RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/18/how-much-of-the-u-s-has-china-already-infiltrated-right-under-our-noses/

Through land grabs, media partners, and spies, the Chinese assault is less of a swift invasion and more of an endless infiltration.

Numerous pieces have been published discussing the inexorable rise of China, and the likelihood of the Chinese economy overtaking the United States’ economy. More concerning, though, is the fact that Chinese companies closely aligned with Beijing are directly influencing operations in the United States. They are buying up land, influencing news and media networks, and shaping the narratives on college campuses. The Chinese assault is less of a swift invasion and more of an endless infiltration.

Land Grabs

Fufeng Group, a company with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), recently acquired 300 acres of prime farmland in North Dakota for $2.6 million. China now owns well over 192,000 agricultural acres in the United States.

On July 25, obviously concerned by Fufeng’s purchase, Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota asked the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to “provide clarity on whether this land purchase has national security implications.”

Burgum’s fears are most definitely warranted. Over the last decade, Chinese ownership of farmland in the United States has increased dramatically. To compound matters, only a handful of states ban foreign ownership of farmland. Since 2016, a mysterious billionaire by the name of Sun Guangxinhas spent tens of millions of dollars buying land in Texas. Sun’s ties to the CCP are well known. 

In truth, Chinese ownership of American farmland is just one part of the disturbing equation. Residential real estate is the second part. China now accounts for roughly a quarter of total foreign investment, in U.S. residential real estate, according to Market Watch. The Chinese are now the largest foreign buyers of U.S. homes and this has been the case for close to a decade. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-thousand-talents-is-999-too-many-energy-department-china-technology-transfer-research-innovation-national-lab-conflict-of-interest-appropriation-11659980858?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

When I joined the U.S. Department of Energy in 2017, I was briefed about how pervasively the Chinese Communist Party had woven itself into the U.S. government’s research and innovation efforts. Traditionally, labs and academic institutions around the world and their researchers work on projects together. And periodically, foreign institutions, including in China, compensate Americans for their efforts. The Communist Party began to use these interactions to recruit people for their technology-appropriation programs.

I should have known. Before I joined the department, I was in the nuclear industry in the private sector, and served on an Energy Department advisory board. Chinese state entities often invited me to attend nuclear conferences and tour the country—all expenses paid. I always said no, because I was too busy. In retrospect, I certainly am glad I was. The invitations have resumed since I left the government, and my answer is a well-informed no.

I learned that people working at the Energy Department’s National Laboratories had significant engagements with China. Some were paid by one of the many Chinese Communist Party Thousand Talents Plans while concurrently working at sensitive U.S. government labs. These agreements often required technology transfer as well as support for recruiting more members to the TTPs. This was also happening at other agencies, and it was recently disclosed that these include nonscience and international institutions such as the Federal Reserve and the Inter-American Development Bank.

The weakness in the Energy Department’s compliance rules was that there were no disclosure or conflict-of-interest policies regarding foreign engagement or research and technologies other than those involving strategic weapons. There were no rules about research in quantum computing and artificial intelligence, which will have a large economic impact and defense applications.

https://www.hstoday.us/featured/why-proactive-cybersecurity-is-a-must-in-todays-sophisticated-threat-environment/

In recent years, the cybersecurity focus and activities by both industry and government have been reactive to whatever is the latest threat or breach. As a result, mitigating the threats was difficult because, from the outset, cyber-defenders were always at least one step behind.

The reactive mindset has been changing due to a series of wake-up calls that have included a major series of intrusions by sophisticated threat actors against many high-profile targets (including SolarWinds, Colonial Pipeline, OPM, Anthem, Yahoo, and many others) that exposed a flawed approach to defending data and operating with a passive preparedness.

As our reliance on the interconnectivity of cyber devices, enterprises, and applications on the cyber landscape has grown, so have the cyber intrusions and threats from malware and hackers. The growing and sophisticated cyber threat actors include various criminal enterprises, loosely affiliated hackers, and adversarial nation-states. The firm Cybersecurity Ventures expects global cybercrime costs to grow by 15 percent per year over the next five years, reaching $10.5 trillion USD annually by 2025. Cybercrime To Cost the World $10.5 Trillion Annually By 2025 (cybersecurityventures.com)

https://townhall.com/columnists/stephenmoore/2022/08/09/biden-puts-irs-funding-ahead-of-military-and-border-security-n2611444

Everyone should be deeply troubled by the recent report that the Army is on pace to miss its recruiting goal by dozens of thousands of troops and by the report that followed a few days later, alleging that the Border Patrol is running short of agents in Arizona and Texas. The border is so porous these days that even mayors of sanctuary cities are starting to complain about illegal immigration.

So, what is Congress doing about these crises? They are going to spend tens of billions of dollars to increase the number of … IRS employees. The plan calls for spending some $80 billion to hire some 80,000 new agents and investigators. This will give the IRS the resources to double the number of people who get audited every year.

Is this about the most warped set of national priorities you’ve ever heard? If this $80 billion were rerouted to the Army and the Border Patrol, we could easily stop much of the tide of illegal immigration and staff up our military so we have the soldiers we need to defend our country.

According to official budget numbers, the overall cost of border security at the Department of Homeland Security is roughly $55 billion a year. That is less than just the increase in IRS funding to harass the public. Or consider this: The epidemic of opioid and other drug overdoses is killing close to 100,000 a year. We spend about $11 billion a year to prevent these tragic deaths. But the ironically named Inflation Reduction Act calls for 30 times more than this, or more than $300 billion, to try to combat climate change, while the number of those who die from CO2 emissions each year is close to zero.

All of this is to say that the Biden-Manchin-Schumer spending bill that has now passed the Senate is arguably the greatest misallocation of our federal dollars in American history. It spends money in areas where we should be cutting expenses and ignores national security priorities.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/tijuana_mexicali_ensenada_tecate_and_other_mexican_border_cities_explode_into_orgy_of_cartel_violence.html

“Joe Biden’s open borders policies have led to a full-blown war zone at the very edge of the U.S., with scenes like these, all because of the money and power at stake.  It’s compounded by the Mexican federal government’s coddling of cartels.  That’s a toxic, explosive mixture that has led to this actual national security crisis.”

Less than 20 miles away from where I’m writing this in San Diego, the next city over is exploding into some kind of Ukraine-like hellscape.

According to local station CBS8:

TIJUANA, Baja California — The United States Consulate General in Tijuana is instructing employees to shelter in place after unrest in the region began on Friday.

The U.S. consulate is warning government employees near Tijuana, Mexicali, Rosarito, Ensenada, Tecate to shelter in place until further notice due to vehicle fires, roadblocks and heavy police activity.

U.S. citizens are being told to avoid the area, seek secure shelter, and monitor local media for updates.

It must be still on the national-news radar as a local story, maybe something that happens all the time, this being Tee Jay.

But it’s no local story.  It’s the logical consequence of Joe Biden’s open borders policy, which has made control of Tijuana and all border cities worth fighting for to Mexico’s brutal cartels.  Apparently, three have laid claim to these cities — and they are big ones.  TJ is bigger than San Diego, which is America’s sixth largest city, for one, putting these cities under an unprecedented siege.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/07/next-generation-suicide-bombers-being-trained-daniel-greenfield/

Americans have gotten very comfortable thinking that 9/11 is in the rearview mirror and that after Afghanistan and Iraq, we’ve done enough and we don’t have to think about it anymore. Islamic terrorist plots keep happening and migration is changing the country’s demographics. Mehmet Oz’s GOP/MAGA Senate nomination in PA has been a political game changer that has mostly flown under the radar. Gitmo is being emptied. We think we’ve won when actually we’re losing. Badly.

Here’s a little preview of what’s coming.

The lines include, “I make an oath…one day when you need me, I will be your martyr.”

Here’s a little background.

The Islamic Education Center of Houston, Texas, is organizing a “group recitation” — sung by children as young as four — of a new Iranian anthem saluting Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.

“The song Salam Farmande is an expression of one’s love for the Imam of our age,” says the center.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/communist-cells-in-western-firms-business-investment-returns-xi-jinping-11657552354?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The legal and regulatory risk of doing business in China may be about to get a lot higher. The China Securities Regulatory Commission is implementing changes to its rules governing publicly offered securities investment funds. These rules include requiring foreign-owned fund managers such as BlackRock and Fidelity to create Communist Party cells when operating in China.

Many foreign investors have assumed these rules would apply only to Chinese businesses and state-owned enterprises. China analysts, however, have been warning since 2018 that these laws could soon apply to foreign-owned companies operating through Chinese joint ventures. Since 2016, Xi Jinping has pushed for state-run companies and subsidiaries of foreign-owned companies to establish cells through the provisions of the Chinese Communist Party’s Articles of Association.

In September 2020, the General Office of the Communist Party’s Central Committee issued the “Opinion on Strengthening the United Front Work of the Private Economy in the New Era,” which called on the nation’s United Front Work Departments to strengthen their involvement in corporate governance. In response, the European Chamber of Commerce in China cautioned that the strengthening of the role of party cells would “have a considerable impact on business sentiment, and could lead foreign companies to reconsider future and even current investments in China.”

Western financial firms piled into China anyway, attracted by the prospect of high returns and advised by Chinese contacts that engagement with the Communist Party is the price of doing business. Since 2018, foreign businessmen have reported being approached by the party about the establishment of party cells. The secrecy of the United Front Work Department makes it impossible to establish how many such cells exist. In January 2021, HSBC executive Noel Quinn was unable to confirm to the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee that the bank had no party cells in its branches in Hong Kong and the mainland.