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HOMELAND SECURITY

How the Chinese Communist Party Steals U.S. Technology A Thousand Talents is 999 too many. By Paul Dabbar

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.

Why Proactive Cybersecurity Is a Must in Today’s Sophisticated Threat Environment Prevention and preparedness begin with discovering the knowns and unknowns in the code that is the backbone of the array of applications and operating networks. By Chuck Brooks

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)

Biden Puts IRS Funding Ahead of Military and Border Security Even mayors of sanctuary cities are starting to complain. Stephen Moore

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.

Tijuana, Mexicali, Ensenada, Tecate, and other Mexican border cities explode into orgy of cartel violence By Monica Showalter

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.

Biden’s Handlers Released 324 Unvetted Afghan Evacuees on Terror Watchlist Into the U.S. It’s all going according to plan. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/bidens-handlers-released-324-unvetted-robert-spencer/

Biden’s catastrophically botched withdrawal from Afghanistan was bad enough in itself, diminishing America’s standing in the world and projecting an image of weakness that has encouraged and emboldened enemies of our nation worldwide. The fallout from it, however, could be incalculably worse. A Defense Department (DoD) whistleblower has revealed that 324 of the Afghans whom U.S. forces brought to the United States as the disaster in Afghanistan was unfolding appeared on the department’s Biometrically Enabled Watchlist (BEWL), which includes terrorists, and yet were admitted into the country without being vetted. No one who has been watching the spreading dumpster fire that is the Biden administration could possibly be surprised.

Senators Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) have called upon the DoD to investigate. On Thursday, they wrote to DoD Acting Inspector General Sean O’Donnell about their “concern over new allegations raised by a Department of Defense (DoD) whistleblower. This information may show the Biden Administration’s failure to vet those evacuated from Afghanistan was even worse than the public was led to believe. The following allegations demand an immediate investigation by your office.” There should indeed be an investigation, but in these days of the hyper-politicization of everything and concomitant wokeification of the government bureaucracy, a genuinely illuminating investigation is about as likely to happen as Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis getting the Democrat nomination for president in 2024.  

The Next Generation of Suicide Bombers is Being Trained at an Islamic School in Houston Daniel Greenfield

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.

Biden’s TSA Becomes the Transportation False Security Administration Illegal aliens are welcomed aboard airliners – using arrest warrants for ID. Michael Cutler !!!!!

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/bidens-tsa-has-become-transportation-false-michael-cutler/

The Biden Administration continues to implement policies that are not in the best interests of America or Americans.  Nowhere is this more apparent than the multifaceted immigration system.

Immigration is not a single issue, but a singular issue because it profoundly impacts nearly every challenge and threat that confronts America in this especially perilous era.

Even with the ongoing “crisis on the southern border” getting some attention by some news organizations, the immigration crisis involves far more than the unending tsunami of illegal aliens flooding into the United States from Mexico.

The frequently maligned Border Wall was never designed to keep people from entering the United States, only to make it more difficult of those who seek to enter to evade the vetting process we conduct at ports of entry to screen out aliens who would pose a threat to public health, public safety, national security and the jobs and wages of Americans.

Chinese Communist Cells in Western Firms? Xi Jinping has pressed for measures giving party apparatchiks more power over foreign companies. By Dennis Kwok and Sam Goodman

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.

Media Uninterested in Discussing 2 Illegal Aliens Who Plotted July 4th Mass Shooting Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/07/media-uninterested-discussing-2-illegal-aliens-who-daniel-greenfield/

Inconvenient narrative.

Mass shooters are supposed to be suburban American kids. In statistical reality, if counting mass shooters by the number of victims, most are gang members in urban areas. And even the conventional concept of the mass shooter, a disgruntled or unstable individual opening fire at a school, workplace, or general area to cause as much harm as possible without a criminal or political motive, the truth is more complicated than the media’s narrative would have it.

That’s why the media is reluctant to discuss it.

Like this latest July 4th mass shooting plot by illegal aliens.

Two illegal immigrants were arrested in a mass shooting plot at the Richmond, Virginia, July Fourth celebration.

“A hero citizen picked up the phone and overheard a conversation there was a mass shooting being planned here in the city of Richmond, Virginia,” Richmond Chief of Police Gerald Smith said Wednesday.

Two illegal immigrants, 52-year-old Julio Alvarado-Dubon and 38-year-old Rolman Balacarcel, were arrested and charged with being a non-U.S. citizens in possession of a gun after police uncovered a plot that the duo planned a mass shooting at Richmond’s July 4 celebration Monday.

Police Arrest Illegal Immigrants after ‘Hero Citizen’ Tipped Off Authorities to Planned Mass Shooting By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/police-arrest-illegal-immigrants-after-hero-citizen-tipped-off-authorities-to-planned-mass-shooting/

Police in Richmond, Va., said a tip from a “hero citizen” helped prevent two illegal immigrants from carrying out a planned shooting at a Fourth of July celebration.

“A hero citizen picked up the phone and overheard a conversation there was a mass shooting being planned here in the city of Richmond, Virginia,” Richmond Chief of Police Gerald Smith said during a press conference on Wednesday.

Police said they found evidence that Julio Alvarado-Dubon, 52, and Rolman Balacarcel, 38, were planning an attack at the city’s Independence Day celebration at the Dogwood Deli amphitheater and a city baseball game.

After the citizen called in the tip on July 1, police investigated the suspects’ residence and saw “evidence in plain view” to corroborate the tip. Officers seized two assault rifles, a handgun and 223 rounds of ammunition from the home.

Officers arrested Alvarado-Dubon and charged him with being a non-U.S. citizen in posession of a firearm on Friday. Balacarcel, who is Alvarado-Dubon’s roommate, was arrested and charged on the same count on Tuesday after a weekend of police surveillance.

The pair is being held without bond. Both suspects may face additional charges, police said.

Police did not identify a motive for the foiled attack.