Intel operation against Trump still going strong

There was a great deal of news this past week about President Trump’s audacious disregard for the advice and warnings from his own intelligence community experts.

Perhaps there’s good reason for alarm.

But I think there’s one shocking aspect — perhaps a larger story — that’s gone virtually unreported. It appears that anonymous intelligence officials are executing an operation against the sitting commander in chief. It might not qualify as all-out mutiny, but it’s also not all that far from one.

How arrest of Chinese ‘princess’ exposes regime’s world domination plot

Getty Images; Shutterstock

 

Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s arrest in Vancouver on Dec. 6 led to immediate blowback.

Furious Chinese Communists have begun arresting innocent Canadians in retaliation. So far, three of these “revenge hostages” have been taken and are being held in secret jails on vague charges. Beijing hints that the hostage count may grow if Meng is not freed and fast.

Even for a thuggish regime like China’s, this kind of action is almost unprecedented.

So who is Meng Wanzhou?

Is U.S. Geopolitical Strategy Experiencing a Monumental Shift?

 

The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap. The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago. Most such contests have ended badly, often for both nations, a team of mine at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded after analyzing the historical record. In 12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years, the result was war. When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part not just of the challenger but also the challenged.

– From Graham Allison’s article: The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?

For the past two years, my geopolitical assumption has been that the Trump administration would more or less continue along with the reckless, shortsighted, and disastrous neocon/neoliberal interventionist foreign policy of the past two decades focused on undeclared regime change and proxy wars across the world, especially the Middle East. Given his strange obsession with Iran, I figured he’d start a conflict there and that this conflict would end up a bigger disaster than Iraq.

FBI Chief Says Threats From Drones to U.S. ‘Steadily Escalating’

FBI Director Christopher Wray, testifies before a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing on “Threats to the Homeland” at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington on Oct. 10, 2018. REUTERS/Alex Wroblewski

 

WASHINGTON—FBI director Christopher Wray told a U.S. Senate panel on Wednesday that the threat from drones “is steadily escalating” even as Congress gives agencies new tools to address threats.

Wray told the Senate Homeland Security committee that the FBI assesses that “given their retail availability, lack of verified identification requirement to procure, general ease of use, and prior use overseas, (drones) will be used to facilitate an attack in the United States against a vulnerable target, such as a mass gathering.”

FBI Director Warns China is America’s Most Significant Intelligence Threat

FBI Director Christopher Wray / Getty Images

 

Beijing engaged in ‘pervasive’ targeting of US secrets, Wray says

China is engaged in aggressive intelligence operations in the United States, ranging from the recruitment of academics to stealing agricultural secrets from farmers, FBI Director Christopher Wray says.

“I think China, from a counterintelligence perspective represents the broadest, most challenging, most significant threat we face as a country,” Wray said during a security conference in Colorado.

The FBI director said the Chinese utilize a “whole of state” spying effort.

CIA Warns of Extensive Chinese Operation to Infiltrate American Institutions

China Marks Confucius’s 2558th Birthday (Getty Images)

 

Intel report: Beijing provides ‘strings-attached funding’ to ‘coerce’ self-censorship

The CIA has issued a classified report detailing China’s far-reaching foreign influence operations campaign in the United States, which imparts financial incentives as leverage to permeate American institutions.

In an unclassified page of the report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, the CIA cautions against efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to stipulate funding to universities and policy institutes in exchange for academic censorship.

The director of the FBI says the whole of Chinese society is a threat to the US — and that Americans must step up to defend themselves

FBI Director Christopher Wray and Chinese President Xi Jinping. (AP/Andrew Harnik/Fred Dufour/Pool)

 

• FBI Director Christopher Wray issued a dire warning about China’s growing influence during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday.
• He said there were a variety of ways China was implementing a plan to replace the US as the foremost global power, including by infiltrating academia.
• Recent reports have suggested that while China’s Confucius Institutes are ostensibly language-learning centers, they often serve as vehicles for Chinese propaganda at universities around the world, including the US.
• Intelligence experts have also cited Chinese cybersecurity threats as a major concern in 2018.

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday reiterated a commonly held view among US intelligence officials that China is seeking to become a global superpower through unconventional means — but he framed it as both a governmental and a societal threat to the US.

Speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee alongside the heads of other US intelligence agencies, Wray said that to undermine the US’s military, economic, cultural, and informational power across the globe, China was using methods relying on more than just its state institutions.

Is the FBI Plotting its Revenge Over Memo?

 

A Former CIA Counterterrorism Official Has Told CNN That ‘We’re Going To Win.’

That senior officials in the FBI and intelligence community were outraged by the release of the House Intelligence Committee’s four-page memo on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant abuse was a given, but a recent guess on CNN suggests the war against President Donald Trump is about to get much worse as a result.

FBI Director: Drone Attacks ‘Coming Here Imminently’

Terrorist attacks using drones against American citizens is a rapidly emerging threat that could “be here imminently,” according to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

 

During testimony Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray raised the alarm that terrorist groups may soon attempt drone attacks on American citizens soon.