The discussion followed a hearing in the Senate Intelligence Committee a day earlier on Worldwide Threats.

Washington [...]]]> It’s quite heartening to hear a conventional pol like Senator Marco Rubio recognize the national security threat that Red China poses, as well as speak informatively on the subject, as he did with Tucker Carlson on January 30.

The discussion followed a hearing in the Senate Intelligence Committee a day earlier on Worldwide Threats.

Washington has been slow on the uptake, stuck for too long on China’s cheap manufacturing and the full tuition paid by well heeled foreign students. Those students went unobserved by government and media for years, but now are being noticed in some quarters due to their extreme numbers — over 350,000 in the academic year 2016-17.

Hopefully the Trump Administration will tighten the screws appropriately and tell Mao’s current offspring to stay home — all of them.

National security is more important than universities accumulating maximum tuition cash.

Spare audio:

TUCKER CARLSON: Officials in Washington has spent more than two years in utter hysteria over the threat that Macedonian Facebook users might pose to American democracy. But take a deep breath, and ask yourself, is Macedonia really the top cyber threat to the United States? Is Russia? No, of course not. When actual experts on the subject testified, they always say the same thing: China is the top cyber threat to the United States.

The Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, testified as much to Congress this week. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida was at that hearing and says he has a plan to combat Chinese spying on the United States. Senator Rubio joins us tonight. Senator, thanks a lot for coming on. Summarize for our viewers, if you would, quickly what Director Coats said at this hearing.

RUBIO: Well, they all agreed that China is the most comprehensive intelligence threat the United States has ever faced and because it’s a commercial threat, they steal our products and reverse engineer them and then sell them at lower prices, subsidized by their government so they can put our businesses out.

They steal our research from universities and they do that by either packing in and stealing it. Sometimes, they just hire the researcher and have them bring their research with them. Sometimes, they embed students in our system and these students become research assistants and they take that information and steal it back with them.

They steal of course, our military secrets and they also are in the supply chains, so they are embedded in commercial and in parts of our communication system, so for example, they make a router or a surveillance camera and can embed themselves into our systems that way. Especially things that have to do with defense, but even with commerce.

So they steal business and in defense, and it’s an enormous threat.

CARLSON: It’s terrifying. What do we do about it?

RUBIO: Well, first of all, we have to admit it exists, and for a long time, China was kind of viewed as a benign threat, in essence, a country — the conventional wisdom of Washington was, “Don’t worry about China. They are a developing country. Once they become like us, once they become as rich as we are, then they will become just like us.” Well, it hasn’t worked out that way.

So at least people have woken up. But you already see things happening. The Justice Department going after Huawei. The extradition of the leader of Huawei in Canada. So every day you see more and more of this happening and now you’re starting to see other countries doing it. Poland, numerous countries who are now taking this threat seriously as well, because Huawei is an example is already embedded there, but there’s just so much more to do.

We still struggle, for example, with academia. I can’t tell you how many universities in Florida that I’ve talked to and said, You have these Confucius Institutes and they’re used as agents of influence to shape the narrative and potentially to identify Americans who 20 years from now could be a mayor, could be a congressman, could be a leader of a major corporation and start to sort of recruit them to the Chinese view of things. And how many schools fought us on that.

Now, we’ve gotten them kicked out of almost every school, but one in Florida, and more universities are coming, waking up to that threat, but it is still an enormous challenge to convince academics that this is a threat.

CARLSON: Well, considering that these schools, almost every last one of them rely on tax dollars either through guaranteed student loans or directly through grants to operate, doesn’t the Congress have some leverage on this question?

RUBIO: We do, and eventually it may get to that point, what we’re hoping to do is through these defensive briefings, we and other members of the Intelligence Committee have been hosting these closed meetings with leaders of business, academia, even the press, and sort of walking them through the threat that China poses.

And I can tell you two or three years ago, it was a huge challenge because the business community just saw China as this huge market they wanted to sell things and make things cheap in, and now I think people are starting to wake up to this threat, but we have a long ways to go.

CARLSON: My last question; is it a partisan question? I mean, are there senators on the other side, Democrats who understand the threat and are willing to address it in the straightforward way that you are?

RUBIO: Yes, absolutely. So Mark Warner is the Vice Chairman of Intelligence and he’s one of the leaders and I think we haven’t turned this one into a partisan issue yet. And that’s a good thing. I think the challenge really becomes from the pro-corporatists, pro-business — I’m pro-business, but not to the expense of national security, and some idea that ultimately open trade, more commerce and engagement is — selling things over there or making things over there is more important than our national security. That’s where I think the challenge is more embedded. That’s changing a little bit, as I said, but we still have some challenges there.

Lou Dobbs has long been a rare exception: he was reporting on China [...]]]> The public discussion about the danger to America from Red China does not correspond with the actual peril, since big money from the Chi-Coms has corrupted much of American business, plus the press is always loathe to speak ill of the diverse.

Lou Dobbs has long been a rare exception: he was reporting on China espionage in 2007 with the crime of Chi Mak, an engineer who stole critical technology that allows submarines to run silently in a case that was then called “the most significant Chinese spying case in two decades.”

Dobbs also reported around the same time that Red China had 3000 front companies in the US for the purpose of stealing US technology and industrial secrets, so there have been plenty of crimes to investigate, but Washington wasn’t interested.

But more analysis and prosecution have been bubbling up recently during the Trump administration. One important case has been that of the Huawei tech mogul whose recent arrest in Canada made the Chi-Coms howl:

How arrest of Chinese ‘princess’ exposes regime’s world domination plot, By Steven W. Mosher, New York Post, December 22, 2018

Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s arrest in Vancouver on Dec. 6 led to immediate blowback.

Furious Chinese Communists have begun arresting innocent Canadians in retaliation. So far, three of these “revenge hostages” have been taken and are being held in secret jails on vague charges. Beijing hints that the hostage count may grow if Meng is not freed and fast.

Even for a thuggish regime like China’s, this kind of action is almost unprecedented.

So who is Meng Wanzhou?

Currently under house arrest and awaiting extradition to the US, she will face charges that her company violated US sanctions by doing business with Iran and committed bank fraud by disguising the payments it received in return.

But to say that she is the CFO of Huawei doesn’t begin to explain her importance — or China’s reaction.

It turns out that “Princess” Meng, as she is called, is Communist royalty. Her grandfather was a close comrade of Chairman Mao during the Chinese Civil War, who went on to become vice governor of China’s largest province.

She is also the daughter of Huawei’s Founder and Chairman, Ren Zhengfei. Daddy is grooming her to succeed him when he retires.

In other words, Meng is the heiress apparent of China’s largest and most advanced hi-tech company, and one which plays a key role in China’s grand strategy of global domination. (Continues)

On Thursday, Tucker Carlson interviewed Michael Pillsbury, a long-time critic of Red China and author of The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. Recent actions of the Trump Administration against Chinese thefts and espionage have put the topic more in the news, for which Pillsbury was grateful that the public would understand how China intends “to steal their way to global leadership.”

It’s definitely good that America is learning that the Chi-Coms are not our friends — maybe we could stop admitting them as students and immigrants.

TUCKER CARLSON: The Administration today issued a strong condemnation of a major foreign power that routinely hacks American infrastructure, steals national secrets, technology, personal information in huge quantities.

The Director of the FBI called this country the greatest long-term threat to America’s wellbeing. Russia, oh sorry, excuse me. China, misread that, for more than two decades now, of course, it has always been China, America’s greatest geopolitical rival.

You wouldn’t know that though from watching television. Even this week, with this new news about China, there’s only one foreign power on the radar considered a threat. You know what it is.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN: The Russians exploited a massive backdoor into the foundation of our democracy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Moscow’s attack on American democracy.

TONY ROMM, WASHINGTON POST: The work by Russian agents to try to destabilize American democracy.

DON LEMON, CNN: It’s everything you need to know about the threat to our democracy.

DAVID GERGEN, COMMENTATOR: The long-term damage is going to be to weaken our democracy.

ELISE JORDAN, MSNBC: You have Republicans who are silent and seemingly OK with this kind of attack on our democracy.

CARLSON: These people are so stupid it’s amazing they’re employed.

Michael Pillsbury, not stupid, and employed, Director of the Center for Chinese Strategy, the Hudson Institute, author of the remarkable book, The Hundred-year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America As the Global Superpower, a strategy no longer secret, thanks to his book.

Mr. Pillsbury joins us tonight. Thank you very much for coming on. So, this seems like a confirmation, this announcement today, of what we may have known, but still striking.

MICHAEL PILLSBURY: Yes. I think when the Director of the FBI calls China our main rival and then specifically said their goal is to replace us as the global superpower, that’s the subtitle of my book.

So, it’s not just good news for me though, Tucker. It shows the recognition of the problem of China is now getting quite widespread.

CARLSON: Give us a scale of the hacking efforts by the Chinese government here.

PILLSBURY: Well they’re number one, by far, more than the Russians. They have a number of techniques, some of which were revealed today, formerly classified matters. There’s this wonderful term, I hope you’ll start using called, Stone Panda. It’s the codename for the Chinese unit that’s been doing this.

CARLSON: Sounds like a restaurant but I like it.

PILLSBURY: And it seems to, according to this declassified material, it seems to go back 12 years. It seems to focus on American companies. The data that they stole then can help them in negotiations, business negotiations with American companies. They also get trade secrets.

It’s massive. And it seems to be focused on the high-end technology sectors that China would need to dominate by 2030 or 2035 in order to be the world leader. So, in other words, they’re going to steal their way to global leadership, let’s put it that way — it’s more polite than domination. And the FBI is blowing the whistle today along with the Deputy Attorney General.

The pity is, as you know from our local press, there’s been a big leak that Steve Mnuchin and the Treasury Department were going to offer sanctions today as punitive for these things that DoJ and the FBI are finding.

For some reason, at the last minute, Treasury pulled out, so they weren’t at the announcement and they’re not putting the sanctions forward. So, this leak shows dissent inside the Trump team.

And, of course, the Chinese have a strategy that Vice President Pence spoke about back in October that they want to divide the Trump Administration. They know they’re hawks and doves. So this is good news. It raises public awareness for what China is up to.

There were no actual sanctions announced other than the indictment of these two Chinese hackers out of possible 10,000 hackers, let’s say.

CARLSON: Meanwhile, there are calls for more Russia sanctions. It just tells you everything. Michael Pillsbury, thank you very much for this and all you’ve done on this topic.

So, you can’t exactly call the increased enforcement a “crackdown” but it’s been a start.