The Patriot Post® · The ChiComs, Taiwan, and Your Toaster

By Mark Alexander ·
https://patriotpost.us/alexander/103496-the-chicoms-taiwan-and-your-toaster-2024-01-10

“There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness.” —George Washington (1793)

Sometimes it is difficult to grasp the implications of global national security threats, but if you like your toaster and coffee maker, and everything else that requires electronics to operate, read on.

Merriam-Webster defines “crazy” as “not mentally sound: marked by thought or action that lacks reason.” Thus, it is not clear if Joe Biden has acute dementia, or if his non compos mentis domestic and foreign policy failures are the result of just being crazy.

Take your pick — either way, Biden and his leftist puppeteers constitute the most dangerous existential threat to our national security.

Biden has ignored or ducked all the “red flags” ahead of a growing list of catastrophic foreign policy failures since he took office.

The first of his administration’s cascading failures was his surrender and retreat from Afghanistan, leaving the country in the hands of the same invading terrorists that hosted al-Qa'ida for its 9/11 Islamist attack on our nation. The second was, in effect, inviting Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. And the third, most recently, was empowering Iranian surrogates with Hamas to attack Israel.

After Putin invaded Ukraine, I wrote the obvious: “Power does not tolerate a vacuum, nor an inept and vacuous appeaser.” I noted that Red China and Russia are tag-teaming, testing Biden’s lack of resolve to confront authoritarian tyrants. They watched him demonstrate his lack of will in Afghanistan when he refused to take on the Taliban — a far less threatening adversary than either Putin or China’s communist dictator, Xi Jinping.

Clearly, Biden does not just miss or ignore red flags; he IS the red flag.

What Biden’s lack of will has created in the years since is a much stronger alliance between China and Russia — what any seasoned national security analyst would acknowledge is the most perilous foreign policy menace since the Soviet Union’s collapse. That alliance is the direct consequence of Biden’s failed diplomacy and has obviously reshaped global order in some very dangerous ways.

This is not a recent revelation. More than 30 years ago, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet reign of terror, there was a clear consensus in national security assessments and briefings that the Red China threat was ominous. Despite the most recent attack on our nation, resulting in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, that Red China risk assessment has not changed, except that the impending threat is much more perilous now than it was then.

Ahead of the 2020 election, and after Donald Trump had racked up significant domestic and foreign policy successes, however unorthodox his means, Biden declared that Barack Obama chose him as a running mate because of his foreign policy expertise.

“I will put my record against anyone in public life in terms of foreign policy,” Biden declared. According to Biden’s campaign: “We live in the most dangerous moment in a generation. Our world, set on edge by an erratic, unstable president. This is a moment that requires strong, steady, stable leadership. We need someone tested and trusted around the world. This is a moment for Joe Biden — a president with the experience to lead.”

Biden laughably asserted: “Right now, we don’t really have a foreign policy. I’m not being facetious — we don’t have a foreign policy.” He could accurately make that statement today.

But Obama countered in a conversation with a Demo strategist ahead of the 2020 election, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up.”

In East Tennessee, we have a saying about people who, on rare occasions, get something right: “Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.” Obama knew that Biden would be a disaster.

Last October, in the wake of Biden’s mounting policy failures, Robert Gates fired a warning shot across our nation’s bow.

Gates, who served as the 22nd secretary of defense (2006-2011), and previously as director of Central Intelligence, including the post-Ronald Reagan years after the Soviet collapse and the rise of China, asserted correctly that Biden has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue” over the course of his career.

According to Gates: “The United States now confronts graver threats to its security than it has in decades, perhaps ever. Never before has it faced four allied antagonists at the same time — Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. … And no one alive can remember a time when an adversary had as much economic, scientific, technological, and military power as China does today.”

Reread that last sentence if necessary.

If you need evidence of Biden’s coddling appeasement of China, his failure to take action against the ChiCom spy balloon a year ago, which was actually a ChiCom test balloon to check Biden’s resolve, is a perfect metaphor for how Biden covers for Xi. In fact, during Xi’s recent “state visit” to the U.S., despite Biden’s repeated assurances that he would confront Xi about “the balloon,” there was no confrontation.

One reason for Biden’s acquiescence is that he does not want to derail his so-called “climate change” agenda with China, another brilliant “deal” brokered by John Kerry, who previously brokered the Obama/Biden Iran nuke deal. Xi is already on record using “climate” to pressure Biden into submission.

And the other reason for Biden’s acquiescence: He knows that Xi knows all about “The BIG Guy” and his 10% cut from Hunter Biden’s ChiCom deals. And now that direct evidence of Biden’s profiteering is emerging, the risk to his presidency and the Democrat Party’s 2024 prospects is growing. Of course, that assumes Biden will be the 2024 nominee, and I have asserted he likely will not be on the November ballot.

So, what does all this have to do with your toaster and coffee maker?

Xi Jinping is now aggressively threatening “reunification” with Taiwan.

So?

When, not if, the ChiComs come across the Taiwan Strait, they will do so not because of some nationalist fervor but because strategically, that will give China control of the world’s largest production of semiconductors and microchips, which are found in everything Americans take for granted.

As National Review’s Jim Geraghty observed: “Taiwan is to semiconductors what the Middle East is to oil; this island makes the most advanced semiconductors in the world. Because everything from your cell phone to your car to the Pentagon’s F-35 fighter jets runs on semiconductors, there’s an argument that Taiwan’s role as a key link in the global supply chain of advanced technology acts as a deterrent against a future Chinese invasion or other military aggression — that Taiwan, and in particular the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, are so valuable that the world couldn’t allow that supply of semiconductors to be interrupted by a war or blockade.”

However, Geraghty correctly concludes, “But there’s reason to wonder if the ‘Silicon Shield’ is really that much of a deterrent.”

And that is because China is dependent on the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for more than 70% of the chips it installs in a plethora of consumer electronics, which are then exported to the U.S. and globally. TSMC is the world’s largest chip producer, and when combined with other Taiwanese chip producers, Connie Chang, director general of strategy for Taiwan’s National Development Council, estimates, “If something happened to Taiwan, probably half of the world’s industries will shut down.”

Remember that ChiCom Virus pandemic thing, when a lot of production came to a halt because the availability of microchips was enormously constrained? The ChiCom Virus allowed Xi and his strategists to determine everything they needed to know about the economic impact of reduced chip production — and likewise, control of chip production.

Fear not, though. Biden has convened his new supply chain council to ensure there will be no future issues with economic constraints associated with chip availability. More government bureaucrats directing the production and supply line, that’ll fix it!

Meanwhile, the ChiComs rapidly expanded military operations in the South China Sea last month, and the potential for China’s surge across the Taiwan Straits is a greater risk now than ever.

According to high-level officials briefed on Xi’s meeting with Biden, he told Biden, “Beijing will reunify Taiwan with mainland China but the timing has not yet been decided.”

As China’s domestic economic growth continues to slow, and as its looming real estate bubble blowup is driving foreign investors away, the prospect of its invasion of Taiwan is increasing in order to consolidate its global economic influence as a hedge against continued economic stagnation.

And when the ChiComs come across the Taiwan Strait, they will do so with coordinated threat distractions from Russia, Iran and China’s slave state, North Korea.

To be clear – you will know when they endeavor to take Taiwan because they are likely to launch cyber-attacks in the U.S. that will create an enormous “domestic distraction” from whatever military and sanction responses Biden can conjure up.

Recently, FBI Director Christopher Wray outlined in congressional testimony, that China s fully prepared to disable our domestic infrastructure. According to Wray: “China’s hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities. The risk that poses to every American requires our attention now.”

He elaborated further: “Volt Typhoon malware enabled China to hide as they targeted our communications, energy, transportation, and water sectors. Their pre-positioning constitutes a potential real-world threat to our physical safety that the FBI is not going to tolerate. We are going to continue to work with our partners to hit the PRC hard and early whenever we see them threaten Americans.”

In an advisory issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, National Security Agency, and Federal Bureau of Investigation, the agencies observed “indications of Volt Typhoon actors maintaining access and footholds within some victim IT environments for at least five years.”

Jen Easterly, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, elaborated on the dire threats Wray outlined: “It is Chinese military doctrine to attempt to induce societal panic in their adversary. The Chinese government got a taste of this in the aftermath of the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline in May of 2021 that shut down gas to the Eastern Seaboard for several days. [Americans] couldn’t get to work. They couldn’t take their kids to school, get folks to the hospital. It caused a bit of panic. Now imagine that on a massive scale. Imagine not one pipeline, but many pipelines disrupted and telecommunications going down so people can’t use their cell phone. People start getting sick from polluted water. Trains get derailed. Air traffic control systems, port control systems are malfunctioning. This is truly an everything, everywhere all at once scenario.”

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland claimed: “The Justice Department has disrupted a PRC-backed hacking group that attempted to target America’s critical infrastructure utilizing a botnet. The United States will continue to dismantle malicious cyber operations – including those sponsored by foreign governments – that undermine the security of the American people.”

I feel much safer now…

That being said, China will demonstrate its ability to interrupt American commerce and lives in small ways ahead any debilitating mass cyber attack. That would include intrusions into financial networks, power grid networks and transportation/distribution networks, probes that serve as small shots fired across our technology and logistics bow.

And understand this: The Red Chinese have a pretty good idea how ill-equipped our nation and the world is after watching western nations flail during the ChiCom Virus pandemic the seeded.

Regardless of what you think about Donald Trump, none of these recent obscene domestic and foreign policy failures — I repeat, NONE — occurred when Trump was president, nor would they if he were still president. Trump was tough on China, and Xi stayed in his box.

Notably, as Biden launched his 2024 campaign’s Orwellian “Defense’ of Democracy” hate and division theme this week, voters in Taiwan defied Beijing by electing their new president, Lai Ching-te. After his victory, Lai said, “China has opinions about me and Bi-khim, and that’s because both of us are steadfast in upholding Taiwan’s sovereignty.”

Let me be clear: The probability of the ChiComs invading Taiwan before January 2025 is directly tied to Biden’s polling against Trump, and at the moment, Trump holds a narrow lead in a general election matchup. If it looks like Trump will return to office, then, like Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine and Iran/Hamas attacking Israel, China will make their move before it happens.

Let me reiterate: The most dangerous threat to U.S. national security has been and remains Joe Biden.

Tell your Democrat friends that the next time they vote for a president, vote as if their toaster and coffee maker, and every other consumer product they rely on, depend on it — because they do. But that may be apparent ahead of the November election if Xi decides Biden, or his most likely ballot successor, will not prevail.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/103496-the-chicoms-taiwan-and-your-toaster-2024-01-10


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