remove TikTok from government-issued devices, White House says.  The White House announced on Monday that it was giving federal agencies 30 days to remove TikTok from all government-issued devices.  Monday's move arrives as the popular Chinese-owned social media app faces increased scrutiny in Washington and in states across the country over security concerns — with critics claiming that the Chinese government could use TikTok to gain access to private user data or spread misinformation.  TikTok is already not allowed on White House devices — and some other federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security, also have similar restrictions in place.  Now, remaining federal agencies will follow.

China's secret police actively hunting people on US soil.  The revelations read like an overwrought spy thriller: secret foreign police stations in Manhattan, shady foreign security thugs hunting American residents in American neighborhoods.  But they weren't fiction: Following stories in The [New York] Post, last month The New York Times reported that the FBI raided a non-descript building in Chinatown where the innocent-looking community association on the third floor hid a nefarious surprise — an unauthorized "police service center" linked to the Chinese Communist Party.  That secret police station is a terrifying threat to Chinese-Americans, other CCP targets — and American sovereignty itself.

Covert Chinese Police Station in NYC Closed Following FBI Raid.  A covert police station located in New York City that was being run by the Chinese government has closed after the FBI raided the location in recent months, a report noted on Friday [2/3/2023].  The Epoch Times quoted a U.S. State Department official as having confirmed the operation and the station's closure.  "The FBI has confirmed that the 'overseas police station' in New York linked to Fuzhou has closed," a State Dept. official confirmed in an email.  "We continue to be concerned about PRC [People's Republic of China] transnational repression efforts around the world and are also coordinating with allies and partners on this issue."

Commie Invasion! Two More Secret Chinese Police Stations Discovered, This Time in L.A..  The non-profit group Safeguard Defenders just located 43 more secret commie Chinese police stations across the world, and two are in Los Angeles.  We already knew about the one located in New York City.  There are now more than 100 secret Chinese commie police stations operating in 53 countries.  There are five in Canada, which means there are now eight in North America that we know of.  [Tweet]  The Chinese claim the police stations are for Chinese nationals to renew their driver's licenses and stop "online fraud."  Yet, as per the Spain-based Safeguard Defenders, the police stations have used nefarious means to "convince" roughly 230,000 people to "voluntarily" return to China.  The police stations are also keeping tabs on Chinese nationals who speak out against the commie regime.

Experts, GOP Reps Call On The Biden Admin To Shut Down A Secret Chinese Police Station In NYC.  The U.S. government must immediately investigate and shutter the recently discovered overseas Chinese government police station in New York City for potential violation of U.S. laws, several experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.  In 2022, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established secret police stations in over 100 cities around the world to conduct intimidation and harassment operations against overseas Chinese, human rights organization Safeguard Defenders revealed in a September report.  While other countries have announced probes into the alleged police stations, the location within American Changle Association — a Chinatown community organization in New York City — continues to operate outside legal boundaries and should be shut down, experts told the DCNF.  "This is a disgrace.  How [...] could they openly have these communist police stations in our country?" Beau Dietl, a retired NYPD detective and current head of Beau Dietl & Associates private investigation firm, told the DCNF.

Chinese Police Overseas NY Outpost Can Be Tool for Sabotage in US: Expert.  A report emerged in September that said Chinese authorities have opened 110 police service centers outside of mainland China — including one in New York City — that repatriate Chinese people using coercion, according to a security policy expert, but which also may be used for sabotage or espionage.  Frank Gaffney, the executive chairman at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, said that as part of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) global transnational repression those service centers can be tools to conduct espionage and sabotage work.  "The Chinese are not simply forcing people to go back to China and stand trial, but they may be giving them directions to do other things," such as espionage, recruitment, influence operations, sabotage, or subversion, Gaffney told the "China in Focus" program on NTD news.  He said those are the sorts of things we need to "ensure do not continue."

China's Spying Goes Far Beyond Balloons.  There is something intrusive about a foreign object the width of several school buses entering my personal space that demands a decisive response.  Given the sparse population of Montana, it seemed the appropriate time to dispatch it while above remote territory with the least risk to bystanders below.  The concern wasn't so much that China was gathering intelligence from above as some other potential for a weaponized payload like explosives, bioweapons, or an electromagnetic pulse device.  The Chinese have no shortage of satellites or technology required to spy on Americans.  Most Americans have willingly adopted Chinese manufactured and even branded surveillance technology into their homes, myself included. [...] At some point, my wife found a Shark Robotic vacuum on clearance at the store.  Excitedly, she set it up on our home network, and it went to work mapping out its cleaning path.  Unfortunately, the Firewalla began to set off alarms at odd times, suggesting that the Shark Vacuum was uploading a data feed to Shenzen, China.  Regardless of how innocuous this could be, I find no reason why any home appliance needs to send data it collects in my home to servers in China.  I took the Shark vacuum off our network, and we got rid of it.  We exchanged it for a different model with no data connection [...]

Close-Up, High Resolution Photos Of Chinese Spy Balloon In Flight Released By US Military.  The U.S. military has released a close-up photograph of a Chinese spy balloon captured mid-air by a U-2 spy plane.  The images were taken on Feb. 3 as the balloon was flying at 60,000 feet over the American Midwest, with the U-2 plane trailing it across the continental United States.  The balloon's white fabric shows a silhouette of the U-2 aircraft, and underneath it is the payload containing reconnaissance sensors, antennae, and solar power panels.

The Editor says...
There is only one such picture in the article above, regardless of what the headline says.  But the photo clearly shows the U-2 was flying well above the balloon.  That alone is impressive.  But what's really surprising is that the U.S. military released hi-resolution pictures of anything.  As I've said a few times before, we have clearer footage of the bombing runs in World War Two than the bombing in the Persian Gulf area in 2002.

Could the 'Chinese Spy Balloon' Have Been a US Spy Balloon?  Still, unanswered questions remain since Montanans first gazed up at the sky above in Billings, Montana and saw a giant balloon floating overhead on February 1.  The answers provided by the Biden administration have been entirely unsatisfactory; ranging from absurd and illogical to even contradictory at times.  The administration immediately claimed the balloon was a Chinese Spy Balloon, and yet when asked the obvious question — why was it not shot down — the administration responded that the debris could harm civilians on the ground.  The same administration just sat idly by as deadly vinyl chloride was recently lit on fire in Palestine, Ohio — spewing poisonous gases into the air.  That harm to nearby residents seems to be of little concern to the Biden administration.

Here We Go Again: Another 'Large White Balloon' Spotted.  There are now new reports of a large white balloon spotted about 594 miles northeast of Honolulu, Hawaii.  The Oakland Oceanic Air Traffic Control was reporting sightings of the balloon, with multiple commercial pilots saying they'd seen it.  Reports were that it was flying at an altitude of 40,000 to 50,000 feet.  Pilots were advised to report if they saw the object.  [Tweets]

One More Kill and Biden Is an Ace.  Joe Biden (call sign: Lying Dog-Faced Pony Soldier) will sweep the skies of America and Canada and he'll shoot down whatever is floating.  Joe admitted that NORAD didn't know what they shot down over Alaska.  It could have been Carl, Doug, and Russell.  It could have been a 5-cent Ralph's Grocery Bag, a Hefty garbage bag, a guy tied to a chair under party balloons, a used car dealership balloon man, or a $12 hobby balloon.

US military ends search for balloons shot down over Alaska and Lake Huron.  The search for small balloons shot down recently by US and Canadian fighter jets over Alaska and Lake Huron has been called off, military commanders have said, days after balloon hobbyists in northern Illinois indicated that one of the stray unidentified flying objects could belong to their group.  In a joint statement released at 10 pm on Friday, the North American aerospace defense command (Norand) and the US northern command said they had recommended calling off the search because the objects were believed to have landed in difficult terrain.  The US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, had approved the defense agencies' recommendation.  The agencies' statement said: "Search operations conclude today near Deadhorse, Alaska, and on Lake Huron, as search activities have discovered no debris from airborne objects shot down on" 10 and 12 February after "a variety of capabilities, including airborne imagery and sensors, surface sensors and inspections, and subsurface scans" had failed to locate debris.

Chinese spy balloon recovery mission completed, military mum on investigation.  The U.S. military has finished recovering parts of the Chinese spy balloon shot down off the South Carolina coast.  The joint Navy, Coast Guard and FBI operation concluded Thursday, the Defense Department's U.S. Northern Command said Friday in a statement.  The final pieces were transported from the crash site to FBI headquarters in Virginia.  Though China maintains the balloon was a weather monitoring device that blew off course, U.S. leaders said recovery operations confirmed it was designed for surveillance.  Northern Command said the FBI was conducting "counterintelligence exploitation."  The payload included "electronics and optics," according to White House national security spokesman John Kirby.  He did not go into specifics.

The Week in Pictures: Balloon Payment Edition.  There is something fitting that an administration that emits mostly hot air would become obsessed with balloons.  And if we're not running low on munitions having shipped off so much of our inventory to Ukraine, shooting down weather balloons with $500,000 air-to-air missiles will surely finish the job of depleting our stocks.

UFO shot down by $400K US missile may have been a $12 hobby balloon: report.  One of the UFOs shot down last weekend by the US Air Force with a $400,000 missile may have simply been a $12 balloon belonging to an Illinois enthusiast club, a report said.  The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade told Aviation Week on Thursday that it fears one of its diligently-tracked gasbags that recently went missing was mistaken as the mystery object taken out by the military over Canada on Saturday [2/11/2023].  The Pico Balloon — a silver-coated, cylindrically shaped object — reported its last position at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska on Friday.  By Saturday, based on the balloon's projected path, it would have been over the central part of the Yukon Territory around the same time a military Lockheed Martin F-22 shot down an unidentified object of a similar description and altitude in the same Canadian vicinity, the outlet reported.

What Biden Appears to Have Shot Down Over Lake Huron Is Clown-Show Stuff.  Do we finally have an explanation for why the Biden administration has been so tight-lipped about the unidentified flying objects shot down more recently?  It wasn't until Thursday that the president finally addressed the matter, providing essentially no details as to what was intercepted and downed in the weeks prior.  That was in stark contrast to the incessant bragging about the downing of a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina.  So why all the secrecy?  The answer seems to be that the truth is incredibly embarrassing.  [Tweet]

Constant Government Lies Spark Resistance Movements.  In the digital public square of social media, I have seen a noticeable uptick in biting memes and political cartoons calling out the U.S. government for its constant lies.  In one example, a cyber-billboard screams, "I don't know if I'm being distracted by vaccine deaths so I don't notice inflation, or if inflation is the distraction to Ukraine money laundering, or if Ukraine is a distraction for rampant pedophilia, or if pedos are distracting me from election fraud."  Clearly, that was produced before the great balloon scare gripped the nation. [...] What I see today is a bubbling movement of frustration and anger that is as acidic as anything I've come across. [...] Whether it is White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claiming that Slow Joe is the "best communicator" around; Treasury secretary Janet Yellen insisting for over a year that skyrocketing inflation would be "transitory"; government economists redefining words to avoid admitting that we're in a recession; Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas flat-out lying about the southern border being "secure"; or former chief of staff Ron Klain preposterously labeling the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, in which thirteen U.S. servicemembers lost their lives for no reason, a "tremendous humanitarian achievement," the people occupying the highest positions of power and authority in the U.S. government do not bat an eye while telling the American people the most outrageous falsehoods drenched in risibly nauseating sanctimony.

I hope it's space aliens, but I doubt it.  Suddenly our skies are filled with threatening UFOs — that absolutely must be shot down. [...] Let's apply [Occam's] razor to our current debate about what's going on in the battle raging over North America.  Could China have sent the UFOs?  Has the country that steals its technology from us come up with a super-secret aircraft — with leap-ahead technology?  If so, would the Chinese use such an aircraft to do what they've already successfully done with a balloon?  Did Russia send the UFOs?  Have the Russians developed a highly advanced aerospace technology that we are unaware of?  Would the country that started a three-week war with Ukraine — which is approaching the one-year mark — use that technology on us rather than on the country they're currently losing to? [...] Or is the Biden administration feeding us a line?  Is Joe Biden shooting down weather balloons with half-a-million-dollar missiles to pose as alert, on the job, and in control — between trips to Baskin-Robbins?  What seems more likely:
  •   a sudden advancement in Chinese or Russian aerospace technology that doesn't use propellers, jets, rockets, or lighter-than-air gases;
  •   space aliens who can travel across the galaxy, but can't avoid crashing once they arrive; or
  •   a government hoax to cover up incompetence?

Balloon follies.  Literally all aspects of the recent "Balloon Gate Saga" are utterly preposterous.  First, the U.S. lets a suspected Chinese spy balloon slowly traverse the length and breadth of the country before finally shooting it down over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina.  After it had several days to leisurely transmit the intelligence it gathered back home to the Chinese Communist Party.  Yet now the Biden administration, perhaps chagrined, is blasting anything and everything out of the sky, even while acknowledging that these "unidentified flying objects" could be our own weather service — or corporate — balloons.  What [...]?!  Wouldn't/shouldn't we know if they were?  Weather Service balloons are launched by another branch of government, one closely related to the Department of Defense... that shot them down.  The U.S. government was, apparently, unable to detect the giant Chinese spy balloon.  That was left to citizens of Montana, who happened to look up into the clear blue sky.  The official explanation for why the government was picking up so many unidentified objects is that, prior to this event, it was only looking for larger objects, and has since tweaked its radar so as to detect smaller objects.  You've got to be kidding me.

From Sound Stage, Joe Biden Says U.S. Military Shot Down Balloons Belonging to "private companies, recreation, and research institutions".  Apparently almost every media outlet buried the lead.  According to analysis from combined intelligence operations of the U.S government, last week the Biden administration ordered U.S. military fighter jets to launch missiles and shoot down of what is now believed to be "balloons belonging to private companies, recreation, or research institutions."

They came in peace.  Forgive me for repeating myself — the Biden administration intended to let the Chinese spy balloon traverse the United States and surveil some of our most secure war-fighting facilities without obstruction or notice.  It was only exposed to the public by the efforts of Chase Doak and the Billings Gazette as it crossed Montana.  As we reacted with incredulity, the administration woke the president and shot the balloon down off the coast of South Carolina.  Secretary of State Antony Blinken intended to meet with his Chinese counterpart that weekend, but was embarrassed into postponing the jamboree in Beijing.  Since then NORAD has shot down three balloons of apparently unknown origin over Canada and the United States.  The Pentagon did not rule out the possibility that they were piloted by aliens.  All the while, President Biden has remained dormant and/or mute.  Orson Welles could not be reached for comment.

Biden Finally Speaks on Shootdown of Three 'Objects,' but Snaps at Reporters' Questions.  Joe Biden has finally been forced into making comments on the three "objects" that the U.S. shot down over the past weekend.  What's been glaring has been Biden's failure to respond or speak to the shootdowns and the many questions that the American people have had about the actions.  We heard from the Secretary of Defense.  We heard from the NORAD Commander.  We heard from White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre who had trouble describing what NORAD was and called Canada, "Canadia."  But we didn't hear from Biden.  So on Thursday, he finally said he would be delivering remarks on the subject.  But when he did finally speak on it, Biden didn't say much more than we already knew — and he was, typically, a little late for his remarks.  Biden said that they still don't have any further information on the objects.  He said there wasn't anything to indicate that they were surveillance craft or from China as yet.  [Tweet]

Chinese Spy Balloon Had Maneuvering Ability and Similarities to Google AI Balloon Project: Ex-DoD Official.  The Chinese spy balloon had maneuvering capability and had similarities to the Google balloon project Loon, which utilized AI analytics in its operations, according to Col. (Ret.) John Mills, an author and former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Department of Defense.  "What's very interesting is in 2012, I was at Google and Google briefed me on Project Loon, their balloon project.  And they use their advanced AI and analytics to raise and lower the balloon and they could maintain the position of a balloon by raising and lowering it.  And they could also maneuver it," Mills said in an interview recorded on Feb. 9 on China in Focus, a show on NTD TV, The Epoch Times' sister media.  He said throughout the "spy balloon" episode that the Department of Defense has very clearly said that the Chinese balloon had maneuvering capability.  The Chinese regime maintained that it was a runaway weather balloon, but the U.S. administration has refuted such claims.

Three Objects Shot Down Were 'Most Likely Balloons' Not Tied to Chinese Surveillance.  President Joe Biden said Thursday that the three most recent objects he ordered to be shot down were "most likely balloons" not tied to Chinese surveillance.  "We don't yet know exactly what these three objects were.  But nothing, nothing right now suggests they were related to Chinese spy balloon programs or they were surveillance vehicles from other any other country.  The intelligence community's current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research," he said.

White House Demands Media 'Comply,' Hauls Specific Reporters Out Of Biden's UFO Brief.  The White House heavily controlled which reporters had access to President Joe Biden's remarks on "aerial objects" Thursday, telling the media to "comply," and asking reporters — including the Daily Caller's correspondent — to leave the room.  Biden's remarks were scheduled for 2:00 p.m., and reporters were notified less than an hour before that they would need a "pre-credentialed" pass to attend the press conference.  Biden's team walked the press over to the South Court Auditorium, where the remarks were to be delivered, at approximately 1:50 p.m.  When reporters entered the auditorium, White House staff approached every correspondent and pressed each of them to show an email containing a "pre-credential," as there was not enough space in the room.

A brief recap:
Destroying Meritocracy Is Deadly.  This month, the Defense Department officials apparently allowed a series of surveillance balloons to enter U.S. airspace.  President Joe Biden claims he was advised by the military not to shoot down a Chinese survival balloon craft as it crossed with impunity much of the United States.  In the aftermath, Pentagon spokespeople gave incomplete, mutually contradictory, and absurd explanations for these serial violations of U.S. airspace, most likely perpetrated by the Chinese communist government.

WH press secretary torched for fumbling her way through explanation on airborne object over Canada: 'Brutal.  White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was called out over the weekend after struggling to explain why the U.S. military shot down an unidentified airborne object over Canada.  A "high-altitude airborne object" over Northern Canada was shot down by an F-22 fighter jet at the directive of President Biden, a North American Aerospace Defense Command [NORAD] official confirmed in a statement to Fox News Digital.  The incident came one day after the United States shot down an unidentified object over northern Alaska on Friday that entered U.S. airspace before it was detected and a week after the U.S. shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon spotted off the coast of South Carolina.  The White House confirmed President Biden authorized for the object to be shot down, but did not elaborate further.'

Biden says 3 UFOs [were] shot down after spy balloon not related to China program.  President Biden told Americans Thursday there was no evidence a trio of unidentified flying objects shot down following the downing of a Chinese spy balloon were nefarious — in his first comments on the unprecedented military action in North American airspace after five full days of silence.  White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre promised Biden would explain his "decisive response to China's high-altitude surveillance balloon" — but the president hewed closely to a familiar script based on details already provided to the press.  "We don't yet know exactly what these three objects were," Biden said of the devices shot down off the Alaskan coast, over Canada's Yukon territory, and over Lake Huron Feb. 10, 11 and 12 — echoing remarks by other administration officials.

Chinese Spy Balloon May Not have Been Intended to Fly Over Continental U.S., Report Says.  U.S. military and intelligence agencies tracked the Chinese spy balloon for nearly a week before it violated American airspace last month, according to a new report.  As the U.S. monitored the balloon, it appeared headed for the U.S. territory of Guam.  But the balloon was seemingly blown off course and instead ended up over Alaska's Aleutian Islands before ultimately floating over the continental United States, the Washington Post reported.  U.S. officials are considering the possibility that China did not intend to send the spy balloon over the continental United States, but instead took advantage of the balloon being blown off course to surveil sensitive locations in Montana.  The balloon was launched from Hainan Island as part of a program run in part by the People's Liberation Army air force.

For what it's worth:
UFO Being Transported By Truck For Analysis?  [Video clip only.]

China 'Brazenly Pushing Limits to See How Far They Can Go,' Homeland Security Panel Chairman Says.  High-ranking House Republicans and a defense expert are continuing to sound the alarm after the U.S. military shot down a Chinese spy balloon about what's at stake for the United States' relationship with the communist nation.  "China is brazenly pushing the limits, to see how far they can go.  President [Joe] Biden's administration has consistently demonstrated weakness, showing a willingness to act against adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party only after the public outcry was so deafening that they could not ignore it," Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement.  "This situation is still developing, and the House Committee on Homeland Security will continue monitoring this incident as more information comes out and demand full transparency for the American people," said Green, also a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee.

U.S. Intel Watched Suspected Spy Balloon Take Off From China: Reports.  Biden administration intelligence officials observed the suspected Chinese spy balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina ever since it took off, according to multiple reports.  U.S. monitors watched as the aircraft took off from Hainan Island near China's south coast in late January nearly a week before it entered U.S. airspace, The New York Times reported, earlier than previously known.  Follow-up reports by The Washington Post and CBS News indicate U.S. intelligence tracked the balloon moving east toward Guam, but it suddenly veered north toward Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

New Report Shows Biden Team Has Been Lying From Beginning About Chinese Spy Balloon.  CBS News reported on Tuesday that U.S. intelligence had been tracking the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down over the Atlantic near the Carolinas since it took off from China and that the U.S. military had been tracking it for more than a week before it entered U.S. airspace, much longer than the Biden administration had said.  [Tweet]  The Biden team has claimed that they first learned about it on Jan. 28, when it was near Alaska.  Then, as I've noted before, their story evolved, first saying they didn't have time to take a shot over Alaskan waters.  Then NORAD Commander Glen VanHerck said he couldn't take the shot because it wasn't demonstrating "hostile intent."  So if this report from CBS is correct, add one more lie to what they told us about this whole story and they had plenty of time to plan a takedown over water, contrary to what they said.  If they had wanted to.

Did Biden Use $400,000 Missiles to Shoot Down Weather Balloons?  It's been days since President Joe Biden directed the Pentagon to shootdown a number of "objects" he claims were a threat to U.S. airspace and commercial aircraft.  There are no photos of the "objects," which White House officials say cannot be classified as balloons, and still no recovered debris after they were reportedly taken out by F-16 pilots using $400,000 missiles.  As officials drag their feet on providing details about what exactly the objects were, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre won't say whether Biden scrambled fighter jets to shoot down benign and routine weather balloons.

U.S. tracked spy balloon after it lifted off from China, officials say.  U.S. intelligence officials were tracking the spy balloon that was shot down earlier this month since it lifted off from the south coast of China, U.S. officials said Tuesday.  According to U.S. officials, after takeoff, the spy balloon drifted east in the direction of Guam and Hawaii and then went north to Alaska and entered U.S. airspace on Jan. 28.  Given the path, it's possible that the balloon was blown off course by weather, but U.S. officials said that once it came south over the continental United States, it was being controlled by China.  The tracking of the balloon was first reported by The Washington Post.

Sen. Kennedy Dishes on Info They Got in Briefing on Those 'Objects'.  Senators were given a closed-door briefing on Tuesday [2/14/2023] on the three "objects" that were shot down over the U.S. and Canada over the weekend.  While many of the Senators were limited in what they could say because the meeting was classified, senators on both sides of the aisle said that the Biden team should make the information known to the American people.  Both sides called for more transparency from the Biden team.

FNC's Hume: Seems Like Biden Admin Shooting Down Everything They Can See.  Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume said Monday [2/13/2023] on FNC's "Special Report" that the Biden administration is shooting down everything after letting a Chinese spy balloon cross America before shooting it down.  Discussing the three objects shot down over the weekend, Hume said, "Certainly, there has been a change in the administration's policy or practice here after letting that first balloon as it turned out to drift all the way across the continental United States.  They shot that one down.  Now it seems they're shooting everything down that they can see.  And the interest interesting question what are we shooting down?  We shot these things down.  We don't know what they are.  We don't know what they are when we shot them down.  Jennifer Griffin quoted someone as telling her it might be sky trash.  Oh great, we now have F-16s in the air over the continental United States, and we are shooting down possibly sky trash.  I could kind of understand why the president doesn't want to come out and talk about this yet because he doesn't know what he has done."

Speculation about the balloons is the latest "misinformation".  The real issue for journalists, however, is the almost total lack of information coming from the White House, with much of what has been released consisting of vague suggestions.  Now, however, officials seem to be growing increasingly bothered by analysts who have been filling in the information gap with speculation.  The administration has labeled all of this conjecture as the latest example of "misinformation" that needs to be swatted down. [...] You people need to stop "speculating" and "stirring the pot" about all of these objects that are being shot down.  You'll just have to wait until the Biden administration settles on whatever story they eventually plan to tell us about these "objects."  I'll grant you that some of the suggestions being made in the usual internet rabbit holes are definitely "out there" and at least bordering on conspiracy theory territory.  These include claims that Washington is putting the objects up and shooting them down to distract attention away from the toxic railroad spill in Ohio, the war in Ukraine, or the investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop.

First Attempt to Take Down UFO Over Lake Huron Failed as $439k Sidewinder Missile Missed the Target.  When the Chinese spy balloon story first broke, President Biden was heavily criticized for waiting days to take it down as it passed over the continental United States and our sensitive nuclear bases, possibly vacuuming up gigabytes of intel.  Now, however, it seems that not a day goes by without the administration shooting down yet another unidentified object.  The Pentagon issued a memo to lawmakers Monday with more information concerning the shooting down of a "cylindrical object" flying over Canada:  ["]The American military shot down a "small, metallic balloon" over Canada on Saturday, the Pentagon wrote in a memo to lawmakers Monday — offering one of the first descriptions of one of the three mystery objects downed over consecutive days.  [... "]  So take aliens off the list — at least for that particular UFO. It was one of three takedowns over the weekend, with US forces also shooting down an unidentified object over Alaska on Friday and another over Lake Huron, Michigan on Sunday.  But the initial shot at Lake Huron failed, as the AIM-9x missile shot from an F-16 missed the mark:  "The first Sidewinder heat-seeking missile missed the target," a US official told Fox News.  Each Sidewinder, made by Raytheon Technologies Corp., costs more than $439,000.

The Editor says...
The Sidewinder is apparently good at intercepting airplanes that are propelled by jet engines.  It is probably not very effective against Mylar party balloons.

Pentagon memo says object shot down over Canada was a 'small, metallic balloon'.  The unidentified flying object shot down in Canadian airspace on Saturday appeared to be a "small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it," according to what sources described as a Pentagon memo sent to lawmakers on Monday and obtained by CNN.  The memo offers the first official details of one of the three objects shot down in recent days that was previously described as a "cylindrical object."  The object crossed near "US sensitive sites" before it was shot down, the document said.  Defense officials also told lawmakers that the object shot down over Lake Huron, in Michigan on Sunday, "subsequently slowly descended" into the water after impact.

An update on the balloon saga.  [Scroll down]  Maybe we'll get an idea what the Feb. 11 balloon was about if they can find the debris.  Canada is taking the lead on that investigation but the FBI is working with them.  The object shot down over Lake Huron yesterday is also mentioned in the same memo.  It descended slowly into the lake and may be recoverable as well.  However, both balloons were much smaller than the Chinese spy balloon so there's a lot less material to find.  National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said today at the White House that, for the moment, we don't know what the other three objects/balloons were or where they came from.

Balloongate — China's Long Game.  China's use of balloons to overfly U.S. territory is not an accident — it's part of China's Long Game for capturing Taiwan and becoming the world's leading superpower. [...] When planning for the long term, everything happening in the here and now are inevitably linked to their long game.  Which is why the South Carolina balloon was shot down less than a week before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's long-planned trip to Beijing.  In the face of this "intrusion" into American airspace, Blinken was forced to cancel his plan to conduct "peaceful" discussions with Chinese leaders, including Supreme Leader Xi Jinping.  This timing was no coincidence.

Fake alien invasion psyop being tested on suggestible Americans.  U.S. and Canadian Air Force jets are using high-cost missiles to shoot down metallic birthday balloons while claiming they are "defeating" the objects.  It's all part of a massive psyop to try to imply that aliens are invading Earth's atmosphere and that alien craft are being shot down by modern jet fighters.  Every effort is being made to paint these birthday balloons as mysterious, possibly alien craft.  And it's all ridiculous.  For example, the WSJ reports that a "flying object" was shot down over Canada.  This object was described as a "small metallic balloon" (i.e. some little boy's birthday balloon filled with helium) that drifted to 20,000 feet altitude.  Canadian officials were breathless over their amazing military effort to "defeat" a helium-filled birthday balloon.

White House Says No Evidence of 'Alien or Extraterrestrial' Activity in Shot Down Objects.  The White House says that there is "no" evidence of any "alien or extraterrestrial activity" around the recent "takedowns" of unidentified flying objects in the recent days since the Chinese spy balloon.  Following the United States military shooting down multiple objects over the U.S. and Canadian airspace, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a Monday [2/13/2023] press briefing that there was no evidence of "alien or extraterrestrial activity."

Americans Don't 'Need to Worry about Aliens,' White House Says After Shooting Down Three Unidentified Objects.  National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Monday [2/13/2023] dismissed concerns that a string of unidentified airborne objects shot down by the U.S. in recent days are related to aliens or extraterrestrial activity.  "I don't think the American people need to worry about aliens with respect to these craft," Kirby said during a press briefing on Monday.  "I don't think there's any more that needs to be said there."  Kirby's comments come one day after a top U.S. general said he hadn't ruled anything out when asked specifically about the possibility of aliens as it relates to three objects shot down over the weekend.

Pentagon Confirms Shot-Down Objects Aren't Balloons, Makes an Even Weirder Admission.  Alright, maybe I was too quick to dismiss the possibility of aliens.  The Pentagon gave a briefing on Sunday evening after yet another unidentified flying object was shot down, this time in US airspace over Lake Huron.  Reports began to circulate that the object was an "octagon" and that it didn't appear to be a balloon.  That set off some speculation that the recent rash of UFOs were balloons, likely from China, but that they were simply shaped differently than one would expect.  In a pretty shocking statement, though, Gen. Glen VanHerck made it clear that's not the view of the US military.  [Tweet]  The UFOs not being balloons would be crazy enough, but things get even weirder when you hear a top US general admit that we don't even know what is keeping these objects in the air.

Bombshells, Landmines, and Nemesis.  [Scroll down]  Finally, we are witnessing the strangest provocations to U.S. sovereign airspace in history.  China apparently has been sending with impunity surveillance balloons throughout American skies.  Our woke military either did not know of all of them, or could not or would not stop them, or did not disclose these apparent serial violations to their own civilian overseers.  Biden mysteriously allowed an enormous Chinese spy balloon to traverse nearly the entirety of the continental United States.  When pressed, his administration issued a series of untrue statements or at least mutually contradictory excuses for its own paralysis: the device may have been just a weather balloon; it was a harmless, anemic primitive spy device; it may have been more sophisticated than we thought but we took measures to ensure our sensitive locales were protected; we could not shoot it down because it had caused no harm; we could not shoot it down because the debris might have hurt people on the ground; we could not shoot it down over Alaskan waters because they are too deep and too cold; Trump was to blame for not stopping them earlier; and on and on.

New Info on 'Object' Just Shot Down Reveals Glaring Problem for Biden Team.  The confusion of the Biden administration seems to continue.  While NORAD issued a statement last night saying there was an "anomaly" and they said they didn't see anything when they went to look, now we're hearing on Sunday that they are saying that the object shot down over Lake Huron is likely the same object as that spotted over Montana. [...] So how did they have radar, tell Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) there was an object and then they found nothing?  That's something they need to figure out, otherwise we're sitting there with our borders exposed.

Object Shot Down Over Lake Huron Was "Shaped Like an Octagon": Wall St. Journal and Rep. Bergman Report.  The Wall Street Journal reported the object shot down over by U.S. planes Lake Huron Sunday afternoon was "shaped like an octagon."  Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI) said in an interview with Fox News a few minutes ago the object shot down by an F-16 that fired an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile was an "octagonal structure" over Lake Huron at about 20,000 feet.  Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) implied in a statement the object was the same one tracked over Montana Saturday night. [...] Military jets searched for but could not find an object detected by radar over Montana Saturday evening.  Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) appeared to imply the object shot down over Lake Huron was the same object tracked over Montana, [...]

Another Chinese balloongate?  Recently, Biden's spokespersons announced the shoot-down of an "object" over far Northeastern Alaska, shot down where it would land on an ice floe in Prudhoe Bay.  The Pentagon was quick to "not call it" a balloon, just as they were careful not to call where it crashed down "ice."  Instead, they called the balloon an "object" and called it "frozen water."  Why did Biden permit a massive balloon, with an equipment pod as large as a commercial airliner, to overfly the entire United States — including our nuclear missile silos in Montana — while popping a relatively tiny balloon, with an equipment pod smaller than a small car?  More to the point, since China tested lofting deadly EMP generators on large balloons, why was the large balloon allowed to threaten all Americans while the tinker-toy mini-balloon was destroyed as a "viable threat"?  A balloon known to be capable of carrying devastating weapons, spotted flying over the entire U.S., is apparently no threat, but a micro-balloon over the most remote portion of the U.S. is a threat?  Really?  Pentagon spokespersons were quick to deny that they knew that the balloon shot down was Chinese.  But if it wasn't Chinese, why did they destroy it?  They denied knowing that it was a balloon.  They also "confirmed" that this object wasn't a manned aircraft, but an object.  If they could determine that it wasn't manned, surely they could see that it was a balloon.

Sidebar discussion:  Why does everything have to be a secret or a lie?

The federal government and the news media won't tell the whole truth about anything, even when it's obvious that the official explanation is full of holes.  Plausible conjecture, reasonable assumptions and educated guesses are called conspiracy theories.  If the public somehow finds out the truth, or most of the truth, the story falls into the news media memory hole.  Here are a few examples, in roughly chronological order:

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
Bay of Pigs
Kennedy assassination / Lee Harvey Oswald was rubbed out two days later
UFOs / Roswell UFO crash / Area 51
Chappaquiddick
Peak Oil
DDT
Global warming / cooling
Carbon dioxide
Coal
Polar Bear Extinction
Polar Ice disappearing
Unsustainable population explosion
The 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing
World Trade Center Building 7
Pentagon bomb / missile / whatever it was on 9/11/2001
American 587
FISA court arguments and decisions
Vince Foster suicide
TWA Flight 800
Patriot Act
Obama's birth certificate / Social Security number / College transcripts / dual citizenship
Obama secretly airlifted $400 million in cash to Iran in January, 2016
Benghazi -- and dozens of other Islamic terrorist attacks
Who killed Seth Rich, Vince Foster, Philip Haney, George DeMohrenschildt, Dorothy Kilgallen, Karen Silkwood, Catherine Cesnik?
AIDS / Ebola / Zika / bird flu / swine flu / monkeypox
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Anchor babies
Islam is touted as a Religion of Peace
How many useless government agencies exist?
Obamacare / Pass the bill to find out what's in it
Social Security insolvent
National debt / insurmountable but nobody cares
Hillary Clinton's secret email servers and other un-punished scandals
Domestic surveillance
Unexplained mass shooting in Las Vegas 10/4/2017
Black crime in black cities
The politicized FBI
Border patrol whipping migrants
Covid-19 : masks / alternative treatments / mandates / shutdowns
Theft of the 2020 election
Theft of the 2022 election
Biden's dementia / Who's really in charge?
Hunter Biden laptop
Hunter Biden paintings
The shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas
January 6, 2021, disturbance at the US Capitol
Epstein suicide
5G cell phone health hazards
Ukraine war
Nord Stream pipeline sabotage
Paul Pelosi DWI
Paul Pelosi hammer attack
Vaccine mandates / Healthy people dying suddenly
Natural gas appliances are suddenly bad
Joe Biden's classified documents
Chinese spy balloons or whatever they are

I looked for a list like this on the internet, but couldn't find one, so I had to compile it myself.

U.S. Military Unable To Find Alleged Object That Caused FAA To Close Airspace In Montana.  The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the U.S. Northern Command released a statement late on Saturday night [2/11/2023] about a supposed unidentified object that they identified over Montana, saying that fighter jets were not able to locate the object.  "NORAD detected a radar anomaly and sent fighter aircraft to investigate," that statement said.  "Those aircraft did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits.  NORAD will continue to monitor the situation."  The statement came after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sent a notice to airmen (NOTAM) late Saturday night warning that it had designated an area in the northern part of Montana as a "national defense airspace" and that anyone who entered the airspace would be intercepted.

How many UFOs will we (globally) shoot down this month?  All of you who had "UFO invasion" on your 2023 bingo card may now collect your prizes.  After the United States shot down an "unidentified object" on Friday over Alaska, yesterday and today produced a cascading series of reports about strange objects being seen (and in some cases attacked) in the skies around the world.  First, on Saturday, joint forces from the United States and Canada shot down another one over a remote region of Yukon in the northwestern part of the country.  But just like the one over Alaska, this didn't look like a balloon at first, and Canadian officials were not ready to blame it on China.  (It came in from over the North Pole, not from the west.) [...] Pentagon officials later said that the object was a "small metallic ballon with a tethered payload."  That conflicts with earlier reports from the Canadian Defense Minister who described it as a "small, cylindrical object" the size of a car.  This latest description is still rather vague, so who knows what we're being told and how forthright they are being?

The vast scale of Beijing's high-tech balloon programme.  There will no doubt be some tense moments in the boardrooms of western technology companies over the coming days after the revelation that the Chinese spy balloon shot down after traversing the United States had western-made components with English-language writing on them. [...] Investigators are continuing their efforts to recover the wreckage of the balloon and its payload of surveillance kit from shallow waters off the South Carolina coast but have already concluded that the craft was part of a fleet operated by the Chinese military with sensors capable of sniffing for electronic communications.  The targets likely included data transmitted in and around US bases as well as between those bases and US satellites.  Officials said the balloon's surveillance equipment alone was the size of a regional jet, with solar panels capable of powering 'multiple active intelligence collecting sensors', with the data sent in real time to Chinese satellites orbiting above. [...] On Friday Joe Biden ordered the military to shoot down another 'high altitude object' near Alaska, although the White House did not confirm whether this was another Chinese spy balloon.  National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the object 'posed a reasonable threat to the safety of the civilian flight.'

The 'let's try it again' leftist balloon PR blitz.  Suddenly, U.S. president Joe Biden and Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, are decisively shooting down new "UFOs" that purportedly wandered into their national airspace.  They are doing so with personal verve and command, displaying their sudden prowess as defenders of their nation's respective airspace borders.  Don't believe it.  The manner in which the press releases were written indicates that the writers went out of their way to make the story about the president and prime minister, and about their newfound leadership, as well as positioning NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) as suddenly now on top of its game. [...] Modern electoral government is a highly scripted activity; it is not an institutional culture that is inherently poised for spontaneous action.  This is the great risk that the public faces with elected leaders who are otherwise merely legacy political ideologues like Trudeau or proxies like Biden:  when actual national security requires actual civilian leadership, they are unprepared or unqualified, or both.  They are not trained in leadership or military operations or strategy.  They are completely dependent, especially in Biden's case, given his obvious mental dysfunction, on an unorganized cabal of various advisers and handlers.  And those political appointees are not directing their attention to national leadership or national security or national defense, but to private interests that can be affected through government institutional manipulation.  For them, national security is merely national theater.

Mystery airborne object remains over Montana, says congressman.  A Montana congressman said on Saturday night that he had been told an unidentified object was spotted over his district, forcing the temporary closure of airspace -- and the search for it would resume at daylight.  Matt Rosendale, a Republican elected in 2020, said he had been briefed by the Department of Defense, while he was at a Lincoln Reagan dinner.  Fighter jets were scrambled and airspace above Havre, a town of 10,000 people, 30 miles south of the Canadian border, was shut at 7:50 pm before being reopened about 50 minutes later.

GOP Rep. Says a 3rd 'Object' Near Northern Border.  [Scroll down] "I am in direct contact with NORCOM and monitoring the latest issue over Havre and the northern border," Rosendale divulged. "Airspace is closed due to an object that could interfere with commercial air traffic — the DOD will resume efforts to observe and ground the object in the morning."  It's not clear why they're not taking the shot now, but they also delayed on the prior two shoot-downs, so they may be having trouble picking it up for some reason.  This followed two objects being shot down, one over Alaska on Friday and another that was shot down over Canada Saturday evening.  Both of those objects penetrated U.S. airspace before they were detected and shot down.  Their descriptions were similar — "small" and "cylindrical."

GOP's new probes may burst baloony Joe Biden's bubble.  With China's spy balloon crossing the American heartland unmolested and GOP leaders simultaneously starting probes of his family's corruption, Joe Biden is entering a new phase of his presidency.  The worst case scenario is that all his chickens are coming home to roost.  The spy balloon's appearance and that of two additional objects shot down by the military oddly highlight the importance of the House probes.  The possibility that Biden has been compromised by profiting from son Hunter's lucrative foreign entanglements, especially with China, is drawing extra attention to how the president reacts to the Communist regime's aggressive surveillance.  So far, his weak-tea response is raising even more suspicions.  In fact, it's fair to say he has done or said nothing that would allay concerns and everything to aggravate them.  It started with his administration's bizarre radio silence as the balloon crossed over Alaska and entered mainland airspace.  Only after a civilian spotted it over Montana did the White House acknowledge what it knew all along.

'High-altitude object' shot down by Pentagon over Alaska, just days after Chinese spy balloon incident.  The Biden administration confirmed it shot down a "high-altitude object" over Alaska on Friday afternoon.  Officials did not say what the object was, and they would not confirm if it was a second Chinese spy balloon nearly one week after shooting down a craft over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Carolinas.  National Security Council spokesman John Kirby additionally briefed reporters Friday [2/10/2023] on the operation, which took less than an hour prior to his appearance in the White House press briefing room.  "I can confirm that the Department of Defense was tracking a high-altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours," Kirby told reporters.  "The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.  Out of an abundance of caution at the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to down the object, and they did it when it came in inside our territorial waters."

More Info on That Unusual 'Object' Shot Down Over Alaska.  There's now more information on that object that the military shot down over Alaskan waters, which we reported on earlier.  It was a "high-altitude object," flying at about 40,000 feet that was about the size of a "small car," according to National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby.  The description of the object was unusual. [...] Sounds more UFO-ish, if they can't even identify what it is.  But at least this time they were able to detect it.  They first detected it on Thursday evening.  It was picked up by ground radar, and they flew planes up to check it out.  But they didn't shoot it down until Friday afternoon around 1:45 — after they had more planes check it out and after they got the order from Joe Biden.  They shot it down over frozen water, so they believe they will be able to recover it.  They said they shot it down because it could pose a danger to civilian air traffic.

The Editor says...
Really?  How much "civilian air traffic" flies at 40,000 feet over frozen Alaska territorial waters?  And what kind of an object "about the size of a 'small car'" can fly at 40,000 feet?  If it was a balloon, why don't they just say so?  Why is it impossible to get the whole story out of any government spokesman?

High-altitude object shot down over Alaska, US says.  US President Joe Biden ordered a fighter jet to shoot down an unidentified "high-altitude object" off Alaska on Friday [2/10/2023], the White House says.  Spokesman John Kirby said the unmanned object was "the size of a small car" and posed a "reasonable threat" to civilian aviation.  The object's purpose and origin was unclear, Mr Kirby said.  It comes a week after the American military destroyed a Chinese balloon over US territorial waters.

Ri-i-i-i-ight
Austin: Spy Balloon Forced Us to Limit Movement, Communications Across Country So 'We Didn't Expose' Nuclear Capabilities.  During a portion of an interview with CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin released on Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated that in response to the Chinese spy balloon that flew over the country last week, the United States ensured that its nuclear bases "were buttoned down" and that "movement was limited and communications were limited so that we didn't expose any capability unnecessarily."  Austin also stated that the buttoning down applied to nuclear bases all across the United States.  Martin asked, "You don't know what it was looking for, but you certainly know what you were concerned about it looking for.  What were you concerned about it looking for?"  Austin answered, "Well, I — certainly, all of our strategic assets, we made sure that we were buttoned down and movement was limited and communications were limited so that we didn't expose any capability unnecessarily."

CNN boldly reports that which is obvious, but only because the government said it first:
Chinese spy balloon contained technology to monitor communication signals, US says.  The Biden administration has determined that the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that traversed the United States last week was operating with electronic surveillance technology capable of monitoring US communications, according to a senior State Department official.  The balloon "was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations" and was part of a fleet that had flown over "more than 40 countries across five continents."  "We know the PRC used these balloons for surveillance," the official said.  "High resolution imagery from U-2 flybys revealed that the high-altitude balloon was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations."  Signals intelligence refers to information that is gathered by electronic means — things like communications and radars.

Chinese Spy Balloon Carried Technology to Monitor Communication Signals: Official.  The Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States for days before being shot down could monitor communications signals, a U.S. official says.  "High resolution imagery from U-2 flybys revealed that the high-altitude balloon was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations," an official with the State Department, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Epoch Times.  "The high altitude balloon's equipment was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard weather balloons.  It had multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications.  It was equipped with solar panels large enough to produce the requisite power to operate multiple active intelligence collection sensors," the official added.  Frank Gaffney, executive chairman at the Center for Security Policy, told NTD that China would likely have an interest in monitoring communications between intercontinental ballistic missile silos.

America's Disarray Is A Stark Contrast To China's Unity.  Listening carefully during the State of the Union, you could hear roaring laughter in Beijing when President Biden again said that J6 was the greatest threat to America since the Civil War.  Biden is China's perfect stooge.  China has a long-term mission to retaliate against the West, with a bullseye on America, for a Century of Humiliation (1839-1949).  To succeed, China must have political and racial unity and opportunities to strike, like an American president driving political, racial, and military disunity and invested in the mythical J6 monster. [...] But what if none of this is ironic to Xi?  What if the white spy balloon was a successful diversionary tactic while the CCP clandestinely works to facilitate divisions in America through the indoctrination of CRT and wokism?  This would be an espionage masterstroke to advance the CCP's long-term mission to humiliate America and achieve global supremacy.  This could be a bigger threat to America than the mythical J6 domestic-extremist monster, right?

Hunter Biden, victim.  DNC fabricators are good.  They spun a spy balloon from Red China as being nothing unusual.  Their boy at the Pentagon said, "The balloon is currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground.  Instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years.  Once the balloon was detected, the U.S. government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information."  Nothing to see here.  Move along.  Once the Red Chinese accomplished their mission, the military blew it up — and Democrats congratulated the president. [...] Finally, the DNC blatantly lied and said Red China sent balloons over the USA when Donald Trump was president.  The press went with that story.  Only a few conservative outlets, such as the Boston Herald, carried his denial:  "It never happened with us under the Trump administration and if it did, we would have shot it down immediately."

Rep. MTG Bursts Biden's Balloon: 'He's Owned by China!'  [Scroll down] The balloon, which first captured the public's attention last week after a photographer caught sight of it floating over Billings, Montana, entered U.S. airspace days prior, on January 28, near the Aleutian Islands, a senior Pentagon official said during a press briefing Saturday after the military had taken the balloon down.  "It's really interesting," Greene said.  "I think everyone should know that the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, the president of the United States knew China was bringing a spy balloon towards our country on January 28.  Then they allowed it to enter our airspace.  They allowed it to traverse the entire United States, spy on multiple, multiple military bases with critical infrastructure, gather as much intel as they needed until it left the country, and then they shot down the spy balloon."

NORAD Pleads Incompetence Over Failure To Spot Trump-Era Chinese Spy Balloons.  As the Biden administration came under fire last week for allowing a Chinese spy balloon to cross the entire United States before shooting it down off the coast of South Carolina, an anonymous US Defense Department official said over the weekend that spy balloons transited over US territory during the Trump administration.  Trump, and his former administration officials, collectively [disputed] the report — saying it 'never happened.'  "Now they are putting out that a Balloon was put up by China during the Trump Administration, in order to take the 'heat' off" the Biden administration, Trump wrote Sunday.  "China had too much respect for 'TRUMP' for this to have happened, and it NEVER did."  In response to the entire Trump administration's lack of knowledge of these alleged incursions, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Monday called for a congressional investigation into why the US intelligence community failed to inform the sitting administration of foreign spycraft transiting over US airspace.

Disturbing possibilities to explain the Chinese balloon.  How could a Chinese (or any other) foreign object enter U.S. national airspace (the "NAS" or national airspace system, controlled by the DOD and the civilian FAA) without its presence known far beforehand, and its flight path not tracked and projected?  And if a very slow-moving balloon, let alone a supersonic aircraft, or a hypersonic missile, is not announced over a public communication system until it is already over U.S. airspace, loitering over the Midwest, what does this say about our entire national defense system and about NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), or about general civil defense and public notification systems?  It is of interest that the September 11, 2001 tragedy was defined in part by a still unexplained failure of the entire NORAD system, declared in the final 911 Report to be systematically preoccupied with joint simulations and drills.  In the case of the Chinese balloon incident, what then is offered as an explanation for its apparently unknown presence over the U.S., and its casual trajectory over military installations, nuclear facilities, industrial operations, dense population centers, and civil infrastructure?  Moreover, why was it supposedly shot down over the Atlantic Ocean, and its recovery made problematic, when it could have been captured through routine in-flight procedures, and towed effectively to a defense installation for examination?  It could also have been easily compromised in its ability to maintain altitude, without destroying it, and recovered intact.

In the Aftermath of Balloongate, Now What?  This article had already been accepted for print in American Thinker when President Joe Biden "courageously" ordered the destruction of China's spy balloon after it had soared out to sea, where there was nothing more to spy on.  That balloon crossed the entire country, passing over strategic U.S. assets, such as the field of silos at Malmstrom Air Force Base, which houses a major proportion of America's intercontinental nuclear-equipped missiles.  When Joe announced this "victory" over an unarmed eye-in-the-sky spy balloon with all the swagger of John Wayne at his peak, he tried to make it seem as though he he were bold, decisive, and in charge.  The facts, however, suggest something else.

How Biden And His Media Allies Turned A Threatening Chinese Spy Balloon Into A Political Feud.  If there was any doubt that we are engaged in some sort of cold war or contest for global superiority with China, the emergence of the CCP surveillance balloon over the United States should eliminate that.  There's no question China is being intentionally provocative.  And why wouldn't it?  The CCP is paying close attention.  Chinese leaders have correctly assessed America is so politically and culturally dysfunctional that blatant acts of provocation can be done with impunity because blatant acts of hostility will just become more fodder for our domestic political disputes.  Our lack of national unity has been a national security problem for a long time, but as far as China's concerned, it became abundantly clear just how bad a problem it was in 2020.  The media and those otherwise responsible for "fortifying" our elections decided we weren't allowed to say Covid came from Wuhan and started banning people from social media for saying the virus leaked from a Chinese lab.  Regardless of the fact that China's irresponsible behavior was to blame for the deaths of millions of Americans, it became an important domestic political priority to convert a global plague into baseless accusations of racism so it could be used as a cudgel in a presidential election.

Chinese Spy Balloon Was Part of Widespread Aerial-Surveillance Program by People's Liberation Army: Report.  A suspected Chinese spy balloon that the U.S. military shot down off the Carolina coast last week was part of a larger surveillance program run by the People's Liberation Army, according to a new report.  The program has collected information on military assets in a number of countries, including Japan, India, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines, U.S. officials reportedly told the Washington Post.  One official called the scheme a "massive effort" by China using an "unbelievably old technology" that it joined with "modern communications and observation capabilities" in an effort to gather intelligence on other countries' militaries.

US Military NOW Says There Were SIX China Spy Balloons Spotted During Trump Years — But No One Was Notified.  The Pentagon NOW says there were SIX Chinese spy balloons spotted over US territory during the Trump years.  But no one was notified in leadership in the Trump administration or the US intelligence department.  The story is literally changing by the hour.  And General Keith Kellogg, who was the Executive Secretary and Chief of Staff of the United States National Security Council in the Trump administration, says he was never notified!

Red Zeppelin recovered: Pentagon releases pictures of Navy pulling wreckage of Chinese spy balloon from Atlantic Ocean.  The Pentagon has released sensational photographs showing the Navy's retrieval of a suspected Chinese spy balloon shot down over the Atlantic Ocean.  The mission off the coast of South Carolina has taken days, and comes as relations between Beijing and Washington rapidly deteriorate after the high-altitude aircraft was shot down on Saturday.  Defense officials confirmed earlier this week that an amphibious warship, as well as several divers and underwater robots, had been deployed to survey a specific 'square mile' of ocean where the remains of the balloon were thought to be located.

How Did Biden Admin Retroactively 'Discover' Chinese Balloons in the U.S During the Trump Years?  The Biden administration has been trying to plug a gigantic hole in their story about Chinese spy balloons flying over U.S. territory during the Trump administration with no one in the government aware of it.  Initially, the Biden administration sought to deflect attention from their failure to shoot down the balloon by noting that Chinese spy balloons transited U.S. territory three times during the Trump years.  But when several Trump administration officials hotly denied that charge, Biden administration officials changed their story.  They claimed that the balloons were only over U.S. territory briefly — skirting Hawaii and flying over part of Florida — unlike this latest spy balloon, which traversed the entire width of the country.  They also claimed that the balloons weren't detected.  But how do we know this if the balloons weren't detected and national leaders weren't informed of their presence?

Baffling and contradictory claims about the Chinese spy balloon.  The Chinese high-altitude balloon said to be about the size of three buses being allowed to hover over the United States for almost a week before it was shot down is another example of how matters have deteriorated under Joe Biden. [...] Beyond its functionality, there were other issues.  A easily visible surveillance balloon is a symbolic act of domination by the Chicoms.  The balloon was also meant to demonstrate sophisticated Chinese technological capability to penetrate U.S. airspace.  It is also an ominous sight for citizens, unable to do anything about it.  In all scenarios, Biden's dithering over the course of action has already done the damage and may have brought the U.S. very close to a serious catastrophe.  It also made the U.S. look weak and incompetent.  Yet some sections of the U.S. media are still defending Biden.

Tucker Carlson Rips Biden Admin For Claiming Chinese Spy Balloon 'Posed No Threat'.  Fox News host Tucker Carlson blasted the Biden administration Monday for saying that a Chinese balloon "posed no threat" to national security.  "On January 28th, the balloon entered U.S. airspace over Alaska.  From there, it traveled over the northwest territories of Canada and then it dropped back into the United States over Idaho.  By last Wednesday, February 1st, it was spotted by civilians in the skies over southern Montana," Carlson [...] said. [...] "Debris was still fluttering toward the ocean when the administration began telling lies, many of them about what had happened.  That balloon posed no threat to American national security, the Biden Administration claimed," Carlson said."  "Why?  Because the balloon never transmitted data back to China.  Now, how could officials know that?  They never explained, nor did they say whether the Chinese military would send one of its aircraft all the way to the U.S. without a satellite uplink."  Carlson noted other media outlets pushed claims from DOD officials that Chinese balloons had flown over the U.S. during the Trump administration, a claim disputed by senior officials in the Trump administration.

NORAD Admits They Didn't Detect the Spy Balloons Until Post-Trump.  The government suggested Donald Trump ignored three balloon incursions into our air space by the Chinese communists during his presidency.  Forced to explain, they now say NORAD learned of them later by other means and never detected them while Donald Trump was president.  When is someone going to get fired?  Air Force General VanHerck said that they didn't detect the balloons and "we have to figure that out."  Maybe the news reporter who spotted the balloon in Montana should work for NORAD. [...] Breaking Defense.com reports US Northern Command does not have the correct mix of sensor capabilities, according to the commanding general responsible for homeland defense.  The White House had said there were three incursions under Donald Trump.  After Donald Trump and his former staff said they were never told, Gen. VanHerck and NSC spokesperson John Kirby had to clarify or alter their statement.  They said US intelligence agencies had used "forensics" to identify the Chinese spycraft incursions only after President Biden took office in January 2021.

What, besides spying, can a balloon do?  We all assumed that the Chinese Spy Balloon was, in fact, a spy balloon.  But what if it weren't?  What could it have been, or what could a similar balloon do should it be equipped with a different kind of payload?  The most obvious answer, speculated about by many people, is an EMP delivery device.  It would be easy enough to do, with the miniaturization of nuclear weapons, but also incredibly risky for obvious reasons: sending a nuclear weapon into US airspace is a bit more of a provocation than a spy platform traversing the country.  If it was shot down, the fact that it carried a nuke would be blindingly obvious.

The whole "Trump ignored China spy balloons" story is a transparent lie.  Karen expressed appropriate skepticism about the story that Biden defenders were pushing that Trump ignored 3 incidents of Chinese spy balloons crossing the United States.  Biden partisans pushed the story hard, claiming that Slow Joe was Maverick from Top Gun, while Trump meekly took it when China did the same thing during his administration. [...] Of course, we all knew the story would turn out to be a fabrication, and indeed it is.  The goal was to implant the idea in people's heads that Biden was a strong leader, even stronger than Trump.  More importantly, it muddied the waters.  Now that the idea is out there, the story is starting to change.  Not a little, but a lot.

Pentagon Won't Name Official Who Divulged Misleading Info About Chinese Spy Balloons During Trump Admin.  The Washington Free Beacon's Chuck Ross revealed that the Pentagon wouldn't name the official who provided misleading information about three supposed Chinese spy balloons during President Donald Trump's administration.  The senior official said on Saturday:  ["]PRC [People's Republic of China] government surveillance balloons transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the prior administration and once that we know of at the beginning of this administration, but never for this duration of time.  We spoke directly with Chinese officials through multiple channels, but rather than address their intrusion into our airspace, the PRC put out an explanation that lacked any credibility.["]  The media and Democrats ate it up.  During his administration, Trump and his former officials, including John Bolton, denied knowledge of Chinese spy balloons.  Officials in the Pentagon changed their story on Sunday, but honestly, they made it worse.  They told the media the balloons were discovered after Trump left office.

Probably just the parts that float.
U.S. Navy collects debris from Chinese surveillance balloon.  The U.S. Navy has started to collect what remains of a Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon after an Air Force fighter jet shot it down over the weekend.  The Department of Defense announced the recovery effort Monday, stating it was taking place about 6 miles off the coast of South Carolina in about 50 feet of water, after rough seas prevented the safe retrieval Sunday.

Two more sites in Virginia and California were previously spied on, but the Pentagon dismissed it as UFOs.  The first photos of the F-22 Raptor which shot down the spy balloon have been published - as it emerged the U.S. used U2 spy planes, first deployed during the Cold War, to monitor the Chinese balloon.  This comes as reports suggested that similar balloons were spotted previously in two more highly-sensitive military sites in Virginia and California, but the intelligence community classified them as UFOs.  The U-2S Dragon Lady spy planes were enlisted as part of last week's scramble to assess the balloon because they are able to fly at extremely high altitude.

General Mattis Claims He Had No Knowledge of Chinese Spy Balloons.  On Monday during an interview with Fox Business Network, Republican Rep. Mike Waltz suggested that the Pentagon and General James Mattis refused to tell then-President Donald Trump about Chinese spy balloons because they were worried his reaction would be too strong.  "My office has been briefed by the office of the Secretary of Defense of the current Pentagon that it happened over Florida, it happened over Texas, and that it's happened before," he said during the interview.

The Narrative on Supposed Previous Chinese Spy Balloons Gets Even More Confusing.  The narrative on the Chinese spy balloon has gotten even more bizarre, given that the Biden administration's response includes claiming that the same thing happened under the Trump administration, three times.  Not only does former and potentially future President Donald Trump deny it, but so do members of his administration, including Mike Pompeo, who served as CIA director and then secretary of state, and may be a potential 2024 primary rival, as well as former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe.  Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of U.S. Northern Command, is in the news for his Monday remarks on this narrative, which don't exactly shine much light when it comes to clarifying the situation.  A reporter had asked "was NORTHCOM involved in tracking the balloon that was at the early stage of the Biden Administration and also the three that transited during the Trump administration," as well as "what can you tell us about those that were different?"  After acknowledging that it is his "responsibility to detect threats to North America," General VanHerck then went on to share "I will tell you that we did not detect those threats.  And that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out," though he then demurred, adding "I don't want to go in further detail."

New Info on Chinese Spy Balloon From NORAD Commander Is Jaw-Dropping.  At this point, everything the Biden team says about the Chinese spy balloon just seems to make the problem worse.  One of the big questions that people have had is why the balloon wasn't shot down earlier, for example, over the Aleutian Islands, near Alaska.  Or over any of the less populated areas of Alaska, Canada, or Montana that it went over?  Now, they're out with more comments and they're not helping themselves.  They had earlier claimed they didn't have a "water shot." That answer has now "evolved" further.  According to the Department of Defense, the U.S. did not have time to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon right after it crossed into Alaskan waters.

General Says NORAD Missed Previous Chinese Spy Balloon Incursions During the Trump Administration.  Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Northern Command (NORTHCOM), admitted Monday that the joint U.S.-Canada organization missed previous incursions of Chinese spy balloons, including during the Trump administration.  When asked during a press briefing whether NORTHCOM was involved in tracking previous Chinese spy balloon that flew into the U.S. airspace during the Biden and Trump administrations, VanHerck responded:  ["]So those balloons, so every day as a NORAD commander it's my responsibility to detect threats to North America.  I will tell you that we did not detect those threats.  And that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out.  But I don't want to go in further detail.["]  He indicated that the intelligence community tracked those previous balloons after the incursions through "additional means."

So, That's What Our Military Brass Is Blaming for the Chinese Spy Balloon Incursion?  The Chinese spy balloon circus is over, but now it's question time for the Biden administration who let this espionage device from Beijing float around for days.  We finally downed the balloon over the Atlantic Ocean near the Carolinas over the weekend.  But how could this have happened?  It wasn't traveling at supersonic speeds, and our tracking devices could have stopped it when it was hovering near Alaska.  There was time to shoot down this balloon before it breached US airspace.  We know about the Pentagon's concerns about falling debris killing American citizens.  The floating spy circus had enough equipment to span three bus lengths — we get the security concerns, but the delay in action is another matter.  Spencer wrote on Monday about the latest twist in this episode: there was a possibility that it could have been carrying explosives.  Sounds like something you shoot down when it's near Alaska, right?  Well, maybe not.  All is not well at the Pentagon regarding detection capabilities, it would seem.  The brass is blaming an "awareness gap" for the spy balloon incursion.

Intel Community Says They Discovered Prior Chinese Spy Balloon Operations, Only After President Trump Left Office.  This is so stunningly incredulous, and transparently politically orchestrated, it's laughable.  The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) defended the actions of the Biden administration last Saturday by saying three Chinese spy balloons had previously been deployed during the Trump administration.  However, President Trump and all national security heads including Mike Pompeo (CIA), Richard Grenell and John Ratcliffe (DNI) denied ever hearing about these balloons.  To reconcile the claim of historic Chinese spy balloon operations, against the denials and absence of briefings for the Trump IC officials, the current Intel Community (and Biden Administration) are now claiming they only discovered the prior balloon flights *AFTER* President Trump left office.  Oh, and due to national security issues, the IC cannot explain how they found out after the fact.  Yes Alice, that's their story, and they're sticking to it.

Rep. Waltz Says DOD Told Him China Spy Balloons Crossed US During Trump Years But Gen. Mattis Did Not Tell Trump.  Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) joined Stuart Varney on Monday morning on FOX Business Network.  Rep Waltz says current Pentagon officials briefed him over the weekend and said Chinese spy balloons crossed over Texas and Florida during the Trump years.  Waltz then dropped this bomb.  Rep. Waltz said that General Mattis was Secretary of Defense at the time and decided not to inform President Trump because the Pentagon thought Trump was "too provocative and aggressive!"  This is a treason if true.  Mattis put the US in danger, offered comfort to the enemy, allowed Chinese spying on US installations, and then hid this from his superiors, including the President of the United States.

Four Months Ago, A Chinese Spy Balloon Crashed Off The Coast Of Hawaii.  According to more mainstream media reports, a mere four months ago, a Chinese spy balloon crashed off the coast of Hawaii.  U.S. officials reportedly confirmed that a Chinese spy balloon crashed near Hawaii four months ago, Fox News reported on Sunday, however, this wasn't mainstream news until now.  Does that mean the war rhetoric is ramping up?  Most likely.

Here's The Long List Of Military Bases The Chinese Balloon Passed While Biden Did Nothing.  [Scroll down] The recent occurrence of a China spy balloon tracking model over the continental US is a cause for concern, and highlights the inadequate and negligent actions of the current administration.  The Biden administration has been accused of attempting to conceal this information from the public, possibly due to an impending visit to China by the Secretary of State.  These developments raise questions about the loyalty and commitment of the Biden administration to the safety and security of the American people.  Some individuals have labeled the Bidens as a potential danger to the nation, and believe that their actions suggest a level of compromise within the administration.  The situation requires a careful and impartial examination to determine the true extent of the impact on US national security and to ensure the protection of American citizens.

Biden's Ballooning Foreign-Policy Blunders.  ast Friday, just before President Joe Biden left for another of his many long weekends away from the White House, reporters vainly asked him about the Chinese surveillance balloon that had been meandering around in U.S. airspace since Jan. 28.  Our commander-in-chief offered no response beyond a smirk and a vacant stare.  The "spy balloon," as it has been dubbed by the media, is a good metaphor for the Biden administration's foreign policy — lighter than air and potentially dangerous.  Unlike Biden's foreign policy, however, the spy balloon had a discernible objective.  This became clear when it spent an unnerving amount of time last week hovering over Montana's Malmstrom Air Force Base, "which houses a large portion of the US's Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles," according to a Bloomberg report.  In other words, the balloon was being used by the Chinese to gather military intelligence in order to assess our national-defense capacity.

The balloon is a Chinese middle finger to the US.  Military fighter jets have just shot down the Chinese Communist Party's gigantic spy balloon that had been hovering about 60,000 feet over the United States.  The balloon was "taken care of," to quote President Biden, over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of South Carolina.  Prior to the maneuver, the balloon drifted, unharmed, over our sensitive military sites and fellow citizens.  It lingered there, doing what Chinese President Xi Jinping pleased, while rightfully indignant members of Congress representing those violated states took to press releases and cable TV to demand the federal government secure our sovereign airspace.  All of this was no doubt churned back through the CCP's propaganda outlets, smearing America as divided, weak, and foolish. [...] Even the CCP's official explanation about the balloon is a troll.  They claimed it was a "civilian airship" merely conducting innocuous meteorological research that "deviated far from its planned course" due to strong winds.  Of course, due to the PRC's national strategy of Civil-Military Fusion in service of the Party's military, there is no real civilian research program.  And for the world's most sophisticated techno-authoritarian state that boasts of its control and lack of errors, accidentally losing a valuable surveillance blimp the size of three school buses over the territory of your number one rival is quite the accident.

Ukrainian Paradoxes.  [W]hile we discount the nuclear dangers of a paranoid Putin reacting to the arming of our proxy Ukraine, the brazen Chinese, in violation of American airspace and international law, sent their recent "weather" surveillance balloon across the continental United States with impunity.  Only after public pressure, media coverage, and the Republican opposition did the Biden Administration, in the 11th hour, finally drop its increasingly incoherent and disingenuous excuses, and agree to shoot the balloon down as it reached the Atlantic shore — its mission completed.  Given the balloon may have more, not less, surveillance capability than satellites, may have itself been designed eventually to adopt offensive capability, and may have been intended to gauge the American reaction to incursions, the Biden hesitation and fear to defend U.S. airspace and confront China makes no sense.

Biden's Story About the Spy Balloon Doesn't Add Up; Here's What Most Likely Happened.  As Joe Biden faces the fallout of his poor handling of the Chinese spy balloon, the effort to rewrite history is already underway.  Soon after the balloon was shot down on Saturday, Biden claimed the order to shoot it down was given on Wednesday. [...] But is this true?  Did Biden really authorize the balloon to be shot down on Wednesday?  I have my doubts.  The Biden administration has long pointed to the size of the balloon's payload and the potential debris field shooting it down over land might cause.  But, when Pentagon spokesperson Air Force Brig.  Gen. Patrick Ryder was asked on Friday if there were plans to shoot it down once it was over water again, and he didn't rule it out, but it sure sounded like no decision had been made at that point. [...] The other problem with this story is that we know the Pentagon had been monitoring the balloon since it left China, and it had previous opportunities to shoot it down while it was over U.S. territorial waters when it crossed over the Aleutian Islands.  The Biden administration most certainly knew what it was and where it might go, and the opportunity to shoot it down safely over the water was not taken.

Trump says Chinese spy balloons 'NEVER' flew on his watch; former DNI chief Richard Grenell agrees.  On Saturday, Biden, the same guy who was reportedly opposed to the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, strutted his stuff on the tarmac outside Air Force One over the successful takedown of the surveillance aircraft after it had already traversed the United States.  At the same time, the Defense Department claimed that "Chinese balloons briefly transited the continental United States at least three times during the prior administration."  In response, Trump fired back on Truth Social Sunday morning and wrote, "The Chinese Balloon situation is a disgrace, just like the Afghanistan horror show, and everything else surrounding the grossly incompetent Biden Administration.  They are only good at cheating in elections, and disinformation — and now they are putting out that a Balloon was put up by China during the Trump Administration, in order to take the 'heat' off the slow moving Biden fools.  China had too much respect for 'TRUMP' for this to have happened, and it NEVER did.  JUST FAKE DISINFORMATION!"

Pompeo: Biden's Weakness on Spy Balloon Assures Chinese Aggression.  President Joe Biden's weakness with China is once again on display.  Earlier this week, U.S. officials tracked a Chinese reconnaissance balloon over the American mainland.  A Chinese Communist Party spokesperson claimed this was nothing more than a "weather research" balloon that had simply blown off course.  Sure, the CCP's harmless weather balloon just happened to pass over multiple sensitive military sites vital to America's national security — nobody should believe that nonsense, especially not the Biden administration.  Even if it were true, the CCP's policy of civil-military fusion — which requires all available research and technology, from China's private sector or otherwise, to be shared with the Chinese military — makes such an excuse an impossibility.  Thus, this appears to be an intentional act of espionage, and it signals that the CCP is feeling ever more emboldened with Biden in charge.  If the Biden administration does not act to change this paradigm quickly, the threat of conflict will only continue to grow.  Weakness breeds aggression.  America must demonstrate clear strength and resolve.

Military Finally Shoots Down Chinese Spy Balloon After Biden Let It Float Across Entire Country.  U.S. military fighter aircraft shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon as it floated off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, drawing to a close a dramatic saga that shone a spotlight on worsening Sino-U.S. relations.  "We successfully took it down, and I want to compliment our aviators who did it," President Joe Biden said.  Biden said he had issued an order on Wednesday to take down the balloon, but the Pentagon had recommended waiting until it could be done over open water to safeguard civilians from debris crashing down to Earth from thousands of feet above commercial air traffic.

That claim about three Chinese spy balloons on Trump's watch is deflating fast.  The Milley boys at the Pentagon have come up with a new public relations "save" for Joe Biden and his pathetic indecisiveness about a China spy balloon brazenly traversing the continental United States until it was shot down over the Atlantic yesterday.  According to the Pentagon's website, defense.gov:  ["]The balloon did not pose a military or physical threat.  Still its intrusion into American airspace over several days was an unacceptable violation of U.S. sovereignty.  The official said Chinese balloons briefly transited the continental United States at least three times during the prior administration.["]  Predictably, the left has seized on that last line and had a field day: [...] There's just one problem, though — the claim that Trump saw three Chinese balloons traverse through the U.S. on his watch and did nothing is ... deflating fast.  First, we have an explicit denial from someone who would have known.

US Military Fears China May Reach Balloon Wreckage Before They Can Get There.  You just can't make this up!  After allowing a China spy balloon to float across Alaska and the continental United States for the last 10 days, the US military finally shot the balloon down after its work was accomplished.  Now the US military is concerned they may not reach the balloon wreckage before China can.  The balloon was shot down 6 miles off the coast of Carolina.  They can't be serious, except that they are.  The US military will not have a proper salvage vessel at the scene for several days.

Jill Biden Gushes Over Joe's Handling of Chinese Spy Balloon.  We saw in Joe Biden's reaction to the Chinese spy balloon what a problematic leader Joe Biden is, if we didn't already know it.  The balloon wasn't taken out when it first entered American airspace on Jan. 28, off the waters of Alaska.  That was when you would think Biden would take the "water shot," but the military said they didn't have it.  Then it went over Alaska, where there are huge expanses of unoccupied land.  Again, no shot.  It went over Canada and then entered the U.S. again on Tuesday, January 31.  According to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, that's when Biden was apprised of what was going on, supposedly.  Why wasn't he told until then?  Biden wants us to believe that he told the military on Wednesday to shoot it down as soon as possible.  But even if I were to believe he told them that on Wednesday, why did he wait a day when he was told on Tuesday?  Why wasn't he told before Jan. 31, when the balloon entered our airspace on Jan. 28?  And why wasn't it taken down before then, over the vast expanses of unoccupied area, where you would have had a better opportunity of recovering material than in the ocean?  Sorry, but I'm not buying it, I think the problem here was Joe would have just let it go, except for the backlash.  As we wrote earlier, their first thought was to be quiet about it.  Indeed, we likely wouldn't even have heard about it, had Americans not spotted it over Billings, Montana, and it likely never would have been shot down.  It's only shot down after it traverses the country, gathering whatever information it came to gather.

Trump, others deny Chinese spy balloons flew across the U.S. during Trump administration.  Democrats and their cohorts in the media are quickly coming to Joe Biden's aid as critics say Biden didn't handle the Chinese spy balloon incident well.  The spy balloon flying across America can easily be thought of as a test of Biden's inclination to use force against Chinese intrusion.  At first, the Biden administration and the Pentagon remained silent about the appearance of the balloon.  Then a local news organization in Montana reported on it as it hovered over Billings.  The word quickly spread to news outlets across the country.  When would Americans have known about the story of a Montana news organization that had not reported on it?  The most transparent administration — evah — sure doesn't conduct itself as such.  The administration was aware of the spy balloon approaching U.S. airspace when it was heading toward the Aleutian Islands.  Allegedly they monitored it until the story broke.

Independent Reporter Confirms That Biden Admin. Has Been Aware Of Chinese Spy Balloons For At Least A Year.  As concerns continue to mount over the presence of Chinese spy balloons in the United States, reports are emerging that the balloons have been a persistent problem both in the United States and across the world.  This week, it was revealed that spy balloons released by China are also flying over Latin America, just as it has been revealed that the United States government has been aware of similar issues for at least a year, if not longer.  The fact that the problem has existed for years begs the question of why the Biden administration was not prepared with a response when it was revealed that spy balloons were flying over the northern United States.

Chinese Spy Balloons: Potential Purposes For The High Altitude Invasion.  My home state of Montana was recently featured in news feeds this week as the first to observe and identify what the US Air Force says is a Chinese spy balloon.  The Chinese claim it is a civilian weather apparatus that was blown off course and they expressed "regret" for the event, but the equipment visible in photographs suggests that this is a lie.  Beyond that, another similar balloon has been spotted over Latin America — One wayward high tech Chinese balloon might be believable, but two is not a coincidence.  There are numerous theories as to why such a surveillance platform would be used by the CCP and what it is designed to look for, and I thought I would offer a couple theories based on my years of study into similar projects pursued by the US Department of Defense and DARPA.  First, the immediate question is why the Biden Administration has not destroyed the balloon?  Why not shoot first and ask questions later?  Well, Biden's silence on this issue suggests he either has no answers or that the truth will make the American public very angry.  The most likely reason it has not been shot down is because it is very difficult to shoot down.

'Dark Brandon' Returns in Desperate Attempt to Gloss Over Joe Biden's Weakness.  The long journey of a Chinese spy balloon finally ended on Saturday after it was downed off the coast of South Carolina.  According to reports, President Joe Biden gave the order to shoot it down on Wednesday, but Gen. Mark Milley, infamous for overriding presidents and supporting China, chose to not carry out the order until four days later.  Ostensibly, the reason was to prevent damage to civilian property, but as we'll get to, that makes no sense whatsoever.  Still, in a laughable show of arrogance, Democrats rushed to praise Biden as courageous for downing the balloon after it had already completed its mission of transitioning the continental United States. [...] The balloon was first detected entering US airspace over Alaska.  It passed through hundreds of miles of uninhabited areas where it could have been blown out of the sky safely.  After leaving Canada, it ended up in Montana, again traversing hundreds of miles of completely uninhabited country.

Trump and His Team Shoot Down Report About Chinese Balloons During His Term.  Joe Biden has been getting a lot of backlash for taking so long to react to the Chinese spy balloon floating over our military installations and letting it traverse our country for a week.  As I noted there are some questions about the timeline that they have given.  The balloon entered our airspace over Alaskan waters on Jan. 28 but White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that Biden was "briefed on Tuesday" [Jan. 31].  So they didn't react until it was already over the continental United States, re-entering from Canada around Idaho on Jan. 31.  That certainly needs to be answered more fully as to why it even took that long to seemingly have any reaction at all.  But now, seemingly in reaction to the criticism of Biden from those on the right, there's a report from an unnamed Pentagon official who claims that three balloons made it into U.S. airspace during the Trump years.

There Are Big Problems With Biden Team's Evolving Story About Prior Chinese Balloons.  The report began spreading on Saturday that supposedly Chinese balloons had incurred into American airspace three times during the Trump Administration.  Now, this report came right as Joe Biden was getting a lot of backlash for being slow to react and it came without any real details, allegedly from an unnamed Biden defense official.  But there were no details apart from that none of the incursions were on the order of magnitude of the one this week in terms of length of time over U.S. territory.  As we reported, the Trump team including President Donald Trump quickly shot the report down.

China's Spy Balloon Is About Much More Than the Pentagon or Biden Admit.  Never underestimate the willingness of American mass media and their audiences to be fascinated for a few days by a balloon from China.  The fact that the Pentagon said it was an immense surveillance balloon carrying a load of instruments the size of three school buses made the story even more irresistible.  You should also never underestimate their willingness to miss the real intent of this ancient diplomatic ploy by Xi Jinping.  Combine that with the mental clarity of our president — who boasts that half of the women in his administration are women — and you've got a narrative guaranteed to endure a bunch of news cycles.  The only possible better enticement would be if the Washington Post somehow tied the balloon caper to Donald Trump colluding with China.  Like Russiagate, it need not be true, just briefly credible in that troubled newsroom.  Maybe it would earn another Pulitzer.  Now, Commander in Chief Joe Biden says he commanded the military to shoot down the Chinese balloon on Wednesday.  Donald Trump, who is no longer commander in chief, was more emphatic.  He ordered the balloon's doom in all-caps: "SHOOT DOWN THE BALLOON."  But the U.S. military feared that wasn't safe somehow.  So, it didn't obey immediately.  It allowed the communist balloon to complete its alleged intelligence mission, transmit its data up to Chicom satellites, and exit U.S. airspace before perishing off North Carolina.  There, an F-22 dutifully launched a Sidewinder missile that destroyed, not the balloon, but the huge equipment capsule that might have revealed [what] the Chinese were looking for.

The Editor says...
This balloon story gets fishier every day.  The balloon should have been detected and intercepted before it reached the Aleutian Islands.  When it arrived in rural Idaho, it should have been shot down with a single round from the very good cannons on an F-16 or an A-10, and the instrument package recovered quickly.  But no, it was allowed to run its course across the continental U.S., and was then blown to bits, after its work was done, over the Atlantic Ocean, where the chances of recovering it (before a Chinese "fighing boat" picks it up) are poor.  Every possible coincidence is coming together to benefit the Communist Chinese.  Now the guessing begins:  What was the mission?  Just humiliation of Joe Biden, who is also owned and operated by the Chinese?  A dry run for a future attack?  Were they trying to see something that Google Earth doesn't already show plainly enough?  If the Chinese government had been in complete control of the U.S. military for the last two weeks, what would have happened differently?

Joe Biden vs. Party Balloon.  The most powerful military ever assembled by humans was thwarted this week.  By a balloon.  Specifically, a large spy balloon dispatched by the Chinese Communist Party.  A Chinese Communist Party balloon — hereafter known as the "Party balloon."  It will forever be remembered as the Party balloon that defeated President Joe Biden.  And the greatest military in the history of human civilization.  The country that stood steel-spined through D-Day, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War folded like a cheap suit under the threat of a Party balloon made in China.  No wonder Mr. Biden's military leaders would rather fight battles over pronouns, "white rage," and gender studies.

Spy Balloon being shot down off South Carolina coast.  Shows the moment a spy balloon was shot down off the South Carolina coast.  [Video clip, profanity warning.]

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's Statement on Downing of Chinese Balloon Is Ironic Comedy at Its Best.  After a U.S Air Force F-22 Raptor shot down the Chinese surveillance balloon with a sidewinder missile on Saturday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued an alternative-universe statement in which he lauded Joe Biden's commitment to "always put the safety and security of the American people first." [...] Austin began by suggesting the "commander in chief" — I put that in quotes because Biden is pretty much not the commander of anything — was in charge from the outset. [...] However, as we reported earlier today, Biden told reporters he ordered the Pentagon to down the balloon on Wednesday but was — in effect — overruled by U.S. military commanders. [...] And monitoring the surveillance balloon's intelligence activities?  So what?  The balloon was undoubtedly transmitting data to Chinese satellites in real-time, so to paraphrase Hillary Clinton, what difference did it make if the U.S. was monitoring its intelligence collection activities?  They think you're stupid, America.

There's a Much Bigger Problem Here.  This video explains what's going on with the balloon and the larger power struggle around the world.  [Video clip]

China's Secret War Against America.  The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has for decades waged a quiet war against the United States, mobilizing all elements of its society, and targeting all institutions and foundations of the American system.  In this war, it is using a series of unconventional warfare tactics designed to achieve the goals of war, without engaging in troop-on-troop combat.  Many of these tactics were detailed in the 1999 Chinese military book, "Unrestricted Warfare," but pull from older deception tactics and from programs that were set in motion by the Soviet Union.  The key goal is to win a war without fighting openly, to seize control of a society gradually, to steal an economy, and to use methods to intentionally keep the public distracted and unaware.  Among the overarching strategies is the process of subversion.  The Soviet Union used subversion to spread its "communist revolution," and the CCP has adopted many of the same strategies to export its "China model."  Subversion is a process to seize control of a country by destroying religion, morals, traditions, and everything that makes the country function; with the end-goal of bringing the country into a state of chaos, so that the public will support outside intervention to install a new form of government.

Thousands mistake US owned research balloon for Chinese spy balloon.  FlightRadar 24 changed the classification of a standard United States based high altitude research balloon on Saturday morning, after thousands of Americans mistook it for the suspected Chinese spy balloon.  The flight tracking website clarified in a tweet that the balloon was operated by the U.S. instead of China, writing, "no, this is not a Chinese balloon," and specified it did not believe the spy balloon would be picked up by its sensors.  "To provide additional clarity about what balloons are and are not visible on Flightradar24, we've updated our database entry for N257TH," FlightRadar 24 tweeted.  "N257TH is a standard high altitude research balloon, often released over the US and is not the Chinese balloon."

Biden Tries To Take Victory Lap For Shooting Down Chinese Spy Balloon, Gets Slammed By Top Officials.  President Joe Biden tried to take a victory lap Saturday afternoon after the U.S. military shot down a Chinese spy balloon that Biden allowed to travel across the entire country before destroying.  Biden claimed in remarks to reporters that he "ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down on Wednesday as soon as possible," but that the decision was made to not shoot it down over land because debris could cause damage when falling to the ground.  U.S. officials were reportedly "well aware" that the balloon had crossed into American airspace on January 28 and that it was over Idaho on Tuesday, but decided not to inform the public to not upend Secretary of State Antony Blinken's diplomatic trip to China.

Canada says it's tracking a second 'surveillance balloon' in its airspace.  Canada on Thursday said it was tracking another potential "surveillance balloon" at the same time that a confirmed Chinese craft was spotted over the United States.  A Thursday statement from the Canadian defense ministry said that "a high-altitude surveillance balloon was detected and its movements are being actively tracked by NORAD."  "Canadians are safe and Canada is taking steps to ensure the security of its airspace, including the monitoring of a potential second incident," the ministry said, adding that "NORAD, the Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence, and other partners have been assessing the situation and working in close coordination."

What Did Joe Biden Know About China Spy Balloon-gate and When Did He Know It?  "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"  That was the question asked of Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal of the 1970s.  The presumption, of course, was that the 37th president knew more about the scandalous activities than he was letting on.  And, of course, Nixon was ultimately forced out of office because of Watergate.  Today, I'd like to ask the same question of Joe Biden about the China Spy Balloon-gate scandal.  Of course, the matter of the Chinese spy balloon is [a] lot more serious than the Watergate break-in because it potentially affects the safety and well-being of 335 million Americans.  Yes, President Biden finally oversaw the shoot-down of the spy balloon on Saturday, but only after it had spent days floating over the United States' landmass from Alaska to South Carolina.  Is that the right way to handle an intrusion from a rival — even adversarial — superpower?  Should we allow their surveillance machines to traverse our country and only deal with them after they've finished their American tour?

Balloons and Hot Air.  Was our intelligence lacking and permitted the overflight?  The NY Post says it wasn't, that we knew about it for a week before it was spotted by civilians and tried to hide it so the overflight would not interfere with Secretary Antony Blinken's' planned trip to China.  If that was the intention, it failed, and the trip, after all, was cancelled once the administration's plan to keep it secret failed. [...] I certainly have no idea whether or not this is a dangerous move by China or how we should respond, though my friends Stephen and Shoshanna Bryen, with a lifetime of experience in such matters, think it exposes a massive vulnerability.  First, they expose as unpersuasive the military defense for doing nothing:  To the claim that the balloon was operating far above commercial airspace they remind us that we learned about it only because it was spotted and photographed by a passenger on a commercial plane.  To the claim that shooting it down would create debris that might injure civilians on the ground, the Bryens note it was spotted over very sparsely populated Montana.  No purchase in their thinking for the assertion that the balloon provides China with no more than it would get from surveillance satellites either:  such balloons could easily be carrying EMPs.  (Electromagnetic Pulse which would destroy the electronics and digital circuitry over an area of hundreds of miles, thereby denying electric power to our homes, businesses, and military.)  The surveillance operation, they argue, could as well have been a test of our air defense system.

The Editor says...
The Editor is an EMP skeptic.  EMP is extremely unlikely to do the amount of damage that everyone seems so sure it will do.  An EMP attack has never been tried, and it if has, it went completely unnoticed.  In any case, nobody in the world is as worried about EMP as the American news media, which thrives on sensationalism.

U.S. Uses $400K Missile to Shoot Down Chinese 'Spy Balloon,' Destroys All Its Electronics.  The alleged Chinese "spy balloon" which flew over the US this week and captured the nation's attention was shot down on Saturday by an F-22 fighter pilot using a $400,000 AIM-9 Sidewinder missile.  "NEW: senior defense official tells me an F22 fighter jet fired a single shot at the Chinese spy balloon in U.S. air space over Atlantic Ocean," Pentagon stenographer Jennifer Griffin reported.  "The F22s flew from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.  Senior US military official says 1 air to air missile fired by F22 at 58,000 feet (an A9X missile) brought down China spy balloon.  The balloon was at 60-65,000 feet when shot."

Report: Biden Administration Tried to Hide Chinese Spy Balloon from American Public.  The Biden administration was aware of the Chinese spy balloon entering United States airspace on January 28 but tried to hide its existence from the American people until being forced to go public, according to a report on Saturday.  Bloomberg News reported that the Biden administration was "well aware" that the balloon had entered U.S. airspace on Saturday, January 28, but decided to keep quiet about it so as not to ruin a planned trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China.

Pentagon Reveals Why It Waited Days To Shoot Down Chinese Surveillance Balloon.  The U.S. was able to collect valuable information on China's surveillance capabilities while observing the spy balloon as it traversed the continental U.S. for several days, a senior military official and senior defense official claimed Saturday [2/4/2023].  President Joe Biden asked for possible military options for removing the threat of the suspected Chinese spy balloon Tuesday, but the Department of Defense (DOD) opted against doing so Wednesday over concerns falling debris could endanger civilians, officials said at a briefing Saturday.  However, they did not clarify whether a military option was considered when the craft transgressed U.S. airspace over Alaska's Aleutian Islands on Jan. 28, before crossing into Canada and reentering U.S. territory on Jan. 31 in northern Idaho.  Waiting to down the balloon "actually provided us a number of days to analyze this balloon, and through a number of means," the defense official said.  "We don't know exactly all the benefits that will derive, but we have learned technical things about this balloon and its surveillance capabilities."

Rep. Mary Miller on Chinese Spy Balloon: 'National Security Must Not Be Compromised by Biden Family Payoffs'.  Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) said that China is "exploiting" President Joe Biden's "weakness" with the spy balloon hovering over America and declared that the United States's "national security must not be compromised by Biden family payoffs."  Miller's comments came in a tweet Friday morning as the Pentagon says the espionage device is expected to linger in United States airspace for a "few days," as Breitbart News reported.  The Congresswoman also called for the House of Representatives to "investigate why China is confident Biden will not respond to their hostile actions."

Balloons Can Launch Bombs, Drone Swarms and Even EMP Attacks.  Upon hearing that there's at least one Chinese surveillance balloon drifting over the continental United States (as of this writing), and another reportedly over South America, you might picture a payload of advanced electronics snapping high-resolution photos and videos of strategic targets, and communication interception devices snooping on American government, military, and high-tech secrets. [...] The first and most obvious danger is that a balloon could be carrying munitions — which it could drop any time its operators so chose.  Note that if a Chinese bomber had flown over the U.S. mainland, it surely would have been shot down by now, but this CCP balloon has been floating around unmolested for days.

Chinese spy balloon roaming American skies unimpeded.  We have a Chinese spy balloon roaming American skies unimpeded, and the Biden White House thinks that's fine.  They were snippy with the press when they asked for more details about the high-altitude spy balloon reportedly launched from central China.  Beijing has apologized for breaching our air space, though the reasoning is ridiculous: they claim it blew off course.  The incident has caused Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel his scheduled visit to the country.  It was spotted by passengers on a commercial airliner yesterday.  Montana is where this device was first tracked.  It's now somewhere hovering above Kansas. [...] Biden refused to answer further questions about the balloon today, though he wanted to shoot it down.  The Pentagon advised against it due to falling debris potentially killing civilians.  Even on national security issues, this administration is slower than molasses.

Pentagon says another Chinese spy balloon is traveling over Latin America.  The U.S. government says another Chinese spy balloon is traveling over Latin America.  "We are seeing reports of a balloon transiting Latin America," Brig.  Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, told Fox News Friday night. "We now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon."  Ryder said during a briefing Thursday the U.S. government detected a high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental U.S.  A senior defense official said during the briefing the U.S. government is "confident" the surveillance balloon is from the People's Republic of China.

China Has Multiple Spy Balloons Overhead.  It's like a twisted version of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, except the balloons out there are floating over our heads and spying on the Americas for the Chinese.  As was revealed earlier, a Chinese spy balloon was spotted floating over Montana on Thursday.  The Biden administration's response was essentially a shoulder shrug, because apparently popping a balloon would be a problem on the ground.  Just how much stuff is attached to this balloon that popping that sucker would be a problem for people on the ground?  Presumably, our fighter jets got a look at the balloon and what it was carrying.  And we're just going to let it float away and keep doing whatever it's doing?

White House KNEW About the Chinese Spy Balloon and Covered It up.  How cowardly and compromised is the Biden regime?  We have fresh evidence of just how bad it is, courtesy of the Chinese spy balloon.  The world found out about the now-infamous balloon on Thursday, when a Montana resident named Chase Doak spotted it and posted a video.  But that was not the first that Old Joe Biden's handlers heard of the balloon.  Now it has come to light that they knew about it all along but kept the knowledge secret so as to avoid a confrontation with the Chinese Communist Party and keep Secretary of State Antony Blinken's now-canceled trip to Beijing on track.  Patriots can thank Chase Doak for the small show of spine from the Biden State Department that the cancellation represented.

The Editor says...
If Mr. Doak or somebody else hadn't spotted the Chinese balloon and publicized it on Facebook, would NORAD have told us eventually?  Surely NORAD knew all about it, right?  What would be China's motivation for this?  A distraction?  A taunt?  A dry run for an attack?  Is this Chinese Spy Balloon #1, or have there been others already?

House Homeland Security Chair Green: I Never Got Alerted About Spy Balloon by Biden Administration.  On Friday's broadcast of the Fox News Channel's "Fox News @ Night," House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) stated that he was never alerted by the Biden administration about the Chinese spy balloon.  Host Trace Gallagher asked, "Are you getting any information, sir, from the Pentagon about the specifics or anything else about this balloon?"  Green responded, "No.  We're getting very little and we never got a phone call.  We never got alerted to this.  It's a crying shame when the Chairman of Homeland Security finds out about a Chinese spy balloon flying over the United States, it's just — it's really unconscionable."

Whether it's illegals or balloons, Joe Biden fails to protect the U.S..  Joe Biden has been hit by crisis after crisis as a result of his own bad decisions, and oddly enough, they are starting to look alike.  Take the latest China balloon incursion, where some kind of spying device has been sent over military installations throughout the U.S. interior, with Biden doing nothing about it.  That's a sovereignty violation that ought to be drawing a major response to an arrogant, expanding wannabe superpower desperate to flex its military muscles, yet Joe's response, that shooting the invading device down might create debris or hit a populated area (America is loaded with unpopulated ones the balloon is traversing) is simply pathetic.  Is it all that different from his open borders policies, where millions of unvetted foreign migrants are flooding into this country without authorization, bringing crime, drugs, and costs, yet there too nothing is done about it? [...] His entire orientation is about protecting himself politically through public relations moves, not about protecting the country for real, which is his job as president.

Fighter jet shoots down China spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina.  Joe Biden praised the Top Gun fighter jet pilot who shot down the Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina today after he vowed to 'take care of it.'  An F-22 Raptor out of Langley Air Force base took the balloon down with a single AIM-9X sidewinder missile at 2.38pm, separating its surveillance payload and sending it plummeting towards the ocean off Myrtle Beach.  Footage showed the jet screaming towards the spy aircraft before firing the missile as stunned locals watched from the coast.

US military shoots down Chinese spy balloon over Atlantic Ocean.  The U.S. military has shot down the Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean.  While the balloon was off the coast of South Carolina, it was shot down by U.S. military fighter jets on Saturday afternoon, according to Fox News sources.  A senior U.S. military official said that an F-22 was used to bring down the balloon at 58,000 feet, adding that a single A9X missile was fired.  A senior defense official said during a Thursday afternoon briefing that the U.S. government is "confident" the surveillance balloon is from the People's Republic of China.  When asked about the balloon on Saturday by a reporter, Biden said, "We're going to take care of it."

Regarding the Chinese spy balloon hovering in U.S. airspace.  Early yesterday [2/3/2023] it was reported a suspected Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon is hovering over the United States. [...] Experts say that balloons of this kind could be fitted with advanced technology spy cameras and radar sensors.  There are advantages to using balloons for surveillance - the primary reason being that they are relatively inexpensive and easier to deploy than drones or satellites.  The fact that balloons linger around make it easy to monitor the target locations for prolonged periods of time.  In contrast, the movement of a spy satellite is restricted to its orbital pass.  Few have considered the possibility that toxic chemical or biological substances could be sprayed which may cause long- or short-term harm to the population or crops or property or military installations.  If this truly was an accident or a malfunction, the Chinese officials should have warned U.S. officials in advance and worked with them to either redirect or bring down the balloon and then issued a groveling apology.  But instead, the Chinese officials issued terse statements about the balloon's function without proof.  There was regret but no apology.  Worse, despite being at fault, they issued warnings against "speculation."

Balloon with a view.  [Scroll down]  This is a devastating blow to President Biden.  I wonder if it was a message that China has embarrassing information on Joe and Hunter.  Or maybe they were showing the world that our military has spent too much time on pronouns rather than defense.  Wonder what Taiwan is thinking this morning?  There may be a silver lining to this cloud.  Maybe Senator Jon Tester of Montana will finally wake up to the fact that he is voting too much with the Biden administration.  He is up for reelection in 2024 and a balloon over Montana plus the rancher's wife paying too much for food is not helping him.

This Chinese balloon(s) story is another pile of hot garbage.  Much like too many stories that have cropped up lately, with Tyre Nichols being only one example, everything we're being told thus far makes no sense whatsoever. [...] And then there's the response from the Pentagon.  We're being told they "considered shooting it down but opted not to out of fear the debris could cause injuries."  Really?  It's a balloon.  And it was over Montana.  How much damage was it going to cause aside from maybe hitting a couple of elk?  Yes, the first balloon was reportedly the size of three buses and had some sort of technology suite attached to it, but there's only so much of an impact it could make.  If we don't know how to conduct a controlled deflation and descent of a balloon by now, we probably shouldn't be trusted with jet planes.  Reports this morning are saying that Joe Biden himself made the decision not to bring it down.  Why?  Was he afraid of provoking Beijing?

Other news about China's influence in the U.S. and elsewhere:

Waste of the Day:  China Still Owes Over $1 Trillion to American Bondholders.  The Chinese government refuses to repay over $1 trillion of decades-old bonds held by private American citizens, even though the U.S. is still making payments on its more than $850 billion debt to China, according to a recent op-ed in The Hill.  The Republic of China financed huge infrastructure projects in the early 20th century by issuing bonds to investors and governments around the world.  The Chinese government fell behind on its bond payments in 1938 while at war with Japan.  Before they could fix the error, it was overthrown by the current communist regime and the People's Republic of China was formed.  The current Chinese government argues that it is not responsible for repaying the previous government's debt, leaving over 20,000 Americans with worthless bonds.

China begins building underwater data center.  Microsoft's Project Natick in 2014 kicked off the trend of putting data centers in the ocean.  Since then, there have been a couple of underwater data centers (UDCs) around the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.  As reported by China Central Television (CCTV), China started to assemble what seems to be the world's first commercial underwater data center off the coast of Sanya, a coastal city south of Hainan Island.  According to CCTV, each data storage unit can process more than four million high-definition images in 30 seconds.  The estimated performance claimed to be comparable to approximately 60,000 regular computers operating in unison.  The companies involved installed the first data storage unit back in April.  On Friday, a team of engineers added another data storage unit on the sea floor south of the Hainan province.  The units house racks of servers, although the exact number and specifications remain a mystery.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed Dines With, Accepts Stuffed Panda From Chinese Influence Operatives.  San Francisco Mayor London Breed dined with the head of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence group in China on Thursday, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of that organization's website and social media account.  Breed arrived in China on April 13 for an approximately week-long trip visiting several Chinese cities, which will wrap up on April 21, according to her office.  Breed visited the Beijing headquarters of the Chinese People's Association For Friendship With Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) on Thursday and met with CPAFFC Party secretary and chairman Yang Wanming, according to the organization's Chinese-language website and social media account, which the DCNF translated.

Chinese Swimmers Test Positive For Banned Substance, Win Olympic Gold Anyway While WADA Looks Other Way.  The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) confirmed on Saturday that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance before the Tokyo Olympics.  But WADA let it slide after China claimed the positive results were a result of accidental contamination.  Multiple reports said the swimmers tested positive for trimetazidine months before the COVID-delayed Games began in July 2021. Typically found in heart medication, trimetazidine is listed as a "metabolic modulator," which can help with endurance in physical activity.

China's dangerous battery monopoly.  China is positioned to adversely influence lithium-ion battery production worldwide.  China has monopoly control over processed graphite, an essential component of almost all lithium-ion batteries.  Virtually all processed graphite, natural and synthetic, is made in China then exported to the battery makers worldwide.  These batteries are used universally in electric and electronic devices, from cell phones and watches to EVs and huge grid-scale backup batteries; there are numerous essential military uses, as well.  China is just now beginning to implement an export control program for processed graphite.  By controlling exports, China could, to a significant degree, adversely influence much lithium-ion battery production, such as by raising prices to selected producers or even blacklisting entire countries.  Thus, the potential adverse impact of Chinese monopoly power is enormous.  What they will actually do remains to be seen, but the threat is very real.

700 Chinese Migrants [were] Apprehended at California Border in One Week.  An unofficial report from U.S. Customs and Border Protection reviewed by Breitbart Texas revealed that nearly 700 migrants from the People's Republic of China (PRC) were apprehended entering the San Diego region in the third week of April.  Since the fiscal year began in October, more than 26,000 migrants from the PRC have been apprehended.  A CBP source, not authorized to speak to the media, told Breitbart Texas the number of Chinese migrants apprehended represents a more than threefold increase from the same time last year.  The source told Breitbart that China is now within the top ten nationalities encountered by the Border Patrol along the southern border.  The bulk of the Chinese nationals are released into the United States almost immediately the source says as China adamantly refuses to take their citizens back.

FBI Warns Chinese Hackers Are Preparing to Attack US Infrastructure.  Last May I wrote about a group of Chinese hackers who'd been identified by Microsoft after malware was discovered in telecom systems on the island of Guam.  Microsoft named the hacking group "Volt Typhoon." [...] For its part, China has released a report claiming that Microsoft's investigation (the one that named Volt Typhoon last year) was mistaken.  The hackers aren't backed by the state China claims, but simply criminals looking for ransomware opportunities.

Yellen Dispatched to Beg China for Face-Saving Slowdown.  The U.S.' growing urgency in 'containing' China's development was thrown in sharp relief this week as Janet Yellen arrived in Beijing for what turned out to be an execrable beggar's tour.  Just days prior to her arrival, she had buzzed the punditry with her historically memorable exclamation that China was now operating at "overcapacity"(!!).

When China Wired Money to Joe's House.  In the summer of 2019, while Joe Biden was running for president, the money was rolling into Delaware from Communist China.  This was the same Wilmington house where classified documents were lying around while Hunter Biden was living while allegedly spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on prostitutes: some of them apparently foreign nationals.  On paperwork, Hunter appeared to claim ownership of the house and in 2010, he had begun paying for the upkeep of the house and his veep dad's bills.  By the time Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR, was sending a $250,000 wire payment to Joe Biden's address, the former vice president and future president had already met with the Chinese investment exec doing business with his family and had written recommendation letters for his kids.  The $250,000 Chinese wire was described as a "loan".  But how was Hunter, by then approaching rock bottom, going to pay it off?  Where was the money coming from?

McConnell Backs House Legislation Mandating Chinese Parent Company Sell TikTok.  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) is throwing his weight behind bipartisan legislation designed to facilitate the sale of TikTok, separating the social-media giant from its Chinese parent company.  McConnell spoke on the Senate floor Monday afternoon and expressed support for legislation passed by the House last month requiring Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American buyer or face a ban.  "America's greatest strategic rival is threatening our security right here on U.S. soil in tens of millions of Americans homes," McConnell said.  "I'm speaking, of course, of TikTok."  "Today, 170 million Americans are active users of a social media platform that the People's Republic of China treats as a tool of surveillance and of propaganda," he continued.  "Divesting Beijing-influenced TikTok would land squarely within established constitutional precedent & would begin to turn back the tide of an enormous threat to America's children & to our nation's prospects."

Now scientists say wearing jeans is bad for the environment.  They might be an essential piece of everyday clothing, but scientists now say that even a simple pair of jeans could be bad for the environment.  Wearing a pair of fast fashion jeans just once creates 2.5kg of CO2, the equivalent of driving a petrol car 6.4 miles.  Scientists from the Guangdong University of Technology analysed the life cycle of a pair of Levi's jeans from growing the cotton to their eventual disposal.

The Editor says...
[#1] China has an 1,100-gigawatt fleet of coal-fired power plants [*] with more under construction, and they're telling you not to wear jeans because there's the CO2 problem.  [#2] Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.  CO2 emissions are not something that needs to be avoided; and even if CO2 were a problem, lack of clothing would be a bigger problem.

Chinese Illegals Entering U.S. in Record Numbers.  The Joe Biden regime has overseen a surge of over 140,000 Chinese illegal aliens since fiscal year 2021, most of them military-aged men.  This surge represents a threat to national security, with El Centro Sector Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino recently disclosing an incident in which a Chinese national infiltrated a Marine Corps base near the border.  Bovino confirmed the "purpose and intent behind his actions are still being investigated" and that he was in the country illegally.  Illegal entries by Chinese migrants rose from 23,471 in fiscal year 2021 to 27,756 in fiscal year 2022, then to 53,700 in 2023.  With reports of 36,912 apprehensions through February 2024, this year continues the upward trend.  The influx has been partly facilitated by TikTok, controlled by the Chinese government, with accounts on the platform providing detailed instructions on how to make the journey to the U.S. border.  Despite the obvious security implications, the Biden regime weakened the vetting process for Chinese illegal aliens in April 2023.

Looks like we Trumped Red China.  The news on Monday morning was dominated by stories of an economic recovery by Red China of a recession that the U.S. press had largely ignored.  Bloomberg reported, "[Red] China's factory activity beat expectations in March, boosting optimism about the country's ability to achieve its ambitious growth goal of around 5% this year.  "The Caixin manufacturing purchasing managers' index rose to 51.1 on Monday — above the 50 mark that indicates expansion for a fifth month, the longest streak in more than two years. [...] Trusting Red China numbers is like trusting its statements on covid but the encouraging news is that Red China has — or at least had — a recession.  The admission by our Maoist press shows that the communists who run the joint no longer can paper reality over.

85 million Americans get their news from a Chinese Communist controlled platform.  In 2020, 3% of Americans got their news from TikTok.  It's now 14% or 1 in 7 people.  Among 18-29 year olds, 1 in 3 Americans get their news from TikTok.  That's up from less than 1 in 10 in 2020.  Some of this is due to the app's growth rate, but it's also a strategy.  It's not just that TikTok is growing quickly, but today half of TikTok users say they get their news through it.  That's up from 1 in 5 in 2020.  TikTok isn't just growing, it's growing its political influence.  When the House passed a bill forcing an end to Chinese Communist control over TikTok, the platform rallied its users, many of them underage, to pressure and even threaten Congress.  With 170 million active users in the United States, TikTok is one of the largest news platforms in the country and it's under the control of Communist China.  By 2021, most mainstream media organizations had jumped on to a platform that used to be known for short dance clips.

Chinese Illegal Alien Arrested at US Military Base, but That May Just Be the Tip of the Iceberg.  We've been reporting on the huge flood of illegal aliens pouring across the southern border, and for more than three years now, Joe Biden has done nothing substantive to try to slow the flow.  In addition to all the resulting problems like the overwhelming of the system, the drugs and crime that has resulted from all this, it puts our nation in great danger because it's a massive national security threat.  The Biden team has no idea who is coming across that border.  There have been a lot of questions about Chinese men of military age coming across the border in ever-increasing numbers.  [Video clip]  Now, there's a report that a Chinese illegal alien was arrested by the Border Patrol after he breached a military base in the El Centro sector of California.  He was there without authorization and refused to leave.  His purpose & intent behind his actions are still being investigated.  [Tweet]

Chinese-Owned Chemical Giant Expanding Into US Heartland.  Top executives behind a Chinese chemical manufacturer planning to build two U.S. factories belong to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and affiliated influence outfits, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has found.  Capchem Technology USA, the wholly-owned subsidiary of China-based Shenzhen Capchem Technology (Capchem), is slated to build a $120 million factory in Ohio and a $350 million plant in Louisiana.  At the same time, Capchem records and social media posts that the DCNF translated show the company employs dozens of CCP members.  Executives at Capchem and Capchem USA have also held positions at organizations affiliated with CCP influence operations, a DCNF review of Capchem's website, Chinese social media account and executives' social groups found.

What if Totalitarianism Comes to America?  Xi Jinping is a megalomaniac.  Make absolutely no mistake about that.  He is Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong all rolled into one.  After the total disaster of Mao's rule, China had to open up somewhat (which it did under Deng Xiaoping) to avert the collapse that happened in the Soviet Union.  China became wealthy borrowing from, stealing from, and deceiving stupid Western capitalists who think only in terms of money.  But to do that, China had to be a little more flexible ("two steps forward, one step back," Lenin said).  Yet, a totalitarian regime can only abide that for a limited period of time.  Freedom is dangerous to totalitarianism.  And, in China, a new Mao has come to power.  Governmental laws and policies are becoming increasingly strict under Xi.  He wants total control.

Here Comes the EV Bloodbath Trump Warned Us About.  Donald Trump was right.  It's going to be a bloodbath when China's BYD starts selling its "fun-to-drive" Seagull EV in this country at a price not even Tesla can match.  The five-door hatchback doesn't have the best range or fanciest amenities.  But what it does have is a top price under $14,000, good safety features, aggressive looks, and plenty of financial backing from Beijing.  BYD's specialties are batteries and high-tech manufacturing, and they're using both to aggressively expand overseas production and deliveries.  An improved version for South American markets, called the Dolphin Mini, is already on sale, starting at $21,990.  "What we've seen over time is automotive manufacturers eventually enter all the markets that matter... Ultimately the Chinese will come to the U.S.," Marin Gjaja — chief operating officer for Ford's EV unit — told CNBC in an interview last week.

The real reason Boeing is in the news.  In short, China wants Boeing out.  China's new knock-off passenger jet is waiting for approval as a replacement for the Boeing 737, and the Biden administration is only too willing to help the Chinese by demonizing an American manufacturer, with national security implications.  As major media report, "Boeing's crisis may open a gap for Chinese jets to fly through."  With a Trump presidency, this would not have happened, and it's another reason why the DNC and its China-first allies want Trump permanently sidelined.  To an unusual extent, the major media are reporting what seem to be a nearly unending series of mishaps involving U.S. commercial airline aircraft made by the Boeing company.  Whether it's a window blowing out in flight, a tire falling to the ground after takeoff, or a sudden "nosedive" in cruising flight, it seems the Boeing jet, especially the 737, can't be trusted anymore, and the public is being conditioned to think so. [...] But statistically, it is hard to explain the sudden cluster of reported issues with Boeing aircraft, and based on random occurrence, while China is aggressively lobbying to have its copycat model replace it.

The Impact of China-Linked Contractors on U.S. Security.  The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would force TikTok's Chinese owner to either sell the video app or have it banned in the United States.  Although there is a debate over the details and approach of the law itself, the bill represents growing concerns over just how far the tentacles of Chinese spying reach.  Indeed, these tentacles are expanding well beyond TikTok through the complex and expanding sea of international economic cooperation, advancing technologies and intelligence gathering methods, intensive military integration with foreign partners, and the role of independent firms with valuable information.  As a result, significant risks to U.S. intelligence have been identified in foreign bases where U.S. military technologies are used, at home through critical threats to U.S. infrastructure and technologies, and, most recently, through U.S. contracting firms with links to the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Chinese scientists find laser weapons can strip the coating off hypersonic missiles with unexpected ease.  When using laser weapons to defend against hypersonic missiles, cranking up the power does not automatically guarantee better outcomes.  That is what a team of aerospace defence engineers and scientists from Beijing found after conducting wind tunnel tests to examine a scenario in which a missile travelling at Mach 6 is hit by a laser beam.  When the beam's power density reached 1kW/sq cm, it caused significant peeling of the coating on the missile's surface.  This special coating is what gives China's hypersonic weapons their edge.  Without it, they would be prone to overheating, destabilising or even falling apart mid-flight.  But here's the kicker:  when the scientists doubled the laser's power density, the area of peeling actually decreased.

Chinese billionaire admits to making illegal straw donations to several political campaigns.  A Chinese billionaire pleaded guilty on Monday to an illegal straw donation scheme, according to a press release from the United States Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of New York.  Hui Qin, a Chinese national who operated a Hong Kong-based entertainment company, admitted to making roughly $11,600 in straw donations to political campaigns in New York and Rhode Island, according to the Department of Justice.

Hunter Biden witness may be self-serving but his China cover-up info is accurate.  Fugitive Gal Luft, the "missing witness" from the Biden corruption investigation, has made fresh allegations about the president's family's China connections in an exclusive 50-page expose obtained by The [New York] Post.  The former Israel Defense Force lieutenant colonel, who worked with the same Chinese energy company, CEFC, that paid Hunter and Jim Biden more than $8 million, skipped bail in Cyprus last year after being charged with attempted gun-running, acting as a foreign agent for China and lying to the FBI.  While his attacks on federal prosecutors clearly are self-serving, his disclosures so far have proven accurate, and his ongoing conversations with former employees of CEFC while on the run have produced new information about how influential Americans on both sides of the aisle in Washington were recruited to serve China's imperialist Belt and Road Initiative.  Hunter Biden, "the true sheikh of Washington," as one of his partners dubbed him, wasn't the only VIP cultivated by CEFC's enigmatic billionaire chairman Ye Jianming, who sprinkled expensive diamonds around Washington like candy.

What else could they possibly say?
Chinese crane company at center of espionage probe denies posing threat to US national security.  A Chinese crane manufacturing company at the center of a congressional espionage investigation denied posing a threat to United States national security, Fox Business reported, citing a recent filing.  The House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party and the House Homeland Security Committee opened an investigation into Chinese-built ship-to-shore cargo cranes located at U.S. seaports after the Department of Justice warned last year that the equipment could be a Trojan horse, the Wall Street Journal reported.  The probe found that several seaport cranes, made by Shanghai-based manufacturing company ZPMC, contained communication devices that were not requested, including over a dozen cellular modems.

Firm Building US Facility Confirms Parent Company's Chinese Communist Party Ties Following DCNF Investigation.  The president of a firm building a manufacturing facility near several Midwest military bases confirmed that his firm's China-based parent company employs Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members and was previously involved in a military program during a state committee hearing on Monday.  The Chinese parent company of Cnano USA Inc. (Cnano USA) — which intends to build a facility in Kansas approximately 70 miles from Missouri's Whiteman Air Force Base — employs dozens of CCP members and sold products to a Chinese university for its use in a Chinese military program, Shawn Montgomery, Cnano USA president, testified during a Kansas House Committee on Commerce, Labor and Economic Development hearing.

China Tightens Grip Over Internet During Key Political Meeting.  China has intensified efforts to block software that enables internet users to access banned websites during a top political meeting this week, a leading provider of firewall-leaping software told AFP.  Beijing operates some of the world's most extensive censorship over the internet, with web users in mainland China unable to access everything from Google to news websites without using a virtual private network (VPN).  And as thousands of delegates gather in Beijing this week for the annual "Two Sessions" meeting, VPN software has increasingly struggled to circumvent the censorship while outages have become much more frequent, even when compared to during previous sensitive political events.

UCL bans lecturer from China course to protect its 'commercial interests'.  A leading UK university has banned an academic from teaching a "provocative" course involving China to protect its commercial interests, The Telegraph can disclose.  Michelle Shipworth, an associate professor at University College London (UCL), told The Telegraph she had "no choice" but to blow the whistle in order to "expose" how British universities were "conceding to the censorship demands of some Chinese students".  Ms Shipworth, 58, was also accused of being anti-Chinese after she caught out two students from China who were cheating and they were subsequently expelled.  One had used a body double in an attempt to hoodwink her during a supervision.  Her head of department at UCL told her he was taking action because "in order to be commercially viable", the university's courses "need to retain a good reputation amongst future Chinese applicants".  UCL has the highest number of Chinese students in the UK, making up almost a quarter of its total student population.  More than 10,000 Chinese students are at the university, typically paying two to three times the fees of home-grown students — up to £40,000 a year.

Indiana's GOP-Run Government Working On 11 Land Deals With Chinese Communist Businesses.  A bill to slightly limit foreign adversaries' ownership of Indiana land revealed a state agency is currently planning 11 business deals with Chinese companies worth an estimated $14.4 billion.  The Indiana Economic Development Corporation, however, wouldn't release to The Federalist the names or locations of these foreign-owned ventures.  In fact, said Republican state Sen. Jean Leising in an interview with The Federalist Friday morning, state lawmakers tell her the IEDC even uses "code names" for its foreign business deals to preserve secrecy until they're completed.  The IEDC will not even release basic information about any of these deals to the state lawmakers who give the IEDC billions in tax dollars.

Are the thousands of Chinese 'migrants' flooding into the U.S. really a sleeper army?  Topped with razor wire that glints menacingly in the desert sun, a 30ft steel fence runs along part of the vast U.S.-Mexican border, providing an imposing bulwark in America's war against illegal immigration.  But at a certain point, where the fence runs up against a rocky outcrop, there is a 4ft gap, loosely blocked with more razor wire.  Predictably, it fails to discourage a steady stream of migrants, who simply step around the wire and enter the promised land.

Chinese American Who Allegedly Stole US Missile Detection Tech Was Part Of CCP's Plan.  Chenguang Gong, a Chinese American who has been accused of stealing U.S. infrared missile detection technology, was listed as one of 558 "young talents" in the 12th Thousand Talents Plan run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2016.  The list of talents was issued by the Task Force Office of Overseas High-Level Talent Recruitment Programs under the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the CCP.  A complaint by the U.S. Attorney's Office claimed that Mr. Gong transferred 3,600 files from his work laptop to three personal storage devices from March 2023 to April 2023.  It also claimed that Mr. Gong possessed in his personal storage devices files marked as "confidential" that appeared to belong to several of Mr. Gong's former employers.  These devices were taken from his temporary residence in Thousand Oaks, California, following an FBI search on May 8, 2023.  Mr. Gong, 57, of San Jose, was arrested on Feb. 6 and was bailed out on a $2.5 million bond following a hearing in San Jose the next day.  He was indicted on Feb. 27 by the Assistant U.S. Attorney's Office, making it a formal criminal case.  The case has since been transferred to the Central District Court in Los Angeles, where Mr. Gong made his first appearance on Feb. 20.

Chinese 'spy cranes' in US shipping ports are equipped with secret modems that could be used for espionage or sabotage, probe finds.  An investigation has revealed suspicious communications devices inside Chinese-made cargo cranes used widely at US ports, supporting fears that the equipment could be part of an espionage plot.  Cranes made by Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries (ZPMC), a state-owned Chinese company, in some cases carry cellular modems, according to a congressional investigation reported by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.  The modems offer a potential backdoor for remote access, and do not appear to support the normal operations of the equipment, the investigation found.

Probe Finds Strange Communication Devices On Chinese Cranes In US Ports.  A congressional investigation has discovered strange communication equipment on Chinese-built cargo cranes at U.S seaports, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.  Rather than building them domestically at potentially higher costs, the U.S. relies heavily on Chinese-built cargo cranes that are relatively cheap to produce and equip at seaports across the country.  The congressional probe discovered that several of these cranes, built by Chinese mega-manufacturer ZMPC, contain communications devices that were not requested or don't appear to support standard operations, heightening existing espionage concerns, according to the WSJ.

Hunter Biden's Chinese legal 'client' threatens to sue unless first son pays back $1 million.  Hunter Biden was paid $1 million by Chinese firm CEFC to act as attorney for its employee, Dr. Patrick Ho, but now Ho is threatening to sue the first son within seven days unless he gets the money back — because he claims Hunter did no legal work for him.  Ho sent a legal letter to Hunter last week requesting that their attorney-client agreement be terminated immediately and threatening legal action unless he receives a detailed list of services provided by Hunter and reimbursement for the unused funds, as laid out in the 2017 contract.  Ho's letter, sent by Hong Kong law firm Huen & Partners to Hunter's attorney Abbe Lowell in Washington, DC, set a deadline of seven days for the repayment of any remaining funds.  "Patrick says he paid him, and that Hunter never did anything for him," a friend of Ho's told The [New York] Post, "and that according to the contract, the money should be reimbursed."

Chinese Doctor Who Paid Hunter Biden a Million Dollars for 'Legal Services' Wants Refund.  Remember that guy Hunter Biden referred to [...] on a recording in 2018?  That guy was Dr. Patrick Ho, although it's not clear exactly what his role with China was.  According to Ho, CEFC paid Hunter Biden a million dollars to act as his attorney back in 2017.  But now according to a new report, Ho just sent a legal letter to Hunter threatening to sue him if he doesn't give the money back, because Ho says he didn't get any legal work for the money.

Chinese outnumber Mexican migrants crossing into Calif, mostly military age males.  The number of Chinese migrants who have crossed into California via the San Diego border with Mexico is now greater than the number of Mexican nationals who swarm into the progressive sanctuary state.  Citing data obtained from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Fox News reports that "Chinese nationals are the second-largest nationality encountered at the border in San Diego Sector since the fiscal year began in October."  "There have been 21,000 Chinese nationals encountered, second only to Colombia (28,000)," the data revealed.  "Third is Mexican nationals with 18,700, followed by Brazil (8,700) and Ecuador (7,700). Other countries of origin include Turkey, Guinea, India, Guatemala and Peru."  Last week, between Saturday and Monday, Border Patrol apprehended 452 Chinese nationals in the San Diego Sector alone, according to Fox.  That's "more than the entirety of FY 2021 across the whole border," the outlet notes.  [Tweet]

Chinese fishing vessels are going scorched earth and pumping cyanide into contested waters, Philippine fishing authority says.  The Philippines' fishing bureau has accused Chinese fishing vessels of using cyanide to destroy Scarborough Shoal, a fish-rich atoll in the South China Sea contested by both Manila and Beijing.  "These Chinese fishermen use cyanide," Nazario Briguera, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, said on Saturday, per a translation from Filipino by The Philippine Star.  Cyanide fishing is a controversial fishing method that typically involves dumping the highly toxic chemical near coral reefs or in fishing grounds to stun or kill fish so they can be easily captured.  It's widely condemned because it indiscriminately affects most marine species in the area, causes severe damage to aquatic ecosystems, and can make fish harmful to handle or eat.

Number of Chinese migrants crossing the border at San Diego now exceeds Mexicans.  The number of Chinese nationals crossing the southern US border near San Diego has eclipsed the number of Mexicans in recent months, according to a new report.  US Customs and Border Protection has recorded 21,000 encounters with Chinese nationals in the San Diego Sector since the fiscal year began in October, according to CBP data obtained by Fox News that is not yet public.  That's more than the 18,700 encounters with Mexican nationals during the same period, and second only to the 28,000 Columbians CBP reported encountering in the sector.

China built 47GW of coal power last year and is "way off track" to meet emissions targets.  If coal is a planet wrecking problem, if it really mattered, about 30 countries are beating themselves up in a grandiose public flagellation, while one country is wrecking the planet and nobody cares.  The truth is that no one is behaving like they think CO2 is causing a crisis.  All over the West everyone wears the hippie-care coat while buying the cheapest fridges, phones and fashion they can get from the global coal furnace.  And China nods the nod then keeps on adding coal power plants.

Some of the Same News Outlets Warning About 'Disinformation' Are Taking Millions To Print Chinese Propaganda.  When U.S. news outlets' lucrative peddling of Chinese propaganda was exposed in 2019 and 2020, it was a scandal.  Human rights groups condemned the practice, and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal swore off Chinese Communist Party money.  In the years since, however, a number of major U.S. newspapers and magazines have kept at it — accepting hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars from the Chinese Communist Party in exchange for publishing content by China Daily, a state-owned English-language paper.  China Daily's Foreign Agents Registration Act filings show that between October 2020 and October 2023, the CCP mouthpiece paid outlets such as Time, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the Chicago Tribune a total of $8.2 million.

Voters Want China Out of American Farmland.  Americans firmly reject the Chinese agenda of acquiring U.S. assets, especially vital strategic ones like American farmland.  Battleground polling reveals that this issue provides an opportunity for patriotic populist candidates to protect the heartland, provide a stark contrast vs. the leftist big business globalists, and reap substantial political benefits in November's elections.  Of course, Chinese companies and nationals buy substantial real estate across the board in America, not just farmland.  According to National Association of Realtors data, China remains by far the largest source of foreign purchases of U.S. homes.  Last year, the Chinese bought $13.6 billion in American homes, more than double the $6.1 billion they spent the year before.

San Francisco Totally Loses Its Mind By Electing A Chinese Woman Who Can't Vote Legally To The Elections Commission.  San Francisco's Board of Supervisors appointed the first non-citizen to the San Francisco Elections Commission last week.  The non-citizen appointee will now be responsible for helping oversee and develop policies for San Francisco's Department of Elections despite being currently ineligible to vote herself.  According to KQED, Kelly Wong, who is an outspoken advocate for immigrant rights, was sworn in last Wednesday at San Francisco City Hall by Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.  Wong is believed to be the city's first non-citizen to become a member of the San Francisco Elections Commission.  [Video clip]

There Sure Are a Lot of Chinese Illegal Immigrants Sneaking Over the Southern Border.  President Joe Biden's border crisis is getting quite diverse.  The southern border has reportedly seen a considerable surge in the percentage of illegal immigrants entering the country from China.  The increase will likely raise eyebrows, questions, and possibly the usage of Google Translate at the southern border.  Border Patrol agents have run into rising numbers of Chinese illegal immigrants trying to cross into the states. [...] The uptick in Chinese illegals at the southern border has become so pronounced, journalist Bill Melugin, who frequently reports on the border crisis, humorously noted that his Spanish-speaking skills were "not doing me a whole lot of good down here" because a "massive explosion of Chinese nationals" were showing up to try to cross the border.

Chinese Border Invasion In Progress?  On Joe Rogan's podcast, Bret Weinstein talked about traveling to Panama to see illegal alien migration problem firsthand, and came away with some disturbing information.  [Video clip]  [...] "The international community has arranged separate encampments.  The Chinese are in many cases traveling a separate way across the Darien Gap.  They're skipping some of the worst parts of it traveling by boat." [...] "When asked where they're from, where they're going, why they're going, they are uninterested in talking.  There's a hostility to it that I found shocking." [...] "[If they] didn't like the way things were in China, they feared their government, they thought that there was economic opportunity, they would be curious about Americans.  These are soon to be their countrymen.  They would tend to be interested in talking.  And even if they, for some reason, because they had lived under a totalitarian regime, felt that they couldn't talk, they wouldn't be broadcasting hostility, they would be ambivalent or something." [...] "That is not the impression that they leave when interacting with them, so I found that utterly alarming." [...] "I wonder if the [larger migration] is a cloak for this other migration from China, which is nothing if not mysterious.  Why are they letting it happen?  Why do you think the government is allowing the border to be so porous, and why are they resisting when Texas tries to do something about it?"

Chinese Nationals Are Surging Over The Border — This Isn't A Crisis, It's An Invasion.  The uptick in Chinese nationals illegally crossing the southern border proves the record-breaking number of foreigners walking into our nation and being shipped by border agents to American cities with little to no vetting is no longer a crisis but a full-fledged invasion.  The Biden administration's long-held talking point is that the current border crisis is fueled by a surge of struggling migrants from unstable Latin American countries.  Chinese migrants, however, not natural disaster victims in Central America, have become the fastest-growing people group to take advantage of the lapsed southern U.S. border.  Border Patrol agents in San Diego alone recorded encounters with 269 Chinese nationals on Monday, Fox News's Bill Melugin reports.  Since the 2024 fiscal year began, Customs and Border Protection clocked more than 20,000 Chinese nationals illegally crossing into the U.S. via the southern border.  Some of them crossed with the help of the Chinese Communist Party-linked app TikTok.

The Newest Wave of Invaders Over Our Open Southern Border:  Chinese Nationals.  We're giving away our country and our birthright to a hostile communist foreign power.

China urges US to 'stop harassing' its students at the border 'for no reason'.  China has asked the United States to end the "unwarranted harassment" of its students, following renewed reports of interrogation and deportation at a key US airport.  The call from Wang Xiaohong, China's public security minister, came during a meeting with his US counterpart Alejandro Mayorkas in Vienna on drug control and related law enforcement cooperation.  Both sides described Sunday's talks as "candid" and "constructive".  According to state news agency Xinhua, Wang urged the US "to stop harassing and interrogating Chinese students for no reason, and ensure that Chinese citizens enjoy fair entry treatment and full dignity".  He also said Washington should "lift visa restrictions on relevant Chinese institutions and personnel", Xinhua reported.  Wang's statement came some three weeks after China lodged a formal protest against the US for allegedly blocking Chinese students at the border.

Chinese Co. to Raze Trees to Build Michigan EV Battery Plant, Claims Locals Spreading 'Misinformation'.  A Chinese company, with the approval of Michigan's government, is cutting down trees to build a plant to build batteries for electric vehicles.  In so doing, they are effectively removing a great carbon sink — trees — to build batteries that are of questionable quality, to power electric vehicles that are of questionable effectiveness, all in the name of "green energy."

China's Infiltrators: 'They Are Coming Here to Kill Us'.  Chinese attackers are already in America, more are arriving by the day, and they are armed.  Videos posted to X (Twitter) show Chinese migrants firing pistols.  One video is of a Chinese female with a sniper rifle.  [Tweet]  There is no Second Amendment in China, and Chinese citizens are not permitted to possess firearms.  So is it possible that the shooters in the videos are merely taking advantage of a new-found freedom in their new home country?  Unlikely.  One of the migrants videoed was in America for only three weeks and arrived in the country with no money and no identification.  If you had just landed somewhere as a migrant with nothing to your name, you would undoubtedly be preoccupied with finding your next meal, getting a place to live, making a livelihood.  You would not, within weeks of entering your new homeland, be sharpening your skills to kill.  You would not be thinking of killing unless... that is what you came to do.

TikTok Will Help You Illegally Migrate.  Is there nothing TikTok can't do?  Most of us are probably familiar with the typical uses of the app.  You can watch crazy dances and Tide Pod challenges.  You can learn the locations of conservatives or Jews you'd like to dox.  Or you can just open up your own data to be consumed by the Chinese Communist Party.  It's all in good fun.  But did you know that TikTok can also help you illegally migrate into the United States?  A recent 60 Minutes segment reveals that migrants have been using the information provided by helpful TikTok posters to locate gaps in the border barriers where they can cross into the United States undetected.  How awesome is that?

San Diego border agents arrest 269 Chinese migrants in a single day.  San Diego Border Patrol agents have faced an untenable flood of Chinese migrants sneaking over the border each day, raising fears over the growing influence of the hostile state in the US.  Border sources claim that 269 Chinese migrants were apprehended by CBP officials in a single day this week, according to Fox News' Bill Melugin[,] with the number not including those who manage to cross undetected.  Chinese nationals now make up the largest growing demographic of migrants crossing the porous US-Mexico border.  And 2024 is already well on-track to easily exceed the staggering 37,000 Chinese migrants who were apprehended by the CBP in the 2023 fiscal year.

U.S. Officials:  Chinese Hackers Are Planning to Take Down Power Grid.  The looming threat of a major cyber attack against the U.S. is becoming more likely after the FBI admitted that Chinese hackers are planning an all-out assault on the country's power grid and infrastructure.  A cyber attack against the United States would not just be devastating for Americans; it would also allow China to take advantage of the ensuing chaos, especially with it being an election year.  According to U.S. officials, they have already foiled a state-backed Chinese effort to plant malware to damage civilian infrastructure.  The head of the FBI is now warning that China is preparing to disrupt the lives of Americans as much as possible in the run-up to the 2024 election.

Report: Mayorkas Paid Chinese Communists to Come Illegally.  As you read this, keep in mind that Sen. Dick Durbin wants to allow illegal aliens to serve in the U.S. Military.  You can see the problem, can't you?  There is also the case of the Taiwanese helicopter pilot who was going to steal 50-year-old US technology for a $15 million payoff from China.  Former FBI agent, West Point graduate, and patriot David Baumblatt has an important message for Americans:  "Illegal Chinese migrants are the fastest growing group crossing into the U.S. from Mexico.  I am a US Citizen and Military Veteran, and when I travel to America, I am Detained, Searched, Interrogated, Surveilled, Humiliated, Deceived, and Assaulted by my government.  However, all of these illegal Chinese spies are allowed to enter FREELY.["]

U.S. Border Agents Arrest Three Chinese "Asylum Seekers" with 23 Fake IDs.  Five Chinese nationals were arrested this week in California after border agents discovered thousands of gift cards, merchandise, and 23 fake Pennsylvania IDs, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said Thursday.  Of the five, three had pending hearings for claims of asylum.  CBP did not release any other details about the individuals.

No Arrests as Illicit Chinese Marijuana [Operation] in Norridgewock [is] Busted.  Maine law enforcement busted a massive illegal marijuana growing operation Thursday morning at 9 Riverside Drive in Norridgewock.  Although no arrests were made, law enforcement seized more than 2,000 cannabis plants and 10 lbs of processed marijuana, according to Somerset County Sheriff Dale Lancaster.  A 2016 Ford Transit van was also seized, according to Lancaster.  According to real estate records, the property is owned by Hai Bin Cen, of Brooklyn, N.Y.

With Evergrande's liquidation, is China's Potemkin economy nearing its end?  Last week, a court in Hong Kong ordered that Evergrande, China's massive property developer, must be liquidated.  Real estate accounts for about one-quarter of China's GDP, and Evergrande isn't the only troubled part of the Chinese real estate sector.  While I'd always like to see China constrained, not only is a collapsing China dangerous, but the real estate collapse also reminds us of what's happening domestically.  Business Insider reported on Evergrande's liquidation, which has long been expected and which will be carried out in an orderly fashion.  The assets are valued at $245 billion (which I suspect is inflated), while the company's debts are $300 billion.  As with an American bankruptcy, secured creditors get first dibs on any money from the liquidation, with the people carrying out the liquidation then getting their fees.  The dregs will be for unsecured creditors and shareholders.  Offshore investors will be lucky to see pennies on the dollar.  What's more interesting about the report by Huileng Tan is what's going on with the rest of China's real estate market.  That's because Evergrande isn't the only company hurting.

More than 150 Chinese nationals [have] entered [the] US illegally EVERY DAY since October.  More than 150 Chinese nationals have snuck into the US illegally every single day since October, according to startling new CBP statistics.  Among the record numbers of migrants flooding the southern border, Chinese illegal immigrants made up the fastest-growing faction of border crossers last year.  The 2023 fiscal year reportedly saw over 37,000 Chinese migrants encountered at the border — with a staggering 20,000 more since October, when the 2024 fiscal year began.

Chinese Nationals [are the] Fastest Growing Group of Border Crossers.  A gap exists on the Southern California-Mexico border near Jacumba Hot Springs, CA, located 60 miles east of San Diego.  Locals named the gap the San Judas Break.  Quite a few of the Chinese nationals come from the middle class.  They arrive with roller bags filled with clothes and other items.  One national took 40 days to arrive at the border:  Thailand, Morocco, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.  Many choose to fly to Ecuador since the country "doesn't require a visa for Chinese nationals" and then to Tijuana.  In Tijuana, the nationals pay smugglers "$400 for the hour-long drive to the gap at the border."  The nationals know about the gap from TikTok, which also has posts with tips about smugglers and directions.

New Climate Envoy John Podesta had a close relationship with Chinese Communist Party.  The White House recently appointed John Podesta as Climate Envoy following the exit of John Kerry from the administration.  Yet, Podesta's previous work with a Chinese United Front-linked organization on climate change raises concerns about his ability to negotiate with China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.  Podesta has long been a household name in Democratic politics.  He is known for his close association with the Clinton family and for being active in climate policy.  Podesta first served as President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff and then later as the campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton's unsuccessful bid for president in 2016.  In between his work for the Clintons, he served in the Obama Administration as a counselor to the president responsible for climate policy and before that as a co-chair of President Obama's 2008 transition team.  Before entering the Obama Administration, Podesta founded and led the liberal think-tank Center for American Progress (CAP), which seeks to advance progressive policies on issues spanning from climate change to the economy.

Chinese Firm Sent Biden Enterprise $3 Million As 'Thank You' For Work When Joe Biden Held Office, Comer Says.  Hunter Biden's former business associate Rob Walker confirmed Chinese firm CEFC wired him $3 million as a "thank you" payment for work during Joe Biden's vice presidency, according to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer.  Walker, a key figure in the Biden family's Chinese and Romanian business dealings, testified before Congress Friday about the relationship the Bidens had with both CEFC and Romanian oligarch Gabriel Popoviciu, Comer said Friday night.  [Tweet]  "Today's interview confirmed Hunter Biden and his associates' work with the Chinese government-linked energy company began over a year before Joe Biden left the vice presidency, but the Bidens and their associates held off being paid by the Chinese while Joe Biden was in office," Comer said in a press release.  "The Chinese company paid Hunter Biden and his associates $3 million shortly after Joe Biden left office as a 'thank you' for the work they did while Joe Biden was in office.  Members of the Biden family received payments from the Chinese deal even though they did not work on it," Comer added.

Covid:  The Parallel History.  [Scroll down]  Chinese bioweapons labs are notorious for leaking.  For example, staff in one lab had sold animals for their meat, after they had been experimented on.  The SARS virus had leaked from Chinese labs four times over a ten year period.  Covid duly leaked from the Wuhan lab in October 2019.  It has been said that the CIA had been monitoring the area around the lab, and knew about the leak before the Chinese Government did.  The leak showed up in mobile phone traffic at the lab that was picked up by satellites, confirmed by satellite imagery of vehicle traffic.  The Chinese Government locked down Wuhan to stop the spread of the virus but allowed international flights out of China to continue.  This was to make sure the rest of the world became infected, while China stayed healthy.  The lockdowns in China continued for another three years before President Xi flipped to 'let her rip'.  The provincial governments, which had been funding the lockdown efforts, were being bankrupted and the country was on the verge of riots.  About two million elderly Chinese promptly died when the lockdown lifted.

Chinese Commies Think They Own British Public Spaces.  And sometimes I post something just because it makes my blood boil.  Such is the case with these Communist Chinese tourists traveling in the UK who think they have a right to tell others what they can and can't do in public spaces.  Pianist and YouTuber Brendan Kavanagh is livestreaming himself playing in the London St. Pancreas  Pancras tube station on a piano specifically given to the station by Elton John to promote live impromptu performances for the public, when Communist Chinese tourists imperiously demand he stop filming because they don't want to be on camera.  Does any other nation's tourists act with such entitlement toward the citizens of the country they're traveling through?  [Video clip]

British pianist forced to stop playing in public space because Chinese tourists didn't like being in the background of his livestream.  I found a video of peak entitlement:  [Tweet with video clip]  So basically, this guy is in a huge public train station — St. Pancras in London to be exact — just playing the piano as a free British man in Britain.  Then, these snooty commies come over, make a big scene, demand he stop filming, yell at him, and call the police.  Of course, the British police sided with the ChiComms!

There Could Be Only One Reason Why the Chinese Messed With the Coronavirus Again.  There's a new COVID variant that China has been tweaking in the lab, and it's unbelievable.  It was tested on mice and had a 100 percent mortality rate.  Dubbed the 'brain virus,' Chinese scientists are paving the way for another global pandemic if this escapes their labs again.  The study involved a "cousin" strain of the coronavirus, which was mutated and then administered to humanized mice; all died within eight days.  The study does not say how this could impact humans, but the research has been heavily criticized as pointless, dangerous, and veering into absolute madness.

China experimenting with 100% deadly new Covid strain:  Report.  Undeterred by loss of countless lives across the world, China is now reportedly experimenting with a new Covid-like virus that has a "mortality rate of 100 percent."  Doctors trained by Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) have made their version of "pangolin coronavirus" which has been found to have 100 percent mortality in mice.  According to a report published in bioRxiv, a group of mice were administered with SARS-CoV-2-related pangolin coronavirus GX_P2V to test its effect.  The shocking results indicate potential dangers and a risk of the virus spilling over onto humans.  A lab-made version of the pangolin coronavirus, called GX_P2V, was used in experiments on mice.  The pangolin animal is known to carry a coronavirus variant, making it a subject of interest for the study.

Chinese lab crafts mutant COVID-19 strain with 100% kill rate in 'humanized' mice: 'Surprisingly' rapid death.  In a Wuhan-esque study, Chinese scientists are experimenting with a mutant COVID-19 strain that is 100% lethal to "humanized" mice.  The deadly virus — known as GX_P2V — attacked the brains of mice that were engineered to reflect genetic makeup similar to people, according to a study shared last week out of Beijing.  "This underscores a spillover risk of GX_P2V into humans and provides a unique model for understanding the pathogenic mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2-related viruses," the authors wrote.  The deadly virus is a mutated version of GX/2017, a coronavirus cousin that was reportedly discovered in Malaysian pangolins in 2017 — three years before the pandemic.  Pangolins, also called scaly anteaters, are mammals found in warm areas of the planet.

CCP Billionaire Secretly Bought 200,000 Acres Of U.S. Farmland.  It was revealed this week that a member of the Chinese Communist Party secretly purchased 198,000 acres of U.S. farmland, back in 2015.  Chen Tianqiao, a co-founder of Shanda Interactive Entertainment, made the purchase of Oregon land for $85 million, paying around $430 an acre, according to Land Report magazine, the New York Post reported Saturday.  "In 2015, Tianqiao Chen acquired nearly 200,000 acres of former Crown Pacific timberlands in Oregon from Fidelity National Financial Ventures for $85 million ($430 per acre)," the magazine said. "Chen did so via the investment vehicle Whitefish Cascade Forest Resources LLC.  In December 2023, Oregon tax records revealed that the 198,000-acre block was currently owned by Shanda Asset Management LLC."  According to the Daily Mail, Chen's purchase does not show up in government records of land ownership by foreign investors.  Back in October, the Department of Agriculture estimated that Chinese entities owned around 400,000 acres of U.S. farmland, which translates to more than $2 billion dollars.  Though it's a fraction of foreign-owned farmland, the number has alarmed lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, since it's been dramatically increasing over the past decade as China becomes more and more adversarial toward the U.S.

16K Chinese Migrants Headed for U.S. Border, Detained.  Border Patrol agents apprehended tens of thousands of illegal Chinese migrants headed for the U.S. border as President Joe Biden's immigration crisis continues to threaten the nation's national security risk.  Since October 1, 2023, Border Patrol agents have detained nearly 16,000 Chinese nationals who illegally crossed the border between ports of entry.  According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports, 9,844 migrants were apprehended in October and November, leaving roughly 6,800 to be arrested since December 1, 2023.  In addition, Mexican authorities detained 40 Chinese illegal migrants who were traveling by bus in southern Mexico on their way to the United States.  That same day, Mexican authorities apprehended 180 migrants in the state of Oaxaca coming from Central and South America[,] also heading for the U.S.

What does $31 million get the Chinese from Biden?  Easy access into the United States, apparently.  Many have wondered why the Chinese would steer in the vicinity of $31 million to the Biden crime family.  Exactly what were they seeking in return?  We may know the answer.  Writing in Substack, Sam Faddis asked the same question and believes he has come upon an answer.  Biden, Faddis notes, has gone above and beyond in catering to the Chinese.  Still, the most egregious step the Biden administration has taken is virtually eliminating any control on Chinese nationals entering the country.  The administration has basically "greased the skids" to increase the flow of military-aged Chinese males entering the US, most across the southern border.

Terrorist attacks in America: for what are they waiting?  We somehow managed to get through Christmas and New Year's Eve without terrorist attacks.  For what are they waiting?  The FBI has admitted they're watching at least 300 people on the Terrorist Watch List (TWL).  Never mind why people on the TWL were allowed into the country so they could be watched in the first place.  That's "need to know" and Americans don't have a need to know.  Our security apparatus has also admitted thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of military aged males from countries that would like every American dead have crossed the border.  These are countries like Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, and many others.  They've also grudgingly admitted it appears plenty of these military aged males, who happen to be Chinese, just might be members of the Chinese military.

US Navy Sailor Sentenced to 27 Months in Prison For Selling Military Secrets to China.  A US Navy serviceman who admitted to accepting bribes from a Chinese intelligence officer in exchange for sensitive US military information has been sentenced to more than two years in federal prison.  US District Judge R. Gary Klausner on Monday handed down the 27-month prison sentence to Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, 26, of Monterey Park, Calif.  The Justice Department had sought a sentence of 37 months, arguing that Zhao had obstructed the government's investigation.  In October, Zhao pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring with a Chinese intelligence officer and one count of receiving a bribe, both felonies.

How Does a Navy Sailor Spying for China Come Away With Only 2 Years in Prison?  I have no idea why the DOJ is putting out a press release about this.  It seems more like the sort of thing to never mention again.  ["]A U.S. Navy service member was sentenced today to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay a $5,500 fine for transmitting sensitive U.S. military information to an intelligence officer from the People's Republic of China (PRC) in exchange for bribery payments. [... "]  And for that he gets two years.  And a fine that's about a third of the money he got for his treason.  Some people have gotten more than this for petty crimes.

Biden's Energy Policy Aids Communist China.  Modern civilization was built upon the supply of cheap energy.  The only source of cheap, abundant, and reliable energy that has been exploited for the benefit of humankind from the Industrial Age onward is a class of hydrocarbons frequently referred to as "fossil fuels".  The vast improvement in the wealth and high living standards of Western civilization since the 19th century are due directly to the industrialization made possible by cheap and reliable energy.  It is axiomatic that "countries that industrialized through increased use of fossil fuels saw not only a surge in economic prosperity, but also benefits such as increased life expectancy, cleaner air, cleaner water, decreased malnutrition, fewer deaths from infectious disease, and fewer climate-related deaths," as noted by the Foundation for Economic Education.  Yet, the Biden administration's relentless push to transform the US economy through over-regulation and suppression of oil and gas exploration while heavily subsidizing so-called "renewable" — and expensive! — energy sources such as wind and solar not only ignores the key to economic growth (cheap energy) but also plays into the hands of the top threat to the American Republic, i.e., the Chinese Communist Party.

Don't Underestimate China.  No one would argue that one of our most complex trading relationships — and a totally one-sided one at that — is our relationship with China.  To get a first-person feel for that relationship, I decided to get a reality check with a pre-Christmas trip to China's principal American retail outlet, Walmart.  I knew I'd find Chinese-made products there, but I wasn't prepared for the sheer number of them. [...] Nearly the entire assortment of the electronic goods we buy for our homes are manufactured or assembled overseas — products like computers and peripherals, stereo equipment, wide-screen televisions, and mobile phones — most from Southeast Asia and China.  It's also astonishing how many Chinese-made products populate the lower value end of the price spectrum.  They range from plastic extruded items to drop-forged tools, all made at factories employing low- or no-skilled labor.  Many of these jobs were once the province of American workers, but no more.  They've been exported to countries paying bargain-basement wages that offer borderline if not deplorable working conditions.

A Small-Town Battle Against a Giant Chinese Battery Plant.  Ten miles south of where Chicago's suburban sprawl finally peters out, Manteno is the latest battleground over Chinese companies coming to middle America — in this case, the electric vehicle (EV) battery manufacturer Gotion Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of China's Gotion (or Guoxuan) High-Tech Co.  While a recent Manteno board decision to rezone a manufacturing site favorably to Gotion came as a setback for opponents, the war for the industrial future of Manteno, and of America, is far from over.  The recently formed group Concerned Citizens of Manteno fired back with a lawsuit against Gotion and the village on Dec. 22.  In Manteno and towns like it, Americans are steeling themselves for a struggle.

American Public Pension Funds Pour over $68 Billion Into China in Just 3 Years.  American public pension funds have sunk over $73.28 billion into Chinese stocks, over $68 billion of it since 2020 — presenting a potentially serious national and economic security risk, as relations with the communist dictatorship worsen.  The New York State Common Retirement Fund and the New York State State Teachers' Retirement System are among the pension funds most exposed to China, with over $8.3 billion and $3.1 billion committed, respectively.  Other major investors include the California Public Employees Retirement System, with $7.86 billion committed, the California State Teachers System, at $5.55 billion, the Washington State Investment Board, at $5.02 billion, the San Francisco Employees Retirement System, at $3.3 billion, and the Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System, at $3.2 billion.

Hordes Of Military-Age Chinese Men Being Brought Into The United States.  Over the past couple of years, vast numbers of illegal immigrants from China have been pouring over our southern border.  Most of them are military-age men.  So why has there been such a dramatic spike?  Is some sort of a coordinated effort going on that we don't know about?  In this article, I am going to try to make some connections.  Taken on their own, some of the stories that I am about to share with you may not seem that significant.  But when you step back and take a look at the bigger picture, it becomes clear that something very unusual is happening.  Could it be possible that hordes of military-age Chinese men are being brought into this country in an attempt to destabilize our nation?

Holiday shoppers [are being] warned of [a] disturbing gift card scam likely padding Chinese bank accounts.  The Sacramento County Sheriff's Office is warning the public of a disturbing and "very sophisticated" gift card scam that has national and international implications.  The sheriff's office told Fox News Digital this week it carried out a massive anti-retail theft operation at big box stores across the county, netting 285 felony and misdemeanor arrests in seven days.  Among those arrested was a Chinese national who was found to be in possession of thousands of Target and Apple gift cards.  "During our recent retail theft Operation Bad Elf, detectives observed an individual, later identified as Ningning Sun, acting suspiciously near the gift cards in the payment aisles in a Sacramento Target store," the sheriff's office said in a press release Wednesday.  The office said investigators witnessed Sun take all the gift cards off a rack in a Target store and put them inside his jacket.  Authorities said the suspect then replaced the missing cards with "another set of seemingly identical ones."

Large Groups Of Military-Aged Chinese Men Apprehended By The Border Patrol In Jacumba Springs, CA.  Is this the PLA?  [Video clip]

The Confucius Institutes:  China's Trojan Horse.  As any observer of contemporary geopolitics will have noticed, the values upheld by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are diametrically opposed to the values of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, free enterprise, and the rule of law, which conservatives in Europe seek to defend.  Since 2004, China has successfully undertaken a large-scale initiative of cultural diplomacy, through which it seeks to undermine these quintessentially Western values.  The primary means by which the CCP is putting this plan into action are the Confucius Institutes (CIs), which have proliferated globally within a mere two decades, creating CCP footholds within academic institutions throughout the West.

About That 'Mysterious' Pneumonia Outbreak in China....  [D]espite the media attempts to get people worked up about a "mysterious" outbreak of pneumonia in Chinese children, there is no indication that anything mysterious is happening in China or elsewhere in the world.  It appears to be true that children in some regions of China are getting pneumonia and winding up in hospitals, as far as I can tell in a news environment where trust has been broken, especially regarding anything related to politics or disease.  But Dr. Robert Malone has written a Substack essay that explains why there is little to no cause for concern.  [Tweets]  First things first: bumps in respiratory infections are common in winter months.  You don't need an epidemiology degree to know this, because we all tend to get colds in the winter.  The pathogens involved are well known, although there is a bit of dispute regarding why this happens in winter.  Some say it is due to closer contact during the winter months; others attribute it to less exposure to sunshine.  Whatever the case, it is normal and a pattern that has been known forever.

Chinese Shadow Bank Announces Insolvency, Government Announces Investigation.  The big concern about the failure of Chinese real estate titans Evergrande Group and Country Garden was that their financial collapse would spread into the rest of the economy.  Specifically, the concern was that so-called shadow banks, which were involved in many of these property deals, would be impacted.  And sure enough last week a major shadow bank called Zhongzhi Enterprise Group sent a letter to investors announcing it was insolvent. [...] Now that the cat is out of the bag, the Chinese government is leaping into action to investigate.

Joe Biden Ignores Rising Inflow of Chinese Illegal Migrants.  More than 100,000 Chinese nationals have migrated into the United States since 2021, and the federal government is doing little to block them or to send them home, the New York Times reported on November 24. [...] In 2015, for example, federal officials tried to deport more than a dozen violent Chinese migrants back to their home country, Reuters reported.  "But, not for the first time, China failed to provide the necessary documents, and three months later not one of those arrested has been deported, and many have been released from custody," Reuters said.

Whose National Security?  Somewhere around 200,000 Chinese nationals have come through the border.  There are no Chinese nationals who come to America unless they are associated with or employed by the CCP or the PLA.  That's a pretty safe bet, if you know how the CCP works.  If you tune into Monkeywerx on occasion, you'll be informed of how many surveys are taking place in the U.S.  It's constant.  Sometimes they're sniffing for biological or radioactive sources.  Sometimes they're just mapping the area.  Why?  There's no need for that level of detail, except to surveil the people or identify targets.  Could it be that the millions of containers that are being offloaded at ports around the nation and shipped across the country might be suspected of holding some sort of weapons systems or biological or nuclear materials to be unleashed on command by these troops that have entered the unsecure border?  It doesn't matter if it's true, the fact that the federal government is making it exceedingly likely is the violation of national security.  Any government that is less interested in where foreign nationals are and what they're doing than the average, church-going, tax-paying citizen is playing for the other team, the enemy team.

Illegal Chinese Pot Grows Are Taking Over Rural Blue State And Law Enforcement Isn't Stopping Them.  Illegal marijuana grows run by Chinese nationals have sprung up all across the state of Maine, and residents say law enforcement isn't doing enough to stop their spread.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified 270 suspected Chinese illegal marijuana grow operations in the state that could be making an estimated $4.37 billion in revenue, which are often used for more criminal activities or are sent back to China, the DCNF exclusively reported in August.  The DCNF visited dozens of properties identified as suspected Chinese marijuana grows by the DHS memo, as well as other locations reported to be possible Chinese marijuana grows by The Maine Wire.  Maine offers marijuana legalization, making it the perfect place for such operations, according to experts and officials who spoke with the DCNF.  The lax laws, combined with record illegal immigration to the U.S. under the Biden administration, which has also limited deportations, provide cover to the grows.

The Editor says...
Grow is not a noun,

China Is Testing Lasers To Prevent Drivers From Falling Asleep On The Highway.  [Video clip only.]

TikTok is spreading literal terrorist propaganda.  In June 2020, 25 million people took to the streets in solidarity with BLM.  It was coined the "Largest Movement in U.S. History."  Then, starting on October 7, foot soldiers hit the pavement again, protesting on behalf of "Palestine" and Hamas terrorists. on October 28, 7,000 pro-Palestinian supporters took hostage the Brooklyn Bridge, demanding the elimination of Jewish state "By any means."  On November 4, 300,000 people swarmed the Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. in support of "Palestine" and against America.  Postsecondary institutions are also humming with Hamas sympathizers.  Protest after protest consists of mainly students with a splattering of faculty.  They're armed with keffiyehs, talking points for the media, and props, such as posters, swastikas, and "Palestinian" flags.  These are held on and off campuses. [...] Whether it's the Democrat / Globalist driven BLM mobs or the pro-"Palestine'" ones, the level of organization, down to the detail, is sophisticated and unmatched.  There are invite blasts on myriad social media platforms, such as TikTok, Instagram, X, and Facebook. [...] The masterminds behind the rent-a-crowds for BLM have improved their tradecraft for making terrorism aspirational to kids.  How?  TikTok.

Codepink's hard-left activists dismiss claims they're secretly funded by Chinese Communist Party.  Members of the anti-war feminist group Codepink have firmly rejected claims they secretly take money from Beijing — but then refused to condemn the detention of Uyghurs and other human rights abuses in China.  House Republicans this week launched a probe into the anti-war progressive group, which calls for Pentagon spending cuts to tackle climate change, pointing to the group's ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Experts raise alarm after Biden strikes agreement with China to shut down fossil fuels.  U.S. energy experts are warning of the economic and national security implications of President Biden's pact with China this week to move towards shutting down fossil fuel production in favor of green energy.  The State Department announced this week it had struck a deal with its Chinese counterparts pledging to "accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation" with green energy sources like wind and solar power.  The nations, which account for nearly half of global greenhouse gas emissions, also agreed to "deepen policy exchanges" on reducing carbon emissions in various sectors, like power, industry, buildings and transportation, across their economies.  But the agreement — in which the nations further pledged to "sufficiently accelerate renewable energy deployment in their respective economies through 2030" — was criticized over its potential impact on U.S. consumers.  Experts also noted that China has rarely followed through on international accords and stands to financially benefit from such an agreement since it controls much of the world's green energy supply chain.

Nepal to ban TikTok, alleges damaging social impact.  Nepal said on Monday [11/13/2023] it would ban Chinese-owned TikTok, adding that social harmony and goodwill were being disturbed by "misuse" of the popular video app and there was rising demand to control it.  TikTok, owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, has already been either partially or completely banned by other countries, with many citing security concerns.  More than 1,600 TikTok-related cyber crime cases have been registered over the last four years in Nepal, according to local media reports.  Nepal's Minister for Communications and Information Technology Rekha Sharma said the decision to ban TikTok had been made at a cabinet meeting earlier on Monday.

If America Does Not Win, Its Enemies Do.  In January 2021, Iran was on the verge of economic asphyxiation, barely able to continue financing Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. [...] Russia had not yet invaded Ukraine.  Chinese President Xi Jinping was not threatening Taiwan.  Then came the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan; Russia's invasion of Ukraine; China's spy balloon, unstopped until it had finished collecting information over America's significant military sites for a week; the Biden administration's cancellation of the China Initiative that had been effectively combating Chinese espionage; failure to close illegal Chinese police stations throughout the US; no response to roughly 70,000 Americans each year killed by Chinese fentanyl; a US southern border overrun by seven million migrants, and reported a known 1.5 million "gotaways" who have presumably evaded announcing themselves for a reason; around 1,800 young Chinese men, in packs, with simialar clothes, haircuts and tattoos who pretend not to speak English, some of whom US border guards recognize as members of China's military; failure to prevent China buying American farmland, possibly either to grow their food or destroy America's — especially near US military bases; a California laboratory with mice bio-engineered to carry at least 20 deadly pathogens ready to be released into the US; Confucius Institutes that had been closed down but were renamed and are now spreading from universities to high schools; China's subversion of America's children by a "Trojan Horse" named TikTok; financing Iran's nuclear weapons and terrorism programs by ignoring sanctions on Iran to enable it to profit by close to $60 billion, funding the Palestinian Authority to the tune of nearly $1 billion, unconditionally, despite its deadly pay-for-slay "jobs program," and last week, Secretary Janet Granholm inviting the Chinese and Russian officials to inspect a US nuclear testing facility.

Profit At China's Top Wind Firm Slumps 98%.  Lower prices for turbines amid a price war in China have resulted in a 98% plunge in the net profit of the top Chinese wind turbine maker, Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co.  While investments in renewable energy projects in China are booming, intensified competition has led to a race to the bottom for wind turbine prices — a race that has dented profits at the biggest Chinese manufacturer.  Goldwind booked $1.28 million in net income for the third quarter of 2023, down by a massive 98% compared to the same period of 2022, a company statement quoted by Bloomberg showed on Thursday.  Chinese clean energy technology manufacturers have also come under EU scrutiny as the bloc fears cheaper products from China would undermine the European Union's goals of having a strong EU clean energy manufacturing industry.  Globally, the wind power industry faces additional challenges.  Offshore projects are being scrapped amid rising costs and interest rates and supply chain issues.

Small Michigan Town Ousts Its Entire Government Over Its Support for a Chinese-Owned Electric Battery Plant.  While Tuesday's elections results were an epic catastrophe overall for the GOP, a little place in rural Michigan showed that there is still hope for We the People.  The Blaze reported Wednesday that Green Charter Township, a town with roughly 3,200 people located in central Michigan, voted out their entire township board (which governs the city) after they ignored their concerns and cut a dirty deal with a company named Gotion Inc.  Then they put a little icing on the cake afterward when they changed the townhall locks just hours after the vote.  Gotion is a corporation which makes batteries for electric vehicles.  While the company is headquartered in Silicon Valley, its parent company is based in the People's Republic of China and has ties to the CCP.

Granholm plays groveling tour guide to China and Russia at sensitive US nuclear weapons site.  Joe Biden's regime is perhaps the most dysfunctional of all time.  First things first, let's go over the massive threat to national security that the Biden regime continues to be, and to be honest, I hold each and every Democrat personally accountable.  In September, Bloomberg reported that under the direction of Jennifer Granholm, the Department of Energy invited high-ranking Chinese and Russian officials to tour a sensitive U.S. nuclear weapons site, to "prove its engineers aren't breaking a three-decade moratorium against testing nuclear weapons[.]"  The article also noted that this invitation came a number of months after Vladimir Putin withdrew his nation from an arms control agreement with the U.S. that restricted the buildup of "nuclear arsenals" so in other words, supplicant posturing before hostile adversaries.  But, as the Democrats love to say though, "nothing to see here!"  A Fox News item yesterday reported that in response to the news, House Republicans sent a strongly-worded letter to Granholm, asserting that the DOE's approval of "unprecedented access" to Russian and Chinese operatives was not okay, and that the level of indiscretion displayed by Biden and his comrades is "deeply alarming and fundamentally absurd."

Hundreds of Illegal Marijuana Growing Operations in Maine Are Run by Chinese Immigrants.  The Daily Caller first reported the existence of this problem back in August.  Maine has become home to hundreds of illegal marijuana grow sites owned and operated by Chinese immigrants.  Collectively, the sites are believed to produce more than $4 billion in sales per year. [...] Authorities suspect there are two reasons so many of these operations are happening in Maine.  First, it's a very rural area where it's relatively cheap to buy property and also easier to keep the operation out of sight.  Second, Maine has very lax laws, having legalized recreational marijuana in 2016.  A news outlet called the Maine Wire reported today that law enforcement has known about these illegal sites for at least two years though no one from the FBI to the US Attorney would comment.  Locals in the weed business have known about it too.

The Long Red Shadow Behind Islamic Terrorism.  Try searching for "Israel" on China's biggest search engine Baidu — the nation's name is no longer on the map.  The discovery, which caught many in China by surprise on Oct. 30, is the latest twist in a calculated silence by the regime in Beijing, in contrast to other major world powers that have rushed to Israel's side.  Positioning itself as a mediator and advocate for peace, the regime has criticized Israel for going too far in its counterattack against Hamas.  As hostility proliferates against Israel on China's heavily censored internet and in state media, the terrorist group responsible for the deadly assault hasn't elicited a single mention in official statements coming out of Beijing.

Foreign Investment in China Turns Negative for the First Time in Decades.  Another flashing warning sign that China's struggling economy may not be bouncing back as quickly as it has in the past.  For the first time in about 25 years, China's measure of foreign investment turned negative. [...] I've written about the new espionage law before.  Basically this was written so vaguely that almost any foreign firm gathering basic business information in China could be accused of spying.  That law appears to have played a role in the recent decision by Gallup to pull out of China completely.

Biden Can't Escape His China-Scandal Paper Trail.  Would the American people have elected Joe Biden, despite the widespread disdain for then-president Donald Trump, if it had been widely understood that Biden was bought and paid for by the Chinese Communist regime?  The question presses because, as it turns out, the incumbent president actually is what the media-Democrat complex falsely claimed the prior president was: a clandestine agent of a hostile foreign power — indeed, America's greatest geopolitical foe by whom, it is convincingly argued, we are already confronted in a second Cold War.  Scandalous as this story is, it is just as infuriating.  Joe Biden's collusion with China is back in the news because the House Oversight Committee has just released its latest report showing "the big guy" actually did get at least one 10 percent payout from the Biden/China scheme, precisely matching his stake in the venture as it was sketched out in a notorious May 2017 email.  But this is "news" only because the paper trail is now, inevitably, catching up with the outlines of the story.

From Hamas to Iran to China:  Follow the Money.  Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi signed a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement in 2021.  China now has its strongest ever economic foothold in Iran.  Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the agreement provides a "deep, multilayered and fully fledged" pact to enhance trade, economic and transport cooperation that will be "very effective in deepening" relations with China.  University of Tehran professor Mohammad Marandi, who is close to the Iranian regime, said, "This strategic partnership is important because it allows Iran and China to build a roadmap for long-term relations that will be much more fruitful.  It's also a signal being sent to the United States.  The more the U.S. tries to isolate Iran and China, the more it causes countries like Iran and China to move more closely to each other."  China views Iran's economic situation as an opportunity to capitalize on Iran's limited bargaining power with the West.

China Joins Hamas, Erases Israel From Map.  No greater proof of John Dalberg-Acton's famous quote about power tending to corrupt and absolute power tending to corrupt absolutely exists today than the leadership of the People's Republic of China.  Lord Acton added in his letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, "Great men are almost always bad men."  Well, the "great men" who rule the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have achieved what Hamas, despite its endless chants of "From the river to the sea," was unable to do.  They have wiped Israel off the map — literally.  The Wall Street Journal reported:  "Internet users in China are expressing bewilderment that the name Israel doesn't appear on leading online digital maps from Baidu and Alibaba, an ambiguity that matches Beijing's vague diplomacy in the region and contrasts with its attentiveness to maps generally."

Direct Line Between Chinese Money and Biden's Bank Account Drawn — 'Future Blackmail'.  With a [...] video published Wednesday by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, the potential impeachment of President Joe Biden just got a lot more plausible.  Comer, the Kentucky Republican who has been the point man for the GOP investigation of the Biden family's dodgy finances, drew a direct line between money from communist China to Biden's bank account.  And he raised the specter of potential foreign blackmail of the man in the White House.

Hunter and Joe Shook Down the Chinese.  Then Joe Got a Big Check.  The big question was always how Joe Biden, aka the Big Guy, was getting paid Joe Biden and his media allies have made a point of this in defending him.  They'll concede that Hunter and even James, Joe's brother, were involved in some shady stuff.  They'll concede that Joe Biden lent his influence by showing up to meetings and joining in on calls, but they'll claim that he never got any money.  Now Rep. James Comer and the House Oversight Committee are find out how Joe allegedly got paid.  And the answer is 'loan repayments.'  Earlier in October, House Oversight turned up a "loan repayment" tied to wrecked hospitals and Islamic terrorists.

Chinese influencers are showing migrants how to cross US southern border.  The migrant caravan heading to the U.S. has grown by over by a thousand in just 24 hours, as social media teaches Chinese citizens how to reach the American dream.  Hundreds more have joined the caravan of migrants in Mexico bound north, one of the organizers said, bringing the total number to about 7,000 as the group traveled through the southern state of Chiapas.  Organizer Irineo Mujica said on Tuesday the caravan had swelled since Monday by about 1,000 to more than 7,000 people, although a spokesperson for the Chiapas government said state authorities still estimated its size at around 3,500 participants.

Consequences of American Communism.  [Scroll down]  I can tell them that what they want always leads to destruction, that communism doesn't work.  The failures are scattered across the globe and the prophecy of failure is always fulfilled.  In China, where they will eagerly point a finger as an example of communism that works, it has already destroyed itself and the only thing keeping it alive is that it has started to suck the life out of America, draining it's reserves down to nothing.  This war in the Middle East is just another means of achieving the same result and when the United States is weak enough, China will extend its vampirism to every nation within its reach.  China is almost finished with America after decades of infiltration and irrational trade policies that Trump temporarily nixed only to be reinstituted after Biden's inauguration.  It goes deeper, though, into the globalist corporate cooperation from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  Our government cannot function under the debt load that it currently holds as a result of those policies and others.

House Republican Sounds Alarm About Cuba Helping Smuggle Chinese Nationals Into U.S..  China and Cuba have reportedly teamed up to transport Chinese nationals across the Atlantic Ocean's Straits of Florida and smuggle them into the United States, according to a top Florida Republican lawmaker.  U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, who represents the Florida Keys, warned about the alleged partnership between the two communist nations in an interview with the Daily Mail on Sunday — after 17 Chinese nationals were apprehended inside the congressman's district last week.  "This is the first time I think we've caught [Chinese nationals] trying to cross getting into the Keys area ... it's concerning," Gimenez told DailyMail.com during an exclusive interview.  "I don't know who they are, why they're here, or what they were doing."  U.S. Border Patrol agents and Florida Highway Patrol troopers responded to a vessel landing in Key Largo on October 23, which led to authorities capturing three Ecuadorians and another 17 Chinese immigrants — 11 men and six women, according to local media.

Ex-China Premier Li Keqiang, Sidelined by Rival Xi, Dies 'Suddenly' at 68.  Li Keqiang, the former premier of China, is reported to have died "suddenly" on Thursday less than a year after stepping down from his post as the country's second-highest-ranking leader.  He was 68.  A heart attack has been blamed for the death of the English-speaking economist who had once been considered a contender for the country's top job, but was passed over in favour of Xi Jinping and then sidelined.  He was the only incumbent top official who didn't belong to Xi's loyalists group, the BBC reports.

The Mystery of the Disappearing Chinese Officials.  One of the most confounding challenges of interacting with China is how much its system and decision-making are a black box — those of us on the outside have little sense of what the internal deliberations are and whom Xi Jinping is really listening to, if he's listening to anyone.  Even more bizarrely, in the past few months, several top Chinese government officials have suddenly disappeared; one day, they stopped making public appearances and showing up at meetings, and their replacements were announced months later.  It looks like something akin to a purge is occurring within the top level of the Chinese government, with Xi Jinping removing anyone he's not 100 percent certain is completely loyal to him.

Ten more statistics to ruin your day.  [#4] We can't keep up with the Chinese military.  For instance their navy, "surpassed the US Navy in fleet size sometime around 2020 and now has around 340 warships, according to the Pentagon's 2022 China Military Power Report, released in November.  China's fleet is expected to grow to 400 ships in the next two years, the report says."

Gavin Newsom Pledges California Will Be Xi Jinping's 'Long-Term, Stable, and Strong Partner'.  Chinese state media continued to gush over visiting California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, hailing the Democrat's warm meeting with dictator Xi Jinping as a triumph of "mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation."  Newsom said that under his leadership, California is ready to become "China's long-term, stable, and strong partner." [...] A good deal of Newsom's enthusiasm for doing business with China revolved around climate change, electric vehicles (EV), and green energy technology.

Chinese Container Ship Suspected of Deliberately Damaging Estonia-Finland Gas Pipeline.  Finnish investigators are accusing a Chinese ship of disabling an undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia and damaging two undersea telecommunications cables on October 8.  The Balticconnector pipeline is a 94-mile-long pipeline that connects Finland's national gas grid with a major underground gas storage facility in Latvia.  Pipeline engineers noticed an unexplained drop in pipeline pressure, causing the operators to shut down the pipeline.  Investigators quickly determined that explosions did not damage the pipeline and undersea cables but were damaged by human action.  The damage to one telecommunications line was discovered at the time of the damage to the gas line.  A second telecommunications cable was later found to be damaged.

China is Clearly Winning the Israeli-Hamas War.  Early on 7 October, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israeli border communities through the fortified border fence separating the Gaza strip and Israel, killing over 1,200 people including at least 29 Americans and committing barbaric atrocities on innocents.  Israel subsequently declared war on Hamas a day later and conducted air strikes on 800 targets in the Gaza strip, killing at least 400.  Israeli Defense Force ground assets are preparing for a massive counter-strike into Gaza.  Hezbollah appears to be conducting sporadic attacks from Lebanon.  Pro-Israeli and pro-Hamas protests have erupted around the world.  The UN Security Council called a closed-door emergency meeting.  The US response has been modest to date.

China's Proxy Wars Are 'Encircling' America.  China is setting fires.  Chinese President Xi Jinping green-lighted Russia's invasion of Ukraine and is supporting that war with lethal and other assistance.  In North Africa, Beijing, in conjunction with Moscow, has been fueling insurgencies that resemble wars.  In the Middle East, China is backing Hamas's monstrous attacks on Israel.  Hamas fighters, for instance, appear to have Chinese-made weapons, presumably supplied through Iran.  Moreover, the U.S. Navy in 2021 and this year seized Chinese weapons in transit to another proxy of the Islamic Republic, the Houthi militia in Yemen.  "Tehran for some time has distributed Chinese weapons to its terrorist proxies throughout the region," Jonathan Bass of energy consultant InfraGlobal tells Gatestone.  "The Middle East, thanks in no small measure to Beijing, is soaked with blood."

China Creates 'Global A.I. Governance Initiative' to Control World's Tech.  China on Wednesday launched its "Global Artificial Intelligence Governance Initiative" at the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forum in Beijing.  Although Chinese state media touted the A.I. initiative as an "open, inclusive, and fair approach" to A.I. development, the presence of international villains such as Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the Taliban at the BRI forum hinted at the true and much darker purpose of the Chinese Communist Party's plans.

China will have over 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030, exceeding US predictions.  A new Pentagon report points to the People's Liberation Army's growing nuclear capabilities and more advanced weapons, which experts believe may be used by Beijing as deterrence and bring greater pressure to bear on Taipei.  According to a US Department of Defence report titled "2023 Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China" released on Thursday, Beijing is "on track to exceed previous projections" in boosting its nuclear capabilities.

Apple Cancels Jon Stewart's Show over Criticisms of Communist China.  Jon Stewart's show on Apple TV+ has been canceled by the tech giant over the liberal comedian's criticisms of Communist China and artificial intelligence (AI).  Two sources reportedly told the New York Times that Apple axed the show on its subscription-based streaming service.  Stewart informed his team on Thursday that his show titled, "The Problem with Jon Stewart," was over due to editorial disputes.

China Invites Taliban Terrorists to Belt and Road Forum.  The Taliban jihadist regime in Afghanistan sent its Industry and Commerce Minister Nooruddin Azizi to Beijing on Monday to attend this week's "Belt and Road Forum," a celebration of ten years of China's global predatory lending scheme.  The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is nominally a program run by the Chinese Communist Party that offers poor nations funding to invest in otherwise unaffordable road, port, and railway projects, allegedly designed to help those countries become more competitive economically and ship their exports more efficiently.  China offers funding in the form of high-interest loans with a long list of conditions attached, which later erode the sovereignty of the countries involved.

They wanted a low birth rate, and they got it.
China's economy continues to struggle as birthrate hits a 70 year low.  As we've covered many times already, China's economy is struggling, particularly the construction portion which makes up about a quarter of the country's GDP. [...] China has a series of "golden weeks" throughout the year which are full weeks off for everyone.  These are usually big times for travel and shopping and authorities were hoping that the golden week starting at the beginning of October might help pull the economy out of the doldrums with a rush of "revenge spending" after years of zero-COVID lockdowns.  But golden week is over and the revenge spending didn't happen.

State gives $175 million to Chinese company.  Michigan awarded a $175 million grant to an energy company — owned and controlled by a China-based battery manufacturer with ties to the Chinese Communist Party — to build a massive battery manufacturing facility near a U.S. military base in Michigan, according to the Daily Caller.  The Daily Caller found Gotion, Inc of California, will be given $175 million of Michigan taxpayer funds to build a 550,000 square foot facility that has been touted by state officials like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as a "global hub of mobility and electrification."

55 Chinese sailors are feared dead after nuclear submarine gets caught in a trap.  Fifty-five Chinese sailors are feared dead after their nuclear submarine apparently got caught in a trap intended to ensnare British sub-surface vessels in the Yellow Sea.  According to a secret UK report the seamen died following a catastrophic failure of the submarine's oxygen systems which poisoned the crew.  The captain of the Chinese PLA Navy submarine '093-417' is understood to be among the deceased, as were 21 other officers.

Time to Tell America's Climate Cult 'Stop!'  [Scroll down]  But we also need to maintain an economy to feed, clothe, and house hundreds of millions of people and ensure our national security.  We can't do those things if we overburden the nation's electric grid.  We can't do those things relying on "renewables" such as wind and solar power — not even with the best of those technologies that we have available today.  And we can't do that with Americans abandoning their gasoline-powered internal combustion engines in favor of electric vehicles (EVs) that most of them can't afford and that require a charge from an overburdened electrical grid.  We might be able to generate all the required electricity that the climate cult demands with nuclear energy and a massive investment in the electrical grid, but progressives abhor the former and have made no provisions at all to pay for the latter.  At an average cost of $64,000, the cost of the EVs that the climate cult would have us all adopt is now, and will likely continue to be, well beyond the financial means of most Americans.  They're also extraordinarily heavy, going from hundreds to thousands of pounds more than gasoline-powered cars.  That makes EV crashes far less survivable than their gas-powered counterparts and raises concerns about the structural integrity of roads, bridges, and vertical parking garages.  That's to say nothing of how vulnerable an "all EV" economy would make us.  First, the inputs necessary to make EVs are at risk, as they come largely from a geopolitical adversary, China.  Other EV inputs depend on mining in countries in the Third World where China is aggressively developing geostrategic advantage, but where we have no other interest except for EV inputs.  The United States simply can't rely on that supply chain.

China's Goal is World Supremacy, and America is Helping.  Inferior nations are also dependent on others.  China uses its economic heft to secure the real and psychological dependence of foreign nations.  When Russia, the Turks, and Europe secured global power through colonial empires, China did so with a global tributary empire that sees foreigners, including Westerners, validate Chinese superiority and submit to Chinese demands.  In exchange, China allows them to trade in peace.  China knows that economic ties are binding ties that wreak havoc when broken. "No one weaponizes [economic] interdependence more than China." Today, China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has, at last count, 147 indebted clients, with positions indistinguishable from tributes sucked into China's orbit.

Locals reject Chinese-tied battery factory's construction in their Community.  Residents of a small country town in Michigan have rejected the planned construction of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-tied "gigafactory" in their community, The New York Times reported Tuesday.  Gotion Inc., a subsidiary of the Chinese parent company, Gotion High-Tech Power Energy Co., plans to build a $2.4 billion electric vehicle(EV) battery factory spanning hundreds of acres in Green Charter Township, Michigan, which is largely made up of rural farmland, according to the NYT. Residents have opposed elected local leader's decision to allow Gotion into their community, as the parent company is led by a CCP member and employs hundreds more.  "It's the Communist influences that I'm bothered by, because they have shown repeatedly that they don't care about our rules, our laws or anything," Lori Brock, a resident living near the planned site of the factory, told the NYT.  "They shouldn't be able to buy here."

Alex Marlow's 'Breaking Biden': China-Linked University of Delaware Biden Partnership Was Hunter's 'Baby'.  While media reports have focused University of Pennsylvania's Biden Center, less attention has been paid to University of Delaware's Biden Institute, even though these two "institutes" were opened on the same day and meant to serve a shared goal of being incubators of advancing globalism and leftism.  The UPenn Biden Center became a pipeline for longtime Biden allies into his administration, and, as previously reported by Peter Schweizer, proceeded a suspicious influx in Chinese donations to the university.  Together with a Penn Biden office in DC, the two entities that would be the public-facing "stage" for the "Biden Brand."  The key players at the University of Delaware's Biden Institute were either Biden family members, people with deep ties to China, or both.

2019: Hunter Biden Claimed He Didn't Receive 'One Cent' from Chinese Associate Despite Wire Transfers.  Hunter Biden denied receiving "one cent" from his family's deal with BHR Partners associate Jonathan Li, a video from October 2019 shows.  In the summer of 2019, Hunter Biden received two wires totaling $260,000 originating from BHR Partners associates, including Li, that listed President Joe Biden's Delaware home as the beneficiary address for the funds, the House Oversight Committee revealed this week.  The fund is bankrolled by the Bank of China.  Months after receiving the bank wires in 2019, Hunter Biden told ABC News he did not receive one penny from Li.

Never Mind Those Hordes of Military-Aged Chinese Men With the Same Clothing, Haircuts, and Tattoos Swarming Our Southern Border.  Experts believe that more than seven million illegal immigrants have crossed the border since *President Biden occupied the White House.  The apparatchiks in the Pravda Press downplay the situation by assuring us the invaders are "families," even though most of the videos we see are of single, military-aged men, frequently from Venezuela.  But the most onerous onslaught at our northern and southern borders is the disturbing number of single, military-aged Chinese men and women finding their way into our country and disappearing once they get in.  Why would Chinese nationals fly into Panama and make a seemingly arduous voyage to our southern border?  According to Anthony Rubin, the founder of Muckraker, who filmed Chinese people lining up for a seat on a U.S.-bound bus, they aren't able to simply fly in and wait for their visas to expire like they did in the good old days.  "This would be for people who can't fly into the U.S. directly," Rubin told Fox News.

Chinese hackers nab 60,000 emails in State Department breach.  Hackers linked to the Chinese government stole around 60,000 emails from the unclassified inboxes of 10 State Department employees as part of a high-profile hack earlier this summer, according to a readout from a Senate staff briefing on Wednesday.  The new details of the previously known hacking incident, which also impacted Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, are likely to only exacerbate concerns on Capitol Hill about Chinese hacking efforts, which have ramped up this year.

If there's no risk to the investors, or if there ARE NO investors, then something other than capitalism is at work here.
Chinese plant planned for Manteno could receive $8 billion in subsidies, despite costing only $2 billion to build.  Illinois politicians and members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party have raised concerns about the sizeable subsidies being granted to the Chinese electric vehicle battery maker, Gotion.  Gotion is linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and aims to build a $2 billion plant in Illinois while receiving $7.5 billion in federal tax credits, asserting that the U.S. government should not support CCP-backed companies expanding into key sectors like lithium-ion battery manufacturing.  This situation raises concerns about U.S. economic and national security and calls for changes in the legislation that created the 45X tax credit program, which led to generous handouts for battery factory projects, including Gotion's.

Panda diplomacy no more:  China calls back its pandas from U.S. zoos.  The pandas are going home to China.  A nine-day "Panda Palooza" to celebrate the bears before they leave is underway at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.  The pandas will be returned to Chinese conservationists by December 7.  The pandas have been on loan from them and the cost of the agreement with the National Zoo is about $1 million per year since 2000.  It's China's global soft and fuzzy outreach — panda diplomacy.  The panda cubs born in Washington go back to China, too.  Perhaps now is when the separation is being called because of the tension in the relationship between China and the U.S. There are pandas on loan to zoos around the United States and they will all go back to China.

How the game is played:  Ford pauses MI EV battery plant construction, UAW in freak-out mode.  While a shamefully pandering POTATUS shambled alongside smirking Shawn Fain, United Auto Worker president, at a picket line in Michigan this morning, one of the D-3 protagonists in this workers' melodrama was busy assessing ongoing business options and came to the conclusion one of them needed some reassessing. [...] In spite of what passes for warm fuzzies in union contract negotiations, Ford upped the ante this morning.  In a surprise move, the corporation announced it was "temporarily" halting construction on the new bazillion dollar EV battery plant it's building in Michigan with — SURPRISE! — a Chinese company.

Ford Gets Cold Feet, Pulls Plug on Multibillion-Dollar China-Backed EV Battery Plant.  The Ford Motor Company announced Monday that it is pausing construction on a massive electric battery plant in Michigan that involved a Chinese EV battery company.  Notably, the plan had been originally considered for Virginia, but Gov. Glenn Youngkin opposed it due to China's potential influence in the plan, arguing that "CATL and the Chinese Communist Party would have full operational control over the technology."  Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer had no such qualms, however, and welcomed the plant with open arms as her state government pumped $1 billion into the project.  [Tweet] [...] Although Ford has thus far not given an exact reason for the shutdown, one has to ask why such a plan was considered in the first place.  The People's Republic of China is our number one competitor in the world, and should relations deteriorate further, it's not wise or strategic to put them in a position of such power in our crucial automobile industry.  Couldn't they find an American company that could do the job?

Is Blaming 'Chinese CO2' for Global Warming Racist?  China is building coal plants faster than a Democrat can stuff a ballot box, earning it the glorious distinction of being the world's leader in CO2 and air pollution emissions.  But the usual suspects aren't losing their minds.  Greta has never protested there, and extinction rebellion is extinct.  China owns most of the mines, digging up rare earth metals to make the graven green idols of the new energy left.  China is also a leader in ocean pollution and ocean plastic, but bringing any of that is Asian hate speech.  A problem Cult stenographers at Reuters are addressing head-on.  Yeah, China emits a lot of CO2, but it's different. [...] What it is doing is burning coal to shore up its military-industrial complex and commercial global dominance and using cheap, abundant energy to advance its global political agenda while selling the rope to the West with which its elites have chosen to hang us all.

Playing the Race Card to Protect Chinese Spies.  Is it racist to think that a Chinese person is more likely to spy for China than someone with no Chinese ancestry who was born in America?  That was the premise of much of the left-wing opposition to the Justice Department's so-called China Initiative, its investigation of Chinese technology theft that was launched in 2018 and canceled by the Biden administration in 2022 over claims of ethnic profiling.  It is the premise of many news articles written about Chinese scientists leaving the United States in increasing numbers, supposedly because they feel targeted by authorities.  Yet if you asked the average man on the street, he would say that taking someone's country of birth into account in an espionage investigation is just common sense.

The New Opium Wars.  It has been creditably alleged that China is facilitating, if not masterminding, the opioid crisis in America.  If so, the Maoists probably feel it justified as a case of historical tit for tat.  In the 1800s China suffered through an opioid crisis of their own, exacerbated by the opium wars with Britain.  Simply put, opium addiction was ravaging Chinese society, and the British Empire fought two wars to keep it that way.  For most of history China was the place to be.  Up until the Renaissance, Europe was a stagnant backwater, fragmented and culturally stunted.  The literary and technical heritage of the Greeks and Romans languished, locked away in scattered monasteries, safe but near-forgotten.  China and the Islamic world were cultural and scientific utopias in comparison.  In fact, the prosperity of the Middle East depended in large part on marketing the luxury goods of China (silk, tea, fine porcelain) to the West.  This situation carried on for so long that it may have baked a certain degree of arrogance and isolationism into the Chinese character.

Darrell Issa Suggests That Biden's Commerce Secretary Was Pawn In China's Plan.  Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California told Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Tuesday that she was "bushwhacked" by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during her recent visit to China.  Issa questioned Raimondo during a hearing of the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology regarding a review of activity under the CHIPS and Science Act, a law that authorizes subsidies to incentivize domestic production of semiconductor computer chips.  During his questioning, Issa suggested that Raimondo's visit provided the CCP with an opportunity to embarrass the United States after Chinese firm Huawei announced a new 5G smartphone, the Mate 60 Pro, which the U.S. had tried to thwart using export controls.

China's Communist Party Infiltrates American K-12 Schools.  The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has, or has had, ties to 143 school districts in the United States, including 20 near military bases, through its "Confucius Classrooms," according to a recent report, "Little Red Classrooms:  China's Infiltration of American K-12 Schools" by Parents Defending Education (PDE), a grassroots organization.  Confucius Classrooms, are, purportedly, "centers that teach Chinese language and culture."  According to the book Hidden Hand:  Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World, by Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg: "Initiated in 2004 as an innocuous way to spread the Party narrative... ostensibly devoted to teaching Chinese language and promoting Chinese culture they are, as former propaganda chief Li Changchun put it, 'an important part of China's overseas propaganda set-up.'"  In 2020, the US Department of State and the US Department of Education warned about the Confucius programs at American colleges and universities, and designated them as foreign agents: [...]

Rolling Out the Red Carpet for the Red Chinese.  Last Thursday Illinois Governor Pritzker signed a deal to give Gotion Incorporated, a Chinese company, $536 million in tax incentives to open an electrical vehicle battery-assembly plant in Manteno, Illinois.  Gov. Pritzker has been trying to attract electrical vehicle battery manufacturers for a few years to prove his progressive bona fides on green energy.  It's not been easy.  To help attract business, in 2021 Pritzker signed into law new tax credits for EV businesses which Crains Chicago Business said were "massive incentives" that may be the "largest ever in the state's history."  But 10 months later, Illinois was still 0 for 18 in attracting EV battery plants:  "Even Rivian, which assembles electric-powered trucks in downstate Normal, chose Georgia for its first battery plant."

CCP-Linked Company In Michigan, Illinois Poised To Receive Over $1 Billion In Taxpayer Money.  Gotion Inc., a company tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is set to gain more than $1 billion in taxpayer money and incentives for building factories in Michigan and Illinois, according to public announcements.  Gotion Inc. plans to construct two electric battery plants in Michigan and one in Illinois, securing commitments in funding and benefits totaling over $1.25 billion, according to announcements by the states' governors.

Lobbyists for CCP-tied EV company funneled cash to Democrats after filing as foreign agents.  Individuals at a law firm registered as foreign agents to lobby on behalf of Gotion, a Chinese electric vehicle battery company developing a controversial project in Michigan, and wired campaign contributions to several top Democrats.  According to state and federal filings, Monique Field-Foster, an attorney at the Lansing office of the Warner Norcross + Judd law firm who is acting as a foreign agent on behalf of Gotion, donated to the campaigns of Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Whitmer's sister Liz Gereghty and Michigan Democratic Senate hopeful Rep. Elissa Slotkin.  A second attorney at the firm, Madelaine Lane, who works out of the firm's Grand Rapids office and prepared its foreign filings, also contributed to Gov. Whitmer's campaign.

Time to send a clear message on Chinese espionage.  Recent news reports regarding what have to be considered overt and bold efforts on the part of the Chinese government to spy against America should be treated as a call to action rather than just a series of unfortunate events that this country has no control over.  Yet, from the reports being published by even those in the media who consistently defend the current administration and its actions, it is clear that our government is doing little more than watching, documenting, and wagging a proverbial finger at China and asking that they not do it "any more."  If anyone in the administration were allowed to speak without being required to invoke the tried and true "we have no comment" because "it is classified" or "it is under active investigation," they would likely tell you that no action is being taken because it is, in essence, just too difficult to effectively address large-scale espionage in this country's legal system.

Chinese Citizens Entering Through Southern Border Increased 1000%.  The invasion has a lot of moving parts, but here's a component that hasn't been discussed much.  Chinese citizens generally don't enter through the southern border, but the number of CBP encounters with Chinese citizens not only increased sharply, but southern border encounters are vastly up.  At the end of 2020, there were 1 to 9 such encounters a month.  By the end of 2021, it was in the double digits, in 2022, encounters shot up into the triple digits, and in July 2023, there were over 3,000 encounters.  That's a sharp increase from 306 in July 2022.

US military bases fend off visits from Chinese citizens: reports.  Chinese nationals have accessed U.S. military bases and other facilities dozens of times, U.S. officials said, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.  Government agencies like the Defense Department and the FBI held a review the past year to limit the events, the Journal reported.  Officials allegedly call the people involved in the incidents "gate-crashers" and have espionage concerns about their occurrence.  The gate-crashers have reportedly shown up in places like a U.S. missile range in New Mexico and a U.S. government rocket launch site in Florida.  A similar report about gate-crasher incidents in Alaska by USA Today was published in May.  According to that report, one "incident" of attempted breach of Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska, involved Chinese citizens who "blew past a security checkpoint."  A drone was found in the vehicle of the visitors, who said they were lost tourists, USA Today reported.

Chinese owners of planned Michigan EV plant make staff in the Communist state pledge allegiance to the Party.  The Chinese owners of a company developing a taxpayer-subsidized $2.4 billion electric vehicle battery facility in Michigan make staff pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party and wear Red Army uniforms, reports suggest.  Gotian High-Tech the Chinese parent company of Gotion Inc took staff on several corporate retreats to CCP revolutionary memorials in Anhui Province, China in 2021, the Daily Caller reported.  During the trips workers wore Red Army outfits and pledged to 'fight for communism to the end of my life' footage posted on the Chinese battery manufacturer's website shows.

A Reader Asks Why Tailei Qi And Zijie Yan Were At UNC In The First Place?  [Scroll down]  There's no scarcity of highly intelligent Americans.  Could it be UNC just wants cheaper labor or is beholden to Chinese money?  Personally, I regard the Chinese academic influx as an espionage influx for which there is already ample proof.  Peking, like the Manchus before them, regards China as the center of the universe to which all barbarians must do the kowtow.  China doesn't even regard the U.S. as a legitimate nation, merely a shopping emporium.  Domestically, on schedule, cries about rescinding the Second Amendment will go up, ignoring actual facts such as "Where did he get the gun?," "Was he legally allowed to possess a firearm?" and "What type of firearm was it?"  To bring up the question of an alien propensity for murder will be called racist and xenophobic even when the victim is the same race as the perpetrator.  That certain people should be prevented from entering the country because they may be dangerous or a threat to national security is bigotry to a Left determined to replace Americans.

China's Influence Activity in the US Is Unprecedented.  "The system is blinking red right now," an unnamed senior FBI official was quoted as saying in a recent report from the Center for Strategic and International studies (CSIS).  "We have not seen this level of Chinese intelligence and influence activity in and around the U.S. homeland ever."  China is using all means short of war "to expand the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and weaken the United States and its partners," the report continued.  "This campaign involves sophisticated Chinese espionage activities, offensive cyber operations, disinformation on social media platforms, economic coercion, and influence operations targeting companies, universities, and other organizations."  This unprecedented level of Chinese intelligence and influence activity is happening under President Joe Biden, who in February 2022 shut down the Justice Department program known as the China Initiative, which had been focused on countering Chinese espionage.  The alleged reason for the shutdown was that it "unfairly painted Chinese Americans and U.S. residents of Chinese origin as disloyal."  Biden's closing the China Initiative played, of course, right into the CCP's hands.

The 'China Century' Is Over.  For decades we've heard that China will some day, very soon, be the world's hegemon, both through its stunning economic growth and its rising military might.  Move over, America, here comes China.  Just as the 1900s were the "American Century," the 2000s would be the "China Century."  Not so fast.  Google "The China Century" and you get 1 billion hits.  It's that ingrained as an economic truism.  But in recent years, China has entered a kind of doom loop of debt accumulation, population shrinkage and a productivity slowdown that is eroding its once powerful economic growth and threatens to halt many of the economic advances it made over the last 50 years.

To Spy or Not to Spy.  According to Shaomin Li in the American Spectator, the CCP spy agency has sent out a social media warning:  ["]China's State Security Ministry issued a public social mobilization order on Aug. 1 through the Chinese social media platform WeChat entitled "Full-Society Mobilization Needed for Counter-Espionage!"["]  And they are offering up to 500,000 yuan for spy tips.  So, if you are a foreigner in China, you are a high-value target for any aspiring Chinese in need of a financial injection.  Li himself was arrested in 2001 in China on spy charges because he was too pro-Taiwan.  Don't think the CCP will change any time soon:  "it can emphasize catching spies or deemphasize it depending on its priority, not on the rule of law."  Not exactly.  Governments go after spies not from any objective evaluation of enemies, but from their regime threat perception.

The Great China-American Abyss.  Imagine if the United States treated China in the same way it does us.  What if American companies simply ignored Chinese copyrights and patents and stole Chinese ideas, inventions, and intellectual property as they pleased and with impunity?  What if the American government targeted Chinese industries by dumping competing American export products below the cost of production — to bankrupt Chinese competitors and corner their markets?  What would the communist Chinese government do if a substantial American spy balloon lazily traversed continental China — sending back to the United States photographic surveillance of Chinese military bases and installations?  How would China react to America stonewalling any explanation, much less refusing to apologize for such an American attack on Chinese sovereignty?

Biden Allowed Major Donor to Hand Advanced Military Tech to China.  "When I was in another State they would slip and say 'now I want to introduce the Senator from DuPont — I mean Delaware'", Joe Biden had joked at a Senate Subcommittee on Crime session.  There's a certain truth to the joke.  DuPont is the corporation that defines Biden's career.  His first Senate bid was staffed with DuPont employees, including future chief-of-staff and senator Ted Kaufman, who was conveniently allowed to take a "leave of absence" from DuPont to help elect Biden.  Biden celebrated his victory at the Hotel DuPont and bought a former DuPont mansion.  DuPont figures in a lot of Biden's stories.  He even claims to have gotten on board with gay marriage when his father showed him a gay couple kissing at DuPont.  And Biden figures in the latest DuPont story which involves handing over advanced military technology to China.

How the IRS Allowed China Nonprofits to Buy Code Pink.  The 'House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party' was in session when a Code Pink activist disrupted it by holding up a sign reading, "China Is Not Our Enemy."  "The United States needs collaboration, not competition, with China," she insisted.  Collaboration was the correct term.  While most people stopped paying attention to Code Pink in the aftermath of the Iraq War, the leftist anti-war group never went away, but beyond the backing for Venezuela, Iran and the other usual terror states, it's become a vocal defender of China.  The level of collaboration between Code Pink and China is unusual even on the anti-war Left.  "If the U.S. crushes China," Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans claimed, it "would cut off hope for the human race and life on Earth."

'It's Almost Everywhere,' Scholar Says of China's Infiltration of America's K-12 Schools.  China's infiltration of American K-12 schools is "almost everywhere," according to Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars.  "That is, in every state that we've looked at, we have found instances of it, but I would say it's concentrated in the feeder schools to elite education, which means mostly West Coast and East Coast, but not exclusively those," Wood says.  "The effort here is, China's not just spreading around its resources promiscuously across the land.  It's looking for places where buying influence will yield results in the long term," he adds.  "So, it's widespread, but much more prevalent here on the East Coast and California."  In April, The Heritage Foundation awarded the National Association of Scholars its Innovation Prize, which "is intended to spark creative disruption in the conservative movement as we strive to ensure the future of American self-governance."

China Is Screwed:  Pipe People.  First up:  Young people's whose job prospects and futures are so dim that they're actually living in concrete pipes.  [Video clip]  Takeaways:
  •   Certainly America has no shortage of transients living rough, but in contrast to ragged drug addicts, alcoholics and dangerous lunatics, the people living in these pipes look to be normal, healthy 20-something Chinese.
  •   Just because you're living in a concrete pipe doesn't mean you can't be a live-streamer.  Like the under-the-bridge streamers seen in previous videos, you wonder how widespread this behavior is, or whether we're just seeing the edge of the freak show.
  •   "Despite the female hosts not being beautiful and the male hosts not handsome, it doesn't affect viewership."  I do rather want to check their numbers, here.

The Editor says...
Who owns the pipes?  On whose property are the pipes sitting?

A Modest Proposal to Defeat the Political Class.  On an average day, about 140 people die in the U.S. from fentanyl, more than from any other drug in history.  Not limited to viral agents, China is also a culprit behind our fentanyl crisis.  Precursor chemicals are made in China and sent to Mexican labs to be manufactured into fentanyl.  The penalty for manufacturing and distributing most illicit drugs in China is death, while here, you get a clean needle or a shot of Narcan.  China exports this killer to America to disrupt and distract our country.  Secretary of State Antony Blinken, engaging in meaningless negotiations with China and somehow expecting our enemy to change its ways, is another symptom of our weakness.  How many ministerial-level Chinese have ventured here, compared to the wave of high-level officials we have dispatched, hats in hand?  Isn't it obvious our strategy is wrong?

Silk Road Paved with Cash:  Court records confirm millions flowed to Biden family from China.  In the end, there really was a silk road of money that flowed from China to the Biden family's coffers, despite Joe Biden's insistence to the contrary.  The U.S. Attorney's office in Delaware — which charged Hunter Biden with tax and gun crimes last month — released to a federal court last week a now-scuttled plea deal that affirmed the presidential son got millions himself from Chinese sources in 2017-18 alone.  That included money from a Chinese energy firm as well as legal payments from a Chinese executive convicted of bribery.  The records confirm reporting from investigative author Peter Schweizer's book "Red Handed," Just the News stories and investigations by Congress that date to 2020 when Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed bank transfers from Beijing to Biden accounts.

Large numbers of Chinese illegal aliens are showing up in America.  Here are just a few things to consider about China vis-à-vis America:
  •   Its shoddy goods completely undercut our manufacturing sector, helped for years by greedy American unions that killed the goose that laid the golden manufacturing egg and by legislatively cheap postage.
  •   Speaking of China's large economic empire, it controls most of the rare earth elements on which our modern world relies, whether here or in Africa.
  •   It's allied itself with Russia, and the two nations are showing increased aggression against America.
  •   Millions of Chinese-government-connected dollars have ended up in Biden family accounts.
  •   It blatantly sent a spy balloon floating across areas of America that are critical for national security, and (coincidentally, I'm sure) Joe Biden just let it happen.
  •   COVID — and I'm not even talking about that terrifying, illegal Chinese-connected bio lab in California.

Meloni pulling Italy out of Belt and Road pact with China.  Since profiling her in February — and the atrocious way she's been treated by the elitist cabal that runs the EU — Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy has done nothing but move her country forward.  Isn't that delightful?  In fact, there are a lot of things looking rosy about Italy that can't be said for the powerhouses of the E.U. and they still treat Meloni [badly]. [...] Besides negotiating new oil deals to free her country from EU Green entanglements as far as energy goes, Meloni has also been considering detangling some of her former office holders' deals.  One of which was not only baffling, but — as she calls it — "atrocious."

U.S. Energy Secretary Consulted Top Chinese Energy Official Before Draining Strategic Oil Reserve.  he Biden Administration's Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, held several talks with her Chinese counterpart prior to the widely-panned decision to drain the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) back in 2021.  As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the meetings were documented in Department of Energy (DOE) calendars obtained by Fox News.  Granholm met with Zhang Jianhua, chairman of the China National Energy Administration, on November 19th and November 21st, 2021, meetings which were never publicly revealed.  Just two days after their second meeting, on November 23rd, Joe Biden announced the decision to start draining the SPR in order to combat rising gas prices in the United States.  "Secretary Granholm's multiple closed-door meetings with a CCP-connected energy official raise serious questions about the level of Chinese influence on the Biden administration's energy agenda," said Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust.

Judge orders Catherine Herridge to reveal sources for stories on FBI, Chinese American scientist.  A federal judge ordered CBS News senior correspondent Catherine Herridge to reveal her sources for a series of stories about the FBI's investigation of a Chinese American scientist back when she worked for Fox News.  The order last week from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington D.C. comes after scientist Yanping Chen filed a lawsuit against the FBI, claiming that the agency violated the privacy act by improperly leaking information about her.  While working at Fox News in 2017, Herridge used a confidential source or sources to obtain material about the federal counterintelligence probe of Chen.

Dem Donor Behind Vast Pro-China Propaganda Network:  Report.  Neville Singham, a tech millionaire and Democratic donor, reportedly provides significant funding to an expansive pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda network, The New York Times reported Saturday.  Singham's money is financing the Chinese government's propaganda efforts through a complex web of shell companies and nonprofits that stretch around the globe, according to the Times.  Singham has also donated thousands of dollars to left-wing politicians like Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Massachusetts and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, campaign finance records show.  Singham's millions have found their way to organizations like a think tank in Massachusetts, a venue space in New York, a South African political party and media organizations in Brazil and India, according to the Times.  Each of these groups essentially blend left-wing talking points with CCP propaganda narratives, such as those that dismiss Taiwan's claim to independence and downplay the ongoing genocide of Uyghur Muslims in the Chinese mainland, the Times' investigation found.

Illegal Chinese Bio-Lab Discovered in Fresno, California, Was Subsidized by Gavin Newsom.  The secret and illegal Chinese bio-lab that was recently discovered in Fresno, California, which was allegedly full of mice that were engineered to carry COVID-19, was subsidized by Governor Gavin Newsom.  Newsom is in the news constantly these days because he is basically the back-up plan for Democrats in 2024 if Biden can't run.  Do you think anyone in media will ask him about this?  Don't count on it. [...] How many more of these secret labs do you suppose there are in the United States right now?

Energy Sec Had Secret Conversation With CCP Official Before SPR Release.  There have been a lot of questions raised about how Joe Biden and his administration have dealt with China, particularly in light of the Biden family foreign business dealings scandal.  As my colleague Andrew Malcolm has said, "He's been remarkably passive given the increasing power and aggressiveness of Beijing's Communist leaders."  We've seen how weak Biden has been in response to all kinds of troubling actions from China, including spying on the U.S. — from the spy balloon to the most recent hacking of the U.S. Ambassador's email account, as well as the accessing of accounts of other U.S. government officials.  Now there's more troubling news about something that happened in 2021 — but we're just finding out now.

Is China Influencing What Your Child Is Learning in School?  Parents Defending Education has released a new report that offers some unsettling information about the reach of the People's Republic of China in U.S. K-12 schools through so-called Confucius Classrooms.  "Confucius Classrooms are a program that is intended to teach children Chinese language and culture, which on its face sounds benign, but some of your viewers, listeners might remember Confucius Institutes, which were the corollary in the university system," says Nicole Neily, founder and president of Parents Defending Education.  Parents Defending Education describes itself on its website as "a national grass-roots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas."

Fresno Lab:  China's Operation to Exterminate Americans.  Prestige BioTech, a Nevada company fronting for parties in China, was caught operating an "unlicensed laboratory" in Reedley, California in March.  State and Fresno County officers raided the facility, and the FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have since been participating in the investigation.  The illegal operation housed white lab mice — 773 live and more than 175 dead — that were genetically engineered to carry disease.  Authorities also found medical waste and chemical, viral, and biological agents.  There were on site at least 20 potentially infectious pathogens including those causing coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis, and herpes.  The lab is "mysterious," as the California Globe news site proclaimed.  We know enough, however, to be alarmed.

Two U.S. Navy Sailors Arrested On Espionage Charges Involving Alleged Ties To China.  Two U.S. Navy sailors were arrested on national security-related charges related to allegedly sending sensitive military information to the Chinese Communist Party, federal officials said on Thursday.  "These individuals stand accused of violating the commitments they made to protect the United States and betraying the public trust, to the benefit of the [People's Republic of China] government," Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division, said in a news release.

GOP Sen. Marshall:  Biden's 'Schizophrenic' Policy Pushes EVs While Allowing Chinese Chargers, Blocking Mining.  On Friday's broadcast of the Fox Business Network's "Kudlow," Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) [...] said, "This is the next chapter of Joe Biden's schizophrenic policies, which all seem to enrich China.  I say schizophrenic, he wants us to go from 0 to 100 miles an hour in converting all of our cars to EVs, but he won't let us mine the lithium and copper that we need to make those batteries.  He won't let us be able to make affordable steel in this country that we need to make those cars with.  So, all of these policies basically enrich China.  Schizophrenic in the sense that he says, when they develop policies, when we set laws to spend these trillions of dollars, it's supposed to be made in America.  But guess what?  His other policies keep us from making it in America and enrich China.  Sean, sometimes I just throw my hands up and say, I don't know what this president is thinking."

Why was there an illegal China-linked bio lab in Fresno?  You would think that this would get a bit more attention than it has.  It certainly piqued my interest when I saw it.  A China-linked company ran a grossly unsafe bio lab filled with deadly pathogens in a supposedly empty warehouse in Fresno, California.  A company without much of a backstory, addresses that don't exist, and a president who can only be reached by email.  [Tweet]

China-linked Bio Lab Discovered in Fresno County, California.  On March 3, an illegal bio lab was discovered in a believed-to-be vacant building in Reedley, California in Fresno County.  City code enforcement stumbled upon the building in December 2022 when they discovered a garden hose running up into the building through a hole in the wall.  In March, they obtained a warrant to inspect the property, and in April, the Fresno County Department of Public Health ordered an inspection of the facility.  Investigators inspected the building that contained the lab in July and found a room used to make COVID-19 tests and pregnancy tests.  They also found over 35 freezers and refrigeration units that contained "thousands of bodily fluids, serums, tissues, and other medical items."

Illegal Chinese Bio Lab Discovered in Central California.  Reedley is a small city in California's San Joaquin Valley, just east of Fresno.  But a troubling discovery there in early March has recently come to light — and raises a number of questions.  It began with a garden hose attached illegally to a warehouse near the center of town.  The building was supposed to be vacant.  When code enforcement officers from the city went to investigate, they discovered that it was in use and observed several code violations.

Biden Admin. Senior Officials Visit China and Return Empty-Handed.  The Communist Chinese regime will do whatever President Xi Jinping believes is necessary to surpass the United States, which President Xi considers to be in decline.  President Joe Biden is proving to be President Xi's perfect patsy to help him achieve his grand ambitions.  President Biden remains under the dangerous delusion that China is merely a vigorous competitor, not the U.S.'s chief adversary that is determined to replace America as the world's number one military, economic, and technological superpower.  President Biden is on a fool's mission to explore whether there are areas of mutual interest where the Chinese regime might be willing to genuinely cooperate with the United States.  There are none.  Nevertheless, in desperation he has sent so far three of his administration's cabinet-level officials to China to restore fruitless dialogue with their high-level Chinese counterparts.

Why America's Elites are Dedicated to Engagement with Communist China.  Last week's visit to the People's Republic of China (PRC) by the former U.S. Secretary of State and the Biden administration's Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John F. Kerry, represents the end of the beginning of a series of high-level Biden administration visits with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders.  The purpose of these visits that started with current Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June and included the kowtowing visit by U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen can best be described as the unashamed resumption of the Kissinger School of Engagement with the PRC.  Given the PRC's threat to U.S. national interests and the American homeland, including the death of 100,000 Americans from PRC-supplied fentanyl and other expression of unilateral aggression by the CCP in its pursuit of its so-called Great Rejuvenation of China, it is hard to fathom why the Biden administration would reverse course from the Trump era policy of Great Power competition to embrace unconditional engagement.

Chinese retailer Shein faces RICO lawsuit alleging mass infringement of copyrighted clothing designs.  In the latest sign of legal troubles for Chinese clothing retailer Shein, the company has been hit with a RICO lawsuit that alleges that their theft of clothing designers' intellectual property is so systemic that it amounts to racketeering.  The lawsuit, which was filed by three clothing designers, accuses Shein of using "truly exact copies of copyrightable graphic design," and further claims that "Shein has grown rich by committing individual infringements over and over again, as part of a long and continuous pattern of racketeering, which shows no sign of abating."

Chasing a Green Chimera, Biden Has Put America in the Red Dragon's Grasp.  No country would ever depend on an out-and-out rival for something as vital as energy.  Yet the Biden administration, through its zealous, misguided pursuit of "net-zero emissions," is fast-tracking America's dependence on Communist China for the minerals and components that back-end green technology.  The administration also is curbing the mining industry, again allowing China to monopolize America and the world in minerals and ores.  This strategic disaster is a complete reversal of what President Donald Trump had achieved. [...] Biden, on assuming office, pledged to eliminate the fossil fuel industry and pursue a radical climate agenda to replace carbon energy with renewables.  He has since called for replacing 50% of carbon-fueled automobiles with electric vehicles (E.V.s) by 2030, creating a carbon-free electric grid by 2035, and having a carbon-free economy by 2050.  This push toward unstable solar and wind power will markedly increase dependence on China, which dominates the market in materials required for E.V.s, batteries, and other renewables.

Government Officials Were Stunned by 'Startling' Spike in Chinese Donations to UPenn After Biden Think Tank Opened.  The former chief investigator for the Department of Education said the agency noticed a "startling" spike in Chinese donations to the University of Pennsylvania after President Joe Biden opened his think tank at the school in 2017.  "It was extraordinary," said Paul Moore, who served as the agency's chief investigative counsel during the Trump administration, in congressional testimony on Thursday.  UPenn raked in over $100 million from China-based contributors between 2017 and 2022, the Washington Free Beacon reported earlier this year.  This was a substantial increase from the four years prior to 2017, when the school received a total of $19 million.  Moore's testimony comes as UPenn and the Penn Biden Center face scrutiny over the surge in foreign donations, many of them anonymous, that coincided with the think tank's opening and President Joe Biden's election.  Watchdog groups have said the funding raises concerns about foreign influence-buying.

Chinese Neurostrike weapons program designed to control brains, and the world.  The Washington Times recently obtained a copy of a report by three open-source intelligence analysts stating that China's People's Liberation Army is developing high-technology weapons designed to disrupt brain functions and influence government leaders or entire populations.  Well, that would explain a lot, particularly the actions of the Biden administration and the Democratic Party in general.  The 12-page report is titled "Enumerating, Targeting and Collapsing the Chinese Communist Party's Neurostrike Program."  It states that the newly designed weapons could be used to directly attack or control brains using microwave or other directed energy, via handheld guns or larger weapons firing electromagnetic beams.  The intelligence analysts ominously added that the threat of China's brain warfare weapons being used prior to or during a future conflict is no longer theoretical.

Chinese spies hacked the Commerce Secretary's email.  There were reports up this morning that Chinese hackers have breached a bunch of organizations and government agencies, but the update this afternoon is that the hack included the email of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. [...] The [Washington] Post reports that the hackers used a "consumer signing key" to access the accounts.  They gained access on May 15 and were discovered on June 16.  The key they used could only be created using an even more powerful key which is kept secret at Microsoft.  So now Microsoft is looking into how Chinese hackers got hold of it.  The fact that they don't know seems worrisome. [...] This is obviously not the first time we've been hacked by China.  Why does this keep happening?  Probably because China puts far more resources into hacking than the US does.

Chinese Hackers Spied on the State and Commerce Departments.  The State and Commerce Departments were among the government agencies targeted by Chinese hackers last month in the weeks preceding Antony Blinken's trip to Beijing.  The hacks were probably affiliated with China's military and spy services, the New York Times reported, and they began after months of increasing tensions between Washington and Beijing.  Republicans have called on the administration to halt its pursuit of a thaw, given the spy-balloon incident, China's ongoing cooperation with Cuba, and the country's treatment of the Uyghurs and Taiwan.  The State Department learned that a number of employees had their accounts compromised on June 16. Blinken's trip nonetheless went ahead later that day and for the next several days.  Other administration officials either have made or will make visits to China, including Treasury secretary Janet Yellen and climate envoy John Kerry.

GOP Senators Demand Biden DOJ Provide Answers On CCP Intel-Linked 'Service Centers'.  Ten Republican senators urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday to provide answers about at least seven "service centers" tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that are operating in U.S. cities.  A CCP "intelligence service" called the United Front Work Department (UFWD) operates Overseas Chinese Service Centers (OCSCs) out of nonprofits in at least seven U.S. cities, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation recently revealed.  Established between 2014 and 2017, the U.S. OCSCs are located in San Francisco, California; Houston, Texas; Omaha, Nebraska; St. Paul, Minnesota; Salt Lake City, Utah; St. Louis, Missouri and Charlotte, North Carolina, according to Chinese state-media reports.

Hunter Biden, Associates Took Millions From Chinese Company That Paid 'Missing' Biden Witness Now Charged By DOJ.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday charged a key witness in the investigation into alleged Biden family corruption for taking money from the same Chinese firm that paid Hunter Biden's businesses and associates millions, according to DOJ records.  Gal Luft, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, allegedly "willfully" failed to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) while working to "advance the interests of China" in the U.S. by brokering the illegal sale of Chinese weapons and Iranian oil to China, according to the DOJ.  The DOJ alleges that Luft's think tank, the Institute for the Analysis for Global Security, accepted at least $700,000 from CEFC China Energy beginning in 2015, which happens to be the same Chinese firm that allegedly sent millions to accounts linked to Hunter Biden and his associates, in 2017, according to a Senate committee report and a Washington Post review of Biden documents.

China [is] readying for total war, [while] America [is] laser-focused on pronouns and wood-fired pizza ovens.  The Chinese military is training kindergarteners in the ways of war.  According to scores of social media accounts reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is teaching the kiddies how to handle firearms and fight like soldiers in boot camps all across China this summer.  The boot camps reportedly feature training for both boys and girls, involving a wide variety of 'toy' weapons, including knives, grenades, rifles, and shoulder-fired missiles.  Moreover, the children are required to adopt military behavior — such as saluting — according to the schools' social media posts.  Government documents note that the militarization of even extremely young Chinese is occurring subsequent to a 2019 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee decision to push for increased "National Defense Education," which includes a mandate that schools hold National Defense Education activities starting in 2022.

American Companies You Didn't Know Were Owned By Chinese Investors.  [#1] AMC:  Popular cinema company AMC, short for American Multi-Cinema, has been around for over a century and is headquartered in Leawood, KS. In 2012, Beijing-based Dalian Wanda Group became the majority stakeholder, giving them the power to make decisions at the executive level.  Wanda invested $2.8 billion in the historic deal.  AMC owned by Chinese investorsAs the largest cinema company in the world, AMC is owned by several investors.  In 2018, Silver Lake Partners of Menlo Park, CA made an investment of $600 million, giving the company some executive power, but still much less than Wanda.

Biden Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Blasted for Repeatedly Bowing to Her Chinese Counterpart in Beijing.  Joe Biden's Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was in China this week and just couldn't seem to stop bowing to her Chinese counterpart in Beijing.  The optics are absolutely terrible but Yellen didn't seem to mind even though she had to know that multiple cameras were rolling the entire time.  What an embarrassment.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is slammed for bowing multiple times to China's vice-premier.  Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was slammed for bowing multiple times when she met with China's vice premier He Lifeng, as some critics say the protocol error is a sign of American weakness.  Yellen, who served as chair of the Federal Reserve before becoming Joe Biden's top financial official, wrapped up her first visit to China as treasury secretary on Sunday.  Moments after bowing at least three times, Yellen then stumbled over He's name, calling him 'Vice Premier Hu.'

Report: China Has Had an Intelligence Base in Cuba for at Least 30 Years.  A retired American intelligence official told the Miami Herald in a report published Wednesday that China has been conducting espionage activities in Cuba since at least 1992, taking advantage of the fall of the Soviet Union to forge a closer relationship with the fellow communist nation.  The report follows growing concern within the United States regarding China and Cuba's publicly blossoming relationship, triggered by a report in the Wall Street Journal last month claiming that Beijing and Havana were discussing plans to build a spy base on the island.  Cuba is about 90 miles away from America and hosts a pivotal American military base, the Guantánamo Bay facility, making it an enticing target for such activities by U.S. rivals.

The bioweapon that elected Biden.  Red China won Cold War II.  As Sun Tzu said 2,500 years ago, "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."  Chairman Xi did so by using a bioweapon and bribes to eliminate the leader who opposed him.  Xi replaced him with Biden who he bought off a few years earlier for a lousy few million dollars.  The Jerusalem Post reported, "China deliberately engineered the coronavirus virus as a bioweapon, a Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher claimed this week in an interview conducted by Chinese-born human rights activist and author Jennifer Zeng.  "Researcher Chao Shao asserts that the virus was deliberately engineered by China as a bioweapon, and that his colleagues were tasked with identifying the most effective strain for spreading among various species, including people."  Hmm, by various species does this include bats?  If so, it was not bats giving man a virus — as the media and its deep state masters insisted — but man giving bats a virus.  Which is more logical?

The Bidens' Existential Threats to the American Rule of Law.  The American people are bewildered over why the Biden administration is appeasing the Chinese government.  It keeps insisting, contrary to evidence, that bilateral relations are in great shape — after successful and unapologetic Chinese overt espionage efforts to send a spy balloon across sensitive areas of the United States.  China has defiantly stonewalled any request to explain how and why a porous Chinese virology lab incompetently let escape a gain-of-function virus, a virtual bioweapon, that killed over a million Americans and sickened over 300 million.  Its jets now play chicken with our own in the skies above the South China Sea.  And its ships do the same with our vessels in the same environs.  It threatens to escalate to nuclear weapons if the United States should protect its de facto ally Taiwan from envisioned Chinese aggression.  All the above is in addition to years of Chinese copyright infringement, patent violations, manipulation of Chinese currency, trade dumping, and systematic espionage operations throughout sensitive areas of the U.S. military and general economy.

Klaus Schwab praises Communist China's 'achievements,' wants to learn from premier's 'vision'.  Klaus Schwab, the founder and chairman of the globalist World Economic Forum (WEF), has once again praised the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for its "achievements."  During the opening speech at the WEF's "Summer Davos" taking place in Tianjin, China, Schwab spoke fondly of the CCP's second-ranking member, Li Qiang, who also took part in the event.

Hunter Biden Asks for $10M from CCP-Linked Associate: Bidens Do What 'Chairman Wants'.  Just days after demanding to be paid by an associate of a Chinese energy company, CEFC, in a 2017 WhatsApp text with President Joe Biden "sitting" next to him, Hunter Biden asked a second CEFC business associate, Gongwen "Kevin" Dong, for $10 million in another WhatsApp text, noting the Biden family is best at "doing exactly what the chairman wants."  The "chairman," as Hunter Biden referenced, was CEFC's chairman Ye Jianming, who paid Hunter a $1 million retainer fee for legal services in 2017.  Hunter also received a large diamond from Ye in February 2017 worth an estimated $80,000.

Four Ways the Deep State Betrays Americans.  [T]he CEO of Raytheon — one of America's major defense companies — gave an interview in which he stated clearly that "decoupling" from China is impossible.  "Think about the $500 billion of trade that goes from China to the U.S. every year," Greg Hayes argued.  "More than 95% of rare earth materials or metals come from, or are processed in, China.  There is no alternative."  Hayes assured The Financial Times that it would take years to rebuild the necessary infrastructure in the United States before American dependence on China could logically come to an end.  Entrepreneur Arnaud Bertrand called Raytheon's embarrassing admission "hilarious."  In effect, "one of the U.S. top weapons manufacturers" says, "we need China to fight China."

Media peddles new gas-stove study, neglects to mention one thing.  Media outlets covering a recently-published study claiming to show the harmful effects of gas stoves this past week failed to note that the study was primarily funded by a China-linked climate group.  The study found that the burning of methane in gas stoves raised household levels of benzene — a carcinogenic chemical — to those comparable with secondhand smoke, after setting one burner to high or an oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 minutes.  Outlets such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and NPR covered the study in the past seven days, but did not mention that the study was conducted with "primary support" from the High Tide Foundation, a climate activist non-profit committed to reducing methane that was co-founded by Richard Lawrence, an investment banker with significant economic ties to China.

Biden's Economic Program is Made in China.  As reported by New York Times Magazine at the time, Joe Biden's goal was to transform the economy from the get-go: "The Biden Team Wants to Transform the Economy.  Really." Nearly two-and-a-half years later, the damage and chaos of that transformation process are obvious: continuing high inflation (especially energy, food, and gasoline prices), rising interest rates, recession predictions, a stagnant economy, depleted individual savings, sky-high credit card debt, and other indications of stagflation and recession.  Who has benefited from the Biden economy?  Green new deal grifters benefit from the gargantuan tax subsidies and federal spending on transitioning the US economy from hydrocarbon energy sources to "clean" sources, especially solar and wind energy.  The communist Chinese are happy to benefit from Biden economic policies that ultimately mandate and subsidize green products from Chinese companies at the expense of the US companies who produce and use hydrocarbons.

China's death throes will be a danger to us all.  The Bretton Woods deal that America made with its allies was simple.  First, the American market would be open to all its allies.  Second, the United States and its navy, the most powerful fleet the world had ever known, would guarantee the safety of all ocean supply chains.  And third, in exchange for that largesse the allies would side with us against the Soviet Union.  China joined that system in 1980 and together with cheap labor, industrial espionage, and intellectual property theft rapidly became the workshop of the world.  Not only was China the most populous country in the world, it promised to overtake the United States economy, become the world's leader in technology, and dominate the emergent global world order.  Those dreams are now being terminated by the impacts of demographics, geography, and "Xi Jinping thought."

US Appears to Have Caved to China, Now Backs China's One China Policy Against Taiwan.  The recent shift in US policy regarding Taiwan has ignited a firestorm of controversy, as new information linking the Biden family with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) raises serious questions about potential ulterior motives.  Amidst mounting allegations and growing calls for accountability, even some Democrats are voicing concerns and calling for decisive action.  [Video clip]

Blinken Panders to Murderous CCP, Promises No U.S. Support for Taiwan Independence.  Joe Biden's cowardly secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is in China, kowtowing to America's number one enemy — the genocidal Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  Blinken even asserted, contrary to multiple previous assurances from the Biden administration, that the U.S. does "not support Taiwan independence" — and he even used a CCP propaganda phrase to justify it.  The CCP, which is an illegitimate, usurping, and mass-murdering dictatorship, continually blathers about the "One China" principle — by which they mean that they want to own the free, legitimate, and sovereign republic of Taiwan.  The CCP, with its bloody rise to power on the bodies of 500 million victims, has no more right to rule Taiwan than it has to rule mainland China.

Biden's self-abasement toward China risks provoking an invasion of Taiwan.  In multiple ways, President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. is signaling to Xi Jinping and the rest of China's leadership that he is accepting a status as subordinate to them.  In the context of China's openly proclaimed goal of taking over US ally Taiwan, this is an example of what the late Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called "provocative weakness"

One Day After Biden Bent the Knee, the Chinese Thoroughly Embarrass the Biden Administration.  On Saturday, Joe Biden arrived in Philadelphia, PA, to battle it out with Sen. John Fetterman for who is the least capable of doing their job.  Before their trainwreck of a joint presser, though, the president took a question on US tensions with China while exiting Air Force One.  What he told a reporter in response was astonishing.  Namely, Biden claimed that the Chinese spy balloon that traversed much of the continental United States wasn't intentional and that CCP leadership wasn't even aware of what the balloon was doing.

Green energy Democrats took donations from head of China-linked group pushing gas stoves ban.  House Democrats who voted against two GOP proposals to block President Joe Biden from banning gas stoves accepted campaign donations from the head of a China-linked group pushing to electrify the U.S. economy, records show.  Reps.  Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Ro Khanna (D-CA), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), and Adam Schiff (D-CA), among other Democrats, voted "nay" on Tuesday and Wednesday on the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act and Save Our Gas Stoves Act.  The cohort, and other congressional Democrats prioritizing green programs, have been boosted to the tune of almost $23,000 by Hal Harvey, founder and president of Climate Imperative, a nonprofit group with ties to China that has doled out large grants to activists behind expansive electrification policies, according to campaign finance disclosures.

China's economy is [much worse] than anyone thought.  Entering 2023, the relentless drumbeat of Wall Street consensus was pounding out one consistent rhythm:  China is back.  After years of lockdowns and suppressed output, economists and investors cheered the end of Beijing's zero-COVID policy and the economic boom that was sure to follow.  The colossus-in-waiting that is the Chinese consumer was about to roam freely, analysts said.  This was great news for the whole world — everyone would benefit from the globe's second-largest economy getting healthy.  But six months into the year, Wall Street's dreams for the country are turning into a nightmare.  Far from an economic explosion, China's recovery from COVID has been weak.  Industrial production has disappointed.  Trade — both imports and exports — has slowed markedly.  There is debt everywhere, especially in property development, which makes up 30% of the economy.

China likely sending military personnel into US, Homeland chair says.  House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., on Wednesday said China is likely sending military personnel into the United States across the southern border.  At a press conference announcing an investigation into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Green said there are "Chinese Nationals, many of whom are military-aged men" with ties to the Chinese Communist Party who have crossed the southern border and been released into the United States.  "We have no idea who these people are and it's very likely, using Russia's template of sending military personnel into Ukraine, China is doing the same in the United States," Green also said.  The revelation came from a Border Patrol sector chief, Green said, adding that he expects a classified briefing on the matter in the near future.

China is putting its soldiers on U.S. soil, thanks to Joe Biden's open border.  Is China positioning its soldiers on U.S. soil in preparation for a conflict with the U.S.? [...] It sounds fantastical, the figment of a fevered mind seeing Chinese conspiracies all over the place.  But there's reason to think it's not.  The information is correlated with a striking rise in Chinese illegal border crossers into the U.S. through our southern border, some 10,000 from October 2022, the beginning of the federal fiscal year, through April 2023, a sharp rise compared to about 2,000 who arrived from the same period last year.  Virtually all of them are military-aged young men.  Might that just be the plan?  Green's point, that this was how Russia began its offensive against Ukraine, is likely important — this is the new style of warfare for nations that mean to win, at least, and the Chinese are famous for copycatting.

Top GOP Rep Says There's Evidence The Biden Admin Released Migrants With Chinese Military Ties Into The US.  House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green possesses evidence that some Chinese migrants that crossed the southern border illegally and were released into the U.S. under the Biden administration are connected to the Chinese Communist Party and China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), he told the Daily Caller News Foundation during a press conference Wednesday.  The intelligence came directly from a Border Patrol sector chief, Green told the DCNF.  Border Patrol has seen a roughly 393% increase in illegal Chinese migrants at the southern border, with 9,711 Chinese migrant encounters recorded between October 2022 and April.

Chinese Battery Plant In Michigan Gets Biden Admin Approval.  The Biden administration is permitting Gotion, a Chinese electric vehicle battery company, to move forward with the construction of a new plant in Michigan with $175 million in direct taxpayer funding, according to Fox News.  Gotion — a subsidiary of parent company Gotion High-Tech — had previously halted development of the Mecosta County battery plant earlier this year and requested a federal review, after intense criticism about the company's ties to China and concern from local residents, Fox reported.  On Tuesday, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) decided that the proposed plant was not a covered real estate purchase under the Defense Prohibition Act, which ultimately deemed the company a non-threat to national security.

What Will Happen if China Strikes Taiwan During the Biden Administration?  Biden is compromised regarding China, and the two years' worth of weapons promised to Taiwan has not been delivered.  On Sunday, for the second time since Thursday, Chinese fighters and bombers entered Taiwan's air defense zone, causing the island to scramble jets.  Taiwan detected 24 Chinese aircraft, both fighters, and bombers, on Sunday.  Ten of them crossed the "median line."  On Thursday, 37 Chinese aircraft entered Taiwan's air defense zone.  The actions of China are intended to demoralize Taiwan at this point.  But if China strikes Taiwan while the US is weak under the Biden administration, things will go "off the rails" instantly.  Biden has repeatedly said the US will protect Taiwan, and the White House staff has repeatedly walked back those statements.  With the backdrop of the disastrous US pullout from Afghanistan, it is unlikely we would protect Taiwan.

China using secret base in Cuba to spy on U.S., Biden admin official confirms.  China has been spying on the United States from a base in Cuba, a Biden administration official said on Saturday, claiming that "this is an issue that this administration inherited."  The Wall Street Journal, followed by POLITICO and other outlets, reported on Thursday that China had been in conversations with Havana to establish a new spy base in the island nation.  That same day, the White House and the Pentagon said the reporting was "inaccurate," without going into details.

China has a secret spy base in Cuba from which they've been gathering intel on the US since at least 2019, White House says.  News just broke moments ago from the Wall Street Journal that the White House has divulged that China has had a spy base in Cuba since at least 2019 from which they gather intel on the United States.  Cuba is just 100 miles off the Florida coast.  Washington also said that China's attempts to gather intel via espionage are expanding rapidly. "Officials familiar with the matter" said that China is paying Cuba "billions of dollars" for the privilege.

China To Build Spy Base In Cuba Focused On Intercepting Communications Within U.S.: Report.  Communist China has reached a deal with Cuba to build an electronic eavesdropping base in the island country — around 100 miles off the American coast, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal.  The deal, which is reportedly worth billions and has been agreed upon in principle, will allow China to construct a facility that can intercept communications in the southeastern U.S., home to dozens of military bases.  The Chinese spy base could also monitor U.S. ship traffic, WSJ reported.  National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said he could not speak specifically to the alarming report, but the planned spy base in Cuba has caused alarm within the Biden administration, according to the outlet.  Officials said that the Chinese facility would allow Beijing to monitor emails, phone calls, and satellite transmissions through espionage monitoring known as SIGINT.

This means it must be true.
Pentagon and White House deny reports that China plans to build spy station in Cuba.  The Pentagon and the White House on Thursday denied reports that China is planning to build a listening post in Cuba that would allow the communist power to eavesdrop on electronic communications across the southeastern US.  Department of Defense spokesman Brig.  Gen. Pat Ryder called reports of an agreement between China and Cuba to build the secret base "inaccurate."  "I can tell you based on the information that we have that that is not accurate, that we are not aware of China and Cuba developing any type of spy station," Ryder said during a Thursday press briefing at the Pentagon.

Base Cuba: An 'unprecedented new threat' from China.  With weak, doddering, and likely compromised Joe Biden at the helm of the U.S., the Chinese are moving fast now, taking their cold war with the U.S. deep into our hemisphere.  It's not just illegal police stations, extensive spying on Congress members, and brazen balloon surveillance.  Now this shocking news came out yesterday about China's reach into the U.S.-dominated Caribbean. [...] It probably shouldn't come as a surprise that they're doing this.  Their aim is to take Taiwan.  They know the critical importance of sea lanes and sea lines of communication for the projection of power.  The U.S. fought Spain over this very issue in the Caribbean in 1898.

Warfare Defense Expert: Chinese Military Intelligence Pouring in Illegally.  Dr. Lawrence Sellin describes himself on his Twitter profile as a "Biological & Chemical Warfare Defense Expert, IT & pharmaceutical industries, medical research, Colonel U.S. Army Reserve retired, Iraq & Afghanistan veteran."  He has sent out the alarm as to the number of Chinese Communist Party members pouring into our country illegally.  He said they are financed by Chinese people already living in the country.  "No question that Chinese military/intelligence personnel are crossing into the U.S. with the Chinese illegal alien invaders, whose numbers are increasing.  The U.S. government is helping China do it.  Inside the U.S., invaders get support from the CCP Fifth Column already in place," Sellin tweeted.

GOP States Hit with ACLU Lawsuits to Stop Bans Against CCP Buying Land Near Military Installations.  Multiple Asian American groups are taking legal action against Republican-led states over laws passed to prohibit affiliates of the Chinese Communist Party from buying property.  Currently enacted in Florida and Alabama, with Texas considering a similar law, these measures restrict foreign nationals from purchasing land near U.S. military installations or locations affecting national or state security.  The plaintiffs argue that these bans constitute unlawful discrimination.

US Sent Billions in Funding to China, Russia for Cat Experiments, Wuhan Lab Research: Ernst.  Hundreds of millions of U.S. tax dollars went to recipients in China and Russia in recent years without being properly tracked by the federal government, including a grant that enabled a state-run Russian lab to test cats on treadmills, according to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa).  Ernst and her staff investigators, working with auditors at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Research Service, as well as two nonprofit Washington watchdogs — Open The Books (OTB) and the White Coat Waste Project (WCWP) — discovered dozens of other grants that weren't counted on the federal government's USASpending.gov internet database.  While the total value of the uncounted grants found by the Ernst team is $1.3 billion, that amount is just the tip of the iceberg, the GAO reported.

Chinese 'spies' disguised themselves as tourists and tried to infiltrate multiple US military bases in Alaska.  Suspected Chinese spies disguised as tourists have made multiple attempts to infiltrate US military bases in Alaska, according to US officials.  The attempted breaches may be probes into US military activities in the state, soldiers familiar with the matter told USA Today.  On one recent occasion, a vehicle carrying Chinese citizens blew past a security checkpoint at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks.

Digging to America?  China is digging the world's deepest hole.  In what may look like an absurdity of communist central planning, China is digging the world's deepest hole. [...] The hole, which at that depth is very difficult to engineer, will penetrate the superficial layers of the Earth's crust to reach never before breached levels, and for scientists, that can provide information that can be used to determine when earthquakes and volcanic eruptions will occur, as well as identify critical mineral and energy resources, according to the report.  The report doesn't say so, but it's known that the prospect of locating "deep oil" is said to be a stunningly important one for China, which not only could be lucrative for the Chinese, but also could yield complete energy independence if it were developed.  Meanwhile, the Chinese are also all about locating rare-earth minerals for the electric cars and other devices they sell to the U.S. They seem to be sticking to oil themselves, though.

When it comes to China, "we have no plan".  Inside Washington, there is still significant consternation over the possibility that China may invade Taiwan and what the U.S. response would be.  That's understandable, given the current circumstances.  But there is a larger and different type of "war" with China that doesn't receive as much attention.  China is in the process of conducting political warfare against the West in general and America in particular.  That may soon be coupled with a form of economic warfare, considering how dependent we remain on them in key elements of the supply chain.  The White House has been speaking to the leadership in the United Kingdom where they are grappling with the same issues.  But in terms of having a long-term plan, the general consensus seems to be that we don't have one.  And that's worrisome.

China is feared to be hiding missiles in shipping containers as part of a Trojan Horse-style plan.  China has been secretly developing Trojan Horse-style missiles hidden in shipping containers that can be unleashed on enemy ports, experts warn.  Military analysts believe the country's huge fleet of freighters and fishing vessels could be turned into warships with the use of the secretive container missiles.  The Sun reported, Disguised as a regular shipping containers, they can be sneaked on board a vessel to blend in seamlessly with the hundreds of others on board.

Most House Democrats, Eight Republicans Help Biden Shield China's Solar Industry from U.S. Tariffs.  Nearly all House Democrats, along with eight House Republicans, helped tank an effort to override President Joe Biden's veto of a bipartisan plan that would have restored United States tariffs on China-made solar panels.  In June 2022, Biden announced a 24-month tariff moratorium on solar panel imports from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia.  Commerce Department officials suspect that the solar panels are actually made in China but have been routed through the four southeast Asian nations to avoid U.S. tariffs on China-made solar panels.  The suspension of tariffs came even as Biden's Commerce Department found that BYD Hong Kong rerouted its production through Cambodia, Canadian Solar and Trina through Thailand, and Vina Solar through Vietnam for the sole purpose of avoiding the tariffs.  This week, after Biden vetoed a House and Senate-approved plan to reinstate the tariffs on solar panel imports, 197 House Democrats and eight House Republicans voted to help the administration stave off the tariffs.

China thumbs its nose at the climate cult.  Up until now, China has been considered a "developing nation" in terms of carbon emissions, so most of the alarmists continue to turn a blind eye to the way they ignore restrictions being put in place by other nations.  They scoff at the idea of paying into global climate funds.  China has a population of 1.4 billion, as compared to the roughly 330 million in the United States.  India has even more now and they don't do [anything] about climate change either beyond paying lip service to it.  Meanwhile, China is bringing new coal-fired power plants online every week.  They're building pipelines and expanding their oil and natural gas resources.  Their energy needs are expanding as they grow and seek to displace the United States as a global superpower and they're doing what it takes to power those efforts.  Meanwhile, here in the United States, power plants are being taken offline with no plans to replace the lost energy.  We're being pushed into rolling blackouts and the government is coming to take away your gas stoves.  And it's all supposedly being done to prevent an increase in average global temperatures of one degree in the coming decades.

The Cataclysm to Come.  China is leading BRICS countries to replace the dollar's standing as the world's reserve currency.  Any success they attain will lessen demand for dollars and possibly collapse the dollar's exchange rate.  Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party authorities think they have a chance to bolster their power and change the world order in their favor.  Because China's broad geopolitical interests are on the rise, a pressing question is how to check China's ambitions at a time of division and discord in America.  China's current foreign policy could not happen without its substantial military forces and three-decades-long economic growth, underwritten by its exports to America.  Sensing American weakness, the CCP may invade Taiwan before Joe Biden leaves office.  Are the American people willing to fight over Taiwan or freedom of navigation issues near Chinese-claimed islands?

Biden Cowed by China's Aggression.  The State Department delayed imposing sanctions, export controls, and other measures on China after the Chinese military brazenly flew its large spy balloon over Alaska, Canada and the lower 48 states in late January and early February.  The postponement of these measures, reported by Reuters on May 11, will almost certainly strengthen, legitimize, and embolden the most hostile elements in senior Communist Party circles.  These hostile elements, thanks to the State Department, now have additional incentives to engage in belligerent conduct, and, in light of Washington's craven behavior, every nation that looks to America for security has to be extremely concerned.

The RESTRICT Act Gives Up Nearly All Notions of Checks and Balances.  Just like snake oil salesmen of the past, these Senators may talk a good game, but their antidote is far worse than any purported affliction.  To address our nation's hysteria over dance videos, more than twenty Senators, both Republican and Democrat, support the RESTRICT Act.  They tell us that this bill will help rein in the dastardly threat that comes from the Chinese government supposedly spying on silly videos made by American teenagers.  Instead, it bestows an astonishing amount of power to the Executive branch in a manner that the Chinese Communist Party would approve of.  As Tucker Carlson correctly observed, "this is not an effort to push back against China.  It's part of a strategy to make America much more like China."

Pete Ricketts Warns Of New Weapon Communist China Is Using Against The U.S..  Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) warned during a Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing this week that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using state-of-the-art AI to create "deep fakes" to destabilize the U.S.  Deep fakes are photos and videos that have been digitally manipulated to alter voices or images or other aspects of the content to appear authentic in an effort to deceive whoever is viewing the material. [...] Ricketts mentioned that the Soviet Union during the Cold War spent billions on disinformation campaigns as part of their statecraft to destabilize the U.S. and U.S. allies at the time.  "And I believe that in 1980, for example, there was a conservative estimate, the Soviet Union spent $3 billion on disinformation campaigns as part of their overall strategy," he said, noting that the Soviet Union outspent the U.S. 10-to-1 in disinformation campaigns at the time.

China is burning more coal than the rest of world combined.  [Tweet with video clip.]

Bao Fan: Why do Chinese billionaires keep vanishing?  The disappearance last month of technology industry dealmaker Bao Fan has rekindled interest in a recent Chinese phenomenon — vanishing billionaires.  The founder of China Renaissance Holdings — with a client list that has included internet giants Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu — is seen as a titan in the country's tech sector.  Mr Bao's case has followed a well-trodden path: he went missing for days before his company announced that he was "co-operating in an investigation being carried out by certain authorities in the People's Republic of China".  As has also become customary, there has been no word yet on which government body is carrying out the probe, what it is about or Mr Bao's whereabouts.

America First Versus America Last, China Edition.  Communist China's number one goal is to displace the US as the world's only superpower.  Thus, the Chinese view anything that undermines the US as an enabler to achieving that goal.  The World Bank acknowledges that energy production is at heart of economic development for any and all countries.  The corollary is that high energy prices brought about by scarcity is bad for economic growth.  Under President Trump's pro-energy policies, the US became an exporter of oil and gas for the first time in years, with commensurate low gasoline prices at the pump.  Biden's green policies have led to the exact opposite result, as the US is now a net importer and dependent on potential adversaries such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran (in the near future) for oil.  And then there are the historically high gasoline prices.  US energy insecurity benefits China.

Bipartisan House Votes to End Tariff Protections for Chinese Solar Manufacturers.  Despite objections from the Biden administration, the House voted 221-202 to strike down tariff protections given during the Obama administration for solar panels built by Chinese manufacturers.  The Chinese solar panel industry already dwarfs the U.S., and the need for a tariff — if there ever was a need — is gone.  "Joe Biden's decision to protect Communist China's solar manufacturers from U.S. tariffs is another demonstration of weakness from an already spineless administration," House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) told Fox News Digital.

8 House Republicans vote in favor of the Chinese Communist Party.  Just yesterday Breitbart News reported that eight House Republicans joined the Democrats to support Joe Biden's suspension of United States tariffs on suspected Chinese-manufactured solar panels. [...] Biden being soft on China should come not to be a surprise to anyone.  The president of the watchdog Government Accountability Institute, Peter Schweizer, revealed that in 2013 Hunter and Joe flew on Air Force Two to China two weeks before Hunter's firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with the CCP operated Bank of China.  Schweizer exposed numerous lucrative shady deals that benefited the Biden family and Hunter's businesses, where Joe appeared to have a ten percent stake in a company formed in partnership with top CCP officials.  We must also remember that Joe Biden's Washington think tank, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, received more than $54 million from individuals or entities linked to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) from 2014 to 2019.  It would not be beyond the realm of possibility that the attempt to waive tariffs happened with Biden's knowledge that solar panels were made in China but were re-routed to other countries to evade tariffs.

China's suspicious censorship of science about the pandemic.  The NY Times published an interesting story yesterday about China's 3-year-long efforts to censor science about the nature and origins of COVID.  The story opens with an early Chinese paper about COVID which was suddenly withdrawn without an explanation. [...] According to the Times, there's "no evidence" this censorship had a specific goal with regard to the origins of the pandemic.  Apparently this was just part of China's routine effort to ensure China's government always looks good and never appears to have been caught flat-footed.  Nevertheless, the cover-up did often involve scientific information on some of the earliest cases.

The many weaknesses of the Chinese economy.  The major problem for the Chinese economy is the authoritarian ruling style of the CCP or the Chinese Communist Party.  Since dissent is not tolerated, this has created a culture of fear and self-censorship, which has made it difficult for entrepreneurs and investors to operate freely.  The CCP has a history of intervening in the market to protect state-owned enterprises, which has led to inefficiencies and a lack of innovation.  The CCP's control over the economy has created a lack of transparency, which has made it difficult for foreign investors to trust the Chinese market.  The party's opaque policies and practices have led to concerns about corruption and lack of accountability, which has further weakened investor confidence.  This has made it difficult for China to attract foreign investment and in fact many companies are starting to leave China, especially the Japanese.

The invisible 'fox hunt' taking place in America.  Chinese police stations in the USA are a hot topic in the news these days, with two arrests made in New York and six stations claimed in Texas.  These, we're told, were the "illegal" stations.  Simultaneously, it's being reported that there is a "growing number of Chinese migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum."  But we Deplorables should be sensitive to the scent of weasel words.  These stories are always about "illegal" Chinese police stations in the USA, which are characterized as "secret" or "unauthorized."  This language leaves the impression that there may be Chinese police stations in the USA that are legal.  We should care about this weaseling because the key point is that none are legal given their goals.  There is a statute of the People's Republic of China (PRC), called the "National Intelligence Law" (NIL), which mandates that every Chinese national on planet Earth, wherever he may be, is obliged, under penalty of law, to obey any intelligence-gathering request of the PRC.  That is, the NIL makes a statutory spy out of every Chinese national

Biden Vows to Give $1 Billion to U.N. Climate Fund that Sends Money to China.  On Thursday, Joe Biden vowed to give at least $1 billion of American taxpayers' money to a climate fund at the United Nations, even though the fund has sent millions of dollars to China in the past.  As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Biden declared his support for the U.N.'s "Green Climate Fund" (GCF), claiming that the money his administration sends to the fund will support "developing countries in taking stronger climate action." However, the U.N. still officially categorizes China as a "developing country," thus making the Communist nation eligible to be one of the recipients of funding from the GCF.  In 2019, the GCF pledged at least $100 million to a "Green Development Fund" in Shandong, which is the second most heavily-populated province of China.  In September of 2022, the GCF gave $28 million to China, with tens of millions still being reserved for China specifically.  The GCF is scheduled to last until April of 2042.

Why Are Thousands of Military-Age Chinese Men Suddenly "Migrating" Across Our Southern Border?  Vast numbers of Chinese citizens are illegally crossing our border with Mexico.  The U.S. Border Patrol is able to apprehend some of them, but thanks to the Biden administration once they are processed most of them are given "notices to appear" and are then freely released into our communities.  That means that they are running around without any supervision whatsoever.  As you will see in the videos that I have posted in this article, men make up the overwhelming majority of the Chinese citizens that are "migrating" across our southern border, and almost all of those men are of military age.  In some cases, these men are paying human smugglers as much as $35,000 to get them into Texas.  So either those men are independently wealthy, or someone else is providing that money.  Unfortunately, most Americans don't even realize that this is happening, because Fox News is the only major news network that is giving much attention to this crisis.

Biden and China and the American ruling class.  I agree with this author that America's ruling elite bears the overwhelming share of responsibility for the Biden catastrophe.  It was they at all levels — finance, corporate, governmental, security agencies, media and judiciary — that engineered and enabled the Biden coup.  And I also agree with the author that Biden has been an unprecedented domestic disaster.  We will probably never recover from it, certainly never, if Biden gets a second term, which seems highly likely.  But the current assertiveness of China is not for Biden's account.  It is the inevitable consequence of our elites' atrociously selfish, short-sighted and disloyal decision — decades ago — to fast forward China's accumulation of wealth and power by offshoring America's industrial base to the Middle Kingdom. [...] I don't agree with the author's implication that China's behavior is somehow "aggressive" or sinister.

MTG Roasts Swalwell For Sleeping With Chinese Spy During Hearing.  In 2020, Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Eric Swalwell, confirmed his past relationship with a woman named Fang Fang (or Christine Fang), who was suspected of being a Chinese intelligence operative.  On Wednesday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene hilariously roasted Swalwell after he spoke during a congressional hearing, saying, "That was quite entertaining from someone that had a sexual relationship with a Chinese spy.  And everyone knows it!"

TikTok Lobbyists Visited White House at Least 40 Times in Past Year.  Executives at high-powered firms hired by TikTok for lobbying and strategic consulting visited the White House at least 40 times in the past year, according to official White House visitor records.  The Chinese social media platform and its parent company, ByteDance, are mounting a massive public relations blitz as lawmakers are seeking to ban the app due to national security, espionage, and data privacy concerns.  ByteDance and TikTok have spent $13 million on federal lobbying sincex 2019 and hired heavyweight firms such as influential Democratic public relations shop SKDK.  Those hired guns have had the ear of the White House, the records show.

Turns out There Are at Least 6 More of Those Chinese 'Police Stations' Operating in the U.S..  On Monday, the DOJ announced the arrest of "Harry" Lu Jianwang, 61, of the Bronx, and Chen Jinping, 59, of Manhattan — in connection with the operation of an illegal "police station" in lower Manhattan.  RedState first reported, in October, on the dozens of these secret outposts that have cropped up throughout the world.  Their purpose, ostensibly, is to monitor Chinese citizens living abroad.  At the time, only one such station was identified in the U.S., while three were noted in Toronto, and others in London, Amsterdam, Prague, Budapest, Paris, Madrid, and Frankfurt.  54 stations (at least) were identified in 30 different countries.

China ramps up construction on new Antarctic base.  China is increasing its Antarctic footprint according to new satellite imagery collected by a Washington-based think tank that shows construction has resumed for the first time since 2018 on the country's fifth station in the southern polar region.  Beijing has sought to develop new shipping routes in the Arctic and expand its research in Antarctica in recent years.  But Western governments worry its increasing presence in the polar regions could provide the People's Liberation Army (PLA) with better surveillance capabilities.

China may have up to six more 'illegal police stations' in the US.  After the FBI arrested two men in connection with a Chinese 'secret police station' in New York, activists say there may be as many as six other similar illegal outposts across the US.  In addition to the Manhattan outpost that was shut down on Monday, Chinese police operate another station elsewhere in New York City, and one in Los Angeles, according to a New York Post report citing the advocacy group Safeguard Defenders.  As well, the Madrid-based group has identified so-called 'Overseas Chinese Service Centers' that purportedly provide community services in San Francisco, Houston, Minnesota, and Nebraska.

DOJ Charges Dozens Of Chinese Officials For Allegedly Harassing, Persecuting Dissidents In US.  The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York unsealed a pair of criminal complaints against 44 Chinese agents for allegedly harassing Chinese dissidents based in the United States, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Monday.  The two efforts allegedly involved over 40 members of China's national police department, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), and two members of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), who used fraudulent social media accounts on an unnamed U.S. platform to "harass and intimidate" Chinese citizens who promoted political views that were opposed by the Chinese government, the DOJ said in a press release.  One complaint also alleges that, beyond harassing and attempting to suppress the free speech rights of Chinese nationals based in the U.S., members of the MPS created articles and videos to target both Chinese dissidents and the U.S. government.

The Rise and Fall of the BRI.  China's ascent as an international financier (especially in low-income countries) has been accompanied by claims that it engages in so-called debt-trap diplomacy.  The term originated in 2017 to describe a deal that saw Beijing receive a 99-year lease for the Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka after the country fell behind on debt payments and has since been more widely applied to any Chinese project that conflicts with Western interests, especially those under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).  Western media and senior policy officials seem to feel that China is using the BRI to exert undue influence over the world, especially because the initiative mostly funds infrastructure rather than the social sector projects, such as health or education initiatives, that are often favored by large multilateral donors and Western nations.

Two Arrested for Operating Illegal Overseas Police Station of the Chinese Government.  A complaint was unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, charging two defendants in connection with opening and operating an illegal overseas police station, located in lower Manhattan, New York, for a provincial branch of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) of the People's Republic of China (PRC).  "Harry" Lu Jianwang, 61, of the Bronx, and Chen Jinping, 59, of Manhattan, were arrested earlier this morning at their homes in New York City.  Their initial appearances are scheduled this afternoon in Brooklyn before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ramon E. Reyes Jr.  As alleged in the complaint, Lu and Chen are charged with conspiring to act as agents of the PRC government as well as obstructing justice by destroying evidence of their communications with an MPS official.

China's Stateside 'Rent-A-Womb' Industry Poses Yet Another National Security Nightmare.  American policymakers need to get serious about countering the threat from communist China.  While the House China Select Committee has announced it will be investigating Chinese investment in U.S. research and academia, farmland, entertainment, social media, and defense contracts, it should also examine the Chinese "rent-a-womb" industry in America.  Increasingly, Chinese nationals are using American surrogates to bear their children.  Thanks to in vitro fertilization, they don't even need to leave China.  The practice arises from differences in Chinese and American laws and may be driven by both the desire to become parents and the desire for U.S. citizenship.  But there is a national security risk involved too.  Washington has no idea who these children or their parents are.

FBI arrests two New Yorkers accused of running [a] covert Chinese police station.  The FBI has arrested two men accused of running a covert station for China's police force in New York, and using it as a base to track Chinese dissidents living in the US.  The station, in Manhattan's Chinatown, was allegedly set up in February 2022 and operated by Beijing's ministry of public security (MPS) as part of a campaign of transnational repression against Chinese pro-democracy activists and other political opponents around the world.  The justice department also announced charges on Monday against 40 MPS officers and four others for allegedly running an internet troll operation against dissidents in the US, creating fake social media accounts to harass them and recruiting an employee at an unnamed US telecoms company to have a pro-democracy activist removed from the platform.  The officers, thought to be in China, are alleged to be members of an MPS unit, the "912 special project working group", dedicated to the pursuit of dissidents abroad.

Dem Rep Listed As 'Co-Chair' Of Yet Another Nonprofit With Ties To Chinese Communist Party.  California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu is listed as the "co-chair" of an organization that includes several members with ties to alleged Chinese Communist Party (CCP) overseas influence operations, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.  In 2014, Chu, who the DCNF previously discovered was listed as a member of two other nonprofits with apparent ties to Chinese intelligence, joined the "International Federation of Chamber of Commerce [sic]" (IFCC), an organization that shares a website and personnel with the California-based 501(c)(6) nonprofit U.S.-Chinese General Chamber of Commerce (UCCC), according to UCCC's website and images from IFCC's launch.  Chu is currently listed as "co-chair" on UCCC's website.  By its own admission, UCCC and IFCC have cooperated with Chinese government agencies and CCP bureaus that the U.S. government has identified as influence operations, and since 2014, at least six of their leaders have variously served as members of the CCP, the Chinese government and/or alleged Chinese intelligence front groups.

Are You Ready to Live with Less?  Recently, perhaps for the first time, our country's position as the world's reserve currency has been successfully challenged by China.  Why are countries hostile to the U.S. willing to substitute the Renminbi (Chinese Yuan) as the standard means of international exchange vs. the American dollar?  Such action would end America's economic dominance, striking at us as the strategic protector, and destroying the American dollar — it would be catastrophic.  The American Dollar became the main reserve currency solely due to its stability.  When enough nations think our country is unstable, they'll align with countries they believe to be more stable, even ascendant.

Noted China Expert Warns: 'People's Liberation Army' Agents Enter the US Through the Southern Border.  First off, look at the goofy look on Biden's face in the feature image.  What's it tell you — other than he's clueless, but we already know that?  It tells me that Joe Biden honestly believes ChiCom dictator Xi Jinping is one of his pals, and as such, honors every word he gives our inept president — and then some.  For that, and innumerable other ominous reasons, Joe Biden is a dangerous fool who has no business plopped in the Oval Office, must less negotiating with communists whose stated goal is world domination.

Chinese tech companies are exploiting US green energy goals, former State Department officials warn.  Two former U.S. ambassadors are sounding the alarm on the increasing number of green energy projects nationwide being developed with the involvement of Chinese companies.  Former U.S. Ambassadors Peter Hoekstra and Joseph Cella said Chinese companies, which are subject to strict Chinese laws, have made a concerted effort to take advantage of U.S. green energy goals.  The companies, they said, are exploiting American tax incentives to build facilities and projects in the U.S., bolstering Chinese industry and ensuring continued U.S. reliance on technology from China.

The Final Battle Is Upon Us: Sic Semper Tyrannis.  The Biden family sold out our country — not to the highest bidder, but to all of them.  Under Trump, we prospered; we were safe and we were happy.  But communism can't spread when We the People are smiling, so Biden pulled the Bat-chute and brought it all to a screeching halt.  Joe Biden ran up a $52 million tab with China.  And when Xi Jinping tells Joe to jump?  Mark my words: Joe Biden doesn't make decisions; he waits for orders from his Chinese daddy.  Not too long ago, China ordered Joe to allow a spy balloon to cruise over our nation.  Biden knows where his eggrolls are buttered and obeyed like the obsequient lickspittle he is.  I have a sneaking suspicion that Beijing told Joe Biden and his band of bolshies to do what it takes to remove Trump from the 2024 election.  Who has more to lose than China?  And today's spectacle in New York City is just the beginning.  There are three more bogus investigations to come.

Hollow Warriors.  [Scroll down]  Even if we give The Chiefs the full benefit of the doubt and say '"better late than never," it would still be fair to ask if they are sincere when:
 a) they do not immediately block and prohibit projects like the planned CCP battery company in Michigan, which will host up to 300 Chinese nationals who are scheduled to live and work there to serve as CCP operatives.
 b) they allow the CCP to buy up vast tracks of U.S. agriculture land — often in the proximity of military installations.
 c) they know that the invasion at our southern border (and now northern border), utilizing Mexican drug cartels as proxies for human and drug smuggling, is a tactic right out of the Unrestricted Warfare playbook, yet they don't lift a finger to put a stop to it.
 d) they allow the likes of the United Front Work Department, and Chinese-U.S.. Exchange Foundation and all their CCP agents to operate freely within our nation, exerting their Marxist influence across our national institutions — from our children's classrooms to the halls of Congress; into the White House and perhaps even the Pentagon itself.
These and a string of other infringements on United States' sovereignty by the CCP, on American soil, would never be tolerated by Red China, if Americans tried these antics on their turf.

Brazil turning Chinese — I really think so.  Down in Argentina, China is learning to tango quickly: "Argentina and China formalize currency swap deal."  Beyond trade and currency, this is a slap in the face because other countries will see this as China rising and the U.S. falling.  That's exactly the image that China wants to project to the Third World.  In other words, China is the future and Washington is the past.  During the campaign, we were told that the smart people had to replace the crazy Trump.  We needed Biden's experience to work out all these foreign policy issues.  So far, it looks like the only smart people here are the Chinese.

Finance and the 'Great Reset'.  A very real war is being waged to destroy the United States from within, not from a foreign invasion firing bullets and missiles.  In the crosshairs is the U.S. Constitution and the people's rights and freedoms which it protects.  There are also external actors in this war against the U.S. that include Russia and Iran.  But China and its Communist Party (CCP) is the most formidable, and has a large presence within the United States.  The Chinese People's Liberation Army manual Unrestricted Warfare stresses the importance of defeating the United States by working through supranational bodies such as the United Nations, the WTO, WHO, IMF and the World Economic Forum (WEF), to name a few.  Through cultural transformation and elite capture, the CCP has also established beachheads which are internal fronts of the war to undercut the U.S.

Biden is gutting the US Navy.  Biden is speaking loudly but carrying an ever smaller stick.  Over the past couple of years, Xi has been ratcheting up the pressure on Taiwan, and Biden has matched and raised his bet.  I have long been skeptical of the U.S.' strategic ambiguity regarding Taiwan.  Like it or not, Taiwan is now at the heart of global commerce, punching far above its weight class.  About 70% of microprocessors are made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), and while not all of them are manufactured on the island, the world economy would be crippled by its loss.  Taiwan is at the heart of the high-tech economy upon which the world now depends, and that is one of the many reasons China wants to control it.

U.S. charges FTX's Bankman-Fried with paying $40 mln Chinese bribe.  U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled a new indictment against Sam Bankman-Fried, accusing the founder of the now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange of paying a $40 million bribe to Chinese officials so they would unfreeze his hedge fund's accounts.  The new bribery conspiracy charge adds to the pressure on the 31-year-old former billionaire, who now faces a 13-count indictment over the November collapse of FTX.

TikTok Shows How Easy It Is to Buy Congress.  There was a time when Americans used to sneer at corrupt third worlders whose entire governments had a hand out.  There was corruption in America, but it was mostly internal and foreigners couldn't just walk in and bribe half the government.  Abscam was a shock to the system and then by the time the Clintons began renting out the Lincoln Bedroom, followed by Harry Reid, the Bushes and then the Bidens getting into bed with the Chinese, we've become not just corrupt, but laughably easy for the Chinese to buy up like a dollar store. [...] Some say this explains AOC's newfound enthusiasm for TikTok.  Either way, it's absurdly easy for a foreign company operating under an enemy government to just show up and start handing out cash to congressional groups with no apparent legal recourse.  Remember when Dems and the media were warning about foreign influence operations?  Suddenly they don't seem as interested in common sense reforms like preventing foreign companies from buying influence in Congress.

Massive Donations Come To Light After AOC Defends TikTok From Possible Ban.  An organization that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is a member of has accepted sizable donations from ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of the social media platform TikTok, which the democratic socialist recently defended from a possible nationwide ban.  Jake Denton, a technology policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, noted that Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the advisory council for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, a nonprofit entity that received $150,000 at the end of last year from ByteDance, according to a lobbying contribution report.  "What a coincidence," Denton said on social media.  Ocasio-Cortez recently remarked on TikTok that a ban of the platform over national security and privacy concerns would be "unprecedented" and said that such a move does not "really address the core of the issue, which is the fact that major social media companies are allowed to collect troves of deeply personal data about you that you do not know about."  She added that lawmakers should instead pass a broader data privacy bill for social media firms.

As China War Looms, Navy's Priority is Going 'Green'.  The "age of American naval dominance is over", Jerry Hendix, a former Navy Captain warned in a high-profile article in The Atlantic.  Hendrix's article imagines a scenario in which China or other enemy nations seize control of what are now international waters and the cargo that moves across them.  "The great container ships and tankers of today would disappear, replaced by smaller, faster cargo vessels capable of moving rare and valuable goods past pirates and corrupt officials."  A handful of nations would end up controlling the chokepoints of international trade and America would not be one of them.  Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro has already conceded China's naval supremacy.  Last month, the Biden appointee stated that China has "got a larger fleet now so they're deploying that fleet globally."

The Group the Chinese Communists Fear the Most.  I have rarely heard it mentioned in the mainstream media, but, according to reports, during the 1990s in communist China, thirty thousand members of Falun Gong were rounded up and executed.  The founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi, fled China and now lives in the U.S., while in China members of the order went underground. [...] The story of the Chinese government crackdown on Falun Gong is a classic example of totalitarian intolerance of competing ideas, and it involves both propaganda and physical terror.  A careful examination of the record proves that the response of the communist Chinese regime is not very different from that of ancient regimes toward their own enslaved peoples.  Despite their vast power, totalitarian leaders are fearful and at times even paranoid, as was Stalin, and the flip-side of fear is repression.

Michigan-funded Chinese battery maker will require allegiance to 'Constitution of the Communist Party of China,' company bylaws say.  The insane government of the United States is provoking war with China, an opposing military and economic power, while at the same time inviting and paying that opposing country to build a massive factory on its soil, in the state of Michigan, heaping huge taxpayer-funded incentives on the Chinese in the process.  Of course they are also allowing that opposing country, China, which they clearly want to go to war with, to buy up American farmland.  Utterly insane.  Neither Michigan nor any of the other states allowing China to buy up land and build factories could get away with this if federal law didn't allow it.  We are being sold out to the highest bidder.  The frightening fact is that the highest bidder — China — is the same entity that our government is currently threatening and telling that it had better not get involved in helping its ally, Russia, in its war with Ukraine.  Insane?  It would certainly appear so.  The only way to rationalize such seemingly insane policies is if the U.S. government wanted not only to go to war with China/Russia but wanted to lose that war.  This would truly pave the way for a one-world dictatorship under a beast system as prophesied in the Bible.

How the Biden Admin Helped a Public University Partner With a CCP-Controlled School.  The Biden administration is using taxpayer cash to fund a University of Virginia climate change partnership with a Chinese Communist Party-controlled school that conducts research for China's military.  President Joe Biden's National Science Foundation last year awarded more than $130,000 to the University of Virginia to conduct climate change research with Beijing-based Tsinghua University, federal spending disclosures show.  Tsinghua University, which counts Chinese president Xi Jinping among its alumni, will work with University of Virginia researchers to chart the global "transition to a low-carbon economy," according to the grant description.  Tsinghua University is funded by China's Ministry of Education and maintains a "CCP Committee" that keeps the school "in accordance with President Xi's hopes."  It also holds "secret-level security credentials" for classified military research, trains students for China's nuclear weapons program, and has allegedly carried out cyberattacks for the Chinese government, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.  It is also one of several Chinese universities under the supervision of the communist nation's State Administration of Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense, a CCP agency that works to deepen university involvement in the defense sector.

WSJ: State Government Websites Are Infested with Trackers from China's TikTok.  A recent report from the Wall Street Journal claims that web-tracking code from TikTok's parent company ByteDance has been discovered on 30 state government websites across 27 U.S. states.  The Wall Street Journal reports that according to the cybersecurity company Feroot Security, web-tracking code created by TikTok's parent company ByteDance has been discovered on 30 U.S. state government websites spread across 27 states.  The code, known as tracking pixels, raises concerns about the app's ties to the Chinese government by indicating that U.S. state governments are taking part in a data collection effort for a foreign-owned company.

China's growing worldwide influence has set off alarm bells, but is anyone listening?  Over the past several years, the preponderance of discussions regarding China has focused on its threat to Taiwan and its increased military capabilities.  As China has developed its military power at an almost exponential pace, it has also quietly established economic, political and military relationships with many countries around the globe.  Virtually no regions have been overlooked.  Qin Gang, China's new foreign minister, recently said that "China's diplomacy has pressed the accelerator button" as he discussed his country's international efforts.  Has the U.S. watched these relationships develop, or have we slept through the alarms?

Comer demands WH 'correct' Biden's 'dishonest' denial that kin got money tied to China.  House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Tuesday demanded the White House "correct" a "misleading and dishonest" statement by President Biden regarding more than $1 million his relatives got from a company with ties to China's Communist Party.  Comer (R-Ky.) revealed last week that fewer than two months after Biden left office as Barack Obama's vice president, State Energy HK Limited, a firm affiliated with Chinese Communist Party-backed energy company CEFC China Energy, wired $3 million to Biden family associate Rob Walker.  The dough was subsequently distributed to at least three members of the Biden clan and two Biden family associates, according to bank records obtained by the Oversight Committee.

Which presidents have made China and Russia much stronger and America intentionally weaker?  President Trump recognized the risk of Tik Tok years ago but Biden reversed his executive orders that banned them.  Now the Biden administration supposedly cares.  Trump set up a program to investigate Chinese spying but the Biden administration stopped it because they apparently didn't want to hurt Xi's feelings. [...] Trump stopped travel from China early in the COVID pandemic and Biden and others accused him of being xenophobic.  They said it was racist to call it the Chinese virus even though it came from China.  When Trump and others wanted the Wuhan lab to be investigated as the source of the virus, the media, Dr. Fauci, and others colluded to call that a disproven conspiracy theory.  All the people that called it a debunked or disproven conspiracy intentionally lied to protect China from investigations and to intentionally mislead the public.

Biden and Putin: Pawns on China's Chessboard.  In the Russo-Ukrainian war, Ukraine is the victim, and Russia is the aggressor.  However, the victim and the aggressor are not acting alone.  Who made Ukraine the victim?  Who helped Russia make the blunder of aggression?  While analyzing the current Russo-Ukrainian war, the media tend to overlook one thing.  Namely, President Biden and President Putin are — for the lack of a more appropriate word — vassals to China's triple-emperor, Xi Jinping.  From that perspective, the notion of "a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine" evaporates.  The WWIII scare disappears, too, if one recalls two main China objectives: Taiwan and South Siberia.  The occupation of Taiwan requires a weak United States, and the annexation of South Siberia demands a powerless Russia.  It looks as though everybody overestimated Biden and Putin, treating them as independent players and not as order-takers on the Chinese payroll, which they are.

Guilty.  Last week another shoe dropped on the Biden crime family.  James Comer, chairman of the committee investigating the most disturbing scandal in the history of the White House finally received the records from a bank — one of twelve — that the Bidens have used to stash their payoffs from China's Communist dictatorship.  Comer had previously been stone-walled for two years by the corrupt and incompetent Biden Treasury head, Janet Yellen.  This first Biden bank record to be surrendered showed that three members of the Biden family including Beau Biden's widow Hallie and one person identified only as "Biden" received payments amounting to $1 million from a Chinese Communist State energy company.  What were the payments for?  Forget asking the Bidens who have a long history of silence and denial on such material questions.

China Hires the Biden Administration.  Whenever SKDK sends out a press release, it makes sure to mention that Politico had once called it "the loyal opposition where powerful Democrats plot the anti-Trump agenda" and that the Holmes Report had described the firm "the hub of the resistance."  The "loyal opposition" now works for Communist China.  And the "hub of the resistance" is being employed on behalf of a company operating out of one of the world's most totalitarian regimes.  Faced with a possible ban on its destructive social media app, TikTok has gone out and hired the Biden administration and its "resistance" apparatus.  And it probably even got a good deal.  SKDK's managing director, Anita Dunn, is Biden's senior advisor and unofficial campaign manager who took control and steered him through the Democrat primaries.Dunn, an Obama vet, is now in charge of crafting the response to Biden's classified documents scandal.  SKDK people became Biden's campaign comms and they've continued to fill that role in the administration.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm praises China.  What at first would appear to be a head-scratcher comes sharply into focus only when you understand that China is constantly increasing its greenhouse gas output without U.S. rebuke.  Its output is now greater than all the other developed nations combined!  Nothing the rest of the world (i.e.  America and Europe both committed to net zero) does will achieve Biden's stated goals to "save" the planet.  China greenlights two coal plants a week while the U.S. and Europe shutter their own, risking brownouts and people dying from the cold!  Why are we such zealots for dumping our traditional sources of energy with nothing on the near horizon to replace our needs?  Granholm knows what's going on, and, like our President, both are in the tank for an ever-ascendant China.

TikTok Hires Firm Founded by Biden Senior Adviser, Nets Yawn.  On Thursday night, Politico's Daniel Lippman reported that the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok "hired top Biden-connected consulting firm SKDK" founded by current White House senior adviser Anita Dunn within "the last few months" to likely help it escape scrutiny and a possible ban from the federal government amid legitimate concerns its stored data can be used by the Chinese Communist Party.  Given the liberal media's penchant for littering their newscasts with puff pieces on TikTok bringing people together and viral trends, the major broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC ignored this story on their flagship morning and evening newscasts.

The Looming Reckoning for COVID Tyrants.  Though China is likely the primary culprit in unleashing COVID upon the world, and it might be perhaps more appropriate to have these trials in Wuhan, it is difficult to imagine ways in which China's ruling Communist Party can be held to account for their obvious role in all of this, outside of an armed conflict in which we are victorious.  The Chinese clearly do not respect the international authority of the United States or other Western powers any more than they respect their own innocent and healthy citizens whom they are willing to incarcerate in their homes en masse by welding the doors to their homes shut, and they are clearly withdrawing from the international dialogue while signaling alliances with the West's adversaries.

Connecting the dots on Nordstream sabotage and China's sudden emergence as a Middle East peace broker.  The shocking announcement that China had brought together bitter rivals Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia to resume diplomatic relations in a deal negotiated in Beijing is a stunning defeat for America, threatening the basis of our Middle Eastern and world diplomatic power.  If, as it appears, Saudi Arabia is no longer a reliable ally that can be counted upon to keep the Armageddon-mongering mullahs in Iran at bay while warming up to Israel, then the entire power calculus of the Middle East is shattered.  At a minimum, American prestige and perceptions of our power have dramatically crashed, though our propaganda media are doing their best to prevent the domestic public from understanding this.

US energy secretary praises China's climate change efforts.  United States Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm claimed in an interview that America can "learn from what China is doing" regarding climate change, while defending the nation against claims that it is among the bigger contributors to the perceived problem.  Granholm was interviewed at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, and according to Fox News, she told viewers that China is "very sensitive" on the issue of climate change, even more so than the United States.  China "has been very sensitive, and has actually invested a lot in their solutions, to achieve their goals," Granholm said in an interview with Wajahat Ali.

The Editor says...
Yes, I agree that China "has actually invested a lot in their solutions, to achieve their goals," and their goals include building coal-fired power plants at the rate of a hundred per year. [1] [2]

China vs.  USA.  China is pulling out all the stops to lead the world in AI.  It is spending money, rapidly advancing those with the highest test scores; it has one inimitable advantage over the US. It can collect data on everyone, including Americans on Tik-tok and use it in their machine learning training sets thereby giving Chinese AI the edge.  "China's loose privacy laws, mandatory data collection, and targeted government funding give the country a key advantage."  China's challenge comes at a time when American scientific societies are emphasizing gender and ethnoracial diversity priorities into STEM.

Congressman Michael J. Gallagher Chairs Vital House Committee on Communist China.  Communist China now has a largest Army and Navy in the world, and they are involved in a massive warship building program, expanding the number of China's aircraft carriers and their nuclear submarines.  Cong Gallagher's focus as the Chairman of the Select Committee on Communist China is to grapple with the reality of the severe modification that have occurred in Southeast Asia over the last two years, where Communist China's growing military power, and America's declining military capabilities have destabilized the status quo.  Those realities have threatened America's allies of South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Australia, Guam, and Thailand in the region.  The military imbalance in favor of Communist China has also undermined the strategic status quo in Europe and in Asia.  Unless the Select Committee exposes the military imbalance to the American electorate, and convinces Congress to take action to rectify it, primarily through a major expansion of the US Armed Forces and a commensurate increase in America's defense industrial capacity, it will only be a matter of time before an element of the strategic status quo cracks.

Taiwan suspects Chinese ships cut islands' internet cables.  In the past month, bed and breakfast owner Chen Yu-lin had to tell his guests he couldn't provide them with the internet.  Others living on Matsu, one of Taiwan's outlying islands closer to neighboring China, had to struggle with paying electricity bills, making a doctor's appointment or receiving a package.  For connecting to the outside world, Matsu's 14,000 residents rely on two submarine internet cables leading to Taiwan's main island.  The National Communications Commission, citing the island's telecom service, blamed two Chinese ships for cutting the cables.  It said a Chinese fishing vessel is suspected of severing the first cable some 50 kilometers (31 miles) out at sea.  Six days later, on Feb. 8, a Chinese cargo ship cut the second, NCC said.

Taiwan Convinces Kevin McCarthy To Cancel Visit In Bid To Placate China.  House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet Taiwan's premier in California, seemingly backtracking on plans to visit the self-governed island to avoid provoking China, the Financial Times reported.  GOP Rep. McCarthy of California promised in the summer he would travel to Taiwan if elected Speaker of the House, according to the FT.  However, he and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen agreed to meet in California instead to avoid provoking a similar response from China when former speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Taipei in August.  "We shared some intelligence about what the Chinese Communist party is recently up to and the kinds of threats they pose," a senior Taiwanese official told the FT when asked about the intelligence Taiwan provided to McCarthy's office.

China Openly Infiltrates Our Political System, and America's Media Doesn't Seem to Care.  The American media has been liberal for decades, but the utter disregard for the truth that pervades much of the reporting today is something new.  With all the alarm over misinformation on the Right, little attention has been paid to the much broader form of misinformation that dominant corporate media perpetrates today.  One of the biggest stories of our time is the way Communist China has co-opted so many leading American institutions and individuals.  How is it that America, a country committed to human rights, is freely trading with China, a country currently operating slave labor camps?  That's a serious and important question, but it's one the media barely addresses.  Many well-intentioned Americans believed that free trade would liberalize China and provide low-cost goods, ultimately helping American families.  In reality, free trade fueled Communist China's rise, minus the promise of liberalization.  Moreover, these policies left America overly dependent on Chinese-made goods, including key products needed for America's security, its health care, and even, astoundingly, its military.

China is hanging on to foreign investment money.  A hallmark of totalitarianism is that it's never your money; it's always the government's money, although the government can be kind enough to let you have it.  Certainly, Canadian truckers were reminded of that last year when Trudeau had their bank accounts frozen without any due process.  And here in America, leftists repeatedly confuse taxpayer money with government money.  In China, the government makes no pretenses about its right to all money within its borders, as investor Mark Mobius discovered when he tried to withdraw his investments from Shanghai.  Mobius appeared on Fox Business last week to explain how the Chinese were putting essentially insuperable barriers in place to block him from withdrawing his funds:  [Tweet] [...] Under Xi Jinping, China is engaged in a massive, "put all your money on one color" gamble.  Currently, the Chinese economy is still struggling both because of COVID and because Xi has vastly overextended it.  However, if Xi can use what money he has, including foreign investor money. to wipe out the American economy while building up his own military to a point at which no one has the courage to take him on, he's won.

US Ports Full of This 'Trojan Horse' From China.  As Americans' awareness of threats from China increases — thanks to a spy balloon in our skies and a growing understanding of TikTok's influence — the U.S. officials are ringing the alarm about another potential avenue for malign interference in the United States from Beijing:  cranes.  The highly visible but generally ignored ship-to-shore cranes at American ports are responsible for loading and unloading tens of millions of shipping containers each year.  In addition to being a critical component of American supply chains, they're also used in some cases by the U.S. military.  Some of these cranes are innocuous, but an estimated 80 percent of ship-to-shore cranes operating at U.S. ports are made by ZPMC, a China-based manufacturer, leading to rising concern among American defense and national security personnel that have compared the cranes to a "Trojan horse," according to an exclusive report in The Wall Street Journal.

Did China influence the Canadian elections for Trudeau?  It's been a sticky couple of weeks for Canada's natural governing party, as the Liberals like to call themselves.  Anonymous sources from CSIS, Canada's intelligence agency, leaked information to two major Canadian media outlets, The Globe and Mail and Global News.  The reports say China interfered in Canada's two most recent federal elections, and that CSIS alerted the government, but that despite warnings the Liberals — who won both elections with a minority government — did nothing.  It's simultaneously a crisis for the Liberals and a bit of a yawn.  Canadians already knew Justin Trudeau was soft on China's 'basic dictatorship'.  If there was to be foreign interference from one of the most aggressive world powers on the map — and why wouldn't there be? — they wouldn't expect him to stand up to it.

China's Role in Black-Market Money Laundering.  Illicit proceeds are the catalyst driving the tragedies surrounding the open U.S. border.  Yet few realize the quiet ascendency of Chinese money launderers.  They are displacing Colombians and Mexicans.  Their preferred methodology is the Black-Market Peso Exchange (BMPE).  It is arguably the largest and most effective money laundering methodology in the Western Hemisphere.  The evolution of the BMPE is an excellent case study of how international criminal networks adapt and how China is taking over.  Ironically, the BMPE was not created to launder drug money.  In 1967, Colombia enacted regulations that strictly prohibited citizens' access to foreign exchange.  Colombian merchants who wanted to import U.S. trade goods — for example, John Deer tractors, Bell helicopters, or Marlboro cigarettes — through legitimate banking channels had to pay stiff surcharges above the official exchange rate.  To avoid these steep add-on costs, importers often turned to Colombian underground peso brokers, from whom they could buy U.S. dollars on the black market for less than the official exchange rate to finance their legitimate trade.

China Is Openly Infiltrating Our Political System and the American Media Doesn't Seem to Care.  The American media has been liberal for decades, but the utter disregard for the truth that pervades much of the reporting today is something new.  With all the alarm over misinformation on the right, little attention has been paid to the much broader form of misinformation that dominant corporate media perpetrates today.  One of the biggest stories of our time is the way Communist China has co-opted so many leading American institutions and individuals.  How is it that America, a country committed to human rights, is freely trading with China, a country currently operating slave labor camps?  That's a serious and important question, but it's one the media barely addresses.  Many well-intentioned Americans believed that free trade would liberalize China and provide low-cost goods, ultimately helping American families.  In reality, free trade fueled Communist China's rise, minus the promise of liberalization.  Moreover, these policies left America overly dependent on Chinese-made goods, including key products needed for America's security, its health care and even, astoundingly, its military.

If China Invades America, Will Leftists Rejoice?  God forbid there be a military conflict with China.  Yet as tensions increase over Taiwan, spy balloons, and escalating rhetoric, the prospect of a skirmish or broader conflict with that massive nation is a daunting cloud over America.  Traditionally, one would expect such a menace to unite Americans, yet today's far left despises the Constitution and the nation, and indeed tradition itself.  More, the left ignores the human rights abuses of nations such as China in its derisive slanders against America.  Bent on destroying the nation from within, will the left simply roll out the red carpet for Red China if it attacks America?  After all, the grand utopian fantasies of the America-haters is firmly grounded in Marxism — a power grab to create some new yet undefined authoritarian nirvana.

Intel Leaks on Beijing's Interference: Warnings Dismissed for Decades, Now Issue Deeply Entrenched.  The latest intelligence leaks about China's influence operations in Canada are part of a trend that goes back at least three decades, though it has accelerated in recent years.  As early as the 1990s, a joint report by the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was leaked to the media, warning about Beijing's operatives and criminal gangs becoming entrenched in various Canadian sectors, but the authorities dismissed those concerns.  Decades later, drug operations and money laundering became the subject of a B.C. public inquiry.  Back in 2010, long before the recent intelligence leaks concerning some federal and provincial elected officials alleged to be working with China, then CSIS-head Richard Fadden had warned about such issues.  But he was condemned by a House of Commons committee for saying that some elected representatives were under the control of a foreign government.  He was dragged before committee meetings in an effort to force him to retract his statements and resign.

Hillary Clinton Smears DCNF Reports On CCP As 'Racist' After Taking Millions From China.  Former Secretary of State and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lambasted critics of Democratic California Rep. Judy Chu's China connections as "racist," but Clinton herself has a history of taking donations and working with figures linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  Chu came under fire last month after the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) reported on her alleged connections to the CCP, including that she was appointed as honorary chairwoman of an alleged CCP front group.  That prompted Republican Texas Rep. Lance Gooden to share the DCNF story on Twitter, accompanied by a comment questioning where her loyalty lies.  [Tweet]

China barrels ahead on coal plant construction.  Joe Biden's greenie czar, John Kerry, has been looking like a boob lately, jetting around the world in a plume of greenhouse gas emissions, and talking up China as America's partner in making the climate green. [...] Coal is king in China and to the Chinese, John Kerry is just another Western green idiot to pat on the head as the real business of state powers onward.  They had a good time playing him with his greenie games, however.  Just this past year, Kerry was touting China as a partner in the quest to go green, and China played along with the farce to perfection.

WHO Pandemic Treaty: The Back Door to CCP Control Over America.  America's enemies never stop scheming about the ways in which they can bring the United States down.  China, our greatest external strategic enemy, already has a plan to gain control of America through the next pandemic and United Nations agency channels.  The first stage of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) accomplishing this was gaining controlling influence over the U.N.'s World Health Organization (WHO), which was achieved when the Chinese groomed Tedros Adhanom Ghbreyesus as a candidate and then got him elected as Director-General of the WHO in 2017.  The WHO's misguided recommendations and harmful policy responses to the Covid-19 China virus included lockdowns and disruptions of holidays; school, church, synagogue, and business closures; social distancing and masking that retarded children's social development — all of which led to economic contraction, bankruptcies, supply chain disruptions and inflation.  That record doesn't enhance the WHO's trust factor, and its ability to deal with future health emergencies and pandemics.

Chinese drone flights rise near Japanese airspace in last 1 1/2 yrs.  Drones from China have caused the Air Self-Defense Force to scramble jets 12 times since August 2021.  In the eight years before then, dating to September 2013, the ASDF only had three such scrambles.  China's rapid increase in drone flights in the East China Sea and its vicinity are believed to be laying the groundwork for a Taiwan contingency.  According to the Defense Ministry, the ASDF scrambles jets when there is a threat of airspace violations based on an analysis of flight routes.  Chinese drones have been confirmed over the East China Sea "almost every day in recent years," a senior ministry official said.  The ASDF made its first scramble against a Chinese drone in September 2013, then did so again in May 2017 and April 2018.  There were no such scrambles in 2019 or 2020.  In May 2017, a drone believed to be from the China Coast Guard violated Japanese airspace by entering the skies over the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture.

China permits two new coal power plants per week in 2022.  Coal power plant permitting, construction starts and new project announcements accelerated dramatically in China in 2022, with new permits reaching the highest level since 2015.  The coal power capacity starting construction in China was six times as large as that in all of the rest of the world combined.  50 GW of coal power capacity started construction in China in 2022, a more than 50% increase from 2021.  Many of these projects had their permits fast-tracked and moved to construction in a matter of months.  A total of 106 GW of new coal power projects were permitted, the equivalent of two large coal power plants per week.  The amount of capacity permitted more than quadrupled from 23 GW in 2021.  Of the projects permitted in 2022, 60 GW were not under construction in January 2023, but are likely to start construction soon, indicating even more construction starts in 2023.  In total, 86 GW of new coal power projects were initiated, more than doubling from 40 GW in 2021.

It's hard to believe the Chinese birth rate is absolutely cratering, isn't it?  You're probably aware that China is desperately trying to boost its cratering birth rates:  [Tweet] [...] If you don't understand the math here, it means China's population could half in the coming decades — by the end of the century for sure — and cheap labor by an exploding number of citizens is the only thing that's kept the communist regime going the last 50 years.  So is there any guarantee that China can reverse its plummeting birth rates by convincing people to resume historically normal romantic and familial relationships?

China will target the US homeland in war over Taiwan, Army leader predicts.  China will attack the American homeland if "a major war" erupts over Taiwan or elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S.  Army's top civilian expects.  "If we got into a major war with China, the United States homeland would be at risk as well with both kinetic attacks and non-kinetic attacks — whether it's cyberattacks on the power grid or on pipelines," Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said Monday [2/27/2023] at the American Enterprise Institute.  "They are going to go after the will of the United States public.  They're going to try to erode support for a conflict."

Donald Trump Unveils Plan for 'Pro-American' Trade Policy Aimed at Independence from China.  Former President Donald J.  Trump unveiled his plans for a "sweeping pro-American overhaul of our tax and trade policy" aimed at bolstering American production and shedding economic dependence on China.  In a campaign video released Monday [2/27/2023], Trump first blasted President Joe Biden, stating that despite his claims to be pro-American manufacturing, he is "pushing the same pro-China globalist agenda that ripped the industrial heart out of our country."

Glenn Youngkin: Communist China Tries Using 'Trojan Horse' To Get Access To Reap U.S.  Taxpayer Benefits.  Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin said during an interview over the weekend that communist China was attempting to use a "trojan horse" to gain access to U.S.  taxpayer benefits.  Youngkin made the remarks on "Sunday Morning Futures" with Fox News host Maria Baritromo while discussing his decision to reject a multi-billion dollar electric car factory from Ford coming to his state because of the company's connections to China.  Youngkin said the plant would have been operated by China-based Contemporary Amperex Technology and would have been a "trojan horse structure to gain access to taxpayer incentives" legislation that Democrats passed which gives credits to consumers for purchasing electric vehicles.

DPS sent at least 3,000 driver's licenses to organized crime group targeting Asian Texans.  The Texas Department of Public Safety was duped into shipping at least 3,000 Texas driver's licenses to a Chinese organized crime group that targeted Asian Texans, DPS Director Steve McCraw told a Texas House committee on Monday.  The organization was then selling the licenses, obtained using the personal information of Texas drivers, to people in the country illegally, McCraw said.  The fraudsters worked through the state's government portal, Texas.gov.  The agency, which discovered the scheme in December, will begin notifying victims in letters to be sent out this week, the DPS chief said.  More victims are still being identified, he said.

Dem Rep Handed Out Congressional Awards To Members Of Alleged Chinese Influence Operations.  California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu has handed out congressional awards to at least 10 individuals who belonged to alleged Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence front groups, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.  Over the last decade, Chu has awarded certificates of "Congressional Recognition" to at least 10 individuals for a variety of reasons, including launching a non-profit, according to multiple sources.  However, at the time the awards were given, the recipients also belonged to a handful of organizations that were previously identified by China experts and U.S. government agencies as front groups serving a Chinese government "intelligence service," according to DCNF translations of related membership records.  Furthermore, many of the certificate recipients have at one point or another financially contributed to Chu's political campaigns, finance records reveal.

'They Could Literally Starve Us': Republicans Push To Ban China From Purchasing US Farmland.  House Republicans are pushing to bar any person or business associated with the Chinese Communist Party from purchasing agricultural land in the United States, an effort gaining traction on the Hill as lawmakers look to retaliate against China over its spy-balloon incursion.  Reps.  Dan Newhouse (R., Wash.) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), alongside more than 40 cosponsors, last week proposed legislation that would prohibit any purchase of public or private agricultural real estate in the United States and its territories by "nonresident aliens, foreign businesses, or any agent, trustee, or fiduciary associated with the Government of the People's Republic of China."  The legislation, known as the Prohibition of Agricultural Land for the People's Republic of China Act, would also bar those entities from involvement in Department of Agriculture programs.

Surprise! Chinese-built Infrastructure Projects Are Falling Apart.  Not only have several developing countries found themselves burdened with debt they took out to build infrastructure as part of a Chinese project; it turns out the CCP-funded infrastructure is already falling apart.  According to a Wall Street Journal report, a number of projects financed by the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are beset with flaws such as bad cabling, defective fire extinguishing systems, cracked walls, moldy ceilings, and overall sloppy construction.  At one project, the $2.7 billion Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant in Ecuador, rampant defects have led engineer Fabricio Yépez to worry that "We could lose everything.  And we don't know if it could be tomorrow or in six months."

Why A Secretive Chinese Billionaire Bought 140,000 Acres Of Land In Texas.  On June 7, Texas governor Greg Abbott sat down at a desk in the state capitol and, flanked by a half-dozen lawmakers, put pen to paper for a ceremonial signing of the Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act.  "As far as I know this is the first law of its kind by any state in the United States of America," he boasted. [...] The bill, which became law on June 18, was not just precautionary — it was a direct response to one Chinese billionaire and his plans to build a wind farm in southwest Texas, according to its author, state senator Donna Campbell.  Since 2016, a company owned by Xinjiang-based real estate tycoon Sun Guangxin had spent an estimated $110 million buying up land in Texas' Val Verde County.  Located on the Mexico border, Val Verde is home to about 50,000 people, the small town of Del Rio, family-owned hunting ranches — and Laughlin Air Force Base, a training ground for military pilots.  In less than two years Sun bought up roughly 140,000 acres in the county through subsidiaries he controls.

Lobbyists for China's TikTok Have Repeatedly Visited the Biden White House.  Lobbyists for the China-owned app TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have repeatedly landed visits with President Joe Biden's White House, according to recently revealed records.  TikTok and ByteDance lobbyists have visited the Biden White House at least eight times between July 2021 and August 2022, according to White House visitor records obtained by the Washington Examiner.  While it remains unclear what the lobbyists discussed at the White House, their visits are "unequivocally" worrisome, says Heritage Foundation's director of Tech Policy Center, Kara Frederick.  "These people are doing the dirty work of the Chinese party state," Frederick told the Examiner.  "I don't think we should mince words when it comes to that.  They know what they're doing."

British firms' race to exit Taiwan ahead of Chinese invasion.  British firms are in a race against time to exit Taiwan and China before Beijing launches an invasion of the island nation.  Brompton Bicycle — which manufactures commuter-friendly foldable pedal bikes out of parts sourced from both Taiwan and China — is among one of the first Western companies to sound the alarm in the face of the impending conflict.  Taiwan lives under constant threat of invasion by China, which claims the self-ruled democracy as part of its territory to be retaken one day, by force if necessary.

China Expert: Communist China [is] Using TikTok To Promote Drug Use [and] Violence In America In [an] Attempt To Ruin [our] Country.  Gordon Chang, a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute and author of "The Great U.S. China Tech War," said during an interview this week that communist China is using TikTok to promote social disruption in the U.S. in an attempt to weaken America's system of government.  Chang initially responded to comments from Fox News host Jason Chaffetz about China's claims that it has legitimate concerns that it wants the U.S. to take seriously.  "Well, first of all, China doesn't have legitimate concerns.  It's not a legitimate state," Chang said. "And we should stop treating it as such, because as you say, it is committing genocide, crimes against humanity, it deliberately spread COVID-19 beyond its borders — that 6.7 million people outside of China who have died from a disease that should have never left the central part of that country.  You know, we can go on and on.  But clearly, China is engaging in a series of acts which are destructive not only toward the United States, but the international community as a whole."  A couple of minutes later, Chaffetz responded to a report this week that ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, spied on several U.S. journalists.

DoE's Granholm hands out $200 million greenie grant to lithium battery company — controlled by the Chinese.  So what does "American-made" mean to the Biden administration as it hands out huge chunks of "free" taxpayer cash for its "green" infrastructure schemes? [...] Which not only has the smell of 'Solyndra' all over it, given that it can't seem to produce records for an audit any more than Sam Bankman-Fried can, it's also a China-controlled entity.  What China wants, the company does.  Which rather puts paid to rest the idea that Joe Biden is out financing "Made in America" green infrastructure, in response to previous reports that solar panels and wind turbines have largely benefitted Chinese makers.  How he touted that to the public, and like a conman, won votes for his "infrastructure" bill on that very promise.  Domestic green energy, domestically produced, and pay no attention to that oil in the ground that could be produced without subsidies.  Turns out he didn't mean it at all and now that he's got the bill passed with the cash to fling around, his promise was about as good as the one he made to the student loan debtors.

Apple is accelerating plans to move production out of China as protests and riots intensify in response to zero-Covid policies, report says.  Apple is pushing to expedite a pivot away from manufacturing in China, as protests swell over the country's strict zero-Covid policies and riots thwart production.  The technology giant is ramping up efforts to shift production to other Asian countries like India and Vietnam in order to distance itself from Foxconn, one of the company's top suppliers and operator of the world's largest iPhone factory in China, according to the Wall Street Journal.  While the move has been planned for months, after shifting COVID-19 policies enacted by the Chinese Communist Party first began to threaten production earlier this year, sources told the Journal that recent uprisings at the Zhengzhou plant are propelling Apple into action.

Apple Crushes Dissent in America and China.  The largest lockdown uprising in China took place at facilities run by Apple's Foxconn supplier where workers had previously jumped to their deaths.  After thousands fled the Apple gulag, making their way through the woods and rural areas to freedom, other employees battled with Communist authorities over abusive conditions and treatment in the iGulag.  Apple had nothing to say about the rights of those workers who thought differently enough to break free and fight back.  If they were foolish enough to have iPhones, there's little doubt the company would have eagerly helped authorities track them down to be imprisoned or killed.  "Think Different", Apple's slogan, actually means collaborating with a Communist dictatorship where thinking differently is a crime.  And it also means suppressing free speech in America.

Apple Turned Off Protest Communication Tool Right Before Anti-Lockdown Uprising in China.  As it mulls kicking Elon Musk's Twitter off the app store, it has now been revealed that Apple restricted the use of AirDrop in China, a move that harmed the organizational efforts of demonstrators protesting against the CCP's lockdowns.  Over the past week, multiple major cities across China have seen massive protests against lockdowns, with the normally compliant Chinese exploding into rage in response to their government's 'zero COVID' policy.  Much of the unrest blew up in response to an incident in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi, where at least 10 people, some say up to 40, were killed during an apartment fire because lockdown rules stopped residents from fleeing the burning building.  Most of the city's residents have been prevented from leaving their homes for over 100 days as a result of the draconian rules, which are still in place nearly three years after the pandemic began.  With Beijing now trying to contain what some are calling the most serious mass uprising since Tiananmen Square, Apple is apparently helping them to crush dissent.

TikTok Execs Resign after Being Asked to Take Orders from Chinese Parent Company.  Three former senior leaders at TikTok said they were hired to lead departments at the social-media company but ultimately quit after learning they would be beholden to decisions made by the app's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, according to a new report.  The three departments heads who spoke to Forbes are part of a group of at least five senior leaders who resigned after being asked to take orders from Beijing, according to the report.  "A lot of our guidance came from HQ, and we weren't necessarily a part of strategy building," one former leader told the outlet.  "I've been in this industry for a long time.  I don't want to be told what to do."

Biden to request $1.1 billion arms package for Taiwan.  The Biden administration will request Congress to authorize roughly $1.1 billion weapons sale for Taiwan amid an increased push among lawmakers to show support for the self-governing island, Politico reported Monday [8/29/2022].  China has dispatched warships and aircraft across the unofficial "median line" dividing China and Taiwan every day since U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in early August, followed by two more congressional delegations.  Escalating rhetoric has sparked concern Beijing may attempt to capture Taiwan by force, prompting efforts from the U.S. and other Western nations to fortify the island against the Chinese military, according to Politico.

Car-charging stations, factories shut down in China as drought cripples hydroelectric power.  Red China is red-hot, with a heat wave accompanied by a drought drying up the Yangtze River, crippling hydroelectric power in Sichuan province and the neighboring municipality of Chongqing.  The water level of the Yangtze has fallen to its lowest levels since record-keeping began in 1865, according to Bloomberg.  "The output of hydropower units has been seriously affected, and the power load in some provinces has grown rapidly.  During the peak period of power consumption, demand-side management and orderly power consumption measures need to be taken," read a statement from China's National Energy Administration.  Chinese state data also indicates that the average precipitation in Sichuan has fallen by more than 50%, and that the total water storage capacity of Sichuan's hydroelectric plants is 4 billion cubic meters less than previous years.

Biden's CIA Director Employed Undisclosed Chinese Communist Party Members While Heading Elite DC Think Tank.  Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns formerly headed an influential D.C. think tank while it employed undisclosed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members as well as individuals with Chinese government ties, the Daily Caller News Foundation has found.  During Burns' tenure as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from February 2015 to November 2021, the think tank employed at least 20 policy experts whom the DCNF has identified as CCP members.  These CCP members worked at both Carnegie's Washington, D.C., headquarters and Carnegie-Tsinghua — the Beijing center Burns' predecessor, Jessica Mathews, launched in 2010 in cooperation with Tsinghua University.  Yet, expert profiles on Carnegie's website don't disclose these individuals' ties to the CCP. The DCNF only discovered their communist ties after analyzing hundreds of Chinese-language, Communist Party branch records and personnel profiles from more than a dozen CCP-linked organizations.

National Security Concerns Mount as Chinese Company Builds Major Plant Near North Dakota Military Base.  A China-based agribusiness with links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is moving ahead with plans to build a corn mill in Grand Forks, North Dakota, despite local concerns that the project could pose national security risks.  Fufeng Group — the second largest xanthan gum producer in China — recently purchased 370 acres located north of Grand Forks after the City Council voted to annex the property.  The city then changed the parcel's designation to an industrial zone from agricultural to allow the project to move forward under federal law.  A Hong-Kong listed company, Fufeng Group is based in Shandong Province and has subsidiaries in 115 countries around the world.  The future corn mill plant would operate through U.S. subsidiary Fufeng USA on prime land about a dozen miles from Grand Forks Air Force base.  Minot Air Force Base sits about 211 miles west of the city.

China Urges the World to Disregard Protesters Storming Banks for Cash.  China's state-run Global Times claimed on Tuesday [7/12/2022] that Western media was unnecessarily "hyping" protests by roughly 1,000 people in Zhengzhou, China, on Sunday in which participants demanded several rural banks release millions of dollars of deposits after unceremoniously freezing them in April, ignoring the fact that Chinese security personnel physically abused and injured several demonstrators during the rally. [...] An estimated 1,000 people participated in a rally outside the Zhengzhou branch of China's central bank on July 10 to demand the bank release millions of dollars in deposits that were frozen without explanation in April.  Several people told various media outlets, including Reuters and the Associated Press (AP), that they were physically assaulted by security personnel associated with the bank and police officers while demonstrating on Sunday.

Thousands Riot In China After Learning Their Bank Accounts [were] Frozen Due To Lack Of Liquidity.  In China, bank customers have been carrying out massive street protests in the city of Zhengzhou in Henan province after a large number of accounts have been sealed up, seized and funds were frozen.  The financial situation has arisen due to liquidity crunch, which is apparently prevailing for about two months now.  Congregating in large numbers, bank depositors in Henan province staged their largest protest against the "corruption and violence of Henan government."  The agitators demanded their savings back from the bank that has frozen their deposits since mid-April this year.  [Video clip]

The Chinese Are Buying Up Land And Medical Marijuana Growing Licenses in Oklahoma For Human Trafficking Front Businesses.  The ChiComs are buying up the Sooner State.  NATIONAL FILE has discovered that there is a massive black market business in Oklahoma run by Chinese nationals.  The Chinese are buying plots of farmland and residential properties in cash and setting up front businesses including medical marijuana grow houses that are driving the illegal immigration crisis and being used as fronts for human trafficking.  I discussed this crisis Thursday [5/19/2022] on The Stew Peters Show.  Oklahoma State Senator Warren Hamilton confirmed the Chinese invasion of Oklahoma farmland, stating in a text message:  "I authored sb1469 and sjr 45 because of this," referring to the legislative effort to stop the ChiComs from scamming the medical marijuana system to achieve black-market economic and political dominance in America's heartland.

Fox Business anchor has disturbing theory of why full details on Biden-Xi call haven't been released.  There continue to be questions about the reluctance of the White House to release the full details of the high-stakes telephone call between President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart last Friday and the answer could be very troubling if a theory put forth by a Fox Business anchor has any truth to it.

Jill Biden's big tech SOTU guest has deep ties to China, reportedly bent the knee to CCP.  First lady Jill Biden had a close family friend as a guest at the State of the Union address on Tuesday, Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger, whose company is one of the largest tech manufacturers in the world with deep ties to communist China and was a proud sponsor of the Beijing Olympics.  Intel has previously cooperated with the Chinese Communist Party, deferring to its diktats rather than American principles.  That did not stop President Joe Biden from introducing Gelsinger during his speech and proclaiming that Intel will build a monster manufacturing facility in Ohio that will ironically produce computer chips and other technology to counter China's stranglehold on the market.

Chinese media accidentally posts CCP rules on Russia-Ukraine coverage, hint at Taiwan takeover.  Chinese news media posted instructions to social platforms about how to approach coverage on Ukraine, including a note of China's need for Russian "support" with Taiwan.  One outlet appeared to accidentally post guidelines on what should and should not be published, while an editor from another outlet weighed in with guidance on language and approaches that he believed necessary in walking a fine line.  Ming Jinwei, senior editor at Xinhua News Agency, wrote in his WeChat blog about how his outlet needed to walk a tight line on its Ukraine coverage, noting that China "has to back Russia up with emotional and moral support while refraining from treading on the toes of the United States and European Union."

China's fishing fleets are ruining the oceans.  Communist China operates hundreds of thousands of fishing vessels.  Operating as vast superfleets, they feed a voracious domestic market and have no regard for sustainability or the interests of other nations.  It's a big problem.  Surging out of port like the invading Mongol hordes that once crushed China, these fleets travel many thousands of miles from Chinese shores.  Rarely concerned with international law or the exclusive economic zones of other nations, the superfleets scour the oceans.  It's not just the fish that are sucked dry from their habitats — it's sharks, dolphins, and all manner of other marine animals.  Whether in the open oceans or in protected marine reserves such as the Galapagos Islands, Chinese fleets care nothing for the chaos they wreak on vulnerable habitats.

The out-of-control rocket about to hit the moon is not a SpaceX Falcon 9, astronomers now say: report.  A rocket stage set to hit the moon March 4 might not be from SpaceX after all.  The astronomer credited with discovering the forthcoming impact, Bill Gray, announced Saturday (Feb. 12) that he made an error in identifying the rocket as an old SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage that helped launch the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite in 2015.  Rather, Gray suggests the stage could part of a Long March 3C rocket that launched China's moonbound Chang'e 5-T1 mission in October 2014.

The Editor says...
There may be other cases like this, but I am unaware of any other instance in which part of a rocket inadvertently hit the moon.  Fifty or sixty years ago, it was a major accomplishment to launch an object of any size and have it land anywhere on the moon, at any speed.

Author Says China's Domestic Troubles Could Trigger Leadership Coup.  A group of Chinese officials might stage an internal coup against Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and transition China to a democratic political system, according to Roger Garside, author of "China Coup."  "The body politic of China is terminally ill.  Only a transplant can save the body politic, and the only other system on offer is competitive democracy," Garside, a former diplomat, told Epoch TV's "China Insider" program on Jan. 31.  Garside, who served twice at the British Embassy in Beijing, argues that high-level officials in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including Premier Li Keqiang, believe that Xi is taking China in a "very risky and dangerous" direction, jeopardizing their wealth and power, as well as the future of the CCP.  He contends that this is the reason why they are plotting against the Chinese leader.