Chinese threat is here, but not everyone in Congress wants to talk about it

Grant Newsham April 25, 2024
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Originally published by Fox News

Paul Kagame / Flickr
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I testified before the House Oversight Committee about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence in the United States. For an American of my generation, testifying before a congressional committee is a big deal, and an honor.

But, I suspected the hearing could be derailed for political purposes – and it was. Maybe you saw the headlines about the hearing’s “chaos”?

As a result, there were several crucial topics I didn’t cover in my testimony.  I’ll get to them, but first, here’s what I did cover.

Bottom line: America no longer enjoys the protection of “distance” that our strategic community has taken for granted for centuries. The last time the American mainland faced a serious invasion by a foreign power was the War of 1812.

The CCP has systematically taken away that advantage through a multifront political warfare campaign against us.

CCP Has Erased Our Border In More Ways Than You Think

The most obvious way is CCP cyber penetration of America and Americans.  Communists sitting in China are in our critical infrastructure, communications systems, cars, health care, genetic data and schools. China’s 2015 hacking of OPM gave extremely personal files on 22 million Americans holding security clearances.

The same Americans who were furious about a Chinese spy balloon floating over their heads have Chinese spy apps loaded on their phones, sitting in their pockets.

Distance doesn’t protect us from their devastating chemical warfare either. Chinese-origin fentanyl killed over 70,000 Americans last year alone, and is destroying families and communities and cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Beijing could stop it if it wants. But why should it? It is weakening its greatest enemy, and we aren’t doing anything about it.

Same thing on the economic front. The PRC has, in a targeted way, been destroying our manufacturing and other commercial sectors, including ones critical for defense, like shipbuilding and critical minerals. We’ve lost millions of jobs over the last 20 years, hundreds of billions in revenue a year, and are dependent on China for everything from pharmaceuticals to components in F-35s.

We are deeply penetrated, damaged and there is barely a response.

How To Fight An Enemy Inside

For the first time in our history, our distance can’t protect us. We have never faced anything like this. We are under constant attack from within.

Among the recommendations I made to start fighting back are that the U.S. government needs to relearn political warfare and someone needs to be responsible for the political warfare effort – and its success or failure. Currently, nobody is.

And, at a minimum, we should implement a reciprocity standard. We can’t buy land near a military base in China. They shouldn’t be able to buy land near ours.

On the economic and technology fronts, we should do nothing that helps the PRC, including letting them raid our research institutes.

Read more.

President Kagame and President Xi Jinping of China Joint Press Conference by Paul Kagame is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Grant Newsham
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