Tag Archives: foreign policy

Aiding an Enemy Nation

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In the present case, it’s technically legal, but it’s strictly wrong.

The People’s Republic of China is a global leader in the development of artificial intelligence, and it’s on the way to becoming the global leader. AI has a number of uses of which the PRC is taking advantage, including surveillance of citizens and fighting battles and entire wars.

Despite this threat to our nation’s security, American businesses and investors have comprised more than 40% of the 400 international investments in PRC AI, and those 400 investments were 17% of total international investment in PRC AI.

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Taliban and CPC—Peas in a Pod

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That similarity facilitates the People’s Republic of China’s government and Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers hooking up. With President Joe Biden’s (D) decision to cut and run from Afghanistan 17 months ago, the Communist Party of China and the rest of the government of the PRC have been moving into Afghanistan with enthusiasm, and the Taliban has been opening up to them with increasing enthusiasm.

The PRC is committing genocide against Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province, having already locked away in concentration camps more than a million of them and “reeducating” a million more in the CPC’s effort to erase Uighur Muslim culture.

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Two Views

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken was planning to discuss the barbarian invasion of Ukraine with PRC functionaries and then to meet with PRC President Xi Jinping. Now, though, the People’s Republic of China has a spy balloon research airship riding the winds over the US, and Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee are demanding that Blinken confront Xi over the PRC balloon. Blinken has decided to postpone that trip.

There are two likely reasons for Blinken’s decision. One is that, as Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) put it (my paraphrase), Blinken should cancel his trip to demonstrate American displeasure over the balloon.

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Subsidies

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President Joe Biden (D) is arranging subsidies for American companies in a misguided effort to support development and production of electric vehicles and their batteries in the US. The EU objects, saying the subsidies disfavor EU nation-domiciled companies, and is proposing some options to counter the American subsidies.

One provision suggested by the commission could allow governments to directly match certain green subsidies offered by the US. European competition chief Margrethe Vestager said that means that if a company was offered $1 billion to build a new battery factory outside of Europe, “a member state could offer the same.”
The matching subsidies program would have several conditions, Ms Vestager said. A business would have to show how it could benefit from a subsidy from the US or another country, and any matching funds would have to benefit more than one European country.

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Treaty Abrogation

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Russia is actively blocking on-site inspections of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons development facilities and has been doing so at least since last August. This is a stark and deliberate violation of the New START nuclear arms limitation treaty that Russia so solemnly signed with us years ago. Furthermore, Russian government officials are refusing to meet with American government officials even to discuss Russia’s refusal of inspections.

It’s time to recognize that Russia has abrogated New START and to say so out loud.

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An Easy Solution

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LanzaTech is a “carbon-capture” company with a number of joint ventures with People’s Republic of China-controlled companies around the world. The company also has on its Board of Directors a Managing Director of Sinopec Capital, itself a PRC-domiciled (and so under the control of the PRC’s intelligence community via the PRC’s 2017 National Security Law) company.

LanzaTech even acknowledged in its Form S-4 announcing its decision to become a public, exchange-listed company, filed last March with the SEC, that [section head emphasis in the original]

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It’s a Step

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South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) has signed an Executive Order barring the State from doing business with six enemy nations. She’s also pushing legislation to codify that and to block the People’s Republic of China from buying South Dakota agricultural land.

It’s a start, but there’s a critical following step that the State needs to take, and it’s a step that all other States need to take, also. That is to use the State’s constitutional eminent domain authority to seize the lands and other properties the PRC already has bought and commit them to the State citizens’ public use.

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Harassment or Intelligence Gathering?

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The People’s Republic of China once again sent PLAAF aircraft into the Republic of China’s ADIZ without, quite, penetrating RoC airspace, and it sent PLAN warships across the midline of the Taiwan Strait without, quite, penetrating RoC waters. The PRC has done this sort of thing almost daily over the last three weeks.

The PRC’s penetrations and surrounding of the RoC in the days after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) visit to the RoC last August can be viewed as temper tantrum and retaliation for Pelosi’s visit. That rationale no longer applies, these days.

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Who are these Austrians?

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And why do we waste any more time supporting them, for instance via the OECD and OSCE?

In William Nattrass’ op-ed in Friday’s Wall Street Journal centered on Poland’s functional ascension to European leadership regarding the barbarian Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he cited a couple of remarks by Austria’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Schallenberg.

Mr Schallenberg had claimed Europe’s “security architecture will have to take Russia into account in future”….

Certainly, since, contra Putin, Russia’s existence isn’t at stake. But with a Ukrainian decisive victory, that future would include a less capable-of-threat Russia.

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Hold Off, Guys

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That’s what the American “defense” establishment is advising Ukraine now as that nation fights for its existence against the invasion of barbarian Russia. Wait until the new arms transfers, just agreed at a NATO meeting, arrive, those worthies say.

The US has advised Kyiv to hold off on any major counter-offensives against Russian forces in Ukraine until Washington’s latest supply of weaponry and trainings have been provided, a senior White House official said, according to Reuters Saturday.

And

A senior US official told reporters that the US believes Russia will gain an advantage when it comes to a war of attrition and therefore Ukraine needs to change the dynamic on the battlefield.

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