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Saturday, June 15, 2024

Chinese May Be 'Probing' American Military Readiness Through Base Breaches, Lawmaker Says

by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Fears of attacks on the homeland and foreign espionage stemming from the border crisis are growing in light of illegal immigrants breaching military bases as well as those with suspected terrorist ties.

On June 11, news broke that eight Tajikistan nationals with possible connections to the terrorist group ISIS had been arrested in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles in recent days.

Tajikistan nationals were responsible for the March 22 attack on the Crocus City Hall concert near Moscow that left more than 140 people dead and hundreds injured.

The individuals in the United States were being tracked by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. They were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on immigration violation charges, according to wire agency reports.

The suspects crossed the U.S. southern border illegally in 2023 and were released after being vetted. The federal government’s screening process did not turn up any information that would have identified them as potential terrorists with ties to ISIS.

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), who sits on the National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs subcommittee, said that wiretap information revealed that one of the Tajikistan suspects was discussing “bombs.”

“That’s scary. The vetting is a joke,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times.

The incident highlights an increase in foreign nationals from adversarial nations encountered at the U.S. southern border from 180 different countries that include state sponsors of terrorism.

One of the fastest-growing groups of illegal immigrants arriving from hostile countries is China.

In the first seven months of this fiscal year, beginning October 2023, border agents have apprehended 48,500 Chinese illegal immigrants, which stands to smash the 2023 fiscal year’s record of 52,700.

At the same time, Chinese nationals and others from adversarial nations have increasingly been caught attempting to access America’s military bases.

The breaches sparked Mr. Fallon’s subcommittee to hold a classified hearing in May titled: “Intruder Alert: Assessing the CCP’s Ongoing Infiltration of U.S. Military Installations.”

Mr. Fallon described what he heard in the closed hearing as concerning.

Dozens of incidents have come to light of Chinese nationals snapping photos near military installations and critical infrastructure such as reservoirs, claiming to be tourists—even when the facilities are rural and isolated, he said.

A Border Patrol agent apprehends a large group of mostly Chinese illegal immigrants who crossed the U.S.–Mexico border, at Jacumba, Calif., on June 6, 2024. Since October 2023, border agents have already apprehended 48,500 Chinese illegal immigrants. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

Mr. Fallon noted that Navy Adm. Daryl Caudle said in a recent interview that incidents of foreign nationals from China and Russia trying to breach Navy bases occur “two or three times a week.”

“There are some folks in positions of authority and power that want to stick their heads in the sand and say, ‘Oh, there’s nothing here,’” he said.

It could be that the Chinese are probing how the United States responds and how close they can get to bases, he said.

That information would be critical, for example, should there be a conflict between China and the United States over Taiwan.

While the majority of Chinese nationals coming into the United States may be looking for a better life, even if 1 percent were communist “sleeper agents,” that would give Beijing about 480 operatives, he said.

Mr. Fallon said he doesn’t think the record-breaking number of Chinese nationals entering the United States illegally is an accident.

“That is a sky-high number when you consider under the Trump administration, it was under 1,000,” he said.

In fiscal year 2020, Border Patrol agents apprehended 554 Chinese illegal immigrants nationwide, according to government data.

“So I unfortunately believe that there’s going to be something awful that happens from an incident like this,” Mr. Fallon said.

More than 9 million illegal immigrant encounters have been documented nationwide by Border Patrol since the beginning of 2021.

Additionally, officials estimate hundreds of thousands of unknown “gotaways” who aren’t seeking asylum have illegally crossed the southwest border.

Republicans have long complained that President Joe Biden created the border crisis by rescinding policies under the Trump administration, such as “Remain in Mexico,” where asylum-seekers waited in Mexico while their cases were pending.

But Democrats have downplayed mass illegal migration and have blamed global political and economic instability for the border crisis.

*Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) questions a witness during a hearing on the U.S. southern border, in Washington on Feb. 7, 2023. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)*

House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability member Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) said during the hearing last month that America’s immigration system was “broken” and implied racism was the reason behind opposition to migration.

Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow at the Center for Border Security and Immigration for the Heritage Foundation who worked as Consul with the State Department during the Trump administration.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/chinese-may-be-probing-american-military-readiness-through-base-breaches-lawmaker-says

US military strikes Houthi radar sites in Yemen after ship goes missing in Red Sea

The U.S. military is striking radar sites operated by Yemen’s Houthi rebels after a merchant sailor and boat went missing in the Red Sea earlier this week.

U.S. strikes have destroyed seven radars within Houthi territory, the military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) said. The Associated Press reported that the military did not elaborate on how the sites were destroyed and did not immediately respond to questions.

The radars “allow the Houthis to target maritime vessels and endanger commercial shipping,” CENTCOM said in a statement to the AP.

The strikes are the latest development in the Red Sea, where the Houthis are striking ships in an attempt to stop the ongoing war in Gaza. Like other Iranian-backed groups, the Houthis are protesting Israel’s continued bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The group has claimed it struck ships that provided Israel with aid in its ongoing military operation, while others have hit U.S. targets because Washington has offered continued support to the Israeli military.

However, as the news wire noted, the rebel group has also targeted ships and sailors that have nothing to do with the war. About half of all international cargo boats have been diverted through the critical shipping corridor amid the ongoing conflict.

Separately, the U.S. destroyed two drone boats in the Red Sea that held bombs, as well as a drone that was launched above the waterway from the Houthi rebels.

CENTCOM acknowledged that one commercial sailor from the Liberian-flagged and Greek-owned cargo carrier Tutor has been missing since Wednesday, after the Houthis used a drone with a bomb on it to strike the boat.

The crew abandoned ship and were rescued by the USS Philippine Sea and partner forces, but the Tutor remains in the Red Sea and is “taking on water,” the agency said, per the AP.

The missing sailor is Filipino, the Philippine News Agency said.

While most of the Houthi’s attacks since November have been unsuccessful, with the U.S. shooting down drones on a near-daily basis, several commercial ships have been struck, at least four of them have been U.S. vessels, the Pentagon said in March.

The U.S. Navy is likely spending more than $2 million on each surface-to-air missile to take down each Houthi attack.

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4723850-us-military-houthi-radar-strikes-red-sea-attacks/

'Russia’s hybrid warfare spills into NATO, raising new fears'

Russia’s increasing use of hybrid and gray-zone attacks against European countries is posing a major challenge for the U.S. and NATO: how to respond without sparking a major conflict with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Baltic countries, Poland and the Czech Republic in particular, are raising alarm that acts of sabotage — and sometimes fatal attacks against individuals — allegedly sponsored by Russia are a growing threat to Europe and the defensive alliance.

“Russia is throwing at us all the time new challenges, new risks, and hybrid has turned to be one of the serious ones for the alliance,” Estonia’s ambassador to NATO, Jüri Luik, said in an interview with The Hill in Washington last week.

“In all seriousness, we have to respond because if we don’t respond, this will grow. And Russia will feel that there are no limits to what they can do in our countries, and obviously, there is also a discussion among allies about what would be the best responses.”

Just in the past few weeks, Estonia has raised alarm that Russia was behind the GPS jamming and disrupting of a commercial flight, and that Russia is sowing confusion along the border by removing maritime border lines.

Poland has blamed the recent death of a Polish border guard as part of the larger, hybrid threat from Belarus and directed by Moscow. Lithuania has said Russia was “likely” behind a March attack on a Russian political dissident in Vilnius.

A hacking group based in Russia is accused of carrying out a dangerous cyberattack against major hospitals in London this month, and instances of arson across NATO countries — targeting supply warehouses for Ukraine but also civilian sites like an Ikea in Lithuania — have raised suspicions of Russian sabotage.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged late last month that the Kremlin was “intensifying its hybrid attacks” against NATO members and raised the possibility of potential retaliation.

“We know what they’re up to, and we will respond both individually and collectively as necessary,” he said following a meeting with foreign ministers of NATO countries.

It is important for countries to respond, including collectively as NATO, to show Russia that lines cannot be crossed, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told a group of Baltic officials during a meeting in June.

But NATO countries are likely going to have to accept some risk because Russia’s hybrid activities are too cost-effective for them to stop. There’s no clear answer to establish deterrence, officials at the meeting discussed.

John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said that the U.S. is closely watching Russian malign activity, but said its efforts to counter Putin were focused on sanctions targeting Russia’s war economy and increasing military and economic support for Ukraine.

“We are watching these, quote, unquote, ‘hybrid attacks,’ to use your phrase, closely,” Kirby said, responding to a question from The Hill about whether the topic would be addressed at the leaders summit of Group of Seven nations this week, or at the NATO summit to be held in Washington in July.

“We are certainly mindful that these are the kinds of things that Russia has done in the past and has certainly continued to prove their capability of doing now. It is a page from their playbook.”

The leaders of the Bucharest Nine — the countries on NATO’s eastern flank — expressed urgency in a statement earlier this week: “We are deeply concerned about Russia’s recent malign hybrid activities on Allied territory, which constitute a threat to Allied security,” they said.

“These incidents are part of an intensifying campaign of activities which Russia continues to carry out across the Euro-Atlantic area, including sabotage, acts of violence, cyber and electronic interference, provocations related to Allied borders, disinformation campaigns and other hybrid operations.”

^{Estonia’s Ambassador to NATO Jüri Luik speaks in an interview with The Hill in Washington in June. (Credit: Karl-Gerhard Lille/Embassy of Estonia)}

Luik, Estonia’s ambassador to NATO, said responses so far are focused on defensive actions, but that information-sharing between countries experiencing these types of attacks should be prioritized.

“Our position is that we should be unified, we should also be public, meaning we should inform the public what Russia is doing and explain how they operate,” he said.

“And of course it’s very important to exchange information between allies, because often the modus operandi of those various groups are pretty similar. Exchange of information is important.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, following a meeting of NATO Defense Ministers on Friday, said the alliance is prioritizing intelligence sharing and that potential action likely includes imposing further restrictions on Russian intelligence personnel, restricting their movements or possibly expelling them.

“What NATO has done is to partly make Allies aware that these are not kind of individual random things, they’re part of a campaign from Russia or a campaign of hostile actions,” he said.

Elisabeth Braw, author of “The Defender’s Dilemma: Identifying and Deterring Gray-Zone Aggression,” said these provocations are hard to detect and predict. And there are no clear guidelines for a response.

“The reason there’s no punishment is because it’s not a military attack, so we don’t have a rule book for how to respond,” she said. There’s also a major challenge of assigning blame. It took seven years for Czech authorities to point to Russia as behind an arson attack in 2014.

“We can’t respond in kind, and issuing condemnations doesn’t exactly frighten the perpetrator,” said Braw, who is also a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council in its Transatlantic Security Initiative.

Braw also questioned whether it’s NATO’s responsibility to respond to gray-zone attacks, and said it’s more important for governments to build resilience within the public and private sector.

“The thinking hasn’t really advanced much since the last NATO summit,” she said.

“The government will need to involve — when they think of a proper defense and retaliation strategy … the private sector,” she added, citing a number of initiatives from Sweden, the Czech Republic, Finland and Australia as having built up collaboration with wider society in identifying and pushing back against such threats.

“The Swedish Psychological Defense Agency is a really good model for when it comes to detecting disinformation that comes from abroad … the Czech Republic has gray-zone exercises to which companies are invited, I think it’s a brilliant scheme. That’s something I hope other countries will pick up, and essentially, copy [and] paste what the Czechs have done.”

Braw also suggested that with information-sharing between NATO allies, member states who were not victims of attacks could quietly impose visa restrictions on individuals identified as perpetrators.

“Many governments are totally unused to this whole-of-society approach, and it is really difficult frankly. I work on a lot of these thorny issues, and it is really hard to figure out.”

Can Kasapoğlu, a nonresident senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, warned Russia may increase hybrid attacks against defense manufacturing facilities in Europe surrounding the NATO summit.

He highlighted as major warning signals a fire in May at a chemical plant in Germany, whose parent company is connected to manufacturing air defenses for Kyiv, and the foiling of an arson attempt, labeled as terrorism, in the Czech Republic.

“Thinking like a Russian and studying the Russian military mindset, [Europe’s] defense industry would be under huge risks from the Russian subversive and sabotage activities following the [NATO] summit. We have to be very careful about that,” he said.

Kasapoğlu called for a reshaping of how countries view Russia’s malign activity, pointing to actions that extend well beyond NATO’s European borders, to include Russia’s military and political influence campaigns in Africa, and propaganda efforts meant to turn global south countries against the West.

“The first action we have to take is to understand that we do not even have a right diagnosis … If the diagnosis is wrong, I can guarantee that the treatment will be wrong,” he said.

“I would call it unrestricted Russian warfare. The Russian way of warfare does not have to be, and is not restricted by, the Western intellectual boundaries that we are fooling ourselves with. The Russian way of warfare is unrestrained warfare. Warfare by all means.”

The NATO summit, taking place in Washington July 9 through 11, will be a test of how seriously the alliance — and the U.S. in particular — is taking the threat.

“The U.S. position is of crucial importance in NATO, and especially because the U.S. is the host country, which gives it even more added importance,” Luik told The Hill.

“The positions are not yet cast in stone.”

https://thehill.com/policy/international/4721386-russia-hybrid-attacks-nato/

'Former CDC director predicts bird flu pandemic'

Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield said he predicts a bird flu pandemic will happen, it’s just a matter of when that will be.

Redfield joined NewsNation Friday to discuss the growing concern for bird flu, as the virus has been detected in dozens of cattle across the country and the World Health Organization identified the first human death in Mexico.

“I really do think it’s very likely that we will, at some time, it’s not a question of if, it’s more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic,” Redfield said.

He also noted that bird flu has a “significant mortality” when it enters humans compared to COVID-19. Redfield predicts the mortality is “probably somewhere between 25 and 50 percent mortality.” NewsNation noted that the death rate for COVID was 0.6 percent.

At the end of May, the CDC identified the third human case of someone diagnosed with the virus since March. None of the three cases among farmworkers were associated with one another. Symptoms have included a cough without fever and pink eye.

There is no evidence yet that the virus is spreading between humans. Redfield said he knows exactly what has to happen for the virus to get to that point because he’s done lab research on it.

Scientists have found that five amino acids must change in the key receptor in order for bird flu to gain a propensity to bind to a human receptor “and then be able to go human to human” like COVID-19 did, Redfield said.

“Once the virus gains the ability to attach to the human receptor and then go human to human, that’s when you’re going to have the pandemic,” he said. “And as I said, I think it’s just a matter of time.”

Redfield noted that he doesn’t know how long it will take for the five amino acids to change, but since it is being detected in cattle herds across the country, he is a bit concerned.

More than 40 cattle herds nationwide have confirmed cases of the virus. The CDC is tracking wastewater treatment sites to pinpoint where the virus is but the agency said the general public’s current risk of contracting the virus is low.

Since cattle live close to pigs and the virus is able to evolve from pigs to humans, there is cause for concern. Still, he argued, there is greater risk for the disease to be lab-grown.

“I know exactly what amino acids I have to change because in 2012, against my recommendation, the scientists that did these experiments actually published them,” he said. “So, the recipe for how to make bird flu highly infection for humans is already out there.”

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4723753-former-cdc-director-predicts-bird-flu-pandemic/

Lock up nasty pro-Hamas and Gaza 'protestors'

The ongoing anti-Israel riots on our university campuses and city squares have shaken American Jews — and all defenders of Western civilization — to their core.

The mainstream media, always in the tank for vogue causes, sanitized this naked harassment under the label of “pro-Palestinian protests.”

In true extremist form, one “protestor” at George Washington University held up a sign advocating for Hitler’s “final solution” in late April.

This week, anti-Israel protestors were back at UCLA, with a new illegal encampment — the second in as many months.

Jews have been terrified; one Jewish parent at Columbia, withdrawing his freshman daughter in April, analogized his experience to evacuating a refugee from a war zone.

Perhaps colleges and city centers will see a brief respite, as would-be revolutionaries jet off for summertime gigs at tony investment banks or do-goody nonprofits.

Such a respite would be nice.

But one would still be forgiven for asking the obvious question — which I’ve pondered often as a former law clerk on the US Court of Appeals and a frequent law school speaker: Why are none of these “protesters” in jail?

It is not as if legal remedies, both civil and criminal, do not exist. The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky has helpfully explained some leading options for meting out justice.

First, it’s constitutional law that aliens — legal or illegal — do not possess a First Amendment right to free speech that would prevent them from being deported for vocally supporting a US State Department-recognized Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

Each and every pro-Hamas protestor who’s not a US citizen thus can, and should, be sent packing, as 8 U.S.C. § 1201 clearly permits.

Second, much of the protestors’ behavior likely violates Section 2 of the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act (42 U.S.C. § 1985), which creates a civil cause of action to sue those who “conspire or go in disguise on the highway or on the premises of another, for the purpose of depriving . . . any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws.”

Such a successful class-action civil suit — now gaining traction among Jewish leaders — wouldn’t result in jail time, but it could punish the bank accounts of thugs who went “in disguise” to advocate for Jewish genocide.

Federal prosecutors have options too.

The criminal analogue to Section 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act is 18 U.S.C. § 241, which criminalizes conspiring to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person . . . in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

This has clearly been happening nationwide, but no one has lifted a finger to pursue such charges.

Nor has any federal prosecutor gone after a case of material support for a terrorist organization, proscribed by 18 U.S.C. § 2339A.

Where are the federal prosecutors?

For that matter, where is local law enforcement — especially in New York, in light of this week’s horrific bouts of antisemitic vandalism in Manhattan and Brooklyn?

First, there is a reflexive progressive disinclination to prosecute the activist misanthropes the media sanitizes as mere “protesters.”

In Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department, such a high-profile prosecution would muddy the waters for Joe Biden and hamstring his re-election efforts.

No one at Justice wants to be on the “wrong side” of an intersectional divide; far better to win over Michigan radicals than to pursue blind justice.

Second, the most high-profile protest anarchy has transpired in deep-blue jurisdictions overseen by George Soros-funded, or otherwise very left-wing, district attorneys.

Does anyone really expect Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, for example, to bring charges against students at Columbia — or to hunt down antisemitic vandals?

Of course not.

In the case of Bragg — who’s already working to get charges dropped against many Columbia protestors — it’s far better to expend resources going after Trump.

And in many Soros-funded DAs’ cases, it’s far better to simply not prosecute violent or property crime at all.

Tragically, antisemitic bad guys know they get a pass from today’s extremist left.

Gone is the era of noble lawmen such as Eliot Ness, who pursued justice without fear or favor.

Progressive prosecutors at the federal and local level now conform their actions to prevailing woke orthodoxies.

This is doubly true when left-wing thugs are so violent, as we saw during the George Floyd riots and we have seen once again since Oct. 7.

Just as Hamas is still holding roughly 120 hostages in Gaza, so too have Hamas’s supporters held hostage America’s justice system

Josh Hammer is Newsweek senior editor-at-large and host of “The Josh Hammer Show” and “America on Trial with Josh Hammer.”

https://nypost.com/2024/06/15/opinion/how-to-lock-up-those-nasty-pro-hamas-and-gaza-protestors/