Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Last week, the world had a close encounter with a “city-killer” asteroid. It surprised the world’s astronomers and, therefore, with scarcely any warning, this monster rock half-a-mile-wide hurtled by at just a fifth of the distance to the moon.

Had this asteroid hit the earth, the impact would have been 30 times the explosive force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. 

While such an event wouldn’t have ended life as we know it, another space phenomenon – an intense solar storm – could have that effect. The electromagnetic energy thus unleashed would damage or destroy electric grids around the world. And we are overdue for such a catastrophe.

Such naturally occurring events and our terrestrial enemies’ interest in using space against us underscore the urgent need for a Space Force led by an individual capable of developing responses to these challenges.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Last weekend brought more demonstrations by freedom fighters among the people of Hong Kong, some violently opposed by police. They keep protesting despite evidence that they are on their own in facing the ruthless repression of the Chinese Communist Party.

Those of us who take our liberty for granted might find incomprehensible why millions of Hong Kong people have recently joined in this struggle. The answer is simple: This is their last chance for freedom. 

Much more is on the line, though. Today, Hong Kong is the frontline in our era’s phase of the War for the Free World. If Communist China gets away with enslaving the people there, it will be emboldened to do the same elsewhere.

Deterring such a prospect now by bringing to bear our economic leverage on Beijing will be easier than reversing its dire repercussions later.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

In recent days, fast-boats of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have seized oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.  This action has followed a series of other direct and indirect Iranian provocations, including attacks on shipping, Saudi oil infrastructure and U.S. assets in Iraq.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a pair of Chinese long-range bombers joined two of their Russian counterparts and one of the Kremlin’s command-and-control aircraft in conducting a deliberate provocation in the airspace over islands claimed by South Korea and Japan. An extraordinary three hundred warning shots were fired in two separate instances before the intruders departed the area.

Make no mistake: These are probing actions designed to test the readiness and resolve of the United States and its allies. As with any bully, a failure to demonstrate both will result in more aggression worldwide.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Last month, the leaders of Communist China and Russia teamed up to perpetrate a fraud. In a joint statement, the PRC’s dictator for life, Xi Jinping, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, professed a commitment to nuclear disarmament belied by their countries’ actual military programs and unbroken record of violating arms control obligations.

Although these tyrants declared a shared determination to deemphasize nuclear weaponry, their respective militaries have actually engaged in unprecedented nuclear build-ups. Russia’s strategic and tactical arsenals now greatly surpass in modernity, numbers and lethality those of the United States.

For all we know, the secretive Chinese – with their 3,000 miles of hardened underground tunnels perfect for manufacturing, concealing and launching nuclear missiles –may have done the same. 

President Trump is right to pursue our own nuclear modernization program and to eschew unverifiable, fraudulent and violated arms control agreements.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

At the White House Monday, U.S. technology firms assured President Trump that they can sell some of their products to the Chinese Communist Party’s telecommunications conglomerate, Huawei, without harming the national security.

Unfortunately, these companies are not just interested parties. They have a conflict-of-interest. Their bottom lines will benefit – at least in the short-run – from propping up Huawei.

But our country, and many others around the world, will suffer if we continue to help the People’s Liberation Army’s Huawei be a viable source for fifth-generation and other telecommunications capabilities.

Our personal information, proprietary data and state secrets will be vacuumed up. The “Internet of Things” will be susceptible to abuse and even weaponization against us. And Beijing’s digital imperialism will help it achieve the dominance worldwide that is Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” – and our nightmare.

Just say “No” to Huawei, Mr. President.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Saturday marked the 50th anniversary of the first successful dispatch of men to the moon and their safe return to earth. “The right stuff” was evident in America’s extraordinary technology, resources and national resolve.

While the United States has done much in outer space ever since, today we are at risk of ceding the High Frontier. Particularly ominous is the bid now being made by Communist China to dominate the so-called “earth-moon system” as a military theater.

Such a development would have dire implications for both our economic and national security. For example, both depend critically upon satellites with which the Chinese are increasingly capable of interfering.

There isn’t a moment to lose in standing up the U.S. Space Force and ensuring it has the visionary leadership we’ll need for another fifty years of safety and success, in space and here below.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The Communist Chinese Party has quietly inserted forces into Hong Kong capable of eliminating its many opponents in the former British colony. Such a crackdown might make the Party’s Tiananmen Square massacre thirty years ago pale by comparison.

China’s dictator, Xi Jinping, insists this is an internal matter. It would be a serious mistake were the United States to concur. For, if the People’s Liberation Army can with impunity crush freedom in Hong Kong, it is absolutely predictable that liberty will not be safe elsewhere, either.

Fortunately, an existing American law says that if China doesn’t respect Hong Kong’s autonomy, it can no longer benefit from the latter’s Most Favored Nation status – ending a back-door the Communists have long, massively and very profitably exploited.

We must serve notice now: If China snuffs freedom in Hong Kong, it’s guaranteed to suffer severe costs.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The Trump administration has rightly decided to bar the sale of America’s frontline, stealth fighter aircraft to Turkey. This action was made necessary by the Turkish government’s insistence on acquiring and deploying a Russian missile system intended to shoot down our F-35s and other warplanes.

Unfortunately, the problem is not simply that the Turks thus aligned themselves with the NATO alliance’s principal adversary – and that, by so doing, the Russians would likely learn secrets that could help them kill our pilots and defeat their missions.

In fact, this action is just the latest evidence that Turkey, under its Sharia-supremacist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is an ally no more. In addition to Russia, the would-be Caliph is working closely now with China, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Consequently, we must now proceed to protect NATO more comprehensively from this turncoat inside its wire.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Abraham Lincoln famously warned that “a house divided cannot stand.” Today, the U.S. government is a house divided regarding a Chinese Communist Party that’s doing business as a state-owned telecommunications conglomerate called Huawei.

President Trump has formally designated the company a “foreign adversary” and restricted sales of our technology to it and its installation of 5G-related and other equipment and networks here.

The Federal Trade Commission, however, has sued an American chip manufacturer, effectively on Huawei’s behalf. And Mr. Trump is under pressure to allow some sales to Huawei – as long as natural security is not impacted.

In court submissions this week, though, the Justice, Defense and Energy Departments established that Huawei inherently poses a national security threat.

We must stop doing business with, and thereby strengthening, what amounts to a dangerous weapon in the Chinese Communist Party’s “unrestricted warfare” against us.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Today, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo convenes a massive Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. To succeed in that vital mission, the participants will have to address two big challenges. 

First, practical steps that actually advance religious freedom must be adopted. The place to start is by holding accountable those who persecute Christians and other believers and by imposing real costs for their crimes against humanity. The same should apply to those who enable such persecution by lobbying for or otherwise legitimating regimes that persecute religious minorities.

Second, the Ministerial must repudiate those who assert that freely practicing their faith entitles them to deny that right to others. Unfortunately, this task will be complicated by the presence there of Muslim Brotherhood operatives and other Sharia-supremacists who claim divine authority to compel the submission of every other religion’s adherents.

That’s not religious freedom.

This is Frank Gaffney.