Instead of the batteries becoming the next great American success story, the warehouse is now shuttered and empty. All the employees who worked there were laid off. And more than 5,200 miles away, a Chinese company is hard at work making the batteries in Dalian, China.

The Chinese company didn't steal this technology. It was given to them — by the U.S. Department of Energy. First in 2017, as part of a sublicense, and later, in 2021, as part of a license transfer. An investigation by NPR and the Northwest News Network found the federal agency allowed the technology and jobs to move overseas, violating its own licensing rules while failing to intervene on behalf of U.S. workers in multiple instances. //

Department of Energy officials declined NPR's request for an interview to explain how the technology that cost U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars ended up in China. After NPR sent department officials written questions outlining the timeline of events, the federal agency terminated the license with the Chinese company, Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd. //

Forever Energy, a Bellevue, Wash., based company, is one of several U.S. companies that have been trying to get a license from the Department of Energy to make the batteries. Joanne Skievaski, Forever Energy's chief financial officer, has been trying to get hold of a license for more than a year and called the department's decision to allow foreign manufacturing "mind boggling." //

The idea for this vanadium redox battery began in the basement of a government lab, three hours southeast of Seattle, called Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. It was 2006, and more than two dozen scientists began to suspect that a special mix of acid and electrolyte could hold unusual amounts of energy without degrading. They turned out to be right.

It took six years and more than 15 million taxpayer dollars for the scientists to uncover what they believed was the perfect vanadium battery recipe. Others had made similar batteries with vanadium, but this mix was twice as powerful and did not appear to degrade the way cellphone batteries or even car batteries do. The researchers found the batteries capable of charging and recharging for as long as 30 years.

Executives at ByteDance-owned TikTok likely lied to Congress about the social media company’s relationship with China.

Australia is also home to almost half of the world’s lithium supply. The trucks and machinery are humming once again, but now they’re part of a race to secure the clean energy sources of the future—a race being dominated by China. //

Over the past 30 years, lithium has become a prized resource. It’s a vital component of batteries—for the phone or laptop you’re reading this on, and for the electric vehicles that will soon rule the roads. But until recently, the lithium mined in Australia had to be refined and processed elsewhere. When it comes to processing lithium, China is in a league of its own. The superpower gobbled up about 40 percent of the 93,000 metric tons of raw lithium mined globally in 2021. Hundreds of so-called gigafactories across the country are churning out millions of EV batteries for both the domestic market and foreign carmakers like BMW, Volkswagen, and Tesla.
China’s share of the market for lithium-ion batteries could be as high as 80 percent, according to estimates from BloombergNEF. Six of the 10 biggest EV battery producers are based in China—one of them, CATL, makes three out of every ten EV batteries globally. That dominance extends through the supply chain. Chinese companies have signed preferential deals with lithium-rich nations and benefited from huge government investment in the complex steps between mining and manufacturing. That’s made the rest of the world nervous, and the United States and Europe are now scrambling to wean themselves off Chinese lithium before it’s too late. //

An electric car battery has between 30 and 60 kilos of lithium. It’s estimated that by 2034, the US alone will need 500,000 metric tons of unrefined lithium a year for EV production. That’s more than the global supply in 2020. Some experts fear a repeat of the oil crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with geopolitical tension spilling over into a war of sanctions.

Driven by the pursuit of profit, Hollywood has a long history of capitulation to Chinese censors. Have producers finally found their backbone?

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, many people have wondered if China will be motivated to invade Taiwan soon. Should that happen, will the United States and China fight a war over the future of Taiwan? In his new book War Without Rules: China’s Playbook for Global Domination, retired Air Force Brigadier Gen. Robert Spalding says the United States and China are already at war, and it is a war without rules.

Spalding’s book doesn’t present any new thesis. Instead, it explains the idea presented by another book published more than two decades ago. That book was titled Unrestricted Warfare. It was written by two Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, published in 1999.

In Unrestricted Warfare, the two colonels argue that China must learn not to rely on armed forces alone to achieve global dominance. Instead, future warfare is about “using all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one’s interests.”

The non-military means could include everything from corporate sabotage to manipulation of international laws. //

I share Spalding’s concerns that too many Americans, from political leaders to business elites, misunderstand or ignore the CCP’s war without rules. He points out that “the Biden administration, despite some positive moves, is seriously underestimating the malevolence and power of the Chinese threat,” an assessment I couldn’t agree with more.

Arguing that “the United States has never confronted anything quite like modern China,” and “we are already at war with China,” Spalding presented recommendations on what Americans should do to fight the CCP’s unrestricted warfare in his final chapter. Here his emphasis that the United States is only at war with the CCP, not the Chinese people, is laudable.

A very prominent American diplomat told me that you must be doing something right when China gets upset. So don’t worry about China getting upset at you. When they get upset at you, that means you are doing something right.”

The Biden administration’s proposal would generate a public health emergency industry that China will be well-positioned to exploit.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February this year, many observers believed China’s Xi might be motivated to attack Taiwan while the Russian military was keeping the West occupied. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, warned that “an invasion of Taiwan could happen within this decade.” He introduced a bill recently to “increase coordination between the U.S. and Taiwanese militaries to ensure Taiwan is equipped to defend against an attack and invasion by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).”

The calls for the United States to abandon “strategic ambiguity” and offer Taiwan an explicit security guarantee have grown louder. Many pointed to China’s military buildup, the expansion in the South China Sea, the brutal crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, and its increasing military pressures on Taiwan as evidence that China’s aggression has become a threat to the peace and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region, affecting the U.S. and its allies’ interests and security.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is one who has made this argument. He called on the Biden administration to abandon the U.S. government’s long-held “strategic ambiguity” position on Taiwan and clarify that the United States would intervene if China invaded the island. Abe argued that “strategic clarity” is the best deterrence strategy to prevent China from going to war with the United States and its allies over Taiwan. //

Yet the Biden administration so far has created more confusion domestically and internationally rather than presenting any strategic clarity. Since day one, the Biden administration has stated it would continue the “strategic ambiguity” policy toward Taiwan. But President Biden publicly declared several times that the U.S. military would help defend Taiwan in a Chinese invasion. Each time, senior administration officials immediately walked back Biden’s comments as if he never meant what he said.

There are three possible explanations. It could be that Biden’s comments were indeed blunders, and there is no change of U.S. policy on Taiwan. It could also be that he did mean what he said, but his staff simply undermined his authority publicly to avoid antagonizing China.

The third explanation is that the Biden administration has yet to formulate a clear China policy. It probably feels a bipartisan pressure to defend Taiwan but is war-weary and doesn’t want to actually go to war with China. All of these explanations are dangerous, for three reasons.

First, it signals to Beijing that U.S. political leadership is weak and has neither the ability nor the will to confront China. Second, it doesn’t build confidence among U.S. allies. The Biden administration’s policy confusion and perceived weakness may even convince some allies and partners to switch to China’s side.

Third, the Biden administration’s policy confusion and perceived weakness have increased the risk of a conflict with China rather than deterring China. China’s Xi may decide that the best time to invade Taiwan is when the United States is led by an aging politician who often appears confused. Xi can certainly strengthen his argument to his generals by pointing to America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Whether lab or market origin, anyone trying to cover for China should remember both scenarios are humiliating for the Chinese government.

The only Covid narrative that doesn’t directly aim to control people has to do with determining the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Discovering the origin of the virus should have been a top priority, but it was not. Why? Perhaps, instead of controlling people, the goal in this case was to cover for complicit behavior.

There are only two plausible competing virus origin hypotheses: “lab leak” and “wet market.” Instead of imploring scientists to work together and discover the truth, then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins wrote in an email to presidential medical advisor Anthony Fauci early in the pandemic: “Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy [i.e., ‘lab leak’], with what seems to be growing momentum.”

Knowing that SARS-CoV-1 leaked from a Chinese lab on at least two occasions in the early 2000s, why would Collins and Fauci be so quick to “put down” the lab leak hypothesis? //

Either way, whether lab or market origin, anyone trying to cover for China apparently must be reminded that both scenarios are humiliating for the Chinese government. Both represent extremely careless and unhygienic behavior, especially considering that wet markets are places where endangered animals like pangolins are slaughtered for completely unscientific medicines.

The difference, of course, is that the lab scenario also implicates powerful interests in the United States. Thus, it’s not difficult to understand why stifling the lab leak would be important to those in power.

Covid caused those in power to react to events that they had little to no influence over with narratives designed to give the illusion of taking control of the situation. What makes this pandemic different are the tools available to control the narratives, namely the addition of Big Tech and their willingness to suppress debate.

Still, the truism noted by Aldous Huxley that “facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored” remains. The challenge is to ensure that people in our society are never too intimidated to offer counter-narratives or debate the edicts from those with power. ///

If the origins were not a lab leak, would there not be more interest in confirming that it was not not? The amount of effort out into dismissing the lab leak origin suggests there is something there.

Francis Collins may very well be a believer and a good follower of Christ, but that does not mean that he is not a sinner and a flawed man, just like all of us. It also does not mean that he shares the same morals or morés as other Christians, including oneself. Without knowing someone personally and knowing something of their heart, "Christians" in positions of power should be treated with the same disinterested suspicion as any other politician.

Virtually every person on the planet now recognizes that they are simply going to have to live with the coronavirus from now on, in the same way that we have learned to live with the seasonal flu. Even countries that clung to China’s mass containment model well into 2021, such as Australia, New Zealand and Germany, are now abandoning it.

Yet the Chinese Communist Party continues to pursue the impossible dream of COVID Zero.

Now, you might say that no political organization likes to admit it was wrong. In fact, when asked recently why China refused to recognize that COVID was now endemic, a top official of the National Health Commission simply said, “If we stop all containment measures now, it means all the previous efforts are for nothing.”

But at an even deeper level, I see the Chinese Communist Party’s insistence on lockdowns as an expression of its drive for total control.

I am reminded of the CCP official who, in 1980, at the very beginning of the one-child policy, confidently proclaimed: “We are a socialist country. We can control reproduction in the same way we control production: under a state plan.”

Now Xi Jinping’s attitude seems to be: “We are a socialist country. We can control the replication of a virus in the same way we control production: under a state plan.”

One of the most important, two-hour telephone calls of the post-Cold War took place on Friday, March 18, 2022. U.S. President Joseph Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met to discuss the crisis in Ukraine. The discussion laid out the US and Chinese positions on the conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation, which is now in its 23rd day.

The United States noted our position — that we want to draw the conflict to an end by compelling Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin to abandon his invasion of Ukraine, through a regime of economic sanctions against Russia and military assistance to the Ukrainian government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. //

Tonight, while Mr. Putin may want to divide and conquer these two, highly co-dependent national interests, he has further to go to convince either of his position. It’s time to for Russia to stop believing its own propaganda and start listening to what the world is sobering up to.

Could a lot still go wrong here? Yes. That’s the scary part. But, it seems neither the US nor China want it to. And out of that, it may be possible for Ukraine and Russia to take the bell off the tiger.

The Ukraine crisis has brought unconscionable suffering to the Ukrainian people, and it revealed some of the harm authoritarian regimes can cause. If there is one positive outcome of this crisis, Taiwan and Japan have begun to take China’s military threat seriously. The steps they are taking to strengthen their defense may keep the peace in the region by deterring China from launching military strikes against Taiwan.

Xi doesn’t see Russia as an equal partner but as a valuable pawn to realize his vision for China — to replace the United States as the sole superpower in a Sino-centered and autocracy-friendly new world order. An economically weak but militarily aggressive Russia suits Xi’s vision.

Xi deploys China’s economic power to support Putin, counting on the Russian military to keep the West, primarily the United States, occupied and to draw attention away from Beijing’s geopolitical expansion. Meanwhile, the more Russia is economically isolated from the western world due to sanctions and becomes more economically dependent on China, the less likely Putin’s Russia will present a threat to challenge China’s dominance.

Shockingly, the Biden administration has failed to recognize China’s strategic calculations so far. The New York Times reports that Biden administration officials shared intelligence on Russia’s troop buildup with China, hoping Beijing would help avert Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Chinese officials rebuffed the United States and apparently shared the information with Moscow.

The Biden administration’s weakness and incompetence were on full display in a New York Times article last week recounting the White House’s repeated—and failed— attempts to urge China to help avert war in Ukraine. The purpose of the article was to allow senior administration officials to take their duplicitous Chinese counterparts to task, but the account reveals above all that White House officials are out of their depth in dealing with China.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/us/politics/us-china-russia-ukraine.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

It is nearly impossible to read the Biden administration’s side of the story without perceiving the weakness, gullibility, and ineffectiveness that the Biden White House unwittingly presents. Administration officials describe how they were “repeatedly rebuffed” by Chinese officials even as the Americans scrambled for “half a dozen urgent meetings over three months” to try to avert the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The article repeats how “Each time, the Chinese officials… rebuffed the Americans,” as if to drive home the humiliating point. //

Biden officials disclosed to The New York Times that they shared intelligence with their Chinese counterparts only to be double-crossed when the Chinese quickly leaked that intel to the Russians.

To add insult to injury, the Chinese also told the Russians that the Americans were “trying to sow discord,” and promised Moscow that Beijing would not interfere with Russia’s war plans. The Biden officials who leaked these details must not be aware of how embarrassing they are. //
When China was weaker and threatened by what was then the Soviet Union, it turned toward America. After decades of aid, investment, technology transfer, education, and lucrative trade with the United States, China is now much stronger than Russia. Its population is much larger, its gross domestic product is ten times bigger, and its technologies (many stolen from the United States) are better. China has much less to fear from Russia, and thus can leverage Russia against America—the only remaining superpower stronger than China.

One way to pit Russia against America is to give tacit support for a Russian war in eastern Europe that will consume America and her allies, while letting China see how the West responds to an invasion analogous to what China has planned for Taiwan. And that’s exactly what China did. //

Russia might even be reduced to a client state to supply commodities to China. That wouldn’t be a bad turn of events by the Chinese against a country that used to threaten them.

A new book, ‘Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story Of Wealth, Power, Corruption And Vengeance In Today’s China,’ exposes China’s top leaders as little more than corrupt oligarchs. //

When the CCP launched economic reform in the 1980s, it did so for survival, not because it had an ounce of desire to embrace freedom and democracy. Desmond sees the CCP’s honeymoon with Chinese entrepreneurs “was little more than a Leninist tactic, born in the Bolshevik Revolution, to divide the enemy in order to nihilate it.”

After decades of economic growth, as soon as the Party became confident that its survival was secure, it has again cracked down on private businesses and entrepreneurs and brutally suppressed dissenting voices. //

this book confirms what we already knew but with concrete examples.

First, the book confirmed that corruption is a systemic problem in China, and it begins with the senior leadership of the CCP. This explains why no CCP anti-corruption campaign has successfully stamped out corruption. These campaigns have always been more about purging political rivals than addressing the root cause of corruption.

Second, the book confirms the true nature of the CCP: it’s coldblooded, ruthless, and will do anything to remain in control. //

Third, the book also confirms that western businesses have been complicit in rampant corruption in China. They offered children and relatives of red aristocrats overpaid positions or invested in firms owned by red aristocrats to land Chinese clients or obtain preferential business deals in China. Driven by greed, western businesses have played a disgraceful role in strengthening a corrupt authoritarian regime. //

Desmond said he wanted to write an honest account. Still, he offers no apology and demonstrates no remorse. Had he taken some responsibility for profiting from and strengthening a corrupt dictatorial regime, it would have made his book more trustworthy.

Another shortcoming of the book is that although it promised to tell all, it only named names of those corrupt senior CCP officials that western media already reported about, such as the Wens. Desmond refrained from implicating China’s current leader, Xi Jinping.

A new, comprehensive report by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, titled “Corporate Complicity Scorecard,” reveals what these companies have traded away and how much their Faustian bargain with the CCP has endangered all of us.

The report, produced jointly by VOC and Horizon Advisory, evaluates eight well-known American corporations — Amazon, Apple, Dell, Facebook, GE, Google, Intel, and Microsoft. It presents “broad-ranging assessments of the nature of American corporations’ involvement in China” based on a set of indicators, including compliance with Chinese data regimes and supply chain exposure to forced labor risk. The report assigns a letter grade between A to F to the companies, with Facebook and Google receiving the highest score of “B,” while GE, Intel, and Microsoft got the lowest score of “F.” //

In the words of former Attorney General William Barr, American companies are beneficiaries of “the American free enterprise system, the rule of law, and the security afforded by America’s economic, technological, and military strength.” China’s authoritarian regime is not a “hospitable one for institutions that depend on free markets, free trade, or the free exchange of ideas,” Barr said.

The VOC scorecard reminds these American companies that acquiescing to Beijing is a lose-lose strategy and will endanger all of us in the long run.

RNC Research
@RNCResearch
Biden: “Unless the product I’m purchasing for the American people was made in America...we ain’t buying it.”

Biden just paid Communist China $1.2 billion for COVID tests.

2:37 PM · Feb 4, 2022

Top U.S. and British scientists reportedly thought that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, likely escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, but some were hesitant to let the debate play out in the media because they were concerned about “international harmony.” //

Dr. Francis Collins, the then-director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), replied to Farrar, writing: “I share your view that a swift convening of experts in a confidence-inspiring framework is needed or the voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony.”

Another scientist, Dr. Ron Fouchier, a Dutch virologist and Deputy Head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience, responded to Farrar, “Further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular.” //

David Asher, who led the Trump administration’s investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, told Fox News in May 2021 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was up to “some very hairy stuff with synthetic biology” and that biostatisticians from the U.S. government calculated that the odds of the coronavirus evolving naturally was one-in-13 billion.

Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas, who is also a doctor, who went there on the DARPA report. First, Marshall notes that there were more deaths under Joe Biden than under President Donald Trump. That’s the chart you see behind him in the following video. But then he tells Fauci that 59 percent of Americans didn’t trust him. Fauci replies that that was a real “distortion of reality.”

Next, Marshall hones in on the gain of function research lie. He noted how DARPA rejected a proposal but the NIAID didn’t reject it under Fauci. Marshall asks why had Fauci previously said that they hadn’t funded gain of function research when the report indicated that they had. He also asks if Fauci would commit to providing all the documents on this subject — unredacted — to Congress by the end of this week.

Fauci denies that they had funded the grant, but Marshall says they would have all the supporting information available. Fauci’s response to that is crazy, claiming that Marshall was “backing down from this,” which didn’t match what Marshall had said. Fauci just keeps saying that Marshall is incorrect, so Marshall challenges him to provide all the unredacted information.

While the rest of the scientific community have conveniently forgotten that their role is to question and explore without having a foregone conclusion in mind, one scientist has been at the forefront of questioning the origins of COVID-19, but her work has been largely ignored by the media and scientific community. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, told the UK Parliament Science and Technology Select Committee this week that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was likely engineered, and likely originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. //

As Lord Ridley argued in the hearing at which Chan testified, the time for a real, thorough, and complete investigation, absent the participation of anyone related to the lab, has come. The United States needs to stand up to China, because if this virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the failure to properly identify that and address the safety concerns of the other viruses researched and stored at the lab could lead to another catastrophic outbreak tomorrow, and another the day after that, and another a day after that. The irony of a government entity funding research to prevent the next global outbreak, then accidentally creating a global outbreak, and then being trusted to handle not only the investigations of the origins of that virus but the response to that virus, certainly should not be lost. The question is, now that we are waking up to the reality of this, what are we going to do about it?