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espionage

China Likely Exploiting Biden’s lax border policies — imperiling US security

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A young Chinese national man moving through Reynosa, Mexico in this May 2023 photo by Todd Bensman

By Todd Bensman as published February 26, 2024 by The New York Post

AUSTIN, Texas — In the Trump administration’s final three years, a dedicated FBI effort, the China Initiative, nabbed dozens of Chinese Communist Party spies who, posing as scholars, relieved top American research institutions and their naïve professors of sensitive and prized national-defense research.

Those spies had flown into American airports — hiding their military service and Chinese diplomatic relationships — quite legally on cultural-exchange and student-visa programs.

But in a series of stunning make-up presents to China for Donald Trump’s crackdown, his successor President Biden in July 2021 summarily killed a ready-to-go Trump regulation that would have required much more rigorous and frequent vetting of Chinese student and cultural-exchange visa applicants.

That same month, the Department of Justice dropped strong charges against five visiting researcher spies as a diplomatic sop amidst the new administration’s outreach.

Team Biden ended the China Initiative itself in 2022 on grounds the spy-hunting program — especially its name — contributed to bias against US-based Chinese immigrants.

If the Chinese spy services weren’t utterly thrilled with these generous offerings, the Biden government has now outdone itself.

His Department of Homeland Security has let in at least 44,000 Chinese nationals who illegally crossed the southwest border from the time he took office through January 2024, most of them flying first into Ecuador on cheap tourist visas available for a few bucks online.

More Chinese nationals are crossing the San Diego border than Mexican nationals.

While there’s no evidence to support theories China is sending troops in civilian clothing to await Beijing’s attack orders, it’s virtually certain some of these young men and women are at least spies.

SEE ALSO BENSMAN’S: Joe Biden Just Condemned America to More Chinese Espionage – and Worse

And we have a good idea of what they want to do this year, based on China’s relentless past espionage campaigns against the United States and our intelligence community’s determinations.

There are the usual missions we know quite well from Trump-era prosecutions.

China “will likely continue” to “employ economic espionage” and “seek to illicitly acquire our technologies and intellectual property,” concludes DHS’s own 2024 Homeland Threat Assessment.

But the report adds lesser-known layers.

Chinese operatives will work hard online all year to undermine November’s elections, sow political division and erode faith in the country’s institutions and democracy, using AI-driven social-media campaigns.

Besides exfiltrating our technology and running influence campaigns during 2024 and beyond, China will employ operatives to target, find and “repress” anti-regime opponents living and speaking out in America.

Those operatives will use “physical assault, threats, harassment and defamation, rendition” — kidnapping out of the country — “to suppress oppositional voices,” the threat assessment says.

China will be the most aggressive actor in that kind of activity, the assessment declares, adding this surprising tidbit without much elaboration: “Beijing has used a small number of secret, unsanctioned ‘police stations’ in the United States to identify, monitor, and harass dissidents. Its global ‘Operation Fox Hunt’ has sought the extradition of Chinese dissidents under false legal pretenses” so they can be kidnapped and dealt with.

What better way to staff those secret police stations and accomplish its other missions than by moving all the operatives necessary into America over its wide-open southern border?

There is no less risky way in.

China is sending them in because, like the millions of other nationalities coming in from all over the world, its apparatchiks well know Biden’s Border Patrol will quickly process almost all of them into the country on their own recognizance to later claim asylum and sink roots into American society for years with almost no questioning or vetting at the border to discern past service in China’s military and intelligence services.

For Chinese spies and government operatives, border crossings offer far less chance of detection than do student-visa-application processes, which take place in a US consulate or embassy in China and supposedly require face-to-face interviews and intelligence-database searches.

In April, the Biden DHS drastically reduced the number of interview questions Border Patrol agents have to ask Chinese illegal immigrants, from 40 to just five.

Why eliminate even this thin membrane of border vetting?

To avoid large backups of humanity at the border that news video drones can capture and speed up flows to US interior cities.

Many are no doubt regular economic immigrants hoping to live in America, land of the free.

But China would be stupid not to put spies into this almost-unregulated flow, and the spymasters are not stupid.

They are patient, willing to invest in long-term outcomes in lengths of time that certainly match five-year asylum-claim backlogs.

The many Chinese immigrants I have met on the trail in Mexico are among the best equipped, best dressed, most thoroughly coached on what to say and knowledgeable about trail travel.

Some are quite well educated.

Their spies are certainly trained well enough to get through five questions at the border.

Then, as time passes, they will no doubt enroll in top universities, nab gigs at top research institutions, join the US military posing as anti-Communists and enter federal-government service.

It may take a long time for US counterintelligence to discover the ones who came in over the border.

By then, because of Team Biden’s extreme national-security mismanagement, the damage will already have been done.

Todd Bensman is a senior national-security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.

conflict

Iran nuclear talks were ‘coordinated deception’ between US and Israel: report

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From LifeSiteNews

By Kyle Anzalone

Reports state that U.S. peace talks were a ruse and that Trump gave Netanyahu a ‘green light’ to hit Iran’s nuclear and military sites, killing top commanders.

A senior Israeli official told the Jerusalem Post that Tel Aviv and Washington worked together to convince Tehran that diplomacy was still possible after Israel was ready to attack Iran. Just hours before Israel’s massive assault began, President Donald Trump maintained he was still committed to talks.

The Israeli outlet reports, “The round of U.S.-Iranian nuclear negotiations scheduled for Sunday was part of a coordinated U.S.-Israeli deception aimed at lowering Iran’s guard ahead of Friday’s attack.”

READ: Israel strikes Iran’s nuclear sites, kills top commanders in massive air assault

In a post on Truth Social shortly before the Israeli strikes began, Trump declared that “We remain committed to a Diplomatic Resolution to the Iran Nuclear Issue! My entire Administration has been directed to negotiate with Iran. They could be a Great Country, but they first must completely give up hopes of obtaining a Nuclear Weapon. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

After the Israeli attack was in progress, Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied that the U.S. was involved. However, American officials have said the White House was aware Israel was set to begin striking Iran, with Trump telling Fox News he was briefed on the operation.

Barak Ravid of Axios, moreover, later reported that Tel Aviv was given “a clear U.S. green light” to start bombing, citing two unnamed Israeli officials.

Sources speaking with Axios said the perceived split between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was coordinated behind the scenes. “Two Israeli officials claimed to Axios that Trump and his aides were only pretending to oppose an Israeli attack in public – and didn’t express opposition in private,” the report explained. “The goal, they say, was to convince Iran that no attack was imminent and make sure Iranians on Israel’s target list wouldn’t move to new locations.”

The sources said that Trump and Netanyahu discussed the attack during a phone call on Monday. After the call, reports said Trump pressed Netanyahu not to attack Iran, but that was another effort to deceive Iran.

In a second post following the attack, Trump said he gave Iran the opportunity to make a deal, and suggested that Israel used American weapons in the massive air raid. “I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done,” the president wrote.

The U.S. and Iran began negotiations on establishing a new nuclear agreement in April, with the two sides engaging in five rounds of Omani-mediated talks. At times, a deal appeared possible, with Iranian officials saying the dialogue was leading to progress. A sixth round of talks was scheduled for Sunday, but now appears unlikely.

A second source speaking with the Jerusalem Post said the goal of Israel’s military operations was not the complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities, but rather to hit missile sites and top Iranian leaders to bring down the government.

Israel has conducted several rounds of strikes so far, hitting nuclear facilities, residential buildings in Tehran, and military sites. Iran has confirmed that several military leaders and nuclear scientists were killed in the bombing.

Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com.

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espionage

FBI Director: CCP Behind Wave of Pathogen Smuggling as Third Chinese Student Charged in Michigan Lab Probe

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Sam Cooper's avatar Sam Cooper

“In a follow up interview with FBI and ICE HSI agents, Han admitted to sending the packages and lying about their contents”

In an intensifying pattern of national security investigations targeting unauthorized biological shipments from China into Detroit, U.S. authorities on Monday confirmed the arrest of a third Chinese national allegedly involved in smuggling undeclared bio-materials into the United States—this time for use at a University of Michigan laboratory.

“This case is part of a broader effort from the FBI and our federal partners to heavily crack down on similar pathogen smuggling operations, as the Chinese Communist Party works relentlessly to undermine America’s research institutions,” FBI Director Kash Patel posted to X on Monday evening.

The latest defendant, Chengxuan Han, is a citizen of the People’s Republic of China and a doctoral student at the College of Life Science and Technology in Wuhan. She has been charged with smuggling goods into the U.S. and making false statements, according to a federal criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit.

From September 2024 through March 2025, prosecutors allege, Han sent four international shipments containing concealed biological materials to individuals affiliated with a University of Michigan lab. The contents were identified as Caenorhabditis elegans — roundworms commonly used in genetic and biomedical research. The packages were mis-manifested and not declared in accordance with U.S. import regulations.

On June 8, Han arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on a J-1 visa and was stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. She allegedly denied having sent any biological materials to the U.S. and made false statements about the nature of the shipments. Agents also discovered that content on her electronic device had been deleted three days before her arrival — a detail included in the federal complaint.

“In a follow up interview with FBI and ICE HSI agents, Han admitted to sending the packages and lying about their contents,” Patel commented.

“The alleged smuggling of biological materials by this alien from a science and technology university in Wuhan, China — to be used at a University of Michigan laboratory — is part of an alarming pattern that threatens our security,” said U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon, Jr. “The American taxpayer should not be underwriting a PRC-based smuggling operation at one of our crucial public institutions.”

The case marks the third time in one week that Chinese nationals connected to the University of Michigan have been charged with allegedly smuggling undeclared biological material from China into the U.S. for laboratory research.

On June 3, federal prosecutors charged Yunqing Jian, 33, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, and her boyfriend, Zunyong Liu, 34, with conspiracy, smuggling goods into the U.S., false statements, and visa fraud. Jian and Liu are accused of importing Fusarium graminearum — a fungus considered in some scientific literature to be a potential agroterrorism threat — into the country without proper declaration.

Officials allege Liu, who conducts research on the same pathogen at a university in China, initially lied to investigators but later admitted to smuggling the fungus for research in Jian’s Michigan lab.

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