Secure Freedom Minute

Communist China recently achieved what should be a “Sputnik” moment – an event that ought to shock every American and spur us to action. The PRC demonstrated the ability to fly into orbit a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile optimized to perform surprise attacks anywhere on the planet and defeat our missile defense capabilities.

Wisconsin Representative Mike Gallagher warns that we risk losing a “new Cold War with China” if we fail to change course, notably by ending Americans’ current practice of “engaging in joint ventures, [Wall Street and other] investments and research collaborations that involve areas associated with Communist China’s Military-Civil Fusion.”

The Congressman is right, especially in warning about U.S. dual-use technology transfers to our enemies. He should look into one called “Skolkovo” that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used to enable her donors to sell hypersonic missile-related technology to Russia.

This is Frank Gaffney.

On Tuesday, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping cynically used a UN Biodiversity Summit to announce a new fund to promote conservation of developing countries’ native and endangered species.

As it happens, the BBC reported last week on the devastation of one such species that the Chinese are wreaking across Africa. It turns out that millions of donkeys are being slaughtered to satisfy China’s insatiable appetite for their skins and meat. The effect is not only laying waste to such animals. It’s also devastating the livelihoods and lives of Africans who rely on these indispensable beasts of burden.

The Chinese Communists are also afflicting Africa via a colonial Belt and Road Initiative that’s corrupting the continents’ nations, pillaging their resources and undermining their sovereignty.

Beware the CCP’s phony largesse; its object is becoming dominant, not biodiversity – let alone the interests of Africa’s humans. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

Finally, a prominent politician has explicitly denounced “the Biden administration’s unparalleled effort to transform federal laws and agencies into instruments of domestic political repression.”

Unfortunately, while former Wisconsin Representative James Sensenbrenner has laudably called in the Wall Street Journal for Congress to block the latest example of such abuse – namely, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s memorandum ordering the Justice Department and FBI to treat parents who express opposition to school boards’ racist indoctrination of their children as “domestic terrorists” – he is no longer in a position to compel such redress.

It now falls to patriots who are in Congress, and their supporters, to embrace Mr. Sensenbrenner’s call to: “demand the immediate withdrawal of the school-board memorandum, bar the appropriation of funds to implement it, and directly challenge the administration’s efforts to misuse federal laws to silence political opposition.”

This is Frank Gaffney.

Lieutenant General Mike Flynn warned Tucker Carlson yesterday about the growing threat posed by Communist China. He highlighted the advantage the Chinese gain by simply stealing military technology we spend billions and decades to produce.

Today, a U.S. Navy engineer and his wife are being arraigned for allegedly trying to sell an unidentified nation – presumably China – extremely sensitive naval nuclear propulsion technology. Fortunately, the FBI was able to intercept it, instead.

This development underscores the magnitude of our challenge. How many of the hundreds of thousands of students and other Chinese nationals in this country – including some in our government research labs, cyber operatives and spies are successfully stealing our information that can be used to kill us? 

And can the FBI really afford to be spending any time investigating American moms opposing their kids’ racist indoctrination and other non-“domestic terrorists”?

This is Frank Gaffney.

It’s good news that the Central Intelligence Agency is establishing a new Mission Center focused on the massive and growing threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party. Such a heightened priority is long overdue, especially in light of the PRC’s past successes in discovering and neutralizing U.S. spy networks there.

The bad news is that the man ultimately responsible for the CIA’s China portfolio is its Director, William Burns. In his previous post as president of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, Mr. Burns presided over that think tank’s extensive collaborations with Chinese influence operations successfully used by the CCP to obscure the true magnitude of the existential danger it poses to America.

The question occurs: Can the CIA accurately assess and help counter the China threat if its efforts are overseen by a man who has himself gotten it seriously wrong?

This is Frank Gaffney.

Xi Van Fleet is a remarkable and very courageous woman. I had a chance to interview Xi recently about her experience as a child survivor of Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution in Communist China. She warns that so-called Critical Race Theory is a variant on the Marxist-Maoist “class-warfare” technique for dividing and oppressing populations.

Ms. Van Fleet came to national attention when she presented this insight to Virginia’s Loudoun County School Board. Her warning is all the more compelling now that Attorney General Merrick Garland has told the Justice Department and FBI to treat people like her as “potential domestic terrorists.”

In other words, if you oppose the use of a devastatingly effective communist practice aimed at indoctrinating children and adults, destroying individuals and families and subverting entire nations, the Biden administration now considers you a public enemy. That’s un-American and completely unacceptable.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, we’re in the most dangerous national security threat environment in a generation. The Chinese Communist Party has been waging unrestricted – but so far non-kinetic – warfare against us for over two decades. Unless China’s escalating aggressiveness, especially towards Taiwan, is promptly and effectively deterred, an actual war may break out at any time.

It is, therefore, deeply unsettling that Biden Climate Czar John Kerry recently revealed the President was “literally not aware” of what we are encouraged to believe is our most important strategic counter to date to China’s belligerence – namely, U.S. and British collaboration to provide Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines.

Last May, an estimable group of retired Flag Officers for America were roundly denounced for stating the obvious:

“The mental and physical condition of the Commander-in-Chief cannot be ignored.”

Amen.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The Chinese Communist Party is risking internal turmoil by cutting back electricity supplied by coal-fired power-plants.

The impact has translated into widespread blackouts, disrupting industries’ and consumers’ use alike, and they may be allowed to persist for some time.

Former Pentagon official Chuck DeVore theorizes that the regime in Beijing is weaning itself from foreign sources of coal likely to be interrupted if China attacks Taiwan. Whatever the motivation, the question occurs: Might our lights go out next?

After all, if one accepts the proposition that the Wuhan virus was not an intentional biological warfare attack, the CCP deliberately inflicted the pandemic on the rest of the world. If it wants to share the pain of electrical disruption, it can certainly create blackouts here – including long-term ones – for example, by shutting down the 300 Chinese-manufactured transformers insanely placed in our grid.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The Chinese Communist Party has occupied Afghanistan’s vast Bagram air base recently abandoned intact at the direction of Joe Biden. This development greatly compounds the ignominy of Biden’s defeat there. It translates into a significant strategic advantage in terms of China’s power-projection capability, at the expense of ours.

Unfortunately, surrendering Afghanistan to the CCP and its allies has been accompanied by other Biden policies weakening our country at home and abroad that can only reinforce dictator Xi Jinping’s calculation that America is in terminal decline. That perception intensifies enormously the prospect of open conflict with an emboldened and increasingly dangerous Chinese military.

It’s now essential that the transcripts of the three-and-a-half hours of Xi and Biden’s phone calls be dislcosed. We have a need-to-know what further concessions our enemy has demanded, and whether Biden is simply following orders.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The South American nation of Peru’s former First Vice President, Francisco Tedula, is a formidable man. He was among, and helped rescue, 72 hostages seized by terrorists like those who have now taken his country hostage, thanks to a fraudulent election last June.

Mr. Tudela warns of the danger for his people, the region’s and ours if such communists succeed in transforming Peru into a Venezuela on steroids: Terrorism will proliferate; deadly drug trafficking will intensify; and perhaps millions of Peruvians will join those coming here illegally.

Particularly alarming is the prospect of China’s deepening penetration and exploitation of Mr. Tudela’s strategic nation, including by basing there aircraft carrier battle groups – precipitating the most serious hemispheric threat since the Cuban missile crisis.

As Peru goes, so will likely go Colombia, Chile and Brazil. That would imperil our country, and must be resisted.

This is Frank Gaffney.