World Needs to ‘Wake up to the Challenges’ Posed by Chinese Regime: Defense Chief

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper framed the Chinese regime as “Pentagon’s top concern” on Feb. 15, saying that Beijing’s aggressive commercial and military postures have posed a challenge to the world.

“The Communist Party and its associated organs … are increasingly operating in theaters outside its borders, including Europe, and seeking advantage by any means, and at any cost,” he told the world’s leading policy makers at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

“While we often doubt the transparency and forthrightness of Beijing, when it comes to their security aims, we should take the Chinese government at its word,” he said, citing Beijing’s ambition to complete military modernization by 2035, and to assert preeminent military power in Asia by 2049.

Esper said that it is essential for the international community to “wake up to the challenges” as Chinese Communist Party heads “even faster and further in the wrong direction,” with “internal repression, more predatory economic practices,” and “more aggressive military posture.”

He called out Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, as one such example and a “poster child” for the regime’s rampant technology theft.

Huawei has been at the forefront of the 5G development and has sought to export 5G networks worldwide. U.S. officials and lawmakers have sounded the alarm that company’s equipment poses an espionage risk due to the company’s close ties with the Chinese military, as well as the fact that Chinese law compels companies to cooperate with intelligence agencies when asked.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world-needs-to-wake-up-to-the-challenges-by-chinese-regime-defense-chief_3239399.html

'Disown them:' Biden criticizes Sanders for supporters' online attacks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday criticized the conduct of online supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, saying his rival for the Democratic nomination for president has "some accountability."

Biden, in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press," waded into a spat between Sanders supporters and leaders of The Culinary Union, a powerful labor group in Nevada that has been critical of the senator's healthcare proposals. Nevada holds the next nominating contest in the Democratic presidential primary.

"He may not be responsible for it but he has some accountability," Biden said in the interview that will air on Sunday morning. "If any of my supporters did that, I'd disown them. Flat disown them. The stuff that was said online, the way they threatened these two women who are leaders in that Culinary Union. It is outrageous."

Biden has watched his standing in opinion polls slide as Sanders has risen to secure front-runner status.

The Culinary Workers Union said supporters of Sanders "viciously" attacked the organization via Twitter, text, voicemail and direct messaging after the union criticized the senator's universal healthcare plan on Tuesday.

Sanders, in turn, called for an end to all online harassment, but stopped short of acknowledging that the attacks were coming from his supporters.

Instead, Sanders suggested in an interview on "PBS NewsHour" on Thursday that the attacks might be coming from people posing as his supporters.

"And I'm not so sure, to be honest with you, that they are necessarily part of our movement," Sanders said.

https://news.yahoo.com/disown-them-biden-criticizes-sanders-000435627.html

Rob Spalding: Trump’s ‘Real Challenge’ Is China Using ‘Corporate America as Proxies to Fight Their War’

China procures the political support of American companies and institutions through financial incentives, explained Spalding, who reflected on his time in the Trump administration as a national security advisor to President Donald Trump.

“The real challenge that the president has — and this is what I tried to explain when I went to the White House in 2017, [and] as hard as the government might try to fix this problem — [is] the breadth of what the Chinese Communist Party is doing to incentivize corporate America and Wall Street to really be on their side,” Spalding stated.

Spalding noted the Pentagon’s dropping of opposition to the Trump administration’s efforts to halt U.S. chip and technology companies from supplying Huawei, China’s state-linked telecommunications giant.

“That is not because the federal government was lobbying for that,” said Spalding of the Pentagon’s shift in position. “It’s because companies like Qualcomm and Intel were lobbying for that. So the private sector, corporate America, Wall Street, they are pushing the government as hard as they can with all their lobbyists to get them to essentially abandon the trade war, to essentially abandon the enforcement measures that the president has put in place, because, quite frankly, their quarterly profits require this full engagement with the Chinese Communist Party.”

Spanding warned, “That’s how they win. They use Americans, and corporate America, and Wall Street as proxies to fight their war.”

China procures American corporations as political allies to lobby the federal government on its behalf, stated Spalding.

“When you’re dealing with Qualcomm and the Department of Defense, it’s much different than dealing with the Chinese Communist Party,” Spalding remarked. “So they come to the Department of Defense, seeming like an ally, when in reality they’re working as a proxy for the Chinese Communist Party, because that’s how China and the Chinese Communist Party has incentivized the system.”

Spalding continued, “The brilliance of [China’s] strategy is really to create the incentives for our own companies and our own financial institutions to essentially abandon the nation of their birth and really, because of quarterly profits, work on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.”

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Mansour asked how a politician like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) might address national security challenges presented by China if elected president.

“First of all, he’s a communist,” replied Spalding. “He might as well have a running mate that comes from the Chinese Communist Party, because he believes the same things. This is the problem with so many of these candidates. They’re coming out and basically espousing socialist principles, which are essentially what the Chinese Communist Party [pushes].”

Spalding went on, “Xi Jinping says, ‘I am a socialist.’ So, in essence, you could say — Bernie Sanders and Xi Jinping — [their] ideology is the same. The ideology is that you take away individual initiative and you replace it with the control of the government, ‘because we know better than the individual.’ That is not this country. This is not who we are a society.”

Both China and Russia have effectively pursued campaigns of political, social, and cultural subversion against Western values following the end of the Cold War, observed Spalding.

Spalding explained, “The Chinese Communist Party and the Russians, really since the end of the Cold War, have done a great job at continuing the active measures to undermine democracy — and the idea of democracy — by essentially creating this world where on the one side, corporate America says, ‘We are destroying the free trade system because we have tariffs,’ when on the other side, with China and Russia, there is no such thing as free trade.”

Spalding continued, “This is the lie, because there’s no such thing as free trade.

Some Chinese citizens can “really live the American Dream because their government is essentially predatory and parasitic against democracies in the world,” Spalding said, adding, “Our corporate side and financial system all support it on the basis of what they say is free trade.”

Spalding concluded with a call for a renaissance of American values.

“This is the challenge we face,” Spalding determined. “We’re not fighting for the American people. We’re not fighting for the American worker. We’ve given up. We’ve rolled over, and we’ve said, ‘Maybe these guys have a better idea,’ but they don’t. They have the same system that was the Nazi system. The same system that was in Stalinist Russia. It’s the same thing, but they have convinced us to side with them because they have harnessed corporate America and Wall Street.”

https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2020/02/15/rob-spalding-trumps-real-challenge-is-china-using-corporate-america-as-proxies-to-fight-their-war/

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWxgfTMLtc0

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4:34 PM · Feb 15, 2020·

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