S4E18: Indicting China for the Pandemic with Center for Security Policy Founder Frank Gaffney
Frank Gaffney is Founder and President at The Center for Security Policy and bestselling author of the new book THE INDICTMENT: Prosecuting the Chinese Communist Party & Friends for Crimes against America, China, and the World. He breaks down China’s place in the world today, and their strategy to take over the world moving forward.
S4E18: Indicting China for the Pandemic with Center for Security Policy Founder Frank Gaffney – See transcript below.
Frank Gaffney breaks down China’s place in the world today, and their strategy to take over the world moving forward. China can do this by paying off politicians worldwide and unleashing future pandemics like what the world just experienced. Gaffney also shares his thoughts on Islamism, predicting more terrorist attacks against the U.S. and worldwide.
HIGHLIGHTS
Naresh Vissa: [00:59:38] That’s Frank Gaffney. He is a founder and president at the Center for Security Policy, bestselling author of the new book Get It on Amazon. It’s called “The Indictment: Prosecuting the Chinese Communist Party and Friends for Crimes Against America, China and the World.” Like I said, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, it’s available everywhere. The website is Center for [01:00:00] Security policy.org. That’s center for security policy.org. Frank I know we went a little over, but this was just such a fascinating interview that I’m going to be sharing with my friends, with my family because most Americans are so brainwashed. They don’t even know that they’re being controlled by the Chinese indirectly. And I think you’ve helped lay that framework out.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Naresh Vissa: [00:00:29] Hey, everybody. Welcome to the work from Home Show. Shout out to all our homies, Homeboy’s home, girls home, trans, all the work from homers out there. I’m Naresh Vista. Today we have Frank Gaffney on the show. He is the founder and president at the Center for Security Policy and he’s a bestselling author of the new book “The Indictment: Prosecuting the Chinese Communist Party in France for Crimes Against America, China and the World.” I’ve been following Frank for probably over a decade [00:01:00] now. We’ll talk a little bit about his Center for Security Policy, his latest books. And he’s just a fascinating individual. You you may have even seen him on mainstream news media, on documentaries. I’ve seen him on a few documentaries. So, Frank Gaffney, thank you so much for joining us on the Work-from-home show.
Frank Gaffney: [00:01:22] It’s great to be with you, Naresh. Excuse me. Good morning.
Naresh Vissa: [00:01:25] Good morning. So tell us a little bit first about your background. How did you get involved with with security? And also tell us more about the Center for Security Policy, how you got that started, why you got it started and what it does?
Frank Gaffney: [00:01:45] Well, very briefly, I wound up finding myself working for a United States senator, a Democrat from Washington state by the name of Senator Henry Scoop Jackson a long time ago that [00:02:00] led to an opportunity to work on the Senate Armed Services Committee under Senator John Tower of Texas, a Republican that led in turn to working in the Defense Department under President Reagan and Caspar Weinberger on nuclear forces and arms control policy, ultimately acting there as an assistant secretary of defense. And most of the time since then, I have been running and working with a wonderful team at this organization, the Center for Security Policy that I founded in 1988. Its mission is basically promoting the sorts of things that I worked on in the Senate and then with the president. Peace through strength is the term that Ronald Reagan gave it. And it’s been kind of my mission to see what we can do to protect our country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Noth swore in office to do repeatedly and specifically [00:03:00] to try to counter various forms of totalitarianism, starting with Soviet communism and then Sharia supremacism and then most recently, Chinese Communist Party totalitarianism, if you will. Chinese would perhaps call it totalitarianism with Chinese characteristics. So that’s the work we do at the moment. At the Center for Security Policy, we also sponsor coalitions, including a marvelous one called the Committee on the Present Danger China. And it’s really from a series of some 70 webinars that our committee has convened over the past 10 or 11 months that we’ve drawn the much of the contents for this new book, the Indictment, And I’m very excited to present it to your audience.
Naresh Vissa: [00:04:00] That [00:04:00] all sounds really, really good. Before before we talk more about China, you mentioned Sharia. I want to learn a little bit more about that because I know that was a big part of your work ten years ago, maybe 6 or 7 years ago. I’m not sure how involved you guys are with that, if that’s even an issue. But I’m assuming when you say Sharia, you mean terrorism, Islamist terrorism, probably as a result of nine divided by 11, you took it more seriously. I don’t know if you took it seriously in the 90s, but just tell us a little bit more about that. And is that a threat? Is that threat gone or is it still something to be concerned about?
Frank Gaffney: [00:04:48] Well, I think the right way to understand what we’re up against in that form of totalitarianism is that it is not only countenanced, [00:05:00] it is. Is commanded by this Islamic doctrine known as Sharia. Not all Muslims subscribe to it. Let me make clear. But those that do believe that Allah, their God, has commanded them to engage in jihad or holy war, to impose Sharia and Islamic rule on the entire world. And so that kind of terrorism, as we call it, is really just part and parcel of what adherent Muslims believe Sharia commands them to do. And is it a problem? It is very much a problem. I think that it is likely to manifest itself, unfortunately, in this country. Again and perhaps on a vastly larger scale than anything we’ve experienced to date. Partly [00:06:00] because we’ve allowed untold numbers of jihadis in across our southern border. And partly because we’ve introduced 70 to 100,000, mostly unaccompanied military aged men from probably the Taliban into this country as part of the great Afghan surrender. And I think that, you know, this is something we have to be alive to. Unfortunately, it’s overshadowed by an even more serious threat, and that is the one posed by the Chinese Communist Party. But you’re right to call attention to it, and we’ve certainly been trying to do so for the past 20 years or so.
Naresh Vissa: [00:06:44] Yeah, just it was certainly the talk of the news. Post 9/11. And then I remember towards the end of Obama’s presidency, it was almost like we were seeing a terrorist attack every two [00:07:00] months or so. And at least globally, we were hearing about a major terrorist attack every month. But I just feel like in 2017, when when President Trump came in, it was part of his platform, really we haven’t even heard of. Not to my knowledge. Any major Islamic terrorist attacks here in the United States since 2017.
Frank Gaffney: [00:07:25] I don’t think there have been any major ones. The thing that’s worrying to me is that I believe that the people who dominate the Muslim community in America, again, not representing all Muslims here. In fact, I think very much representing a different strain of Islam, this Sharia adherent one. Then most American Muslims practice. They, in many cases, came here to get away from Sharia in their native lands. [00:08:00] But the Muslim Brotherhood, I think, finds it inconvenient and expedient for their more stealthy kind of jihad to have people engaged in the violent kind. So I think they’ve been sort of tamping it down honestly, in favor of, you know, trying to penetrate and subvert our government at all levels and advance this agenda of Sharia supremacism, but through different tactics than the violent kind. Ultimately, I think they will engage in violence. I think that they are perfectly comfortable doing so, but it is not at the moment advantageous. And so you had an event in the White House, I think last week or thereabouts entitled an Islamophobia Awareness event. And it was, you know, an opportunity for the administration to demonstrate its complete [00:09:00] alignment with the Muslim Brotherhood on this putative problem of Islamophobia. I believe it is manufactured and not real, but it’s nonetheless been part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda.
Frank Gaffney: [00:09:14] And the administration, you know, bought into it, embraced it, promoted it at this event, and actually has created a new envoy to combat it. So I think all of that suggests that their efforts are paying dividends and it would be counterproductive as they see it, to have violence breaking out in America at this particular moment. But I don’t think that forecloses it by any means to the contrary. As was pointed out to me on one of our outlets, Securing America the other day by a former FBI agent who follows these guys closely, The United States government is now actually putting money into the [00:10:00] hardening, if you will, of mosques across the country, making them more fortified, if you will, on the grounds that, you know, you don’t want to have Islamophobia translating into violence against Muslims and I’m certainly not condoning any violence against Muslims. But the trouble is those mosques can, in their historical role, be actual armories and, you know, vehicles for power projection for Shariah adherent Muslims. And it’s probably not a good idea to be making them, you know, more fortified and more easily defended. Should you know, that violence start emanating from them.
Naresh Vissa: [00:10:49] Now, when I hear something like that, I just think that’s such a waste of of money. Here we are dealing with record inflation, at least in my lifetime. [00:11:00] And the government has spent trillions upon trillions of dollars just over the past two and a half years with all sorts of bills. And at the end of the day, it’s are you really you’re spending all this money? Who are you helping and are you actually helping them? And we’re seeing that. Most of the spending hasn’t helped the people who need the help the most and to be spending money on funding, I don’t care what it is, whether it’s a Hindu temple or a mosque or a church or a synagogue. We have freedom of religion in this country. And to say that you want to fund a certain religion because of discrimination against that religion, I’m not seeing it. America isn’t a nation where a bunch of synagogues or mosques or churches are being vandalized. Forget about vandals being bombed to the ground. Does it happen once in a [00:12:00] while? Do you hear the occasional story? Yeah, you do. But but to think that that we’re seeing all sorts of hate crimes against any certain group is absolutely false. And to throw money behind it is the priorities are not aligned properly. Let’s let’s that’s how I see it from a from a totalitarian from a an overall perspective.
Frank Gaffney: [00:12:25] Yeah well I don’t disagree and I think the point is it would be one thing if it’s just wasted, if it’s actually compounding a potential threat to our country that’s, well, dangerous and it should be stopped, it seems to me. And there should be more discussion of all of this, more clarity about what is going on here. Um, we, you know, have had this as a very important focus of effort at the Center for Security Policy for, well, I think 20 odd years, certainly before nine over 11, um, and, [00:13:00] and subsequent to it. And it’s, it’s only because there’s an even greater danger that is now looming. As I say, that I think our eye is off this particular ball and it it shouldn’t be altogether.
Naresh Vissa: [00:13:15] Yeah. Now let’s move on to China, though, because like I mentioned, ten years ago or so, the terrorism was an issue. And it seems like China has overtaken that and want to start first again. Your latest book is called The Indictment Prosecuting the Chinese Communist Party and Friends for Crimes Against America, China and the World. I’m assuming a good chunk of your thesis is that the pandemic was created by China. I’m guessing you’re toeing the line of, hey, they maybe somewhat intentionally did this. I want to hear a little bit more.
Frank Gaffney: [00:13:55] Well, maybe just a word of introduction to the topic. The book, [00:14:00] “The Indictment.” And thank you for reading the subtitle, because it’s important to this conversation. “Prosecuting the Chinese Communist Party and Friends for Crimes Against America, China and the World” is based on the premise that the Chinese Communist Party is really not so much a political party or even a government as it is a transnational criminal organization. And if properly understood as such, there are opportunities. In fact, there’s a necessity for us to be recognizing that what it has been doing to its own people first and foremost. And by that I mean not just Han Chinese, but also peoples that they have enslaved, like Uyghurs in East Turkestan and Tibetans and Southern Mongolians and most [00:15:00] recently the people of Hong Kong. But they’ve engaged in unprecedented and truly unimaginably horrific crimes against humanity, against them, killing some 100 million of them, and another for maybe even as many as 500 million babies in the womb. But beyond that, as a transnational criminal organization that has been engaged in what they call unrestricted warfare against the United States for well over two decades, maybe even three, you’ve seen crimes against our country. War crimes, we call them. So the indictment is one indictment charge, you know, the kind of crimes against humanity. The other eight revolve around crimes, war crimes against us. The most obvious one of which, though it is not widely understood as such, is, as you say, the biological [00:16:00] warfare attack that the Chinese Communist Party unleashed on our country. And we did another book recently, as you may know, entitled The CCP Is at War with America.
Frank Gaffney: [00:16:13] It was a study by what we call Team B3 to look at the contention of the director of National Intelligence of the United States that she just couldn’t tell whether the virus that came out of Wuhan was naturally occurring or out of a biological warfare laboratory called the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And our research conclusively demonstrated, I believe, that there’s no evidence, no real evidence that it came out of nature. And there’s abundant circumstantial, yes, but abundant evidence nonetheless, that it did come out of that laboratory. But to your question, did it come out purposefully or was it leaked? We just [00:17:00] don’t have enough information to say. But what we can say for certain, which makes this a war crime, is that once it was out, the Chinese Communist Party deliberately ensured that it was sent here and elsewhere around the world, but especially here to cause well, pandemic. And catastrophic damage to our country, to its people, to its economy, to its government. Notably, toppling Donald Trump and I believe to our freedoms, to the Constitution itself. So all of those things are, interestingly enough, advertised in this book. The two People’s Liberation Army colonels wrote back in 1999, published in China, which means it had the approval of the Chinese Communist Party. It has a list of some 20 different lines of attack that China would use [00:18:00] to take down the United States before it was militarily strong enough to do it the old fashioned way. One of those items was biological warfare. And I believe that’s what they’ve done and that’s what they are prepared to do even more horrifically to us unless they’re stopped.
Naresh Vissa: [00:18:21] Over how long has this been happening?
Frank Gaffney: [00:18:24] Has which been happening.
Naresh Vissa: [00:18:25] Like you brought up the hundreds of millions of people and it’s just like over the last.
Frank Gaffney: [00:18:33] The hundreds of millions of people who’ve been murdered by the Chinese Communist Party has gone back to, you know, its revolutionary phase. And certainly once it became the governing power in Beijing in 1949, but even before then and it continues to this day, I mean, you have organ harvesting, you have forced labor, you have gulags, you have genocide. This is [00:19:00] something that is an ongoing crime against humanity. And the Chinese Communist Party has never been held accountable for it. The crimes against us, I think, probably date pretty much from that time, but they’ve become vastly more capable of them since the 1990s when the Soviet Union was taken down by my old boss, Ronald Reagan, with a little bit of help from me. The Chinese leader at the time, Deng Xiaoping, declared that the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union had ended, the Soviets had lost a new Cold War, had begun between the United States and China, and China would win. And one of the things he said about the same time, we’re told by the then defense minister of China, general by the name of Qiao Chen, this was back in 20 years ago now. But he declared that Deng Xiaoping had [00:20:00] ordered this biological warfare program of China, which, by the way, is illegal because they’ve signed a treaty saying they wouldn’t have one, but they do.
Frank Gaffney: [00:20:10] And he declared its mission was going to be depopulating the United States so it could be colonized by China. So this has been going on, as I say, since the early 1990s. The unrestricted warfare has been openly boasted about since 1999. A people’s War was declared by the Chinese Communist Party against our country, not in some secret venue, but in the pages of its chief propaganda outlet, The People’s Daily in May of 2019. We are, in short, the rest on notice that the Chinese Communist Party is at war with us. We’ve simply chosen to ignore it and we can’t do that any longer. Because, alas, over this time, as China has followed the strategy that Deng [00:21:00] Xiaoping called hide and bide to build up its military capabilities and in the meantime, to do whatever else it could to weaken and if possible, destroy us. The Chinese now have a world class, military fully capable fear of taking ours on, particularly in its neighbourhood, and with devastating effects there, as well as quite possibly here. So for all these reasons, we must recognize we’re at war. So we have 20 different action items that we recommend in the indictment. And our view is that we have to get about them right quick. The hour is very late.
Naresh Vissa: [00:21:39] And what are the politicians, US politicians doing about this?
Frank Gaffney: [00:21:45] Well, that’s a very good question. The single most important line of attack, in my judgment, of this unrestricted warfare is what the Chinese call elite capture. And by that [00:22:00] they mean basically. Steps that they have taken and are continuing to take to capture the American leadership and specifically, but not exclusively. That’s the political leadership excuse me. And no more obvious example. The poster child, you might even say, of elite capture in our country is the commander in chief of the United States military, the president of the United States, Joe Biden. And the evidence continues to accumulate. We had James Comer of the House Oversight Committee laying out more evidence of it just last week, and still more will be coming out. We have abundant evidence in the book and people like Peter Schweitzer and others, Miranda Devine have been doing fabulous jobs of documenting this. But he’s just one example [00:23:00] of it. Many in his administration have similarly been captured by the Chinese Communist Party. Many in the United States Congress have been captured by the Chinese Communist Party. And then there’s the business leaders, particularly in the financial sector. Then there’s the academics, the media, the Hollywood types. The Chinese have, in short, spent probably many tens of billions of dollars buying up America’s elite, and it’s paid them huge dividends. So to answer your specific question, relatively few members of our political class, our political leadership, our representatives in Congress or elsewhere, including, by the way, governors and state legislatures, have mustered out to recognize the danger we face from the Chinese Communist Party and taken the sorts of steps we must take if we are to survive what it has in mind for us.
Frank Gaffney: [00:23:58] And by the way, while you start with [00:24:00] the charge about the crimes against humanity, Naresh. Is it’s perfectly obvious if you think about it for a second. The Chinese Communist Party are not going to treat other people, including most especially ours, better than they treat their own. So if we don’t want to find ourselves enslaved and murdered en masse by the Chinese Communist Party, we better be alive to this danger and taking the sorts of steps that we recommend in the indictment. Let me just say, I think people are resonating to this appeal. It’s a great surprise to me, frankly, and a delight to say that this is now a number one best seller on Amazon in a number of categories. And I hope that means that people will not only be taking it aboard among the American public, of course, but that they will pass it on to their political representatives so that they will do what they’ve largely not done to date, which is to adopt a war [00:25:00] footing vis a vis China and otherwise prepare ourselves to defend this country properly and and what we must ultimately do defeat the Chinese Communist Party.
Naresh Vissa: [00:25:15] Do you expect future pandemics to come from China?
Frank Gaffney: [00:25:20] Um, I fear it’s a certainty. And that’s because I think what actually went down here was only partly. The use of a weapon of mass destruction. And by that also mean the vaccine, by the way, which is manufactured in China. In the case of Pfizer. The dangers associated with it are such that the Chinese, when offered the opportunity to take some. Of the Pfizer vaccine for the purposes of dealing with an outbreak that they were experiencing, they declined. They declined even though it was manufactured in China. So [00:26:00] I think what we saw in that instance was at least a proof of concept that they could use biological weapons decisively against a country like ours. Unfortunately, we have ample reason to believe that what they’ve been doing in part. Incredible as it may sound, with the use of technology that American officials using American taxpayer resources and resource technologies have enabled them to bring to bear the so-called gain of function technologies, we’re almost certainly going to see not only another pandemic engineered by the Chinese communist biological warfare program, but probably one that’s vastly more communicable and deadly than Covid 19.
Naresh Vissa: [00:26:54] So when you say that they’re buying politicians, how are they doing this? Give us the [00:27:00] rundown.
Frank Gaffney: [00:27:02] Well, there’s an acronym called MICE that describes the practice. It’s money. It’s the kind of influence or techniques that can be sort of and described as such. It’s just outright corruption in most cases. I think that’s the case. Money. And then there’s I think it’s called entrapment. It’s the sort of sexual, you know, or ego, I guess, is the ego. Entrapment is part of the influence thing. You can coerce people, you can corrupt them. You can you can otherwise suborn them. And they’re doing all of these things. And I think when they do them, they are able to achieve [00:28:00] the kind of results that they’ve sought, which is essentially neutralizing at best, our leadership. And at worst they have been. Converting them into enablers of their criminal enterprises and war crimes against this country. Let me just give you one example, because it’s it’s perhaps the single most problematic, and that is people on Wall Street have been taking the funds of probably 150 or so million Americans invested in our capital markets through pension funds, through mutual funds, exchange traded funds, index funds and other investment vehicles. And they’ve been sluicing. By some estimates, 3 to $6 trillion. Of such funds. To the Chinese [00:29:00] Communist Party. In the form of investments in their various companies and such. The practical effect of that transfer of wealth has been to enable enormously. Everything that the Chinese Communist Party has been doing to try to. Destroy this country, whether it’s through economic warfare, whether it’s through political warfare, influence operations, energy warfare, this elite capture business, the biological warfare, the takedown of our military and others, all of which are parts of our list of war crimes against this country identified as such in the indictment.
Frank Gaffney: [00:29:48] But they’ve enabled us to be made the victim of this, and they’ve never been held accountable for it. To the contrary, they’re still doing it. In fact, I just [00:30:00] was having a conversation with a former top figure on Wall Street the other day. And he reported that one of the most aggressive of these masters of the universe as they think of themselves on Wall Street, Ray Dalio. Who has personally made billions off of his various deals with China. Putting our money at risk over there and enabling them to risk even greater. Dangers to us. He’s just returned from China two weeks ago, maybe now, and said, you know, he thinks we’re going to be at war with China, the old fashioned kind, the shooting kind of war. And I asked this friend of mine from Wall Street. Huh? Has he told investors, his clients, that he’s put. The money of in China to get their money out if there’s going to be a war. And my friend said no. Now [00:31:00] what that means is that these people are so corrupted. So much in the pocket of the Chinese Communist Party that they wouldn’t dream of looking out for the interests of their clients by telling them to get your money out of China before that war begins, because it’s all going to be gone. Once that happens, count on it. And it just is evidence, I think, really of of how insidious this elite capture is and how much it’s translating into grievous harm to our country and could conceivably much, much worse in the future.
Naresh Vissa: [00:31:39] So what’s the strategy moving forward? Us and China.
Frank Gaffney: [00:31:45] China’s strategy is, I believe, to take down this country to finish the job. If they can do it without firing a shot through further application of unrestricted warfare techniques, including perhaps what they would consider to be [00:32:00] an unrestricted warfare technique of biological warfare, they’ll do that. That’s that’s the game they see. No, you know, opportunity or even possibility for us living harmoniously. Uh, two sons, as they like to say, in a single heaven, there can only be one. And it’s going to be China if they have their way in terms of our strategy going forward. Well, it depends on who’s making it. If it’s Joe Biden’s, it will be to surrender. To capitulate. To allow this country to be taken down. I hope that’s not the strategy of the rest of our country. But if it’s going to be otherwise, we’re going to have to get people understanding the nature of the threat that we’ve just been discussing and giving a mandate to their political leadership minus the ones that have been captured, [00:33:00] of course, to make a very important course correction in our approach to the Chinese Communist Party. It’s laid out in, as I say, 20 steps in this book, the indictment. But short form of it is it means that we have to defeat the Chinese Communist Party. We must help the Chinese people liberate themselves from our mutual enemy, the CCP. And I think there is a chance that, as we’ve seen with Taiwan. That the industrious and dynamic Chinese people, if freed from the party that enslaves them and threatens us, could be very much partners with us, could be part of an international community in which they contribute directly and mightily without threatening the rest of us. But that’s going to happen only if the party that rules them today is taken down. And that has to be our purpose and [00:34:00] our 20 recommendations would help accomplish that, I think.
Naresh Vissa: [00:34:05] Can you talk a little bit about technology, cybersecurity, why China is able to penetrate that so well and why the United States hasn’t been able to?
Frank Gaffney: [00:34:18] Oh, I don’t know that we know how well we’ve been able to penetrate or wage cyber war. There’s talk that we do it from time to time. I think it’s mostly the case that we haven’t, but I think we’ve got pretty formidable capabilities. The trouble is the Chinese have formidable capabilities and they are using them all the time. They use them to steal information, proprietary information technology that is sensitive, in some cases classified, militarily relevant. They use cyber to benefit their corporations. They use cyber to influence [00:35:00] our people. I think of TikTok as a cyber weapon of a kind. Tiktok is, you know, is an instrument not only for hoovering up immense quantities of private and personal and often sensitive information from its users and people they interact with, by the way. But also it’s a vehicle for. Disseminating information either subliminally or very overtly, that reinforces the Chinese narrative that it is the coming thing and a great nation. And communism with Chinese characteristics is the way of the future and much to be preferred over that nasty capitalism. And by contrast, the United States is a terrible place, systemically racist to be loathed, not served, let alone, you know, made victorious. These are the sorts of things that the Chinese do every day. And you ask about, you know, [00:36:00] how do they do it? Will they do it by investing massively in it? I’ve been told and I’m not sure this is exactly right, but it’s probably not too far off that there’s at least 300,000. Chinese. Several civil servants. Party members. Operatives. The Ministry of State Security folks engaged in cyber operations in China. Every day. That’s a level of effort that is surely not comparable to anything we’re doing here. I mean, it’s vastly, vastly larger. So I think it’s a very serious problem. But it’s again, only one example of how China is studiously, comprehensively, systematically, patiently and all too successfully working to achieve [00:37:00] the kind of hegemony that it seeks. And the only real impediment to it they’ve understood for decades is us. And therefore we must be taken out. And they’re hard at it.
Naresh Vissa: [00:37:13] Are there any other nations that they’re targeting?
Frank Gaffney: [00:37:16] Yeah, I think they target the whole world to varying degrees. And one of the most important ways they do that and we talk about this a lot in the book is through what they call the Belt and Road Initiative, which is essentially a colonial infrastructure build out program. I guess my assessment of it is underwritten in part by our money invested in China. They do it through these so-called payday loans to mostly developing countries to promise them that if they’ll just sign here, they’ll get new airports and rail systems and road networks and ports, you know, exploitation of their minerals or other strategic assets. [00:38:00] What they actually get is colonized and enslaved by the Chinese Communist Party. Oh yeah, they may get that infrastructure, but it comes at a price. And especially if they fail to make the payments on their payday loans, the Chinese expropriate those assets and they’re therefore available not only to help control the countries in question, but also project power from them, which makes the prospect of that shooting war. That fear is coming truly a global one unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, because these Chinese operatives and companies and party.
Frank Gaffney: [00:38:43] Apparatchiks are now in something like 147 countries around the world. Doing precisely the kind of colonial buildout is one way of putting it that I’ve just described. All [00:39:00] of this stuff is dual use. All of it is tailored to be available to and useful for the Chinese Communists military, the People’s Liberation Army to be used against us and our friends. We do have friends. Let me be clear about that. But even some of them are now susceptible to this kind of operation, the Belt and Road Initiative. We ourselves, frankly, have been in a fashion even allies of ours have begun to. In some cases at least think that they may need to adjust to a new reality, as the United States, particularly under Joe Biden, is seen to be a waning power. This is the Chinese line and China is the rising one. Saudi Arabia comes to mind. Brazil comes to mind. Others throughout Africa and Latin America and beyond. This is the sort of thing that I think makes [00:40:00] the world a vastly more dangerous place, and not just for us, but for freedom or generally.
Naresh Vissa: [00:40:08] Can you talk a little bit about like social media and the brainwashing that’s happening on there? Is there proof that China has infiltrated that?
Frank Gaffney: [00:40:22] Well, I mentioned TikTok, of course, is as an example. I think there other platforms are to varying degrees, used for similar purposes. Um, there’s a another one that’s name is escaping me at the moment, but that got some attention recently because of like TikTok, One of the features of this particular, um, social media device is it can take over basically your phone. You can turn on your microphone and can turn on your camera. It can hoover up whatever’s on it. [00:41:00] Obviously, it can use apps to its purposes, all of which is going on in conjunction with social media operations that they influence or suborn to influence. Yes. And I think it’s no exaggeration to say when you see data pulling information, for example, suggesting that, you know, very substantial majorities of American young people now think socialism is a better model than capitalism, to say nothing of aren’t too keen on our country, also evidenced, by the way, in their willingness to serve in our armed forces. These are the sorts of things that are evidence of the the use of soft power, if you will. They call it, again, unrestricted warfare. [00:42:00] And they’ve weakened us tremendously and deliberately. But then there are other means that they’re using as well. We talked about the biological warfare. How about chemical warfare? How about using fentanyl to kill 100,000 mostly young people across this country every year? This is the Chinese Opium War 2.0.
Frank Gaffney: [00:42:24] Using this lethal. Drug they manufacture. They put together the ingredients of it and manufacture in drug cartel laboratories in Mexico. They money launder and, you know, help with the movement of I mean, these are the sorts of things that constitute criminal conduct, war crimes, again, against us. And they have to be held accountable for them. And more to the point, whether it’s the social media, whether it’s the fentanyl, whether it’s the biological warfare, whether it’s any of these other techniques we have to. [00:43:00] Bring them to a halt. And where appropriate, we need to be responding in kind. You know, reciprocity is a very wise principle. It’s sort of the golden rule, after all. We’ve allowed the Chinese to do all kinds of things. For example, putting 300,000 students in our country when there’s nowhere near that number in China to buy farmland and farm or food production operations, to invest in all kinds of other things, including Silicon Valley, for the purposes of expropriating its seed corn technology and the like. There’s no reciprocity in China for any of that. And it’s a good rule of thumb to say if we can’t do it there, assuming it’s something that we would like to do and should be willing and able to do, they certainly should not be allowed to do it here. Again, one of the recommended courses of action in [00:44:00] our book.
Naresh Vissa: [00:44:04] Yeah, well, talking about the social media again, not necessarily social media, but the education, because you bring up socialism, you bring up younger people. I’m just trying to understand the intricate ways that they’re infiltrating the system. So when it comes to education, how are they infiltrating the education system, the teachers, the textbooks, etcetera?
Frank Gaffney: [00:44:34] Well, in a lot of different ways. One is just by having 330,000 students in America’s academic institutions. Heard a fascinating story over the weekend. A woman whose daughter.
Naresh Vissa: [00:44:52] So you think the students are, like spreading ideas or. I’ll let you continue.
Frank Gaffney: [00:44:57] Well, let me just give you an example of how this can operate. A woman [00:45:00] I met with over the weekend has a daughter who is at a premier. American University doing a PhD in chemistry. She said she’s one of two Caucasians. The rest are Chinese. In that program, some 30, I think of them at one point. They announced, I think in the recent semester that they were they were not going to be in class for the next month. They were all going home to China. And, you know, it was a kind of power play by these Chinese students. It obviously affected the course and and the studies. But it it’s just an example of what students can do in their own right. Every single one of them, by the way, is here because they were personally approved to be here by the Chinese Communist Party. They don’t get here otherwise. They are all on notice [00:46:00] that it is Chinese law that they must do the bidding of the party. And if that means you know espionage, so be it. If it means recruiting students or professors or otherwise, you know, penetrating, you know, laboratories or other kinds of targets, they’ll they’ll do it or else. And by the way, there’s also these overseas Chinese police peace service centers, as they’re called. A principal purpose of which is to ensure that the Chinese nationals in the United States, or even in some cases, descendants of Chinese nationals, toe the party line or else, or else at least they’re threatened.
Frank Gaffney: [00:46:48] And in some cases they’re actually sent back to China lest something terrible happened to their family members there. But in addition to all of that, you have the [00:47:00] phenomenon of what have been called Confucius Institutes. They’re being rebranded because that’s become a problem for China, but they’re still doing what they do, which is pay for Chinese language studies and culture, in some cases determining in the process what kinds of things are taught on campus, by whom, what kinds of visiting lecturers you might have on campus. All of this because, as with the Chinese students, they’re paying the universities a lot of money that they generally very much need. So these sorts of things are taking place in academia and it’s just another line of attack in the Chinese Communist Party’s elite capture and and subversion operations. And not least, you also have, by the way, the so-called Thousand Talents program, which has been very [00:48:00] directly going after some of these professors. No notably one who ran the I think it was the chemistry department, if I’m not mistaken, at Harvard University. They failed to tell their or others that they’re taking in money from the Chinese. But more to the point, they are helping the Chinese transfer technology and knowhow to, in some cases, Chinese students and in other cases think directly back to Beijing. This is the kind of comprehensive effort that the Chinese communist Party is making that we talk about in the indictment as their unrestricted warfare strategy for taking us down.
Naresh Vissa: [00:48:43] Have you consulted with Peter Navarro and. Oh, he wrote a book. He’s been on on the show before, but he wrote a couple of books on China way back in 2004, maybe 2006, talking about mostly what you’re saying.
Frank Gaffney: [00:48:59] Yeah, [00:49:00] China’s. Excuse me. Peter is a friend. We’ve worked with him for years, including when he was doing, you know, his books and movies on the China threat. Well, before he went into the Trump White House. Um, and we’re still in touch. And I very much admire his understanding of this threat and the efforts that he’s been making both in government and out to warn against and counter it. And I’m sure there are points on which we disagree, but certainly by and large, we’re of a mind that the Chinese Communist Party is, as Ronald Reagan used to say, our times, existential threat to freedom. We will rise to that challenge, as Reagan exhorted us to do in the case of the Soviets in that time. But he said, every generation faces such an existential threat to freedom, and it behooves each generation [00:50:00] of Americans to. You know, fight to prevent that threat from succeeding in our time. This is the Chinese Communist Party and we must do that or else, as he famously said, Reagan, we will tell our children. And our children’s children. What it was like to live in the United States when men were free. I know Peter Navarro and I are again a mind on this. We’re not about to allow that to happen on our watch without a fight.
Naresh Vissa: [00:50:37] This reminds me a lot of the Cold War, the Red Scare and the big thing. I just wanted to get all the information first before forming my own opinions. But when you bring up I’m really concerned about the younger generation who is very they just seem like they don’t understand the issues because [00:51:00] they go off of what they see on tik tok, like you said, on social media. The teachers, the education system the same way. And I don’t know if you guys back when you got started, covered Russia and the threat that Russia posed as far as infiltrating our system went. It seems like Russia is somewhat fallen off the map. They’re not much of a threat anymore. But my concern is what a Russian official said. You probably remember way back on 60 Minutes 25 years ago maybe, and he said, the way that we’re going to destroy nations is by infiltrating their education systems and controlling what people learn and what they think. And there’s now a Chinese word called I think it’s Bizo, which stands for basically Woke. Um, and I believe the Chinese are laughing at us because here we are fighting over what bathrooms we should be using and why [00:52:00] America is systemically racist while China is sending 300,000 plus students getting master’s degrees, learning computers, cybersecurity. Et cetera. And again, here we are fighting over color and race when making, you know, good money having good employment numbers.
Frank Gaffney: [00:52:24] Well, I’m hearing in the background a new generation that you are properly, I’m sure, thinking of as you ask that question. I was involved not as an academic, not as a, you know, a think tank guy. Uh. In waging the Cold War against the Soviet Union. It was very much evident to me and continues to be that those in the Kremlin. Oh, at the time sought [00:53:00] to take us down because for them, as for the Chinese now, we were the impediment to the Soviets achieving their goal of global hegemony. And they were hard at it in the Cold War through a whole variety of means, not least of which was, you know, communist infiltration and espionage and penetration. And one of the most important parts of our fight against them in the Cold War was exposing that. Uh, Joseph McCarthy was made notorious for having done so and done so, I think basically correctly. Ever since then, we’ve been told you cannot look for enemies within [00:54:00] the United States, whether it’s from Russia or the Soviet Union or China or Iran or elsewhere. That’s it’s off limits that you’re McCarthyite. If you do it well. We do have enemies within. And what I’ve just laid out for you is the concerted effort that the Chinese communists have made to proliferate them enormously. Among American leadership elites. The Russians under Vladimir Putin are continuing to do what they can. They’ve got influence operations. Notably, you know, media operations. They’ve also got to be clear, spies think the evidence that’s in the public domain is that they’re operating at more or less Cold War levels in terms of their.
Frank Gaffney: [00:54:58] Espionage operations [00:55:00] inside the United States. You can be sure they’ve got influence operations, too. Well, we kept hearing about them in the course of the attacks on Donald Trump. Didn’t we think those were misplaced and wrong? All about political warfare against him. But they shouldn’t obscure the fact that this is part of the playbook of communists. This is what they do. I think it’s fair to say that they pale by comparison to the senior partners in what they now call their no limits partnership. Namely the Chinese communists, but think the Russians can’t be ignored as well. And, you know, my own personal view is that what they’re doing in Ukraine is evidence of the ambitions of Vladimir Putin to continue to be a threat to freedom where he can. It’s just [00:56:00] that it it pales in comparison to what the Chinese are not only capable of, but what they’re doing. So I’m, you know, a, you know, veteran of the efforts to. Challenge and ultimately defeat. The Chinese Communist Party. Excuse me. I’m doing that obviously, now. But the Soviet Communist Party, um, and don’t for a minute diminish or minimize its, uh, its ongoing operations under. The new management, if you will. Think of it as more or less a Chapter 11 that was performed as Vladimir Putin, I think has all of the hallmarks of a of a totalitarian of the Soviet era. It was his imprinting as a young man, as, of course, a KGB operative. And I think he’s mostly about it these [00:57:00] days as well.
Naresh Vissa: [00:57:02] Last question and then I’ll let you go. I know you got to run, but we’ve talked a lot about Islam. We’ve talked about China. And on the Internet, there aren’t a lot of good things about you. And I just wanted to dig in and see, okay, what’s so bad about what you are. Why is the Internet? Why is Google coming after you? Why is Wikipedia coming after you? What’s your response? Because to me, I think it’s completely unfair. I think people twist here. They might take a sentence here, a sentence there and twist your words. What’s your response? When people charge you with being an Islamophobe or a China phobe or a Russia phobe or anything like that?
Frank Gaffney: [00:57:43] It’s pretty simple. It’s just an example of political warfare, in my experience. People who are effective. Sing what they are saying and warning of on fact, and [00:58:00] thereby exposing the operations of people who have access to the media, who have influence either directly or through cut outs like the Southern Poverty Law Center, to inject into the public arena, most especially the media, a narrative that is designed, as with Joe McCarthy, to silence or censor, suppress, ostracize people who are a thwart to those enemies of our country and their agendas. I take it as kind of an occupational hazard. I don’t particularly welcome, you know, the infamy, the slanders, the libels. But, you know, many and my friends say wear [00:59:00] it is a badge of honor. And I’ve found that of late, most people looking at my Wikipedia profile or Google, you know, rendering of it, recognize that it’s obviously so ridiculously over the top that it’s evidence of what they say in the Air Force you’re taking. Anti-aircraft fire, you’re over the target. It’s a validation in effect, for an awful lot of people who think at least I respect their judgment a lot more than I do, that of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Naresh Vissa: [00:59:38] That’s Frank Gaffney. He is a founder and president at the Center for Security Policy, bestselling author of the new book Get It on Amazon. It’s called “The Indictment: Prosecuting the Chinese Communist Party and Friends for Crimes Against America, China and the World.” Like I said, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, it’s available everywhere. The website is Center for [01:00:00] Security policy.org. That’s center for security policy.org. Frank I know we went a little over, but this was just such a fascinating interview that I’m going to be sharing with my friends, with my family because most Americans are so brainwashed. They don’t even know that they’re being controlled by the Chinese indirectly. And I think you’ve helped lay that framework out. Are there any final thoughts you want to share with our listeners or anything else you want to promote?
Frank Gaffney: [01:00:28] Well, let me just say thank you for going the extra time. I think it was very helpful in illuminating aspects of this that you don’t get a chance to in every interview. If I could just plug one other site or two, maybe one is I mentioned the webinars that we’ve done at the Committee on the Present Danger: China. Its website is PresentDangerChina.org. They are a fabulous resource and really the point of the book was to try to make their most important highlights [01:01:00] and recommendations as accessible as possible to people. And again, I’m gratified that it’s selling rather well. So hopefully that’s the case. But in the back of the book, we have a list of all of the webinars that we’ve done to that point with a what do they call those things? A QR code that will enable you to just instantly pull up those videos if you want to take them aboard in their full content. And I really, really commend it to your listeners. The other side that I would also appreciate people taking a look at if they can is one we call Securing america.tv. And you can follow the television show that I do there. It’s got a radio feature as well in the audio form. Also daily commentary that I do that you can subscribe to at SecureFreedom.org, our Center for Security Policy site and check out there at SecuringAmerica.tv. [01:02:00] So thank you, Naresh, for your extra time and your very thoughtful questions. Appreciate the chance to talk with you.
Naresh Vissa: [01:02:08] Thank you, Frank. To all our listeners, check us out at work from home show.com. That’s w-w-w-workfromhomeshow.com. Get on our email list there. You can also find us on social media if you have any questions or want to share your thoughts on this interview or any other topic. Hello at work from home show.com is our email. That’s how you can get in touch with us. Hello at work from home show.com. There’s also social media. We’re on Twitter. We’re on Facebook. We’re not on TikTok. So that’s, uh, we’re not planning to get on TikTok, but you can find us on, on a few other social media platforms. And until next week, keep on working from home.