Important Takeaways:
- China’s ‘Unrestricted Warfare’: Is It Here Already?
- China-linked hackers appear to be looking to attack U.S. infrastructure, especially key components such as the electrical grid, water reservoirs and treatment plants, pipelines, and transportation and communications systems, among other targets.
- The goal is seemingly to disrupt the U.S. everything critical to life – if you have no electricity, your cellphone will not work; no water will come out of the tap; gas pumps will not pump gas; flights and trains will stop, and disease from disabled sewage treatment plants will spread. There will be havoc and panic. The government and military will be unable to protect the nation. That is what is meant by “unrestricted warfare.” Not a bullet was fired. It did not have to be. According to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, it is perfect.
- What are some of the steps that should be taken?
- The West has correctly identified the CCP as the malign threat that it is; now we have a responsibility to put into place the measures and deterrents to prevent it from attacking us through cyberspace or any other way. Let us not wait until we experience a 9/11-scale cyberattack that could be far more damaging to the U.S. than what took place on that dark day more than 20 years ago.
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Important Takeaways:
- The U.S. cannot afford a war with China. The size of our military has been shrinking, and our resources are stretched way too thin.
- Today, the U.S. has military bases in 80 different countries, and we have troops stationed in 178 different countries. That is insane.
- No empire in the entire history of humanity has had forces spread all over the planet like this. Our ammunition levels are extremely low due to major conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, and every war game that our leaders have conducted has shown us losing a war to protect Taiwan. So we should be trying to avoid sparking a war with China, because we are holding a losing hand.
- It is being reported that officials in Taiwan have confirmed that U.S. forces are now permanently stationed “on its islands in the Taiwan Strait”…
- Taiwan has officially confirmed the presence of US troops stationed on its islands in the Taiwan Strait permanently, a development that could further escalate mounting tensions with China.
- The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed in 2023 facilitated the deployment of these troops to conduct training programs for Taiwanese frontline forces.
- We are being told that U.S. troops have also been stationed on the Penghu islands and the Kinmen islands…
- According to reports from Taiwan’s United Daily News (UDN), US Army Green Berets from the 1st Special Forces Group are now permanently stationed at bases of the 101st Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion, a Taiwanese army special operations force, located in outlying island counties of Penghu and Kinmen. Notably, Kinmen lies just over a mile from Chinese shores.
- Additionally, reports suggest an American military presence in the northeast city of Taoyuan on Taiwan’s main island, with service members providing specialized training on drone equipment for Taiwan’s elite Airborne Special Service Company.
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Important Takeaways:
- A synthetic opioid or super-strength painkiller, it was designed to be an alternative to morphine.
- Appalled at the incredible potency of nitazenes – and the obvious danger that any patients prescribed them would swiftly become addicted – medical regulators blocked the drug’s release.
- Nitazenes are back and they are now increasingly available on the black market.
- Many of these labs are in China, and the drugs are so powerful that they have been nicknamed ‘Frankenstein’ opioids.
- This is a terrifying development, because nitazenes are 20 times stronger than fentanyl, which in 2022 alone killed 75,000 people in America.
- Another reason for the appearance of nitazenes is a 2019 bilateral agreement between Donald Trump’s administration and China to crack down on the production of Chinese fentanyl.
- Underground Chinese laboratories, fearful of being caught producing the drug, turned to nitazenes instead.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia and China on Friday vetoed a U.S. draft UN Security Council resolution which called for an “immediate and sustained ceasefire” in Gaza along with “the release of all remaining hostages” held by Hamas.
- This was the fourth time since the war began in October that the Security Council failed to agree on a resolution calling for a ceasefire.
- This time, the dispute was over the U.S. insistence on linking the ceasefire call to a hostage deal and condemnation of Hamas, rather than the unconditional ceasefire resolution demanded by Russia and China.
- S. and Israeli officials said the Biden administration had been working for weeks on mobilizing support for its draft resolution.
- In order to garner more votes, the U.S. strengthened the paragraph in the draft resolution that referred to the ceasefire.
- The U.S. draft resolution also included strong language expressing concern about a possible Israeli ground offensive in Rafah.
- The Security Council is expected to vote on an alternative resolution put forward by eight member states, calling for an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan to lead to a permanent ceasefire.
- The U.S. is expected to veto.
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Important Takeaways:
- World on the brink as Taiwan admits US troops are now stationed on Chinese border
- American troops are to be permanently stationed in Taiwan, according to Taipei, a huge move that will likely send tensions with China soaring as its president Xi Jinping covets the island.
- According to reports from Taiwan’s United Daily News (UDN), US Army Green Berets from the 1st Special Forces Group are now permanently stationed at bases of the 101st Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion, a Taiwanese army special operations force, located in outlying island counties of Penghu and Kinmen. Notably, Kinmen lies just over a mile from Chinese shores.
- Additionally, reports suggest an American military presence in the northeast city of Taoyuan on Taiwan’s main island, with service members providing specialized training on drone equipment for Taiwan’s elite Airborne Special Service Company.
- Both the US Army and Chinese Foreign Ministry have yet to comment on these developments.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Biden administration is warning states to be on guard for cyberattacks against water systems, citing ongoing threats from hackers linked to the governments of Iran and China.
- “Disabling cyberattacks are striking water and wastewater systems throughout the United States,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote in a letter to governors made public Tuesday. “These attacks have the potential to disrupt the critical lifeline of clean and safe drinking water, as well as impose significant costs on affected communities.”
- Hackers affiliated with the Iranian Government Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have attacked drinking water systems, while a People’s Republic of China state-sponsored group, Volt Typhoon, has compromised information technology of drinking water and other critical infrastructure systems, the letter warned.
- “Federal departments and agencies assess with high confidence that Volt Typhoon actors are pre-positioning themselves to disrupt critical infrastructure operations in the event of geopolitical tensions and/or military conflicts,” said the letter.
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Important Takeaways:
- Bipartisan action is increasingly hard to come by, especially in a presidential election year. But one issue still manages to get attention on both sides of the aisle: China’s growing influence right here in the Americas.
- That is for good reason. In the first two decades of the 21st century, China’s trade with the region jumped 26-fold to $315 billion while it simultaneously enhanced influence in the technology and security domains. China has used its economic engagement to cement access to vital natural resources, such as lithium, or to push countries in the region to loosen ties with Taiwan.
- Why is this possible? For one thing, outside the dedicated public sector officials who have Latin America and the Caribbean as part of their portfolios, the United States has historically paid a problematic lack of attention to the region. That didn’t bear the level of direct implications 20 years ago – when China’s economic and political presence in the Americas was minimal – as it does today.
- Presidential action is important but policies that can span administrations come from the power of Congress.
- Thus, it’s welcome news that senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Michael Bennet (D-CO), alongside House co-sponsors representatives Maria Salazar (R-FL) and Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) introduced the Americas Act on March 5. The bill seeks to marshal the collective resources, institutions, and international agreements of the U.S. government to incentivize investment in the hemisphere and to show our regional partners that strong ties with the United States can bring concrete support in addition to words of encouragement.
- The bill proposes a much-anticipated, welcome set of policy tools—from e-governance to commerce—to advance prosperity in the hemisphere while simultaneously beginning to check China’s economic ambitions.
- The introduction of the Americas Act is also a welcome reminder that the situation demands not just a response, but a long-term strategy. If the United States fails to actively compete with its primary authoritarian revivals, nations in the region may continue to be persuaded to prioritize engagement with China in sectors detrimental to U.S. interests.
- Absent a strategic course correction, the United States will find itself more vulnerable close to home. That would be an unfortunate new reality with grave consequences for U.S. power projection globally.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia is beating us in Ukraine. China’s Navy outnumbers the US. The Army is collapsing – and the Air Force is falling from the sky. So, as Biden inexplicably CUTS defense budgets, ANDREW NEIL blasts: Does he have a death wish?
- From the very start of his State of the Union address last week, President Biden positioned himself as a war president.
- He posed as the champion of freedom and democracy which are threatened across the globe by autocrats on the march
- All the more remarkable then that, within days, the Biden administration produced plans for defense spending with all the hallmarks of a peace president who no longer thinks the US military need be a priority.
- The autocrats must be both baffled and amused. The rest of us should be frightened and angry.
- Biden proposes that defense spending should rise to $895 billion in the next (2025) financial year — an increase of barely 1 percent.
- It’s not that there’s no extra money around. The Biden budget will add over a trillion to federal spending and take it to a record peacetime, non-pandemic share of GDP (25 percent).
- Be in no doubt that the autocrats in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang are taking serious notice.
- The Chinese Naval fleet is already bigger than America’s and is on target to be over 400-strong before the decade is out — a formidable armada that will undoubtedly be used to intimidate Taiwan.
- Americans have rightly criticized the Europeans for putting welfare above military needs. But under Biden, America is doing the same — just another example of how he is ‘Europeanizing’ the USA.
- Yet the Russian economy is now on a total war footing, able to resupply its invaders in Ukraine at a greater scale than we are resupplying Kyiv and, as America struggles to find an extra 1 percent for its military, China has just announced an increase of over 7 percent for its armed forces.
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Important Takeaways:
- When the Moon Turns Red: China’s Plan to Annex Space
- In 2021, Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency and the China National Space Administration agreed to build a shared moon base, to be named the International Lunar Research Station.
- “Chinese control of the moon would confer control of Cis-Lunar space, the portion of space between the Earth and the moon. Control of Cis-Lunar space would give a country the ability to shoot down or otherwise disable deep-space satellites, which are essential for, among other things, the early warning of ballistic missile attacks.” — Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center, to the author, March 2014.
- The free world should view Chinese and Russian progress with alarm. China’s regime, for instance, has made it clear it intends to annex space.
- Ye Peijian made it clear that Beijing intends to exclude others from the moon, among other places, if it is in a position to do so.
- The American-led Artemis program also contemplates a base at the South Pole. NASA, unfortunately, has been pushing back Artemis timetables.
- Article II of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits “national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means,” but when has a treaty obligation ever stopped the People’s Republic from doing whatever it wants?
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Important Takeaways:
- Indiana farmers raise national security fears as China buys up over 600 acres, as lawmakers try to ban purchases near military bases amid spying threat
- Indiana lawmakers propose a law banning certain land ownership by China
- Purchases near military bases or national guard armories would be barred
- 24 states have passed similar laws including Alabama, Idaho and Virginia
- The Indiana bill does not ban specific countries, but defers to the US Commerce Department’s list of adversaries, which currently includes China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba.
- At least 24 other US states have passed similar laws restriction certain forms of foreign land ownership.
- Federal data show that Chinese firms and investors own just over 383,934 acres in the US as of 2021, making it the 18th largest foreign investor.
- That’s far less than the land owned by the top foreign land owners: Canada, Netherlands, Italy, the UK and Germany.
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