October 10, 2024
Your Local Election Might be Invaded by Chinese Bots – mindfulintelligence.com
A report in the Washington Post claims senior U.S. intelligence officials have discovered a mass of Chinese Communist online bots targeting American local elections, seeking to “inflame tensions in the country just one month before the 2024 election.” Another report in Newsweek cited Reuters as claiming “China-linked actors… directly interfered in ‘tens’ of down-ballot races, particularly when it comes to issues that most concern the Chinese Communist Party.”
This writer would assume at the local level what China wants most are officials amendable to provide the Chinese Communist Party free access to sensitive institutional territory, as well as preferential treatment to assure the Chinese can move in as seamlessly and stealthily as possible.
Lest you think that means democrats, this writer can assure you there are plenty of republicans, especially at the local level, willing to grift America for personal gain, there’s just even more democrats not only willing to grift America, but to do that grifting with glee, for they hate her to their core. For the democrat, they’re not selling out their country, their selling out ours, America.
Defense Experts Warn of Dependence on Chinese Technology– www.dailysignal.com
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DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—American defense startups are far too reliant on Chinese parts—and that poses a serious risk of exploitation by Beijing, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Business is booming as hundreds of defense startups have joined the growing U.S. military-industrial complex since 2021, according to The Wall Street Journal. But defense contractors are heavily dependent on China for parts for weapons systems, including motors, chips, and rare-earth minerals, which poses potential avenues for Beijing to exploit or hamper American technologies, experts said.
“This is a serious problem for two reasons,” said John Lee, senior defense expert at the Hudson Institute. “First, as we saw during the pandemic, overreliance on Chinese supply chains for components and inputs leaves countries and economies vulnerable to politically or policy-motivated restrictions being imposed by Beijing.”
“Second, components can have elements inserted into them without the knowledge of the end user. This could be spying equipment, channels for China to disable or damage the component from a distance, or even materials that can weaponize the component,” Lee said.
China slaps sanctions on 3 US firms, 10 senior execs over weapons sales to Taiwan – Reuters
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China’s foreign ministry on Thursday announced it had imposed sanctions on three U.S. military-linked firms and 10 senior excecutives over U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan.The steps taken against the firms, including Edge Autonomy Operations LLC, Huntingdon Ingalls Industries Inc and Skydio Inc, became effective on Thursday and will freeze any property within China, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Kamala Harris’s Electric School Bus Program Granted $395k to a Chinese Manufacturer. Then Its Top Executive Sent Biden-Harris Scores of Campaign Cash.– freebeacon.com
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Vice President Kamala Harris’s billion-dollar Clean School Bus program provided funding to Chinese EV manufacturer BYD Company’s subsidiary in the United States, according to federal filings reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. Months later, the subsidiary’s top executive, a Chinese national, wired $50,000 in support of what is now Harris’s presidential campaign.
BYD Americas was selected in late 2022 to receive $395,000 under the administration’s Clean School Bus program, which was spearheaded by Harris and EPA administrator Michael Regan, EPA documents show. That funding was disbursed in May 2023, six months before Li’s donations to the Biden-Harris campaign, according to the EPA.
The company applied for federal funding to supply an electric bus to Princeton Joint Unified School District located in northern California.
It remains unclear whether the company is directly providing its buses to school districts that applied for program funding from the EPA. “We are currently not aware of other school districts that may be purchasing buses from this company under the Clean School Bus program,” EPA spokesman Remmington Belford said in a statement to the Free Beacon.
BYD Americas’s president, Ke Li, then donated $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund (now the Harris Victory Fund), $18,400 to the Democratic National Committee, but earmarked for the Biden Victory Fund, and a maximum individual contribution of $6,600 to the Biden campaign (now the Harris campaign), according to FEC filings reviewed by the Free Beacon. Li made each contribution on the same day: Nov. 14, 2023. President Joe Biden’s $96 million campaign war chest was transferred to Harris’s campaign in July after Biden withdrew from the presidential race.
In BYD Company’s most recent annual report, Li is identified as a Chinese national. Other company documents indicate she is a Chinese national with a “right of abode” in the United States. While federal law prohibits foreign nationals from making campaign donations, there is an exception for individuals with a green card.
Li’s donations are evidence that Chinese electric vehicle industry officials support the Biden-Harris administration’s agenda, even as the administration seeks to curb reliance on Chinese companies for green energy technologies. They also put a spotlight on the taxpayer funds the administration steered to BYD Americas as part of the push to rapidly scale up EV and electric bus production.
BYD is one of a handful of Chinese automakers that Congress began probing last month over potential espionage concerns. The company was also targeted by a provision in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which prohibits federal funding from being used to procure buses manufactured by a company that “is owned or controlled by, is a subsidiary of, or is otherwise related legally or financially to a corporation based in” China.
That provision—designed to block Chinese companies from benefiting both from subsidies awarded by the Chinese government and the U.S. government—applies, however, to programs administered by the Transportation Department. BYD Americas issued a press release last year publicly offering its products for the Clean School Bus program. “We are happy to help children across the U.S. breathe cleaner air,” said Patrick Duan, the company’s senior vice president.
BYD Americas didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The Clean School Bus program was created three years ago as a provision of the 2021 infrastructure bill, which put aside $5 billion for the EPA to distribute in the form of rebates and grants over the course of five years. Since the initial announcement in 2022, when BYD was selected for funding, the EPA has selected hundreds of school districts to receive nearly $3 billion to deploy electric buses.
A recent report published by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight subcommittee concluded the program was “overall a failure,” in part because it serves as a subsidy for products with ties to China. The report also found the program is costly, vulnerable to fraud, and improperly pushes school districts to adopt inefficient technology.
BYD Americas operates a plant in Lancaster, California, where it assembles electric bus and coach models. Its parent company, BYD Company, operates dozens more plants worldwide, and it manufactures batteries and passenger EVs among other technologies. Although BYD Company doesn’t export any passenger EVs to the United States, it is planning to open a plant in Mexico to supply EVs to the American market, Reuters reported in May.
In recent months, BYD Company has emerged as the world’s largest manufacturer of EVs, surpassing Tesla, which held that title for years. The Chinese company delivered more than 500,000 battery-electric vehicles during the final quarter of 2023, more than the 484,000 sold by Tesla, marking the first time Tesla was dethroned as the top EV maker in the world, the Financial Times reported.
BYD’s growing market share of the global EV market exemplifies China’s continued dominance of both the EV industry and the green energy sector more broadly.
According to the International Energy Agency, for example, China produces about 75 percent of all lithium-ion batteries, a key component of EVs, worldwide. China also boasts 70 percent of production capacity for cathodes and 85 percent for anodes, two key parts of such batteries, the data showed.
“Just at a time when American producers have made our country energy independent in oil and natural gas, Biden/Harris are pursuing energy policies that would make us dependent on China,” Kathleen Sgamma, the president of industry group the Western Energy Alliance, told the Free Beacon.
The Biden-Harris administration’s “record of favoring technologies dependent on China that would be disastrous for the American worker, economy, and energy supply makes you wonder about their loyalties,” she added.
The Harris campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.
October 9, 2024
CHINESE COMMUNIST HACKERS ACCESS FISA WIRETAPS? – A report in the Wall Street Journal claims the U.S. government is aware of a major cyberattack by China. The cyberattack enabled the Chinese Communists to access sensitive, as well as general, American wiretapping assets. Some of these systems include the same systems America’s de facto Star Chamber Courts, the FISA Courts, rely on, the same system that spied on a presidential candidate in 2016.
The report comes from WSJ interviews with informants, from which the publication concluded, “A cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of US broadband providers, potentially accessing information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests. For months or longer, the hackers might have held access to network infrastructure used to cooperate with lawful US requests for communications data, according to people familiar with the matter.”
CHINA SIGNALS IT’S WILLING TO PUSH DNC-CCP IDEOLOGY IN BUSINESS, ESG – China made it clear to the world recently that it is committed to following the ESG standards of the DNC-CCP, with ESG standing for Environmental, Social, and Governance. A recent government propaganda piece signaled China’s involvement in the woke ideology and its commitment to following the standards.
From senecaesg.com: Although China’s ESG framework is still developing, it aligns closely with international standards, ensuring that mainland companies adhere to sustainable practices. This regulatory push is expected to promote widespread ESG awareness and implementation across industries.
Censors Delete Claim That China’s Bad Economy Is Packing Jails– chinadigitaltimes.net
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WeChat has censored an article on a trending question on Douyin: “Why are jails packed this year?” The article, a short synthesis of a viral genre of short video, claimed that detention centers are overfilled due to China’s economic woes and increasingly aggressive policing:
1. Severe economic pressure. The frequency of crime in the “new economy” is attributable to the desperate measures many have resorted to. Many individuals have taken to industries that are illicit or semi-illicit: multi-level marketing, money laundering, and crypto-fraud. A number of businesses with falling revenues have also taken to falsifying invoices and faking contracts.
2. Strike Hard. This year, every public security and procuratorate agency has run a “strike hard” campaign, with key targets including prostitution, gambling, and “new economic crimes.”
3. “The criminalization of formerly legal activity and the harsh penalization of minor crimes.” For example, a few formerly non-criminal activities are now sometimes construed as crimes, and so side-hustles are viewed as “illegal economic activity” and playing mahjong is classified as “gambling.” [Chinese]
It is difficult to confirm whether the Douyin trend claiming that “jails are packed” is true. Chinese authorities have touted mass arrests this year as part of an effort to root out financial crime. In May, the Ministry of Public Security announced it had “investigated and solved” approximately 95,000 cases of economic crimes. Prosecutors have also vowed that a crackdown on organized crime that is entering its seventh year will continue at full force. In July, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced that it had approved the arrest of 367,000 people in total over the past half-year.
China to provide emergency medical supplies to Lebanon – Yahoo! Voices
China hits European Union with new anti-dumping tax on mostly French brandy imports – upi.com
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The Chinese government is reportedly considering additional tariffs on other EU imports including cars, pork and dairy products.
Currently, China is seeing a downturn on cognac and brandy imports into the Chinese market. Import volumes for August were down 40% on a year-on-year basis, according to the UBS spirit tracker. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo
Oct. 8 (UPI) — The Chinese government on Tuesday announced it will be placing an anti-dumping tax on Brandy produced in the European Union that is imported into China.China’s Ministry of Commerce said officials on Friday will begin collecting security deposits from companies that sell European-made Brandy. The security deposits would equal more than 30% of the products’ total value. The announcement came days after the EU decided on Friday to move ahead with tariffs on China-made electric vehicles of up to 45%. The extra tariff could be as high as 35% and would come on top of the existing 10% rate.
“The relevant brandy industry within China has been substantially damaged or threatened,” China’s Commerce Ministry said Tuesday.
Chinese Laser Weapon “Protects” Iran’s Supreme Leader Amid Fear Of Israeli Attacks – Speculative Reports – Eurasia Times
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In an unusual development, a Chinese laser anti-drone system has allegedly been spotted in Iran as the West Asian country fears an Israeli retaliation to its missile strike conducted earlier this month.
On October 4, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave a rare public sermon. The site where the leader spoke was protected by a host of defensive systems for security, including a possible Chinese laser counter-drone system, which was spotted by military observers after photos of the event were published online.
In the sermon, which came days after Iran’s strike on Israel, Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei justified Iran’s recent ballistic missile attack and declared that Iranian-backed proxies would continue fighting.
He also lauded the October 7 attack launched by Hamas on Israel last year, which led to the latter declaring war on the Gaza-based militant group.
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