Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo trashed President Joe Biden’s handling of last week’s debacle with a Chinese spy balloon, saying his inaction only reiterates and underscores his weakness with China.
On Saturday, an F-22 Raptor finally shot down the massive balloon, which the Chinese Communist Party claimed was a “weather research” ship that had blown off course. The balloon spent a week traversing the entire country, from Alaska’s west coast to its final resting place off the coast of North Carolina. Yet neither Biden nor his administration admitted what was happening until a local newspaper in Montana spotted the balloon and began asking questions.
Pompeo, a Republican who served as the nation’s top diplomat under former President Donald Trump and is discussed as a potential 2024 presidential candidate, criticized Biden’s performance in an opinion article published Saturday in the Washington Free Beacon.
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He also dismissed China’s defense of its intrusion into U.S. air space.
“Sure, the CCP’s harmless weather balloon just happened to pass over multiple sensitive military sites vital to America’s national security—nobody should believe that nonsense, especially not the Biden administration,” Pompeo wrote. He called that excuse “an impossibility,” considering the “fusion” of China’s civilian research with military needs and functions.
“Thus, this appears to be an intentional act of espionage, and it signals that the CCP is feeling ever more emboldened with Biden in charge,” Pompeo wrote. “If the Biden administration does not act to change this paradigm quickly, the threat of conflict will only continue to grow. Weakness breeds aggression. America must demonstrate clear strength and resolve.”
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Pompeo noted that China has for years “aggressively engaged in acts of espionage and propaganda against the American people at all levels of American society.”
“The threat from the CCP is very real here at home, in places like Des Moines, Tallahassee, and Pittsburgh. Its malign activity doesn’t stay in Beijing or Wuhan; it is already inside our gates.”
Chinese communists have targeted U.S. officials like Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in addition to our universities, local governments, media, think tanks, and other institutions.
China’s “Confucius Institutes” at American colleges was nothing more than a front “to spy on students and professors and steal intellectual property,” Pompeo argued.
“China’s economy was built on the backs of Americans not only by taking American jobs but also, crucially, by an unparalleled campaign of corporate espionage that has robbed Americans of billions of dollars’ worth of intellectual property. Even seemingly innocuous apps like TikTok have been revealed to be little more than tools for collecting the private information of Americans and spreading CCP propaganda,” he added.
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Things were different under Trump, he pointed out.
For example, he wrote, once the administration discovered the “largest spy ring in American history” was operating out of the Chinese consulate in Houston, it was shut down.
Trump’s team also worked to shutter all of the Confucius Institutes in the U.S., began the process to ban TikTok, which is now happening at the state and local levels, and repeatedly spoke out to state governors about the menace of spying by the Chinese Communist Party.
“I did this because the CCP’s actions threaten the United States at every level, and inaction only invites the CCP to escalate its actions,” Pompeo said. “We refused to give an inch to the CCP’s malign actions against the American people.”
Aside from dealing with the balloon, Biden “must take the threat posed by the CCP seriously.”
“China has been waging economic warfare against the American people for decades, but Biden still fights to cooperate with them on issues like climate change. This must end.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also must work with America’s allies to “deter any more of [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s adventurism and hare-brained schemes.”
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Moreover, he added, “America must demand reciprocity.”
“If China doesn’t allow Americans to purchase farmland next to their military installations, we shouldn’t either. If China doesn’t allow our diplomats to move freely across China, then Chinese diplomats shouldn’t be able to either. If Americans can’t get research jobs at top installations in Beijing, then Chinese researchers shouldn’t be able to get jobs here either.”
“The CCP’s spy balloon is a symptom of the Biden administration’s weakness, not only in relation to the People’s Republic of China, but to America’s adversaries writ large,” Pompeo maintained.
After watching Biden’s previous foreign policy fails, he continued, Xi “will watch Biden’s response to a CCP tool of espionage blatantly flying over sensitive American military sites.”
“Failure to deal with the surveillance balloon sends a message of weakness, not strength, and reinforces Xi’s decision to take advantage of this administration,” Pompeo concluded.
“President Biden must reassert American resolve, not continue to peddle American weakness. If he fails to do so, he will continue to invite greater risk to the safety of the American people.”
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