Comer: Biden’s Intelligence Agencies ‘Have No Plan’ to Counter CCP’s Infiltration Program

The chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee is warning that despite the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) unprecedented level of infiltration of U.S. institutions, intelligence agencies under the Biden administration appear to be unprepared, with “no government plan” to counter the threat.

“[W]e’ve known for years [that] they’re stealing our patents, they’re stealing our intellectual property,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) pointed out during Thursday’s “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.” “They’ve engaged in creating spy centers all across America, not just at our public universities. By the way, China, we have learned, is funding anonymously a lot of our most liberal research universities, the ones which just so happen to be having all the campus protests against Israel.”

A report released Wednesday by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) confirmed that radical left-wing organizations heavily involved in the anti-Israel protests and encampments that have spread to numerous universities across the country have received considerable funding from a network with ties to the CCP. The report details how the Shut It Down for Palestine (SID4P) movement, which includes a coalition of three other left-wing organizations, “are linked through financial, personal, and ideological ties to CCP associates Neville Roy Singham and his wife, Jodie Evans.” Singham, who formerly served as a consultant to Huawei, a Chinese tech conglomerate, “is known for funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into pro-China progressive advocacy through his network.”

The report concludes that the CCP’s “foreign influence efforts” seek to support U.S.-based groups with a “revolutionary, anti-government, and anti-capitalist agenda” in order to “incit[e] unrest throughout the summer of 2024 and in the lead-up to the U.S. Presidential election.”

Comer went on to describe what his committee is doing to combat China’s infiltration efforts.

“[W]e also know that they’re spying on our military bases, and we’ve launched an investigation,” he explained. “We’re trying to learn every detail of how deep their spy rings go, how deep their theft rings go, as well as passing legislation. [O]ur committee yesterday [passed] the BIOSECURE Act, which targeted five Chinese companies that the United States can no longer do business with because they take our genetic data and our health care data and use it against us.”

As reported by the South China Morning Post, the bill was passed out of committee with almost unanimous bipartisan support. The legislation would restrict federal agencies from contracting with the Chinese biotech companies BGI Group, MGI, Complete Genomics, Wuxi AppTec, and Wuxi Biologics. As noted by Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), BGI has been accused of “using DNA from millions around the world without their consent on genomic projects conducted by the Chinese military.” In addition, Wuxi AppTec allegedly stole the intellectual property of U.S. companies and ran genetic testing centers “in cooperation with the Chinese military.”

Despite the increasingly malicious activity directed at the U.S. by the CCP, Comer expressed profound disappointment in the performance and lack of initiative of the intelligence agencies under the Biden administration with regard to the threat.

“Right now, I have absolutely no confidence in our intelligence community whatsoever,” he emphasized. “… [W]hen they give a classified briefing to Congress, if you write that down and wait, their predictions never seem to happen. They’re always wrong in a lot of big things. … [W]ith respect to China, there’s no government plan right now to educate the heads of government cabinets, much less the heads of government departments and divisions as to what to look for, to realize when China has infiltrated your data system or when China has hacked into some type of computer program, or where China may have some employees that are there spying and taking sensitive or even classified information back to the CCP for China.”

Comer further highlighted the dangers of the U.S.’s growing financial dependence on China.

“[China] owns a lot of our debt,” he observed. “And one of the strategies that China uses in third world countries — and I fear that they may already be implementing this strategy in the United States — is a thing called ‘debt trap strategy,’ where they loan countries money on certain infrastructure projects … knowing they will never be able to pay it back. And then, like a bank, they go in and foreclose on that asset. … [A]nytime Joe Biden has a program to pay off student loan debt or has another stimulus program or … gives money to Ukraine, we’re borrowing from China, and I fear that in the back of China’s mind, they realize the United States is going to be just like some of these African [and] South American countries [who are] never going to be able to pay it back.”

“As Scripture says, we don’t want to be indebted because the borrower is slave to the lender,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins remarked.

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

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