It’s a very good day for the Ministry of State Security and the Second Department of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff Headquarters.
The Justice Department announced the end of its “China Initiative” on Wednesday.
Established by the Trump administration, the initiative expanded and better coordinated FBI-led efforts to detect, disrupt, and prosecute Chinese espionage campaigns on U.S. soil. A key focus fell on espionage efforts targeting U.S. college campuses. Toward that end, the Justice Department successfully prosecuted a number of academics who failed to register grants from China. Beijing has used grants and undeclared intelligence officers and agents to gain influence over and access to proprietary U.S. research.
This matters because the operations of Communist China’s intelligence services are massive in scale, dedicated in ideological mission, and expansive in operational activity. They are committed to infiltrating academia, harassing U.S. citizens, and stealing hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. intellectual property for a bold agenda. Namely, so that Communist China can supplant the United States as the most powerful nation on Earth. China wants to use this technology not for its own defense or the benefit of its people, but rather to perfect new weapons with which to kill American sailors, new products to undercut U.S. businesses, and new influence to replace the post-Second World War democratic international order with an order of Chinese-led feudal mercantilism.
As FBI Director Christopher Wray observed just this January, China’s espionage campaign has “reached a new level — more brazen, more damaging than ever before. And it’s vital — vital — that all of us focus on that threat together.”
President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland clearly didn’t get the memo. Matthew Olsen, a deputy attorney general for national security, defended the move on Wednesday. Ignoring Wray’s January warning that China’s espionage campaign was unparalleled in its threat, Olsen said the initiative would be replaced with a new program to focus more generally on espionage from nations across the world. Even more ludicrous, he said that future prosecutions of grant fraud might be prosecuted as civil rather than criminal matters. What message does this send to academics who put money before patriotism?
Olsen concluded, “I do believe that the China Initiative was driven by genuine national security concerns. But I’m also mindful that the department must maintain the trust of the people whom we serve.”
Let’s be clear: The trust of the people is in the ability of their government to protect their freedom, lives, and livelihoods. Not the ability of their government to protect the egos of academics who engage with a mortal American enemy. This is a triumph of manifestly delusional “wokeness” over exigent needs of national security. The only reason that the Justice Department has ended this initiative is because certain academics claimed it was racist. Why it was “racist” to expect some of the smartest people in America to comply with federal law is unclear. Especially, that is, considering the stakes involved here.
Facing a renewed Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration proclaims itself a great guardian of democracy. This sorry saga doesn’t exactly suggest it is serious.
