Webinar | Smoke and Mirrors? Is Biden’s Executive Order on Investing in China Business-as-usual?

Is Biden’s Executive Order on Investing in our Enemy a long-overdue Corrective — or a Vehicle for More Dangerous Business-as-usual with Beijing?

President Biden issued an Executive Order last week that purported to curb U.S. financing of companies helping the Chinese Communist Party dominate three critical and militarily relevant technologies: semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

Since the Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC) has, from its inception in March 2019, called for an end to Wall Street’s practice of sluicing mostly unwitting American investors’ funds to the CCP in amounts estimated to be between $3-6 trillion, this decision would appear to be a welcome one from an administration that has mostly declined to interfere with that practice. So was the recent announcement by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party that it is going to investigate two of the U.S. firms most responsible for underwriting that mortal enemy: BlackRock and MSCI (with respect to the latter, see the CPDC webinar here).

The question that occurs with respect to the Biden Executive Order 14105 is: Will it translate into concrete and long-overdue action? Or is it merely a bait-and-switch designed to give the appearance of action, but — between its narrow focus, delayed implementation, the agencies in charge and other shenanigans — is unlikely to impinge materially on Beijing’s technological advances and the profit Wall Street mavens are making by financing them?

This CPDC webinar critically examines: the Biden Executive Order; the strategic advantages accruing to the CCP from its “old friends” in the U.S. financial sector; help the Chinese Communists are also receiving in eroding the American military’s “qualitative edge” and our competitiveness commercially from Silicon Valley’s Neil Shen and Sequoia Capital; and the cumulative effect these suicidal practices have had on the U.S.-China technology race.

Moderator

- Frank Gaffney, Founder and Executive Chairman, Center for Security Policy; Vice Chairman, Committee on the Present Danger: China.

Panelists

- Roger W. Robinson, President and Co-Founder, Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI), former Vice President in the International Department of the Chase Manhattan Bank, former Chairman of the Congressional US-China Economic and Security Review Commission
—Topic: “The Truth about Biden’s Executive Order — and What is Needed Now”

- Colonel Derek Harvey, U.S. Army (Ret.), Former Special Assistant to the President and a Senior Regional Director on the National Security Council; former Senior Advisor, Chief of Analysis and Director for Investigations for House Permanent Select Committee for Intelligence
—Topic: “Enabling the Enemy: The Strategic Significance of Wall Street’s Support for China’s Weaponization of Technology”

- Brian Costello, a seasoned executive and entrepreneur with thirty years in the technology industry as both an operator and investor. He is currently launching a new AI company
—Topic: “Neil Shen and Sequoia Capital: Leading Silicon Valley’s Targeting and Acquisition of U.S. Technologies for the CCP”

- Dr. Derek Scissors, PhD., Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, Editor, China Global Investment Tracker; chief economist for the China Beige Book, former commissioner on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission; former senior research fellow, Heritage Foundation; and former action officer in international economics and energy, U.S. Department of Defense
—Topic: “The State of the Technology Competition with China: Have We Lost Our Qualitative Edge?”