Congressional lawmakers demand briefing on Chinese activity at U.S. military bases
Congressional lawmakers are demanding a briefing from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) on Communist Chinese activity at U.S. military bases.
In an Oct. 2 press statement, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs Chairman Glenn Grothman (R-WI) announced they are investigating “recent reports of Chinese foreign nationals breaching and accessing secure U.S. military bases and facilities.”
“According to a recent report, Chinese nationals, sometimes posing as tourists, have repeatedly accessed, or attempted to access, U.S. military bases and other sensitive government facilities as often as one hundred times in recent years,” wrote Comer and Grothman. “These efforts to access U.S. military bases and facilities raise concerns about what these Chinese nationals are seeking to access and for what purpose.”
Comer and Grothman have sent a letter to the heads of the DoD and FBI requesting a staff briefing from those agencies “no later than October 16, 2023.”
The lawmakers’ letter highlighted that the Communist Chinese Government’s National Intelligence Law compels Chinese nationals to “support, assist, and cooperate with Chinese intelligence officials, even while abroad.”
“This obligation placed upon Chinese nationals raises concerns about whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) compels its citizens to gather intelligence while in the United States,” wrote the lawmakers. “In 2021, a Chinese company also purchased land around Grand Forks Air Force Base prompting DOD to require U.S. government approval for foreign nationals to purchase property within 100 miles of certain military installations.”
More To The Story
The Comer/Grothman letter follows a report by the Wall Street Journal discussed last month here on More To The Story.
In that article, it was reported that Chinese nationals had attempted to penetrate military facilities in the U.S. around 100 times and that many incidents involved Chinese nationals posing as tourists.
Incidents included Chinese nationals crossing into a U.S. missile range in New Mexico to what appeared to be scuba divers swimming near a U.S. government rocket launch site in Florida. National intelligence officials have characterized the incidents as a form of espionage.
Last month, an outgoing military leader under the Biden administration also dropped information about the spy balloon that was allowed to traverse the interior of the U.S. before being shot down over the East Coast.
On the Sept. 17 edition of CBS Sunday Morning, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley says the spy equipment on the balloon wasn’t activated and captured no intelligence as it drifted across the country.
However, this espionage activity is not limited to inside the U.S. borders.
In early August, China and Russia were holding joint training off the coast of Alaska.
As reported by The Hill, on Sept. 11 Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall warned that “China was building up its military to prepare for a potential war with the U.S., and he said America must optimize its forces to counter the rising threat.”
China is also after human assets.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown said in a Sept. 8 memo that foreign entities are “targeting and recruiting U.S. and NATO-trained military talent across specialties and career fields” in order to train China’s army.
Brown’s memo carries some weight, as he has been nominated to replace Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In June, More To The Story first covered what we’ve dubbed the “Slow motion invasion” after the U.S. border patrol reported a large spike in the number of mainly military-aged Chinese males crossing the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
Between October 2022 and April of 2023, Border Patrol data shows 9,854 Chinese migrants encountered at the southern border; a roughly 393% spike when compared to all of fiscal year 2022. The vast majority of those migrants, a total of 8,304, were single adults and mostly male.