Former National Security Official Warns US Citizens of China's Terror: Kids Are 'Fair Game' in Beijing's Rules
A former deputy national security advisor has issued a dire warning that the People’s Republic of China has obtained such a plethora of stolen data on U.S. citizens, it has the ability not only to compile a dossier on each and every one of us, but a good number of our children as well.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Did the reality as to the extent of China’s information warfare just hit you like a ton of bricks?
It should.
Matthew Pottinger, who served as a deputy national security adviser under former President Donald Trump, provided this chilling information to a Senate Intelligence Hearing on Wednesday, The Washington Examiner reported.
And yes, China, a genocidal power, has every intention of wielding this data to influence American public servants and private citizens alike, Pottinger said.
“Assembling dossiers on people has always been a feature of Leninist regimes, but Beijing’s penetration of digital networks worldwide, including using 5G networks … has really taken this to a new level,” he explained.
“So, the Party now compiles dossiers on millions of foreign citizens around the world, using the material that it gathers to influence, target, intimidate, reward, blackmail, flatter, humiliate, and ultimately divide and conquer.”
Even children are not safe from China’s shady tactics, he added. Not only does China have sufficient data to compile a dossier on “every single American adult,” Pottinger explained, but also on “many of our children too, who are fair game under Beijing’s rules of political warfare.”
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Yikes.
It might be time to reconsider how much time your children are spending on Minecraft or TikTok.
If this sounds to you like a national security threat the likes of which our nation has never faced, that’s probably because it just might be, according to Trump-era director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, William Evanina, who also provided testimony to the panel.
According to Evanina, “the existential threat our nation faces from the Communist Party of China is the most complex, pernicious, strategic, and aggressive our nation has ever faced.”
China’s strategies “drive a comprehensive and whole-of-country approach to their efforts to invest, leverage, infiltrate, influence, and steal from every corner of U.S. success,” he testified, according to the Examiner, also stating that “it is estimated that 80 percent of American adults have had all of their personal data stolen by the CCP, and the other 20 percent most of their personal data.”
The former national security official underscored the “willingness of China and its intelligence services to illegally and legally obtain data to drive artificial intelligence, research, and development programs and to facilitate their military and economic goals.”
Perhaps his most chilling warning, however, was his expressed concerns that as we have seen cyberattacks and “insider threat breaches and criminality” at the hands of the CCP increase over the past decade, “we are becoming numb when it is identified.”
Just as we tend to become numb to things like famine or civil war in the Third World, gun violence in major U.S. cities, or the climbing figure of our national debt, it is indeed true that headlines featuring “China” and “data breach” or “hacking” are almost commonplace these days and rarely met with national outcry.
In 2020, four members of the Chinese military were charged by the Justice Department after they successfully hacked into the Equifax credit report agency’s networks and successfully stole the data of over 145 million Americans.
While President Trump tried to ban the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok over spying concerns, the Biden administration reversed course, shelving a plan for a U.S. takeover of the app. Meanwhile, how many millions of adults and kids alike continue to use the app, blissfully giving the CCP-linked app access to their personal data so they can upload ridiculous dance videos?
Imagine if Americans took this existential threat as seriously as we take things like high-profile police-involved shootings or Simone Biles dropping out of several events at the Olympics.
Meanwhile, the Chinese regime is openly professing its desire to dominate the globe. And as the hacks, breaches, and intelligence-gathering attempts on the part of the CCP that float by in the news cycle clearly illustrate, it’s willing to play as dirty as necessary to achieve this end.
China may have substantial military forces, but it’s no secret that its nuclear capabilities pale in comparison to that of the U.S. and Russia. The regime in Beijing is most certainly wicked, but its is by no means foolish.
Never before has a nation been so deliberate and ruthless in its efforts to gain influence abroad — and it’s got the greatest nation in the world squarely in its crosshairs.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
