CPDChina

Two recent developments are pointed reminders that we are risking disaster by ignoring the greatest threat to freedom in world history. First, the FBI arrested last week a woman who allegedly ran influence operations for the Chinese Communist Party in the course of her eleven-year career at the highest levels of government in New York State – including serving as a top advisor to Governor Kathy Hochul. The charges against Linda Su include that she allowed PRC personnel to listen in covertly to official state business calls, conduct that sounds more like espionage than promoting CCP interests. Second, in the name of “engaging” China and enhancing military-to-military ties, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command has invited General Wu Yanan, the commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theater, to participate in a conference next week of allied military leaders that is supposed to coordinate defenses against, wait for it, CCP aggression. These are just symptoms of how our elites have ignored and exacerbated the mortal peril we now face. Another very worrisome manifestation of this syndrome is that the malevolent intent behind the Chinese Communists’ “unrestricted warfare” and the “People’s War” they have been waging against America have received scant, if any, attention in the course of the 2024 presidential campaign. As a result, American voters are generally clueless about the growing risks of what appears now to be in the offing: a shooting war. This week’s CPDC webinar from 5:00 to 6:15 p.m. ET today will address the urgent need for our leaders to recognize the reality of the Chinese Communist Party’s determination to destroy our country and its increasing readiness to do kinetically, as well as through non- or pre-kinetic means (e.g., economic, political, information and other “unrestricted” warfare techniques) – and to equip the American people to make informed decisions this fall as to how we deter, and if necessary defeat, such aggression and under whose leadership. As it happens, a movie about a similar moment in our nation’s history, “Reagan,” is playing in theaters across America at the moment. It compellingly describes the former President’s determination to take down what he rightly understood to be his time’s “existential threat to freedom,” namely, the Soviet Communist Party. In the 1980 election, he explicitly sought a mandate to put the “Evil Empire” on the ash heap of history and liberate its enslaved peoples. In the course of this election, we need the presidential candidates to be no less clear about a menace that makes the Soviets in their heyday pale by comparison. And we need them to enlist the public’s support for a reprise of Reagan’s strategy of cutting off the cash flow, rebuilding our defenses and otherwise neutralizing the CCP threat and helping the Chinese people overthrow the regime that has long brutalized them and imperils us. Moderator: - Frank Gaffney, Founder and Executive Chairman, Center for Security Policy; Vice Chairman, Committee on the Present Danger: China, co-author, “The Indictment: Prosecuting the Chinese Communist Party and Friends for Crimes Against America, China, and the World” Panelists: - Charles “Sam” Faddis, Former Career Clandestine Service Officer, Central Intelligence Agency; Army veteran; author, “The Decline and Fall of the CIA”; editor, AndMagazine at Substack – Topic: The CCP Threat: What Our Captured Elites Don’t Want You to Know” - Nicholas Eftimidiatis, Assistant Teaching Professor, Homeland Security Program School of Public Affairs, Penn State University; former intelligence analyst specializing in Communist China; holder of appointments to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, National Intelligence Council, the Defense Science Board and the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Subcommittee on Economic Security – Topic: “The Indictment of Linda Su: A Case Study in the CCP’s Intelligence and Influence Operations in America” - Trevor Loudon, Author and filmmaker, “The Enemies Within” and “The Enemies Within the Church”; “Feinstein’s Spy: Russell Lowe and San Francisco’s Pro-China Left”; “Security Risk Senators: Part 1”,” “Security Risk Senators: Part 2,” “House UnAmericans: PART I: ALABAMA dist 7 – CALIFORNIA dist 18” and “House UnAmericans:: PART 2: CALIFORNIA dist 24 – CONNECTICUT dist 5;” contributor, Epoch Times – Topic: The Enemy Within: The Risks Associated with our Willful Blindness” - Brian T. Kennedy, Chairman, Committee on the Present Danger: China; President, American Strategy Group; former President, Claremont Institute; author, “Communist China’s War Inside America” – Topic: “What the 1980 Election Can Teach Us About the 2024 One: Informing