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The New McCarthyism
. . . is what I’m sure this will be called.
Professors around America have been caught selling secret research to the Chinese Communist Regime.
The national media won’t cover it, so here’s a thread of those who have been caught so far:
Read the whole thing. It’s a list of academics who, for some odd reason, ended up getting arrested by the US Government for spying, passing secrets, taking money from the CCP while doing work for NASA, and other things that I’m sure are completely innocent, but are now “crimes” because of xenophobia, Sinophobia, and all the rest of the mental diseases ascribed to those who are suspicious of an authoritarian state. Oh: because they’re academics, highlighting this story is also anti-elitism yahoo ten-toothed Okie meth heads who hate that book learnin’.
It’s a diversion from COVID-19.
You know, the European virus.
Published in General
We really need another cold war. I know it sounds like sarcasm, but it’s not.
Or maybe we just need to acknowledge that we’re in one.
We are in one, but it need not be primarily a military one. Yes, we should maintain and even increase dominance in that realm, but more importantly we need to learn to fight again in the arena of ideas and culture. Reagan had a lot to say about this.
Unfortunately, we developed a very naive view of the world after the cold war ended. Although our motives were completely decent and moral, we gravely misjudged the political scene. This led us into “nation building” wars abroad and blinded us to the true nature of the CCP (and arguably led to an overly sentimental view of immigration as well). We just assumed that after the Berlin Wall fell the whole world was chomping at the bit to embrace classical liberal notions of rights, rule of law and constitutional government.
We are currently in the midst of a process that Tom Wolfe described as “The Great Relearning”.
At least counter the spying, (not clean up afterwards, but stop the free flow of spies), and while we’re at it, fight Chinese propaganda. And heck, keep up with the Chinese militarily, too.
I would favor making it illegal for American tech firms to participate in government censorship and surveillance in China and other countries.
Yes, that’s a good point. (I would rather make it illegal for them to cooperate in US government surveillance.)
Would we have helped the Soviet Union censor and surveil their own citizens? No, I think we would have paid money to have VoA transmit our own US point of view. Why are we taking the opposite side with China. We are complicit.
But — globalism and free markets, I guess.
That isn’t even half true in America, let alone most of the rest of the world. Every society rests on a barbarian base, with only a few exceptions throughout time and geography.
There’s a variant of the “Why do people rob banks? Because that’s where the money is,” joke in this story somewhere. I just have to figure out how it goes.
We’ve been in a cold war whether we need it or not.
I have always thought giving some of these small countries Like Taiwan, and the Baltic states a few Nukes under their governments control is the way to go to protect small democracies against authoritarian nations. They would still have to rely on us for the maintenance of said nukes (like they have to due for airplane parts on fighters we sell them) but it would not allow one president to take them away. Only a long term policy change over multiple admins could cause them to lose control over Nukes.
I agree. People and businesses need to recognize China hates us. They’re a smiling tiger, a dog wagging its tale while baring its teeth. They’ve infiltrated our culture through our universities, and that giant sucking sound Ross Perot talked about doesn’t come from the south.
A cold war is not a military war, but it involves having a strong military ready to go hot at the President’s direction. Sabres will be rattled, but that’s expected. The Chinese are belligerent, but not stupid. Nor are they maniacal like Islamists.
Thank you for the link. I’ll listen to the interview. I know I wasn’t aware of the number, just heard of 1 a few days ago, I think it was a small blurb on Instapundit.
With China, the Cold War is one where the two countries have far more economic entanglements than the U.S. did with the Soviets in the wake of World War II — they hold lots of our bonds and have a near-monopoly in some sectors of manufacturing, but they have no other export market they can suddenly flip their economy to serve without crashing their own production. It’s a different type of Mutually Assured Destruction than what we had with the Soviets, while any justified retrenching on relying so much on China in key economic sectors like medicine has to take into account how long American consumers would be willing to accept higher prices on products as a trade-off for disengagement.
They probably would right now, since a lot of people have their COVID mad on, despite what some in the media are trying to peddle about China being blameless, but that might not be the case a year or two from now if the goal is to wholly repatriate some sectors of production (i.e. — we may end up with Option B, where we get competitors to China like India supplying product, to where production monopoly is taken out of Xi’s hands, but the sticker shock is lessened by not having to sell products now made by $15 an hour Blue state American workers).
All those professors bought off by China!
Now let’s do journalists!
The problem is that a lot of them would do it for free. It’s a version of professional courtesy.
I know included there must be the economic production realm but I think that should be the most explicit weapon we use.
And apparently a CCP tactic is to threaten their families in China.
A lot of professors would, too.
China has weaponized trade with the West. Will the West continue to let them?
Kate: But we won the Cold War, and we are friendly and generous. The world will want the West – we are the good guys!
Michael: Who’s being naive now, Kate?
(Answer: Bruce!)
My God I am so dumb.
I would favor that, but the details would get complicated quickly. What is an American firm? We can’t even answer that clearly when it comes to which state a firm belongs to. Place of incorporation? Place whee HQ is located? Residence of majority ownership? Place where majority of cost is generated?
Aside from that, though, it irritates me that we would even need such a law among the free world. I guess there will always be someone willing to sell the rope that will be used to hang them (and definitely the rope that will hang others). So much for the notion that reputation would be enough to prevent such things.
MeToo
Thanks. I was wondering why it took so long for somebody to bring up the complications.
I’m always on standby to mention the complications, TR. I’m here to serve.
Well said. That was exactly the mistaken assumption my Reagan-enamored brain made when I saw Germans dancing the on the toppled Berlin Wall all those years ago. How wrong I was.
Well, as I mentioned in my post last month (“Dear U.S. Government, Why Can’t You Keep a Secret?”), Michael Pillsbury’s quote (from The Hundred-Year Marathon) is especially relevant, “It’s easy to win a race when you’re the only one who knows it has begun”.
While our “elite” media have been screaming “Russia!” for the last three and a half years, the Red Chinese were laughing (as they have been since they were allowed to enter the WTO) and robbing us blind.
It is to be expected that loud cries of “McCarthyism” will be forthcoming; just as they were for Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs. Never mind that they were guilty as h*ll; it was the principle of the thing, right?
Our media “elites” were allowed to set the tone of the conflict with our Cold War adversaries. “Blame America First” was the constant reframe.
If we allow it to happen again, we get what we deserve.