STEVE MILLOY: We Are More Vulnerable Than Ever To China’s Ominous Threats

I recently warned about the need to assess our vulnerability to Communist China in order to expedite the decoupling of our economy and society from this dangerous rival as soon as possible. A host of developments since that column underscore the urgency of this imperative.

Norway just discovered that Chinese-made buses contain “kill switches” that allow them to be remotely controlled and deactivated. The United Kingdom will now investigate its Chinese-made buses in search of the switches. Chinese buses are also used in Denmark. In fact, China makes about 95 percent of electric buses. Why would the bus maker need to be able to control the buses from China? Is it to stop people in their tracks on some special day of China’s choosing?

Reuters reported this week that China will export a record 24% more battery storage systems for electric vehicles and power grids in 2025, a large portion of which go to Germany and the U.S. No one seems to remember that Duke Energy had to remove Chinese-made batteries from  the U.S. Marine base at Camp LeJeune because they had devices that could communicate with China.

The bipartisan U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission warned about this sort of grid sabotage this week. “The commission also urged lawmakers to provide new funding to modernize the U.S. electrical grid and to ban the widespread use of Chinese-made energy storage systems with remote monitoring capabilities, warning they might be susceptible to infiltration and exploitation,” reported the Washington Post.

But more than our grid is at risk.

Fortune reported that, over the past 25 years, China has secretly loaned about $200 billion to U.S. businesses. “For years, Washington has been warning others not to trust loans from Chinese state banks fueling its rise as a superpower. But a new report reveals an ironic twist: The United States is the biggest recipient of all — by far. And the security and technology implications have yet to be fully understood,” the article says.

China has also been caught trying to steal state secrets from British Members of Parliament by posing as job recruiters on LinkedIn. “Beneath a glossy headshot, Amanda Qiu declared that, as chief executive of the Chinese-based firm BP-YR Executive Search, she ‘connected visionary companies with world-class talent.’ However, MI5 said on Tuesday that Qiu, along with another supposed recruiter, Shirly Shen, had been operating accounts controlled by China’s Ministry of State Security to contact individuals in parliament.”

After the new Prime Minister of Japan said that it might intervene militarily if China were to invade Taiwan, China flexed its economic and military muscle: “Chinese travelers have canceled more than half a million plane tickets to Japan since Saturday. Chinese students there have been told to be careful. Two Japanese films have been pulled from the Chinese box office. Ships are patrolling in disputed waters. State-affiliated academics are warning that the entire country of Japan could be turned into a ‘battlefield.’ And now, China has suspended imports of Japanese seafood.”

China is preparing its homeland for war. The Associated Press reported this week that China is shifting from diesel to electric trucks. While that sounds like, and the AP described it as a climate-related move, the reality is that China is electrifying as much of its energy and infrastructure as possible. China is oil and gas poor, and electrification is its strategy for withstanding a global oil and gas embargo in the event of war.

Finally, for this week, the Washington Post reported on the potential cyber-Pearl Harbor coming our way from China: “China has long posed the most significant cyber-risk to the United States. It has invested in its ‘typhoons strategy’ — a years-long effort to access data and preposition its hackers within U.S. critical infrastructure for possible weaponization in a potential conflict. In September, major outlets reported that the China-linked Salt Typhoon group may have stolen data from every American, including from the phones of Donald Trump and JD Vance when they were candidates. During its term, the Biden administration used a collection of soft tools — including indictments, sanctions and public attribution — but these failed to deter China’s campaign in cyberspace.”

All these things are scary by themselves. Yet they are all news items from just the past week alone.

Although President Trump reached a deal with Communist China’s President Xi a couple weeks ago on trade and exports of rare earth minerals, the deal hasn’t yet been signed and it doesn’t touch on any of these critical issues mentioned above. Meanwhile, Congress is wasting its time on the Epstein files, expanding Obamacare subsidies, and soon it will be the all-distracting midterm election season.

Our country struggled but survived and rebounded from the Pearl Harbor and 9-11 surprise attacks. But the surprise the Chinese seem to be planning would be absolutely crippling. Who is working on it?

Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer. He posts on X at @JunkScience.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Public/Ermell)