China developing battlefield AI for high-technology warfare

FILE – In this April 12, 2018, file photo released by Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks after reviewing the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy fleet in the South China Sea. A new Pentagon report lays out U.S. concerns about China’s growing military might, underscoring worries about a possible attack against Taiwan. The report’s release on Jan. 15, 2019 came just a week after Chinese President Xi Jinping called on his People’s Liberation Army to better prepare for combat. (Li Gang/Xinhua via AP, File)

 

A Chinese military newspaper has outlined how the People’s Liberation Army plans to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) for its forces in future high-technology warfare.

The PLA Daily reported Jan. 19 that warfare is shifting from conventional destruction to artificial-intelligence-powered high-speed and extreme destruction operations.

Li Minghai of the PLA’s National Defense University wrote that AI will be a key “war-winning mechanism” for China.

Pence leaves open the possibility of nuclear weapons in space

Photo: Bloomberg Photo By Andrew Harrer

 

WASHINGTON – Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday declined to rule out the idea of deploying nuclear weapons in space, saying the current ban on their use is “in the interest of every nation” but the issue should be decided on “the principle that peace comes through strength.”

“What we need to do is make sure that we provide for the common defense of the people of the United States of America and that’s the president’s determination here,” Pence said in an interview with The Washington Post, when asked if nuclear weapons should be banned from orbit.

Pence added, “What we want to do is continue to advance the principle that peace comes through strength.”

China’s Strategic Force Gears Up for Space and Cyber War

Li Shangfu (3rd left) is seen in this photo / Getty Images

 

NDU report reveals PLA information warfare plans

China’s new Strategic Support Force highlights Beijing’s growing military might and plans to expand both power and influence using space, cyber, and information warfare in both peacetime and a future high-tech war, according to a Pentagon-sponsored study.

The new force, set up in late 2015, is not part of army, navy, air force, or missile force and is directly under the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, according to a report published this week by the National Defense University.

Gorka: Nothing ‘hidden’ about the Deep State, it was ‘overt … in our faces’

Sebastian Gorka: ‘I’ve seen the worst of the worst, the first seven months, of how the bureaucracy responded to the administration of Donald J. Trump.’

 

The sheer number of serious national security leaks in the Trump White House thus far is a shocking “seven times” the average number of leaks in previous administration, said Sebastian Gorka, former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump.

In a Sept. 15 Judicial Watch panel discussion, “Exposing the Deep State,” Gorka said he preferred the term “Permanent State” and said it was not “a function of something that was hidden or deep, it was right there on the surface of our policy discussions at the White House. It was in our faces. It was arrogant . . . overt.”

“This is not just a reaction to a New York mogul who became president. This has been brewing for decades, truly decades,” Gorka said.

China’s veteran generals fading out in massive PLA reshuffle

Changes to come ahead of 19th National Congress as President Xi Jinping consolidates his power

China’s military is stepping up the pace of a massive reshuffle among its leadership ahead of a Communist Party congress later this year as President Xi Jinping consolidates his power within the armed forces, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Nearly 50 senior officers are due to leave their positions as part of the shake-up, including 18 full-ranking generals, two independent sources told the South China Morning Post.

China’s Hundred-Year Strategy

Beijing has a documented plan to be the premier global superpower by 2049. It’s over halfway there. 

Americans think in four-year election cycles. Chinese leaders think in terms of centuries. Just leaf through the glossy, cream-colored, gold-flecked pages of The Governance of China. This anthology of political theories by Chinese President Xi Jinping is considered almost sacred scripture in Beijing.

Across 18 chapters about leading the most populous nation on the planet, Xi outlines his utopian vision for the Chinese people. In the world he describes, the Chinese are heirs to an ancient and unique civilization entitled to a privileged position among nations. In this world, China is an economic, cultural and military superpower, while the United States is no longer a major geopolitical power.

Chinese General Calls for Attack on American Finances

 

We have long warned that Unrestricted Warfare was underway and that its initial attack would be on our markets and finance. This was the strategy outlined in 1999 by two Senior Colonels in a book published by PLA Press, the official publisher of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). One of the authors of that 17-year old book just wrote an op-ed calling for an attack on American finances, according to an article in the Epoch Times:

Chinese General Says ‘Contain the United States’ by Attacking Its Finances

…

A major general in the Chinese military is calling for China to contain the United States by attacking its finances.

“That’s the way to control America’s lifeblood,” writes Maj. Gen. Qiao Liang, a professor at the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) National Defense University, in an op-ed published in China Military Online, the official mouthpiece of the PLA.

“To effectively contain the United States, other countries shall think more about how to cut off the capital flow to the United States while formulating their strategies,” he writes.

Iran on Way Toward Becoming Global Energy Superpower

With significant oil and gas reserves it would be very hard to ignore Tehran as a major, if not a global energy superpower in the long term, especially if Iran finances its energy projects properly, experts told Sputnik.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) Anastasia Levchenko — Iran possesses the world’s largest gas reserves of 34 trillion cubic meters and one of the largest oil reserves of 157.8 thousand million barrels, according to the experts of major global oil and gas company BP. At the same time, Tehran’s ability to affect the global energy markets was significantly limited by the international sanctions regime.

Ebola Could Trigger Huge Migration Into The US, Says Top General

“If it breaks out, it’s literally, ‘Katie bar the door,’ and there will be mass migration into the United States,” Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly, chief of U.S. Southern Command, said Tuesday at a speech in Washington, D.C.

“They will run away from Ebola, or if they suspect they are infected, they will try to get to the United States for treatment,” he said at National Defense University.

Experts: Iran Exerting Troubling Influence in Latin America

Iran and its terrorist proxy groups’ influence in Latin America remains a troubling security threat to the region and world, experts said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday.

Hezbollah, a Shiite terrorist group based in Lebanon and sponsored by Iran, has established illicit networks in Latin America in the last few decades to provide millions annually for its global operations, experts on the region told the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade.

Those networks involve money laundering, counterfeiting, piracy, and drug trafficking in cooperation with local criminal groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

China plants bitter seeds in South American farmland

China’s rise and push for resources will bring a whole host of other issues to come with it. Given previous actions in Africa, one can get a glimpse of what is to possibly happen in a takeover of Latin America as a result in regards to human rights. This can also have a profound effect on agricultural prices and commodities as demand rises from feeding the world’s most populous nation. Militarily, China has also for some time expanded it’s relations in America’s neglected backyard.

Few were surprised when Venezuela announced a deal with China last week to restore 1.4 million acres of unproductive farmland across the oil-rich but impoverished South American nation.

China increasingly is buying farmland and agricultural companies in South America to feed its ever-growing population, currently estimated to be 1.34 billion.

The most important aspect of China’s agricultural investment in Latin America is that “it is a part of the increasing physical footprint of the People’s Republic of China that is just beginning to occur,” said Evan Ellis, an assistant professor at National Defense University in Washington.

Mr. Ellis said that “with the Chinese becoming mine owners, petroleum-field operators, factory managers and dam builders in Latin America,” China’s farming operations there “will immerse the Chinese, with their very different culture, in one of the most politically charged phenomena in the region – the relationship between the Latin American people and their land.”

Central to China’s rising agricultural-industrial complex are soybeans from Brazil and Argentina, millions of tons of which the Chinese are importing to feed cows and pigs to meet a growing demand for meat.

Full article: China plants bitter seeds in South American farmland (Washington Times)