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.

Qatar is suddenly investing heavily in the U.S., bankrolling D.C.’s City Center, other projects

There shouldn’t be much of a mystery as to why any country, including Qatar, is investing in the United States. Like any business that is poorly managed has a higher risk of being bought out. In other words, America is for sale and new management is being brought in.

Eight years after Washington’s biggest construction project in two decades was launched, City Center was just a sad expanse of parking lots on seven blocks of prime downtown real estate, a project paralyzed by the economic downturn, according to city officials.

Then came Qatar. A tiny nation of sand dunes and salt lakes jutting into the Persian Gulf, Qatar has only about 250,000 citizens, but it is also home to the world’s largest natural gas field and, therefore, unimaginable wealth.