Horror movie plot twist: The terrified teenage heroine finally gets a phone to call the authorities. “Hello! I need help! I think someone is stalking me and trying to kill me!”
“Wait a minute, ma’am. We’re tracking the call. Wait. It looks like he’s home with you.”
Cue the audience holding their breath.
America’s enemies are here with us. And yet here we are, quietly taking a shower like it’s 1995. The movie doesn’t end well if we don’t wake up to the threat.
Today, the Chinese Communist Party spends billions of dollars tracking and surveilling its citizens using facial recognition, social scores, and an ever-growing web of dystopian devices and methods.
These same methods are being used against American citizens.
chinese trojan horse
TikTok boasts 150 million users in the United States (nearly half the country), making it the largest foreign influencer business in history. His rake has enough data to make J. Edgar Hoover blush even in his bloomers. Please try to imagine. The company knows your basic demographics, but it also collects your location, interests, sexuality, politics, religion, beliefs, friends, income, and urges.
TikTok’s algorithm knows secrets that yesterday’s gumshoes could only dream of: which Taylor Swift songs you like, recipes for mouth-watering bolognese ravioli, videos about furious politics, and more. There are no laws, walls, doctrines or ethical guidelines that would prevent the Chinese Communists from using the Digital Tokyo Rose against our government. In fact, they’re already doing it. March 7th, law Introduced in the House of Representatives to prevent foreign adversaries from receiving Americans’ personal data. That day, TikTok sent a message to the phones of all its users in the United States that read, “TikTok is at risk of being shut down in the United States. Call a representative now.”
No elected official in our nation’s history has had the authority to send an email to 150 million Americans asking them to change their vote.
Beyond TikTok
That DJI drone I bought my son for Christmas? Sure, it works. And yes, there has never been an American-made drone that is cheaper and easier to use. This is because China has taken control of the market through illegal dumping. But so what? Americans don’t seem to care that the Chinese now have detailed maps and 4K footage of every street, building, hill, and valley in America. What could be wrong?
Did we care when China started making shower curtain rings and picture frames? Or all toaster ovens? What about slave labor to make sneakers and electronics? Sure, the quality may vary, like toxic drywall or contaminated baby formula, but hey, it’s pretty cheap. As China’s industrial capabilities and expertise grow in complexity and sophistication, perhaps a few people would prefer something like this: robert lighthizer Globalists slammed Lighthizer for undermining more than 70 years of world order, although he said it might not be a good idea to let an enemy build all the cell phone nodes and infrastructure.
These same globalists don’t seem to know or care that our entire national security apparatus depends on China for the very raw materials we use to build our aircraft, ships, and weapons systems. is. If the “balloons go up” (a euphemism used by the military for a full-scale war), China will supply us with the chromium, titanium, aluminum, and dozens of other critical materials we need to fight back. Deaf, you might actually be thinking. they?
communist arsenal
There is an eerie feeling among national security officials in Washington that we have been sleeping on the Chinese threat. China boasts a much larger army, a larger navy, more planes, more missiles, and more satellites to monitor our movements.
President Biden’s proposed 1% increase in the military budget doesn’t even pretend to keep up with our (rampant) inflation, as China’s military investment moves closer and closer to our defense spending.
It’s not just military spending. For 50 years, the United States has seen its manufacturing base steadily eroded in favor of a service-based economy. Our industrial base is just one part of the “arsenal of democracy” that facilitated Allied victory in World War II. In 1942, Ford Motor Company transferred its automotive know-how and produced his amazing 8,645 B-24s for the war effort. At the peak of production, one of Michigan’s finest Liberators was produced every hour.
Good luck retraining YouTubers to weld in 2024!
Friend of the enemy?
The United States has not faced a peer nation since the late 1800s, when its GDP exceeded that of the United Kingdom. The British were our founding cousins, sharing a language, religion, belief in capitalism and free markets, representative government, law, and a tradition of rights dating back to Magna Carta.
Today’s two superpowers share none of these core values.
So while it is fashionable in Washington to refer to China as a “strategic competitor,” make no mistake; China views the United States as an adversary. The Chinese Communist Party views the United States as a great power that should be tamed, at best, to try to control Taiwan and its Pacific neighbors.
It’s time to wake up. The enemy is inside the house.
Morgan Murphy is a former Pentagon spokesperson, U.S. Senate National Security Advisor, and Afghanistan veteran.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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