By Capt Joseph R. John, May 27, 2023

Since General George Washington commanded the Continental Army, over forty-two million Americans have served in the US Armed Forces, under the American Flag in defense of the Republic.  In the past 247 years, in combat operations, 714,914 American military personnel have been killed and seven million have been wounded (many were wounded for life) while serving in the US Armed Forces, supporting, and defending the United States.
Each year on Memorial Day weekend we recognize and honor American Patriots who have given their “last full measure of devotion” in their service to the United States, so their fellow Americans could live their lives free from oppression.
We especially Honor American Combat Veterans who gave up their tomorrows, we also remember members of the US Armed Forces going into “Harms Way” who are separated from their loved ones, and US Military Veterans who answered the “Call to Duty” and repeatedly put their lives on the line in the past. 
On Memorial Day, the Republic’s most sacred and cherished Patriotic holiday, and every day throughout the year, we also honor the 23 million US Military Veterans who served in the defense of the Republic, then continued to serve their country in so many other meaningful ways. 
On this Memorial Day weekend, the nation solemnly pays homage to the thousands of Gold Star Families for the enormity of their sacrifices, and for the loss of their cherished loved ones!
All Active-Duty personnel and US Military Veterans wrote a blank check made payable to “The United States of America” for an amount “up to and including their lives.”  The enormity of their sacred pledge often goes unnoticed and continues throughout their lives.
By clicking on the below listed link, you will be able to watch the moving video, “Why I Stand,” in Honor of America’s Fallen, our Wounded Warriors, serving members of the US Armed Forces, and America’s US Military Veterans.

Americans should ensure that the nation’s youth are taught in public schools the accurate, true, and impressive US History in their US History courses, and they are taught in their homes, to “never forget” the sacrifice made over the last 247 years, by over 42 million of American Patriots, who served in the US Armed Forces, and protected and defended the precious freedoms outlined in The Bill of Rights that all Americans enjoy today.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/2eBxVxO0nh4  

Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John.  All Rights Reserved.  The material can only posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author.  It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.   
 

By Capt Joseph R. John, May 18, 2023  

In the below listed video, Yuri Bezmenov, who defected from a life in Russia as an important Russian Communist Party Government operative, "warns" Americans of the "long term" cultural subversion of the United States that began by Communists in 1929 and is still underway.  After a long service with the Russian Communist Party, Yuri was posted by his Soviet Communist leaders to India, to work on converting Indians to Communism.  After living in India for many years and experiencing the freedoms accorded the general population, Yuri lost interest in Communism and defected to the West.  

The below listed video is a compilation of Yuri Bezmenov's lectures in Canada in which he explains the long and steady subversion of the United States by Russia’s Committee for State Security, the KGB (a terror and espionage organization that operated within the Soviet Union during the twentieth century).  He explains in his lectures that it takes an extremely long time to convert a country to Communism, but it progresses steadily, and makes consistent progress.  The subversion of the United States has been steady and continuing with the considerable help of the US Communist Party (founded in 1929), Marxists, Social Democrats, Progressives, and other US Domestic Enemies.  

The subversion began with the indoctrination, and the conversion of liberals in the United States who were steeped in Marxist philosophy.  A small core group of liberals who were indoctrinated and converted to Marxism, eventually trained and converted other liberals, leftists, Progressives, and Socialists to Communism.  Americans in various areas of society were eventually indoctrinated in Marxism and Communism.  The Marxist and Communist indoctrination and subversion has been underway in earnest since the end of WWII and has been unrelenting for over 75 years.  The Marxist philosophy has been subtly included in grammar school and college textbooks; the goal was to begin the subversion and indoctrination of the impressionable minds of America's youth.  

The Communist and Marxist indoctrination programs expanded to destabilize the faith in the American family unit, in the Judeo/Christian religions (Communists even promotes the dishonest teaching that the Catholic Church and Communism can coexist), and the indoctrination included degrading wholesome family programs on national TV and in the movies.  Communists, Marxists, Social Democrats, and Progressives opposed the teaching of the accurate and truthful US history to students in public schools and colleges; the Marxists and Communists worked against support for various patriotic programs in America.  Leftists in academic circles, left leaning Hollywood liberals, and the leftist media establishment subtly promoted the belief that it was unfashionable to support America's Patriotism.  Since 2008, Communists, Marxists, Social Democrats, Progressives, and other Domestic Enemies have actively promoted a national program to destabilize the tranquility of the United States by creating conflict between the races, and instigating race riots and looting in large Socialist Democrat run cities.  

The Biden/Obama administration is doing nothing to stop the racial conflict, but on the contrary, incites racial conflict by indoctrinating and brainwashing University students, members of the US Armed Forces, Federal Employees, the Cadets and Midshipmen in the five US Service Academies, and students in public schools in Black Lives Matter (it is a racially inciting, Marxist-created philosophy).  The Biden/Obama administration promotes the belief that the source of the conflict in the United States is from White Supremists who they say are responsible for stoking racial conflict.  Yet Obama, Soros, Social Democrats, Progressives, Marxists, and Communists know the racial conflict gripping the United States is the long-term Communist plan to destabilize the United States and help turn the US Constitutional Republic into a Socialist State.

The below listed video of Yuri Bezmenov's interview is rather lengthy, but it verifies the long-term subversive activities by Communists, Marxist, and Progressives, which has been underway in earnest within the United States for over 30 years.  The current massive criminal violations in major Socialist Democrat controlled cities that go on unpunished have contributed to the current conflicts within metropolitan centers.  Conflicts in the United States are being severely aggravated by the Biden/Obama administration’s open border policy allowing over 7 million Illegal Aliens from 161 countries, including Radical Islamic Terrorists on the No-Fly List, over 400,000 Communist Chinese Military males, convicted criminal convicts, and MS-13 gang members to invade the United States. 

https://archive.org/details/yuri_bezmenov_all_interviews_lectures_hq_1983_1984

Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John.  All Rights Reserved.  The material can only be posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author.  It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.
 

By Capt Joseph R. John, May 15, 2023 

It took the Communist Party USA, founded in 1929, until 2020 to get Biden-Harris into the White House. The Communists already had the Socialist Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi in the House and by Chuck Schumer in the Senate to change the once Patriotic Democrat Party of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson into the Socialist Democrat Party that is destroying law and order in the United States.  For two years with complete control of the Oval Office, the House, and the Senate, the Biden/Obama administration allowed Communist China to invade the United States.

During the last two and a half years, the compromised Biden/Obama administration acquiesced to Communist China’s infiltration of every aspect of America’s society, the economy, the Washington Deep State with their Fifth Columns, the ranks of the Socialist Democrats in Congress, and the US Social Media platforms.  The CCP has been able to infiltrate the leftist media establishment, America’s high-tech industry, Big Pharma, American universities, and as well as the Oval Office.  The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been making steady progress in achieving their stated goal of changing the US Constitutional Republic into a Socialist State.  

For two and a half years, the world watched the weakened and confused occupant of the Oval Office failure to push back against an aggressive and bellicose Communist China.  Today, the CCP has used its ability in cyber security systems developed in American universities and companies like Microsoft, to penetrate every part of America’s critical infrastructure.  Between Communist China, Russia, and Iran, they now know how to shut down Americas critical infrastructure and US Electrical Grid. 

One week after the 9/11 attack, it was determined that electricity, telecommunications, and water were the top three vulnerable critical infrastructure areas.  In the last 22 years, extraordinarily little has been done to protect America in those three critical areas.  It is common knowledge among senior government personnel in security agencies that the states and territories that have the highest risk in those three vulnerable areas, are Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and Wake Island; nothing has been done to ensure that their electricity, telecommunications, and water will be secure in the event of a Communist Chinese attack on the United States. 

For the past two and a half years, the Biden/Obama administration and the 80 of the extreme leftist Socialist Democrats elected to Congress, have done absolutely nothing to oppose the entry of over 400,000 male military-aged Communist Chinese National Illegal Aliens (the cartels have been receiving $30K for each Chinese Communist military age male being smuggled into the US), or to prevent the hundreds of Middle East Radical Islamic Terrorists on the “No Fly List” from entering the US.  They have been making entry through the wide-open US southern and northern borders.  Thousands of Chinese Communist highly trained male military personnel, and the hundreds of Middle East Radical Islamic Terrorists listed on the “No Fly List” have been invading the United States daily, who will be prepared to attack the United States will exceed one million personnel by 2024.   

It is estimated that those trained male military-aged Chinese Communist Illegal Aliens include skilled workers trained to take control of the US infrastructure, military spies trained to subvert US government operations, enemy military insurgents trained to disable first responder facilities, People's Liberation Army Agents whose assignments are to disable US military defense systems, and military police-state functionaries.  They will be activated to attack the United States Armed Forces and the US infrastructure when Communist China and Iran decides to activate them.

Today, almost 22 years after the 9/11 attack, our electric supply from the US Electrical Grid to US military facilities and to other national security facilities is still extremely vulnerable, even after over $1.2 trillion in taxpayer dollars were allocated for the Department of Homeland Security to protect the infrastructure, including the electrical distribution system.  Every taxpayer dollar spent after the 9/11 attack was not enough for Congress; they created a $5.7 trillion national debt by 2001, to over a $32 trillion national debt today.  The result has been the worst inflation in over 40 years, an unstable US financial/banking structure, and a worldwide loss of confidence in the stability of the American dollar.

The Republican Controlled Congress should use the power of the purse to try to stem the invasion of the United States by Communist China and Illegal Aliens from 161 foreign countries.  That can be accomplished by funding the recruitment and training of 87,000 additional US Border Patrolmen, and defunding the hiring of 87,000 armed IRS Agents, previously approved by a vote of the Pelosi controlled Socialist Democrat House of Representatives and the Schumer controlled US Senate.  

In the below listed article entitled the “Acts of Treason”, the article explains the “Treasonous Acts” of the Biden/Obama administration over the last two and a half years, by allowing over seven million Illegal Aliens from 161 countries (many of whom have infectious diseases) to invade the United States, including a Communist Chinese Army of over 400,000 males.  It is not only “Treason”, it is an impeachable offense.

For the first time in US history, the Biden/Obama administration “prevented” the US Border Patrol from carrying out their lawful duties of preventing the entry of unknown foreigner nationals into the United States through the northern and southern borders.  No other nation in world history has ever eliminated their controlled national borders or allowed over 7 million Illegal Aliens to freely enter their country with no record of who they are or where they were going.  WITHOUT A BORDER, THERE IS NO NATION!

Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John.  All Rights Reserved.  The material can only be posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author.  It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.
______________________________________________________________________________

SENTINEL INTELLIGENCE SERVICES, LLC

                                  LYLE J. RAPACKI, Ph.D.

                                            ____________

Wednesday –

April the 19^th, 2023

1145Hrs; M.S.T. (Arizona)

____________

FOR YOUR ANALYSIS AND CONSIDERATION:

Why is China Secretly Sending a Modern-Day Terracotta Army Across America's Southern Border?

The CCP is paying as much as $30K to the cartels for each Chinese national they traffic across the US border. Why? 

As many as 400,000 male military-aged Chinese nationals have illegally entered the US since President Biden took office. Why are they here? Where do their loyalties lie?

WATCH NEWS VIDEO HERE: https://politiquerepublic.substack.com/p/why-is-china-secretly-sending-a-modern?r=1o2ns

While the Biden administration is fixated on its proxy war in Ukraine, emptying both our ammunition stockpiles and our strategic petroleum reserve, China is quietly sending thousands of military-age males across our southern border. Just as the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, built his secret terracotta army to accompany him in the afterlife President Xi is building a secret modern-day terracotta army right here in our backyard. The question our policymakers should be asking is WHY?

It is virtually impossible for Chinese nationals to leave China without permission much less buy an airline ticket to Ecuador and pay the $10,000-$30,000 cartels charge to cross the border. To purchase an airline ticket to Ecuador Chinese nationals must have a passport and an exit visa. Fewer than 10% of Chinese nationals have a passport and it is practically impossible to get an exit visa without an act of God. Somehow thousands of military-age men from China are booking tickets to Ecuador with nothing more than a backpack and a passport. Once they reach Ecuador they are met by CCP-backed NGOs who arrange their travel to the US border. Given these facts, it is almost certain that China’s Ministry of State Security is organizing and funding the invasion.

SCROLL DOWN

Chinese suppliers, with unofficial approval from the Ministry of State Security, send various fentanyl precursors (ANPP and NPP) and synthetic opioids (U-47700) via cargo ships to Ecuador where the cartels process the precursors into saleable drugs bound for the US.

 1

 The cartels then charge as much as $30,000 to smuggle a single Chinese national along with fentanyl and/or fentanyl precursors through Columbia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimate that for every four illegal migrants they apprehend as many as six make it across the border unmolested.

 2

 In fact, it is common practice for cartels to notify CBP where they are dropping illegal migrants off so they’ll know where the CBP won’t be active. The cartels are then free to move their most valuable cargo—Chinese nationals and fentanyl safely across the border.

 3

 It is estimated that fewer than 1 in 10 Chinese nationals crossing the border are apprehended. That means with as many as 90 Chinese nationals caught per day as many as 900 are making it into the US.

 4

 Unfortunately, the 90 that are caught are promptly released as they claim they are pro-democracy activists who would be killed if they returned to China. According to the CBP, there could be as many as 400,000 military-age men from China here in America with more arriving each day.

5

Once these Chinese nationals are in the US they are monitored and supervised by a network of Chinese aid organizations. Six years ago China’s Communist Party began a concerted program to fill both domestic and international NGOs with loyal party members in an effort to spread its influence and control.

 6

 Additionally, China has opened more than 100 police stations in countries around the world including the US.

 7

 In the US they’re typically called ‘aid stations’ and provide a connection between the hundreds of thousands of illegal Chinese nationals and the Communist Party—kidnapping and returning those that turn their back on the party.

8

The situation at our southern border is a humanitarian and economic crisis of epic proportions—but it is ALSO a huge security risk. The 400,000 military-aged males who have already arrived are just the tip of the iceberg as China has 34 million more men than women—men who desperately want a better life in America. But where are their true loyalties? What would happen if China decided to invade Taiwan? Could the 400,000 Chinese nationals living outside of the law here in the United States be activated? What are they capable of accomplishing? We’ve seen how easy it is to sabotage our power grids, water supply, and even railroads.

 9

 It is past time to secure our border and determine what risk the massive modern-day terracotta army Xi has built here in America poses to our national security.

Lyle J. Rapacki, Ph.D. 

______________________

LYLE J. RAPACKI, Ph.D.

Protective Intelligence and Assessment Specialist

Consultant at Behavioral Analysis and Threat Assessment

Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association

U.S. Border Intelligence Group

ASIS International

Association For Intelligence Officers

Association of Threat Assessment Professionals – Arizona ATAP

International Association Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts

By Capt Joseph R. John, April 5, 2023 

A new cold war has been underway since January 2022.  At its heart is the Chinese Communist Party (hereafter referred to as the CCP) 30-year plan to subjugate the citizens of the US Constitutional Republic, and a fundamental disagreement between the US and the CCP over the structure of Asian security considerations.  Among the strategic concerns of the US Government, Congressional leaders, US Department of Defense, US Energy Department, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, US Utility Companies, and domestic manufacturers, there is a growing awareness of the acute vulnerability of the US Electrical Grid (hereafter referred as the Grid).  The threat to the Grid is posed by the new “Axis of Evil” consisting of Communist China, Russia, and the Iranian State Sponsor of Terrorism; there is “no plan or action at all” by the Biden/Obama administration to protect the Grid’s vital but vulnerable system.   

The newest Yaogan (Remote Sensing) Communist Chinese Spy Satellites are overflying the US at an altitude of 3l0 miles, multiple times each day.  With clear weather, those Communist Chinese Spy Satellites can film and target US military facilities.  On January 28, 2023, in a devastating breach of National Security, the Biden/Obama administration allowed a Communist Chinese High Altitude Spy Balloon (hereafter referred to as the Spy Balloon) to continue to take photos, collect highly sensitive military targeting data, and transmit the intelligence back to the CCP, in real time, during its relatively leisurely, unfettered transit over US strategic targets, at altitudes from 40,000 to 60,000 feet.  

The Spy Balloon, controlled by Communist China, stopped above certain military targets, made figure eights over other specific targets, while refining and pinpointing information on strategic targets for a missile attack.  The goal of the CCP was to be able to pinpoint, with maximum accuracy, the coordinates to home in on every intercontinental missile silo, two stealth bomber bases, the Strategic Air Command Base, the Oakridge Nuclear Weapons Facility, and 18 US military bases including Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg. 

The incredible unimpeded track of the January 28^th Spy Balloon, as it flew over hundreds of US military strategic offensive and defense weapons, shrieks out to even an uninformed party, that it was the refined final targeting run to pinpoint US military targets for a future attack on the United States – to render the US impotent by a high altitude low yield nuclear detonation above the United States to destroy the Grid and kill 200 million Americans by a Communist Chinese EMP Attack.  The feckless excuses by the Biden/Obama administration, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley for not shooting the Communist Balloon down, but instead allowed it to target vital US Military strategic targets, confused members of the US Armed Forces and frightened American Citizens.     

Military and Intelligence Analysts repeatedly warned America’s prime enemy is Communist China.  That enemy is risk adverse by its very nature.  It will continue to subvert the United Biden/Obama Administration, from within, as it has done for the last 30 years, expecting to be successful in its subversion.  

The US has been subverted by inserting Communist Chinese professors in US Universities, compromising the Leftist Media Establishment with advertising dollars, lying about US History in public school text books, using Tik Tok to brainwash 70 million youth, canceling “Freedom of Speech” by Social Media Companies, killing and injuring millions of Americans by experimental test injections by Big Pharma, promoting anti-Patriotic policies by the Hollywood Establishment, undermining the US Constitution by the Socialist Democrat Party, transferring technology by US Corporations in China, and changing US policies to benefit Communist China by Biden (the US House Oversight Committee’s recent subpoena of bank records, proved millions of dollars were transferred to the Biden family from a Chinese Company, linked to the CCP, in exchange for changes in US policies to benefit Communist China.).

Believing time on its side with its Marxist allies in fifth columns throughout the Washington Deep State, the CCP believes it will succeed in taking control of the United States in the 2024 election by subversion and voter fraud.  It desires to avoid a nuclear exchange, if possible.  Not only do the leaders of Communist China fear damage to their homeland in a nuclear exchange, but their ultimate desired outcome is also for full preservation of the bulk of the US infrastructure.  That would preserve huge resources from having to be rebuild in what Communist China considers will become the Chinese Colony of America in 2024.  

The US is currently being populated by a growing, replacement population of 200,000 Illegal Aliens from 161 countries per month, who have been pouring across the wide open southern and northern border.  In one week with the end of Title 42; it is estimated that the numbers of Illegal Aliens entering the US will increase to 400,000/month.  The US Border Patrol reported the illegal entry of Communist Chinese Illegal Aliens have increased by 900%; their numbers will also double.  It is estimated that these Chinese Illegal Aliens include skilled workers trained to take control of the US infrastructure, spies to subvert government operations, enemy insurgents to disable first responder facilities, People's Liberation Army Agents whose assignments are to disable US defensive systems, and police-state functionaries.  

These recent Chinese Communist Illegal Alien arrivals are being drawn and trained from the 1.45 billion native Communist Chinese in China.  Part of the 30 year plan to subjugate the US, presented by the Communist Chinese Ministry of Defense to the CCP is available in a written report of his speech, and it includes a plan to eliminate most American Citizens, including the “Useful Idiots” in the Washington Deep State who are currently assisting Communist China at multiple levels to subvert the US Constitutional Republic. 

The most effective way for Communist China to achieve the outcome of depopulating the United States would be by killing 200 million Americans, as specifically outlined in the presentation to the CCP by the Communist Chinese Minister of Defense, with an attack on the naked, vulnerable Grid (a “Black Sky” event).  Modern America has grown to be dependent on its three-part fragile AC Electrical Grid: consisting of the Eastern Interconnect, Western Interconnect, and the Electrical Reliable Council of Texas (ERCOT) an independent Interconnect that manages the flow of electric power for more than 26 million Texas customers.  

Without the miracle of flowing electricity, fuel cannot be pumped, electrical communications will cease, as well as lights, water, heat, oxygen; in addition, hospitals operations, and strategic defenses will not function.  Backup generators are good for only several days until fuel runs out, food in US cities will last about 3 days.  After one or two days, dedicated first responders will return home only to protect their own families.  Looting for food will be conducted by roving armed gangs, while Americans will be struggling to try to feed their families.  The pumps that cool stored nuclear waste will run out of backup fuel in weeks, even if dedicated operators remain at work.  Scores of meltdowns of nuclear reactors will erupt and will contaminate radiation across the nation. 

The ten amazingly small groups of non-profit and Government related groups of Americans, who understand and agonize over this “Black Sky” event, know there are three ways to turn off or take down the US Electrical Grid:  with Cyberattacks, Physical Attacks, and EMP Attacks. 

A Cyberattack is the easiest way to attack and disable the Grid.  It can be done with no fingerprints.  The best Offensive Cyber Engineers in our service can shut down any US facility, according to the elite practitioners of this art.  One of our best Cyber Engineers was a part of the Israeli team that stopped the Iranian nuclear program for a decade in the now famous Stuxnet attack (The Iranian operation was unusual; it involved the deaths of key Iranian nuclear scientists when the Siemens centrifuges were blown up.).  Recently Cyber Engineers turned off whole Russian cities in the Spring of 2021 to stop Putin’s first attempted invasion of Ukraine from getting off the ground.  Cyberattacks are usually designed to last for days or weeks and involve non-permanent damage that can be corrected.  The US Solar Winds debacle two year ago and later the US Colonial Pipeline were successful attacked and disabled. 

The Grid is plagued by hundreds of amateurs, who make significant Physical Attacks on sections of the Grid daily.  Physical attacks today by a serious enemy would employ Drones.  A fear of strategic planners is an attack by a swarm of offensive drones against a strategic target.  Defenses against drone attacks have been evolving rapidly in Ukraine, where each side is employing drone attacks.  Russia is using Iranian drones to attack Ukrainian military forces.  Drone ‘swarms’ are of a particular concern.  But for an enemy to use drone “swarms” against the Grid, that enemy would need to have skilled agents on the ground, near any offensive action.  US strategic planners are developing protective measures.

If Communist China decides to depopulate the US and destroy its US Electrical systems, it will initiate a high altitude, low yield, nuclear detonation from one of Communist China’s satellites overflying the US daily.  That would create an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) designed to destroy the US Electrical Grid.  There are three types of EMP Pulses that are created from a meticulously designed nuclear detonation.  The EMP Pulse One travels at the speed of light and creates gamma rays interacting with air molecules; it can destroy electronic equipment that is not protected by metal shielding, shunts, or a Faraday Cage.  EMP Pulse Two travels slightly slower, behaves like lightning, and can burn up equipment that is not grounded.  EMP Pulse Three are the GMP type lower energy long wave pulses, a mile or more in length; they are destructive because they can couple with 340,000 miles of overhead transmission wire, not damaging it, but interacting with it as if it were an antenna.  

EMP Pulse Three looks like a DC current as it travels with the existing AC high voltage lines into the approximately 2,212 behemoth 100–300 ton electrical transformers throughout the United States that service 95% of US power.  Those 2,212 transformers throughout the United States would rapidly overheat and the transformer coils would be destroyed by an Electro Magnetic Pulse.  Those 100–300 ton transformers are manufactured in very few US facilities, and it would take 6 months to a year to replace such a transformer. 

Today a full EMP strategic pulse weapon against the Grid would use 1-5 small nuclear warheads, to fully cover all North America.  They would be detonated at an altitude that would ensure overlapping killing fields, to knock out the entire Grid.  Communist China may also decide to detonate a number of small Neutron Weapon against selected high-population areas and against military personnel in military facilities such as at Fort Bragg, US Marine Base Camp Lejeune - to exterminate personnel, without harming the valuable US infrastructure. 

The harsh reality is that an implacable enemy, such as Communist China, will employ Cyberattacks, an EMP Weapon, and Neutron Weapons (against personnel) to destroy the Grid and ensure there is a 99% assurance of success.  If the Communist China’s 30-year Long Plan to subvert the US Constitutional Republic from within becomes seriously in doubt, perhaps because their control is threatened by a political reversal or if the fraudulent action to harvest ballots to manipulate the vote totals fails, or if the ongoing erosion of the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US Armed Forces is reversed, then taking down the Grid with an EMP Weapon would be a default solution for the CCP to take control of the US.

There is a method to harden and protect the Grid that has been developed over the last 18 years.  High Tech Engineer-led companies have been fixed on the Grid’s vulnerability for over 18 years, and have collaborated with the Sandia Labs, the US Army, the US Navy, Universities such as MIT to produce a solution to harden the Grid, so it would be able to survive an EMP Attack by Communist China.  The High-Tech Engineering-led companies hope to gain support for a Public/Private initiative to harden the Grid and nullify Communist China’s ability to shut down the Grid.  

Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John.  All Rights Reserved.  The material can only be posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author.  It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.

By Capt Joseph R. John, May 3, 2023 

The below listed letter, signed by 87 Patriotic General and Flag Officers, requests the leaders of both political parties in the US House of Representatives to eliminate all funding for the indoctrination and brain washing of all members of the US Armed Forces, and for the Cadets and Midshipmen matriculating at the five US Service Academies, of the Marxist created philosophy of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), which includes the radical Marxist racist philosophy of Critical Race Theory (CRT).  Those Marxist philosophies are being brainwashed into every member of the US Armed Forces by the “Woke” and “Mentally Weak” Secretary of Defense and the compromised and “Woke” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; they have been taking their radical Marxist marching orders from the Communist Chinese corrupted and compromised Biden/Obama administration.

The Biden/Obama administration instituted and has forced the destabilizing policy of Wokeness in the US Military, over the last two and a half years.  It is the politics of discriminating military personnel by skin color, and forcing personnel to use Woke pronouns for newly recruited transgender personnel.  At a time when Communist China is telling their population that they are “at war” with the United States, the brainwashing of military personnel in Marxist philosophy, has resulted in “Weakened Morale,” a Decreased State of Combat Readiness,” has eliminated “Unit Cohesion,” and has degraded the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US Armed Forces.  

The Navy Leadership is aggressively promoting “Wokeness” and has threatened to punish sailors who purposely abuse pronouns to define transgender service members, viewing it as an offense of harassment.  Sailors that contravene the policy can encounter administrative or judicial punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  The Navy Pentagon Leadership states that intentional misuse of transgender service member pronouns is inappropriate and inconsistent with the Navy zero tolerance policy on harassment.  The Navy is now stating that using a Woke pronoun is a transgender individual self-identity which both civilian and uniformed Navy members must always use, whether they believe in the validity of the term or not, they must use the transgendered members preferred pronouns or they will be punished. 

Imposing the “Wokeness” progressive ideology, forcing the indoctrination of “Critical Race Theory” for all members of the US Armed Forces, which focusing on their skin color, and eliminating the privacy of female-only living facilities has resulted in a severe “Recruiting Crisis for the All-Volunteer Force.”  All branches of the Armed Forces are facing dire recruiting difficulties.  The Army failed to meet 25% of its recruiting goal, the Navy is raising the maximum enlistment age to 41 to try to try to meet its recruiting goal.  Vacancies in the ranks are not escaping the rulers of Communist China, Russia, Communist Cuba, Communist North Korea, and Islamic Republic of Iran (Largest State Sponsor of Terrorist).

The requirement for the US military to improve “Combat Effectiveness” should be the primary goal of the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  However, by imposing “Wokeness,” and aggressively recruiting LGBTQ personnel, while requiring the US Military to cover the cost of hundreds of thousands dollars for sex transition surgery, allowing those patients to be on medical leave for 2 years while recovering, is unsustainable.  By imposing the indoctrination of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Critical Race Theory Marxist philosophies on all military personnel, and aggressively recruiting LGBTQ personnel, the Secretary of Defense has made it exceedingly difficult to recruit the average white conservative Americans who at one time enlisted in the All-Volunteer Force.

If American voters want the US Armed Forces to be ready to fight and win in any future conflicts, they must elect a President and Congress that will stop the focus on Wokeness, who instead will focus on improving “Military Readiness”, “Combat Effectiveness”, and “Unit Cohesion”, not on Wokeness.  The US Constitutional Republic needs a President who understands that America’s adversaries do not care about the use of specific pronouns or the focus on the politics of race discrimination.  

The below listed letter signed by 87 Flag and General Officers is a warning to all Patriotic American Citizens that the finest US Military in history is being intentionally eroded, from within, by a Woke” Secretary of Defense, a “Woke” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, by US Domestic Enemies, by Socialist Democrats in Congress, and by Marxists recruited into Fifth Columns which are being embedded in the Deep Washington State by the Biden/Obama administration.

Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John.  All Rights Reserved.  The material can only be posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author.  It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.

By Capt Joseph R. John, April 21, 2023 

Downloading the TikTok App onto your phone, is like downloading a Communist Chinese Spy onto your phone.  Using Tik Tok allows Communist China to imbed Tik Tok inside your phone without you being aware of it.  We encourage you to read the below listed dangers that Tik Tok poses to the Security and Survival of the US Constitutional Republic, especially the dangers it poses to the 70 million US youth that are on Tik Tok for many hours every day.  We encourage you to forward the below listed article from the Washington Post to those you love and want to protect, especially to the youth in the nation Americans must protect.  

Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John.  All Rights Reserved.  The material can only be posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author.  It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.

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The Washington Post

Opinion  by Marc A. Thiessen

April 20, 2023

URL:  < https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/20/discord-leaks-tiktok-threat-china/ >

Beijing knows there are millions of potential Teixeiras out there — ordinary Americans with access to nonpublic information Chinese officials want.  And TikTok could allow the Chinese government to collect personal and potentially compromising information on its American users that could one day be used to trick or coerce them into providing secrets to Beijing.

Downloading TikTok is like downloading a Chinese spy onto your phone.  As Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, recently testified, “TikTok functions as a sophisticated surveillance tool” that allows Beijing to collect search and browsing history, keystroke patterns, text messages, unsent draft messages, images, videos, location data, metadata, fingerprints and voice prints of millions of Americans.  All this information is at the beck and call of the Chinese Communist Party.

What could China do with this information?  The possibilities are endless.

Most Americans think their conversations on messaging apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal are safe because they are encrypted.  But China does not have to break the encryption to collect the content of those communications, because the TikTok app could allow the Chinese regime to follow and record users’ keystrokes.  For Beijing, your Snapchat conversations never disappear; they can be collected and stored for future exploitation.  Trackers within TikTok compile personal and potentially embarrassing information on millions of our citizens.  Beijing can learn these Americans’ deepest secrets — from details of extramarital affairs, say, to private images and videos they share, to the angry messages they composed but never sent to loved ones.  All of that could later be used for blackmail or deception.

Beijing could one day harness artificial intelligence to exploit the information it is collecting from your phone.  Just last week, ABC News reported that an Arizona mother got a call from an unknown number and heard her 15-year-old daughter’s voice on the other end sobbing that she had been kidnapped.  It turned out the voice was an AI-produced “deep fake.”  At this moment, China could use TikTok to collect voice prints of millions of Americans, which could allow China to one day clone their voices in a similar fashion for national security or commercial espionage.

A former TikTok employee tells Congress the app is lying about Chinese spying

Which brings us back to Teixeira.  All China needs to gain access to commercial or national security secrets is to find one low-level employee with access to the information it wants.  TikTok will help it do so.  According to a Pew Research Center survey, 67 percent of American teens have installed TikTok on their phones.  Those teens will grow up and take entry-level jobs in major corporations, research institutions, defense contractors, and military and governmental organizations — giving them keys to information networks and potentially, eventually, to highly sensitive information.  China could one day use the data it collects from TikTok to map out personal and professional relationships among Americans, identify individuals of interest, and then target them for information.

China could use that access not just for intelligence or commercial espionage purposes, but also to potentially gain access to computer networks controlling critical U.S. infrastructure.  That could allow Beijing to target our power grid, telecommunications, banking or transportation systems in the event of a conflict.  And if the targeted individuals share their information — even unwittingly — only with Beijing, not in an online chatroom, the U.S. government might never find out.

TikTok represents an unparalleled economic and national security threat to the United States.  But instead of moving to ban TikTok, the Biden administration is recruiting an “army” of social media influencers to help President Biden win a second term — even planning to give them their own dedicated briefing room in the White House.  This makes Biden the first president to knowingly use a sophisticated surveillance tool controlled by the Chinese Communist Party to influence a U.S. election.  That is a mistake.  The longer Biden uses TikTok to target young Americans, the longer he allows Beijing to do the same.

Comment:  The real key here and there are several, is the Link Analysis which allows the collector to map out relationships between individuals, or among as well as between groups of people.  Like myself, many do not respond to TikTok messages, so are not aware that the App is on their phone.  I found it buried deep within the Apps on mine.

My Fellow Americans,

Only once a year, do we seek financial support to help us to recruit, endorse, campaign for, and elect endorsed Combat Veterans.  We have no paid employees and appreciate the voluntary support we’ve received for the last 13 years.  With that support and employment of our website, the most effective election tool to helped us recruit and campaign for endorsed Combat Veterans For Congress, we have been able to elect 42 Combat Veterans to Congress.  The list of the 20 endorsed Combat Veterans For Congress in 13 states elected in November 2021 is listed on the Endorsements page of the Website.

For the first time in 13 years, agents of Marxists, Social Democrats, and the Biden administration hacked our website, and took it down by injecting malware into it to try to “cancel our voice” and abridge our ”Freedom of Speech”.  They will continue to try to prevent the Combat Veterans For Congress from electing a new slate of Combat Veterans, and to re-elect incumbent Combat Veterans For Congress in 2024.    

For 13 years, the website was well protected from hackers by a Drupal Security System, Site Lock, and SSL Certification, even though, in some months, up to 300 hacks were attempted on the website, without the hackers being able to take the Website down.  Previously, in 2010, the approval of our 501(c)(3) was delayed for 2 years by Lois Lerner, an Obama Administration appointee at the IRS.  She tried to cancel us and prevent us from affecting the 2012 Obama Presidential campaign.  The Combat Veterans For Congress joined in a class action lawsuit against the IRS for delaying our 501(c)(3)’s approval for 2 years.  The IRS ended up paying our 501(c)(3) a settlement check of $14,332.18 for delaying its approval, and the IRS also paid hundreds of Tea Party Groups, settlement checks for delaying their approval prior to the 2012 election.  The same Obama staff members who opposed us in 2010, are now in control of the Oval Office, and are still trying to prevent the Combat Veterans For Congress from exercising its “Freedom of Speech”.

In the last 29 months, the Biden/Obama administration has been undermining the financial stability of the nation, and eliminated America’s energy independence, by instituting regulations that closed the Keystone Pipeline from Canada, re-entered the Paris Climate Accord, and canceled oil and natural gas recovery on federal land, by canceled drilling and fracking operations.  Those Biden/Obama administration imposed restrictive oil and gas regulations, amounted to a reduction in 25% of US oil production.  

Those actions resulted in the highest gas prices at the pump in US history, increasing the price of regular gas from $1.84/gal during the Trump administration to a current high of $7.59/gal at a Chevron station in Big Sur, CA.  The Biden/Obama administration has been selling oil from The Strategic Petroleum Reserve to Communist China and others, dangerously depleting US Oil reserves every month, severely endangering US National Security in the event of a military attack on the homeland. 

The rapidly increasing diesel gas prices have increased vehicle delivery cost for all food sold in the nation, rapidly increasing inflation; food prices have increased by 11.3%.  Rampant inflation has also been fueled by the out-of-control spending of $3 trillion on Socialist and Climate Change Programs by the Biden/Obama administration and the Socialist Democrat Congress, while printing millions of new American dollars, without matching the massive increase in currency, with an increase in the supply of consumer goods.  Furthering the reckless inflation policy, the Biden/Obama administration provided $12 billion to Iran in the Iran Nuclear Agreement, without Congressional approval.  When President Trump left office, the inflation rate was 1.5 %; today the inflation rate is 6.1 %, and the producer price index inflation rate is at 10.3.  Rampant and increasing inflation is costing an average American family over $5,600/year.

Over 5 million Illegal Aliens from 161 countries have been flooding across the northern and southern border into the US.  That includes human traffickers, drug dealers, convicted criminal Illegal Aliens, sex offenders, Radical Islamic Terrorists, and Illegal Alien Communist Chinese, that the US Border Patrol reported has increased by 900%.  It is estimated that these trained Chinese Communist Illegal Aliens include skilled workers to take control of the US infrastructure, spies to subvert government operations, enemy insurgents to disable first responder facilities, People's Liberation Army Agents whose assignments are to disable US defensive systems, and police-state functionaries.    

In violation of US Immigration Laws, the Biden/Obama administration has ceded control of the Mexican Border to Mexican Drug Cartels, enabling them to smuggle truckloads of fentanyl from Communist China into the US.  The Drug Smugglers are selling drugs spliced with fentanyl on social media, killing America’s youth, who are dying at the rate of 300/day or over 100,000/year.  America’s youth are not overdosing, they have no idea that they are ingesting lethal doses of fentanyl, stealthily added to drugs they purchase on the black market.   

As early as 1928, the Communist Party determined that racial differences among Americans constituted the weakest and most vulnerable point in America’s fabric.  The Marxists have been creating racial conflict in the US to divide civilian and military personnel by race.  The civilian and military leaders in the Pentagon have indoctrinated the US Armed Forces in Critical Race Theory and Diversity Equity Inclusion, while discharging conservative highly qualified white senior military personnel, falsely accusing them of White Supremacy.  Those Woke policies have degraded “Combat Effectiveness” and “Unit Cohesion” and resulted in a severe recruiting struggle plaguing the US Armed Forces; the Navy even raised its maximum enlistment age to 41, to try to increase recruitment.   

The Combat Veterans For Congress works to protect and defend the Republic from Domestic Enemies, Progressives, Socialists Democrats, Marxists, and Communist Chinese Agents who are trying to turn the US Free Enterprise System, which built the most effective economic engine in the history of mankind, into a Socialist State.  Socialism has never worked in the 70 nations where it has been tried over the last 100 years.  The above listed leftist policies put in place by the Biden/Obama administration are in support of Saul Alinsky’s Eight Rules For Radicals; they are tearing the fabric of America’s way of life apart and are working to destroy the rule of law under the US Constitution.  

Kindly help us oppose the Marxists attempting to eliminate our “Freedom of Speech.”  We would appreciate your support in helping us cover the cost of enhancing the security of the Combat Veterans For Congress Website, so we can continue recruiting, campaigning for, and electing endorsed Combat Veterans For Congress in 2024 who will protect the US Constitution.  To help us protect and defend the US Constitution from Socialist and Marxist Enemies, please make a donation in “any” amount, on the Donation page of this Website.  

Respectfully, 

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62

Capt      USN (Ret)/Former FBI

Co-Founder and Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC

Reagan Administration Alumnus/Designated Reagan Associate by The Reagan Presidential Library

2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184

San Diego, CA 92108

By Capt Joseph R. John, April 12, 2023 

By reviewing the below listed article, about Communist China now operating the largest navy in the world, it would be obvious to even a casual observer without military experience, that the Biden/Obama administration has not been taking the desperately needed long term defensive actions to protect and defend the homeland with a strong US Navy.  The Biden/Obama administration has also failed to protect the homeland from a devastating attack by Communist China on the US Electrical Grid with a high-altitude low yield nuclear weapon.  

The Biden/Obama administration has repeatedly told Americans the US is in friendly competition with Communist China, while Xi, the General Secretary of the atheist Chinese Communist Party (CCP), tells the population of China that they are at war with the United States, and Xi is mobilizing Communist China to prepare for war with the United States.  Despite the fact that, three years ago, Taiwan advanced $5 billion to the US to purchase 22 defensive weapon systems, the Biden/Obama administration’s State Department and Defense Department have failed to approve delivery of those weapons systems to Taiwan.

“The one thing that we know is that China is making fast preparations for war now,” Gatestone Institute Senior Fellow and “The Great U.S.-China Tech War” author Gordon Chang said on “Mornings with Maria” Monday.  Gordon Chang said, “Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, just about 24 hours ago said all of this was overheated rhetoric, the way he put it.  But the point is, China is preparing to kill Americans and we’ve got to prepare to defend ourselves,” Chang continued. “And the Defense Department is making slow, really slow, molasses-slow preparations to oppose China.”

The US Department of Homeland Security is allowing millions of Illegal Alien Chinese Communists to enter the US. The US Justice Department allowed Communist China to operate a Communist Chinese Police Station in New York City.  The Socialist Democrat Congressmen have been covering up all of Communist China’s anti-American initiatives.  The Biden/Obama State Department has failed to respond to or oppose Communist China warnings and threats toward the US, and the Marxist Media Establishment controlled by Communist China’s advertising dollars is covering up the Biden/Obama administration’s support for Communist China.

The Washington DC Deep State has been allowing Communist China to establish Fifth Columns in the government bureaucracy, infiltrating America’s universities from planting communist professors to indoctrinate students in Communism to making generous “endowments.” “Turncoat” retired US Congressmen on both sides of the aisle are lobbying for anti-American policies in support of Communist China.  US Corporations operating in Communist China have transferred millions of jobs away from middle America to Communist China, and Communist China is in partnership with the Mexican Drug Cartels flooding America with fentanyl, the number 1 killer of 100,000 Americans aged 18 to 45.

The Biden/Obama administration have maintained a blind eye toward Communist China’s buying up US farmland near sensitive US Military bases, allowed Communist China to brainwash American students in US Universities, and are allowing Communist China to indoctrinate the US youthful population with anti-American propaganda streaming on Tik Tok with over 70 million monthly US users (exposed as a secret surveillance toll for the CCP, enabling it to gather personal data on millions of young Americans). The Biden/Obama administration and the Socialist Democrats in Congress have failed to protect and defend the US Constitutional Republic.  Their inactions to protect Americans have contributed toward undermining the “Freedoms” outlined in The Bill of Rights, especially “Freedom of Speech.”   

The Biden/Obama administration has failed to provide defensive budgets to support a strong US Navy for the defenses of its US Asian/Pacific Allies from an attack by Communist China (Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Guam, and Laos).  The inappropriate focus on Woke policies in the US Armed Forces by the Secretary of Defense has been eroding the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US Navy, while failing to support policies to build a strong US Navy.  Although Communist China has historically been a land power, it has built the largest navy in the world, because of the refusal of Socialist Democrat Congress to fund a strong US Navy, in the favor of funding billions of dollars on Climate Change initiatives.  The Senate Rhinos led by McConnell, Murkowski, and Romney, voted to go along with the Socialist Democrats to spend billions of dollars on Climate Change, instead of holding out for a Defense Budget to build a strong US Navy, and for hardening the US Electrical Grid.  The below listed article outlines how the Socialist Democrat Congress refusal to fund a larger US Navy, allowed Communist China to build the largest Navy in the world, and how it now confronts the US Navy.   

Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John.  All Rights Reserved.  The material can only be posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author.  It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.
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A Tale of Two 4-Stars

Milley v. Richard

CDR SALAMANDER

APR 3

How should we talk about the People’s Republic of China?

The PRC, historically a land power, now has the world’s largest navy. I’m still a bit shocked this fact has not resulted in an appropriate response in DC and then nation at large, but complacency is a hell of a drug.

To its south, the PRC continues to make aggressive moves against India. To her east and southeast she is either threatening to seize land and sea as she is against Taiwan, or outright taking as in the South China Sea.

Diplomatically, she continues to grow her presence not just in the islands in the western Pacific, but along the world’s sea lines of communication - up to and including in the Western Hemisphere.

As we’ve covered here since 2004, the PRC is playing The Long Gamewith the understanding that “to be the hegemon, you have to beat the hegemon.” 

Only the willfully blind or compromised cannot see the clear trends. You have to respect the PRC in this regard; they have been focused, persistent, and determined to one goal; replace the United States as the premier world power.

Though many American “elites” refuse to see it, the PRC’s elite know full well that American power resides in its sea power. To reclaim what she sees as historically hers at sea, this land power knows it must fight and defeat the Americans at sea - or have such regional strength that the Americans realize they cannot oppose the PRC righting historical wrongs west of Wake. She would be happy for us to just gracefully back away from the inevitable, but if needed she is prepared - as Japan did to Russia over a century ago - to force the new reality at war. 

History has seen this pattern before, and will see it again. It is as old as our species. It doesn’t matter if you are the village elders in the forests at the edge of the steppe, or the French General Staff in 1939 - ignoring, happy-talking, mental vapor-lock, or just hoping is never the best approach to a rising power’s challenge.

Let’s look at two recent examples of the state of the conversation at the very heights of our uniformed leadership. Two very different men with two very different approaches.

Pick your player.

First we have the comments of the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command Admiral Charles A. Richard, USN.

"We are witnessing a strategic breakout by China. The explosive growth and modernization of its nuclear and conventional forces can only be what I describe as breathtaking. And frankly, that word breathtaking may not be enough," he said.

China is rapidly improving its strategic nuclear capability and capacity, Richard said. It's growing and enhancing its missile force, including multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles. These include intermediate range ballistic missiles, mobile ICBMs and submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missiles. 

Beijing is also pursuing advanced weapons such as hypersonics, he said.

"Because of these challenges our current terrestrial- and space-based sensor architecture may not be sufficient to detect and track these hypersonic missiles," he said. 

In 2019, China tested more ballistic missiles than the rest of the world combined, he noted.

Beijing is also developing a modern nuclear command and control capability and is modernizing its conventional forces to include ships, submarines and aircraft, he added.

"They have the largest Navy in the world and they have the third largest air force in the world," he said.

As one would expect from a nuclear trained submariner with multiple command tours, Admiral Richard’s statements are fact based, direct, and are a clear representation of the world as it is.

He also outlines some proper responses to the challenges he outlines;

To better understand and respond to national security threats, the department needs to harness America's great intellectual community, as it has done before with the RAND Corporation, he said.

The ongoing National Defense Strategy, Nuclear Posture Review and Missile Defense Review, are the ideal means to address the threats, inform decision makers and inform the department's path forward.

Industry as well needs to shore up the nation's defenses by delivering needed technology and systems on time and at reasonable cost, he said.

The importance of allied and partner interoperability and rigorous joint and combined war games and exercises cannot be overstated, Richard said.

You can argue the “what next” response, but you can’t argue with the “what” or “so what.”

There is something anyone from the deckplate leader to Congress to act on there.

Now let’s compare the above to a rather different set of comments from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, USA, on the same topic; 

The Joint Chiefs chairman warned against the rise of “overheated” rhetoric of a looming U.S. war with China, and he said he doubts China’s chances of “conquering” Taiwan. But, he added, the United States should continue to quicken arms shipments to the self-governing nation and its own military capabilities, just in case.

…

“I think there's a lot of rhetoric in China, and a lot of rhetoric elsewhere, to include the United States, that could create the perception that war is right around the corner or we’re on the brink of war with China,” Milley said in an interview with Defense One. 

“And that could happen. I mean, it is possible that you could have an incident or some other trigger event that could lead to uncontrolled escalation. So, it's not impossible. But I don't think at this point I would put it in the likely category,” said Milley. “And I think that the rhetoric itself can overheat the environment.”

…

Milley said Taiwan needs air defense, anti-ship cruise missiles, and anti-ship mines. But he said the island itself, its population of 23 million—including 170,000 active duty military and 1-to-2 million reserves,—and China’s lack of experience make a takeover unlikely. “It favors the defense. It would be a very difficult island to capture,” he said.

“For the Chinese to conduct an amphibious and airborne operation to seize that island—to actually seize it?—That's a really difficult operation. But Xi put the challenge out there, and we'll see where it goes.”

Where do I even begin with this man who has clearly lost the bubble? This is just another datapoint.

This is from the guy who, in his own words;

1.     Did not see AFG falling as fast as it did.

2.     Held no one accountable for #1, even himself.

3.     Called his PLA counterpart concerning a domestic political issue.

4.     In open, in front of Congress and everyone, pretends to be ignorantof his military’s engagement in gender socio-political culture wars - an ignorance that supports one side of the political spectrum, while also being enthusiastic in his military’s and personal involvement in another socio-political culture war topic - an advocacy that supports the same side of the political spectrum as his ignorance.

Which 4-star do you think policy makers, leaders, and the general public should listen to and align with when it comes to the PRC?

What does history tell you?

What do the facts tell you?

What does your gut tell you?

By Capt Joseph R. John, April 8, 2023 

A new cold war has been underway since January 2022.  At its heart is the CCP’s 30 year plan to subjugate the citizens of the US Constitutional Republic, and a fundamental disagreement between the US and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over the structure of Asian security considerations.  Among the strategic concerns of the US Government, Congressional leaders, US Department of Defense, US Energy Department, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, US Utility Companies, and domestic manufacturers, there is a growing awareness of the acute vulnerability of the US Electrical Grid (hereafter referred as the Grid).  The threat to the Grid is posed by the new “Axis of Evil” consisting of Communist China, Russia, and the Iranian State Sponsor of Terrorism; there is no plan or action by the Biden administration to protect the Grid’s vital but vulnerable system.   

The newest Yaogan (Remote Sensing) Communist Chinese Spy Satellites are overflying the US at an altitude of 3l0 miles.  With clear weather, those Spy Satellites can film and target US military facilities.  On January 28, 2023, in a devastating breach of National Security, the Biden/Obama administration allowed a Communist Chinese High Altitude Spy Balloon (hereafter referred to as the Spy Balloon) to continue to take photos, collect highly sensitive military targeting data, and transmit the intelligence back to the CCP, in real time, during its relatively leisurely, unfettered transit over US strategic targets, at altitudes from 40,000 to 60,000 feet.  

The Spy Balloon stopped above certain military targets, making figure eights over specific targets, while refining and pinpointing information on strategic targets.  The goal of the CCP was to be able to pin point, with maximum accuracy, the coordinates to target each intercontinental missile silo, two stealth bomber bases, the Strategic Air Command Base, the Oakridge Nuclear Weapons Facility, and 18 US military bases including Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg. 

The incredible unimpeded track of the January 28^th Spy Balloon, as it flew over the bulk of strategic US military offensive and defense assets, shrieks out to any informed party that it was a final targeting run to pinpoint targets for a future attack on the homeland – to render the US impotent by a high altitude low yield nuclear detonation above the United States to destroy the Grid with an EMP Attack, initiated by Communist China.  The feckless excuses by the Biden/Obama administration for not shooting the Communist Balloon down, but instead allowed it to fly above US Military strategic targets, gave members of the US Armed Forces and American Citizens little comfort.     

Military and Intelligence Analysts are convinced America’s prime enemy is Communist China.  That enemy is risk adverse by its nature.  It will continue to subvert slowly, from within, as it has done for the last 30 years, expecting to be successful in its subversion.  Their targets that have been subverted are major US Universities, the leftist Media Establishment, US youth via their schools and Tik Tok indoctrinations, the Biden/Obama administration, High Tech Corporations, Big Pharma, the Hollywood Establishment, the Socialist Democrat Party, the NBA, and US Corporations operating within China.  

Believing time on its side with its allies in fifth columns throughout the Washington Deep State, the CCP believes it will succeed in taking control of the United States by subversion.  It desires to avoid a nuclear exchange, if possible.  Not only do the leaders of Communist China fear damage to their homeland in a nuclear exchange, their ultimate desired outcome is for full preservation of the bulk of US infrastructure.  That would preserve huge resources from having to be rebuild in what Communist China considers will become the Chinese Colony of America. 

The US is currently being populated by a growing, malleable replacement population of thousands of Illegal Aliens from 161 countries, who have been pouring across the wide open southern and now northern border.  Recently, the US Border Patrol reported the illegal entry of Communist Chinese Illegal Aliens, in particular, have increased by 900%.  It is estimated that these Chinese Illegal Aliens include skilled workers trained to take control of the US infrastructure, spies to subvert government operations, enemy insurgents to disable first responder facilities, People's Liberation Army Agents whose assignments are to disable US defensive systems, and police-state functionaries.  

These recent Chinese Communist Illegal Alien arrivals are being drawn and trained from the 1.45 billion native Chinese in Communist China.  Part of the 30 year plan to subjugate the US, presented by the Communist Chinese Ministry of Defense to the CCP is available in a written report of his speech, and it includes eliminating most of the American Citizens, including the Useful Idiots in the Washington Deep State who are currently assisting Communist China at multiple levels to subvert the US Constitutional Republic. 

The most effective way for Communist China to achieve the outcome of depopulating the United States would be by killing 200 million Americans, as specifically outlined in the presentation to the CCP by the Communist Chinese Minister of Defense, with an attack on the naked, vulnerable Grid (a “Black Sky” event).  Modern America has grown to be almost totally dependent on its three-part fragile AC Electrical Grid: consisting of the Eastern Interconnect, Western Interconnect, and the Electrical Reliable Council of Texas (ERCOT) an independent Interconnect that manages the flow of electric power for more than 26 million Texas customers.  

Without the miracle of flowing electricity, fuel cannot be pumped, electrical communications will cease, as well as lights, water, heat, oxygen; in addition hospitals operations, and strategic defenses will not function.  Backup generators are good for only several days until fuel runs out, food in US cities will last about 3 days.  After a few days, once dedicated first responders will only be protecting their own families.  Looting for food will be conducted by roving armed gangs, while Americans will be struggling to try to feed their families.  The pumps that cool stored nuclear waste will run out of backup fuel in weeks if dedicated operators even remained at work.  Scores of meltdowns of nuclear reactors will erupt and will contaminate radiation across the nation. 

The 10 amazingly small groups of non-profit and Government related groups of Americans, who understand and agonize  over this “Black Sky” event, know there are basically three ways to turn off or take down the US Electrical Grid:  with Cyberattacks, Physical Attacks, and EMP Attacks. 

A Cyberattack is the easiest way to attack and disable the Grid.  It can be done with no fingerprints.  The best Offensive Cyber Engineers in our service can shut down any US facility, according to the elite practitioners of this art.  One of our best Cyber Engineers was a part of the Israeli team that stopped the Iranian nuclear program for a decade in the now famous Stuxnet attack (The Iranian operation was unusual; it involved the deaths of key Iranian nuclear scientists when the Siemens centrifuges were blown up.).  Recently Cyber Engineers turned off whole Russian cities in the Spring of 2021 to stop Putin’s first attempted invasion of Ukraine from getting off the ground.  Cyberattacks are usually designed to last for days or weeks and involve non-permanent damage that can be corrected; the US Solar Winds debacle two years ago, and later the US Colonial Pipeline, were successful in its attack and disabled. 

The Grid is plagued by hundreds of amateurs, who make significant Physical Attacks on sections of the Grid daily.  Physical attacks today by a serious enemy would likely employ Drones.  A fear of strategic planners is an attack by a swarm of offensive drones against a strategic target.  Defenses against drone attacks have been evolving rapidly in Ukraine, where each side is employing drone attacks.  Iranian drones are being used by Russia to attack Ukrainian military forces.  Drone ‘swarms’ are of a particular concern.  But for an enemy to use drone “swarms” against the Grid, he would need skilled agents on the ground, near any offensive action.  Protective measures are being developed by US strategic planners.

If Communist China decides to depopulate the US and destroy its US Electrical systems, it would initiate a high altitude, low yield, nuclear detonation from one of Communist China’s satellites overflying the US daily.  That would create an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) designed to destroy the US Electrical Grid.  There are three types of EMP Pulses that are created from a properly designed nuclear detonation.  The EMP Pulse One travels at the speed of light, and creates gamma rays interacting with air molecules; it can destroy electronic equipment that is not protected by metal shielding, shunts, or a Faraday Cage.  EMP Pulse Two travels slightly slower, behaves like lightening, and can burn up equipment that is not grounded.  EMP Pulse Three are the GMP type lower energy long wave pulses, possibly a mile or more in length; they are destructive because they can couple with 340,000 miles of overhead transmission wire, not damaging it, but interacting with it as if it were an antenna.  

EMP Pulse Three looks like a DC current as it travels with the existing AC high voltage lines into the approximately 2,212 behemoth 100-300 ton electrical transformers throughout the United States that service 95% of US power.  Those 2,212 transformers throughout the United States would rapidly overheat and the transformer coils would be destroyed by an Electro Magnetic Pulse.  Those 100-300 ton transformers are manufactured in very few US facilities, and it would take 6 months to a year to replace a transformer. 

Today a full EMP strategic pulse weapon against the Grid would probably use 1-5 small nuclear warheads, to fully cover all of North America.  They would be detonated at an altitude that would ensure overlapping killing fields, to knock out the entire Grid.  Communist China may also decide to detonate a number of small Neutron Weapon against selected high-population areas and against military personnel in military facilities such as at Fort Bragg, US Marine Base Camp Lejeune - to exterminate personnel, without harming the valuable US infrastructure. 

The harsh reality is that an implacable enemy, such as Communist China, will probably employ Cyberattacks, an EMP Weapon, and Neutron Weapons (against personnel) as a means to destroy the US Electrical Grid and ensure there is a 99% assurance of success.  If the Communist China’s 30-year Long Plan to subvert the US Constitutional Republic from within becomes seriously in doubt, perhaps because their control is threatened by a political reversal or if the fraudulent action to harvest ballots to manipulate the vote totals fails, or if the ongoing erosion of the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US Armed Forces is reversed, then taking down the US Electrical Grid with an EMP Weapon would be a default solution for the CCP to take control of the US.

There is a method to harden and protect the Grid that has been developed over the last 18 years.  High Tech Engineer-led companies have been fixed on the Grid’s vulnerability for over 18 years, and have collaborated with the Sandia Labs, the US Army, and the US Navy to come up with a solution of how to harden the US Electrical Grid, so it would be able to survive an EMP Attack by Communist China.  The High Tech Engineering-led companies hope to gain support for an initiative in a Public Private Partnership to harden and nullify Communist China’s ability to shut down the US Electrical Grid.  

Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John.  All Rights Reserved.  The material can only be posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author.  It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.

By Capt Joseph R. John, March 24, 2023 

For 102 years, the Occupants of the Oval Office, members of the United States Congress, the leaders of the Department of Defense, and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff once fully understood and learned the lessons on strategy, geography, and history that Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, USN presented in his article entitled “The United States Looking Outward.” Published in The Atlantic in 1890.  He argued that, with the closing of the frontier, the United States had become an island nation looking eastward and westward across oceans and stated that the nation’s energies should therefore be focused externally: on the seas, on maritime trade, and on a larger role in the world.  

The US Government understood in the age of Alfred Thayer Mahan, that the US Navy must be strong to ensure Freedom of the Seas (the concept of a mare liberum—a “free sea”—which was first enunciated by the Dutch philosopher Hugo Grotius in 1609).  At the end of World War II, the US Navy fleet consisted of 6700 ships, and for the next 20 years until 1965, the US Navy Fleet consisted of 1000 ships.  Over the next 15 years, the number of US Navy ships declined to 521 ships, until the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980; he rebuilt and strengthened the US Navy Fleet to 593 ships, to ensure the US Navy remained the largest and strongest Navy in the world.  After President Reagan left office, the US Navy Fleet under the administrations of Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden, was reduced in size to 293 ships. 

The leaders of Communist China and Russia read and fully understood Alfred Thayer Mahan’s message and have acted upon his strong recommendations that a nation’s energies should be focused externally: on the seas, on maritime trade, and on a larger role in the world.  Today the Communist Chinese Navy has grown to become the largest Navy in the world, with well over 300 ships, and will have 450 ships and 110 submarines by 2030, compared to the 293 ships in the US Navy Fleet.  Communist China considers the South China Sea as its area of control and influence.

Russia focused on expanding it submarine force to 44 nuclear and 19 diesel-electric submarines, and built the largest Artic operational capable Navy Fleet in the world.  Russia considers the Black Sea as its area of control and influence, and recently warned the US not to fly its drones above the Black Sea.  Russia has developed the new Kinzhal hypersonic missile which flies at Mach 12 to Mach 15.  Those hypersonic missiles can be launched from aircraft, submarines, or surface ships, and have the capability of hitting Aircraft Carriers.  

The United States and its allies have no defenses against hypersonic missiles and are many years behind in developing hypersonic missiles.  The critical issue with hypersonic missiles are the extreme temperatures reached on the surface of the missiles, which can cause the missiles to break apart in mid-flight.  Russia is the only nation that has developed special materials which enable the missiles to withstand this stress, so their flight can be controlled throughout its trajectory and delivered with pinpoint accuracy.  Today Russia has 50 operational hypersonic missiles, and can build 200 of them per year. 

The Superintendent of the US Naval Academy has erased “Mahan Hall” from the center building of the Quadrangle the US Naval Academy that once honored Alfred Thayer Mahan for 117 years.  The Superintendent enforced the brainwashing of the Brigade of Midshipmen by indoctrinating them in Critical Race Theory (CRT).  He is populating CRT indoctrinated graduates to the fleet and Marine Corps, destroying “Unit Cohesion” (color has nothing to do with qualifying personnel in the fleet the corps to become “Combat Effective”).  The Superintendent does not require Midshipmen to abide by the Honor Concept or be dismissed.  If Midshipmen lie, cheat, or steal they are not dismissed, they are “re-educated”.  It is folly to “re-educate” an adult to understand they should not lie, cheat, or steal.  In some cases, the same Midshipmen have been
re-educated as many as “3” times without being dismissed.  

The Biden/Obama administration, Socialist Democrats in Congress, the Woke Secretary of Department of Defense, and the Woke Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have ignored Alfred Thayer Mahan lessons on Strategy, Geography, and History and to ensure Freedom of the Seas.  However, Communist China and Russia have not ignored Alfred Thayer Mahan’s lessons on Strategy, Geography, and History.  The below listed article explains what has transpired in the 133 years since Alfred Thayer Mahan published his article entitled “The United States Looking Outward.” in The Atlantic in 1890, and why “The Age of American Naval Dominance is Over”; the US Navy has been replaced as the largest navy in the world by Communist China, and Russia with its hypersonic missiles.  The United States can no longer take “Freedom of the Seas” for granted.

Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John.  All Rights Reserved.  The material can only be posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author.  It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.

 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Age of American Naval Dominance is Over

The United States has ceded the oceans to its enemies. We can no longer take freedom of the seas for granted.

Very few Americans—or, for that matter, very few people on the planet—can remember a time when freedom of the seas was in question. But for most of human history, there was no such guarantee. Pirates, predatory states, and the fleets of great powers did as they pleased. The current reality, which dates only to the end of World War II, makes possible the commercial shipping that handles more than 80 percent of all global trade by volume—oil and natural gas, grain and raw ores, manufactured goods of every kind. Because freedom of the seas, in our lifetime, has seemed like a default condition, it is easy to think of it—if we think of it at all—as akin to Earth’s rotation or the force of gravity: as just the way things are, rather than as a man-made construct that needs to be maintained and enforced.

But what if the safe transit of ships could no longer be assumed? What if the oceans were no longer free?

Every now and again, Americans are suddenly reminded of how much they depend on the uninterrupted movement of ships around the world for their lifestyle, their livelihood, even their life. In 2021, the grounding of the container ship Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal, forcing vessels shuttling between Asia and Europe to divert around Africa, delaying their passage and driving up costs. A few months later, largely because of disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, more than 100 container ships were stacked up outside the California Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, snarling supply chains throughout the country.

These events were temporary, if expensive. Imagine, though, a more permanent breakdown. A humiliated Russia could declare a large portion of the Arctic Ocean to be its own territorial waters, twisting the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to support its claim. Russia would then allow its allies access to this route while denying it to those who dared to oppose its wishes. Neither the U.S. Navy, which has not built an Arctic-rated surface warship since the 1950s, nor any other NATO nation is currently equipped to resist such a gambit.

Or maybe the first to move would be Xi Jinping, shoring up his domestic standing by attempting to seize Taiwan and using China’s anti-ship ballistic missiles and other weapons to keep Western navies at bay. An emboldened China might then seek to cement its claim over large portions of the East China Sea and the entirety of the South China Sea as territorial waters. It could impose large tariffs and transfer fees on the bulk carriers that transit the region. Local officials might demand bribes to speed their passage.

Once one nation decided to act in this manner, others would follow, claiming enlarged territorial waters of their own, and extracting what they could from the commerce that flows through them. The edges and interstices of this patchwork of competing claims would provide openings for piracy and lawlessness.

The great container ships and tankers of today would disappear, replaced by smaller, faster cargo vessels capable of moving rare and valuable goods past pirates and corrupt officials. The cruise-ship business, which drives many tourist economies, would falter in the face of potential hijackings. A single such incident might create a cascade of failure throughout the entire industry. Once-busy sea lanes would lose their traffic. For lack of activity and maintenance, passages such as the Panama and Suez Canals might silt up. Natural choke points such as the straits of Gibraltar, Hormuz, Malacca, and Sunda could return to their historic roles as havens for predators. The free seas that now surround us, as essential as the air we breathe, would be no more.

If oceanic trade declines, markets would turn inward, perhaps setting off a second Great Depression. Nations would be reduced to living off their own natural resources, or those they could buy—or take—from their immediate neighbors. The world’s oceans, for 70 years assumed to be a global commons, would become a no-man’s-land. This is the state of affairs that, without a moment’s thought, we have invited.

Everywhere I look, I observe sea power manifesting itself—unacknowledged—in American life. When I drive past a Walmart, a BJ’s Wholesale Club, a Lowe’s, or a Home Depot, in my mind I see the container ships moving products from where they can be produced at a low price in bulk form to markets where they can be sold at a higher price to consumers. Our economy and security rely on the sea—a fact so fundamental that it should be at the center of our approach to the world.

It is time for the United States to think and act, once again, like a seapower state. As the naval historian Andrew Lambert has explained, a seapower state understands that its wealth and its might principally derive from seaborne trade, and it uses instruments of sea power to promote and protect its interests. To the degree possible, a seapower state seeks to avoid direct participation in land wars, large or small. There have been only a few true seapower nations in history—notably Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Venice, and Carthage.

I grew up on a dairy farm in Indiana and spent 26 years on active duty in the Navy, deploying in support of combat operations in the Middle East and Yugoslavia, both at sea and in the air. I did postgraduate work at several universities and served as a strategist and an adviser to senior officials in the Pentagon. Yet I have always remained, in terms of interests and outlook, a son of the Midwest. In my writings I have sought to underscore sea power’s importance and the reliance of our economy on the sea.

“If you like Walmart,” I often told my mother, “then you ought to love the U.S. Navy. It’s the Navy that makes Walmart possible.”

Despite my experience, I was never able to convince my mother. She spent the last years of her working life at the Walmart in my hometown, first at the checkout counter and then in accounting. My mother followed the news and was sharply curious about the world; we were close, and spoke often. She was glad that I was in the Navy, but not because she saw my work as essential to her own life. “If you like Walmart,” I often told her, “then you ought to love the U.S. Navy. It’s the Navy that makes Walmart possible.” But to her, as a mother, my naval service mostly meant that, unlike friends and cousins who deployed with the Army or Marine Corps to Iraq or Afghanistan, I probably wasn’t going to be shot at. Her perspective is consistent with a phenomenon that the strategist Seth Cropsey has called seablindness.

Today, it is difficult to appreciate the scale or speed of the transformation wrought after World War II. The war destroyed or left destitute all of the world powers opposed to the concept of a mare liberum—a “free sea”—first enunciated by the Dutch philosopher Hugo Grotius in 1609. The United States and Great Britain, the two traditional proponents of a free sea, had emerged not only triumphant but also in a position of overwhelming naval dominance. Their navies were together larger than all of the other navies of the world combined. A free sea was no longer an idea. It was now a reality.

In this secure environment, trade flourished. The globalizing economy, which allowed easier and cheaper access to food, energy, labor, and commodities of every kind, grew from nearly $8 trillion in 1940 to more than $100 trillion 75 years later, adjusted for inflation. With prosperity, other improvements followed. During roughly this same period, from the war to the present, the share of the world’s population in extreme poverty, getting by on less than $1.90 a day, dropped from more than 60 percent to about 10 percent. Global literacy doubled, to more than 85 percent. Global life expectancy in 1950 was 46 years. By 2019, it had risen to 73 years.

All of this has depended on freedom of the seas, which in turn has depended on sea power wielded by nations—led by the United States—that believe in such freedom.

But the very success of this project now threatens its future. Seablindness has become endemic.

The United States is no longer investing in the instruments of sea power as it once did. America’s commercial shipbuilding industry began losing its share of the global market in the 1960s to countries with lower labor costs, and to those that had rebuilt their industrial capacity after the war. The drop in American shipbuilding accelerated after President Ronald Reagan took office, in 1981. The administration, in a nod to free-market principles, began to shrink government subsidies that had supported the industry. That was a choice; it might have gone the other way. Aircraft manufacturers in the United States, citing national-security concerns, successfully lobbied for continued, and even increased, subsidies for their industry in the decades that followed—and got them.

It is never to a nation’s advantage to depend on others for crucial links in its supply chain. But that is where we are. In 1977, American shipbuilders produced more than 1 million gross tons of merchant ships. By 2005, that number had fallen to 300,000. Today, most commercial ships built in the United States are constructed for government customers such as the Maritime Administration or for private entities that are required to ship their goods between U.S. ports in U.S.-flagged vessels, under the provisions of the 1920 Jones Act.

The U.S. Navy, too, has been shrinking. After the Second World War, the Navy scrapped many of its ships and sent many more into a ready-reserve “mothball” fleet. For the next two decades, the active naval fleet hovered at about 1,000 ships. But beginning in 1969, the total began to fall. By 1971, the fleet had been reduced to 750 ships. Ten years later, it was down to 521. Reagan, who had campaigned in 1980 on a promise to rebuild the Navy to 600 ships, nearly did so under the able leadership of his secretary of the Navy, John Lehman. During Reagan’s eight years in office, the size of the Navy’s fleet climbed to just over 590 ships.

Then the Cold War ended. The administrations of Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton slashed troops, ships, aircraft, and shore-based infrastructure. During the Obama administration, the Navy’s battle force bottomed out at 271 ships. Meanwhile, both China and Russia, in different ways, began to develop systems that would challenge the U.S.-led regime of global free trade on the high seas.

Russia began to invest in highly sophisticated nuclear-powered submarines with the intention of being able to disrupt the oceanic link between NATO nations in Europe and North America. China, which for a time enjoyed double-digit GDP growth, expanded both its commercial and naval shipbuilding capacities. It tripled the size of the People’s Liberation Army-Navy and invested in long-range sensors and missiles that could allow it to interdict commercial and military ships more than 1,000 miles from its shores. Both Russia and China also sought to extend territorial claims into international waters, the aim being to control the free passage of shipping near their shores and in their perceived spheres of influence. In short: Autocratic powers are trying to close the global commons.

Today the United States is financially constrained by debt, and psychologically burdened by recent military conflicts—for the most part, land-based actions in Iraq and Afghanistan fought primarily by a large standing army operating far from home—that turned into costly quagmires. We can no longer afford to be both a continentalist power and an oceanic power. But we can still exert influence, and at the same time avoid getting caught up in the affairs of other nations. Our strategic future lies at sea.

Americans used to know this. The United States began its life purposefully as a seapower: The Constitution explicitly directed Congress “to provide and maintain a Navy.” In contrast, the same article of the Constitution instructed the legislature “to raise and support Armies,” but stipulated that no appropriation for the army “shall be for a longer Term than two Years.” The Founders had an aversion to large standing armies.

George Washington pushed through the Naval Act of 1794, funding the Navy’s original six frigates. (One of these was the famous USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides,” which remains in active commission to this day.) In his final address to the American people, Washington advocated for a navalist foreign policy, warning against “attachments and entanglements” with foreign powers that might draw the young nation into continental European wars. The strategy he advised instead was to protect American trade on the high seas, and advance America’s interests through temporary agreements, not permanent alliances. This seapower approach to the world became the sine qua non of early American foreign policy.

In time, conditions changed. The U.S. was preoccupied by sectional conflict and by conquest of the continent. It turned inward, becoming a continental power. But by the end of the 19th century, that era had come to a close.

In 1890, a U.S. Navy captain named Alfred Thayer Mahan published an article in The Atlantic titled “The United States Looking Outward.” Mahan argued that, with the closing of the frontier, the United States had in essence become an island nation looking eastward and westward across oceans. The nation’s energies should therefore be focused externally: on the seas, on maritime trade, and on a larger role in the world.

In the end, the Second World War was won not by bullets or torpedoes but by the American maritime industrial base.

Mahan sought to end the long-standing policy of protectionism for American industries, because they had become strong enough to compete in the global market. By extension, Mahan also sought a larger merchant fleet to carry goods from American factories to foreign lands, and for a larger Navy to protect that merchant fleet. In a few thousand words, Mahan made a coherent strategic argument that the United States should once again become a true seapower.

From the December 1890 issue: The United States looking outward

Mahan’s vision was profoundly influential. Politicians such as Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge advocated for larger merchant and naval fleets (and for a canal through Central America). Mahan, Roosevelt, and Lodge believed that sea power was the catalyst for national power, and they wanted the United States to become the preeminent nation of the 20th century. The swift expansion of the Navy, particularly in battleships and cruisers, paralleled the growing fleets of other global powers. Leaders in Britain, Germany, France, and Italy had also read Mahan, and they wanted to protect commercial access to their overseas empires. The resulting arms race at sea helped destabilize the balance of power in the years leading up to the First World War.

This is not the place to relate every development in the evolution of America’s naval capability, much less that of other nations. Suffice to say that, by the 1930s, new technologies were transforming the seas. Aircraft, aircraft carriers, amphibious assault craft, and submarines had all been developed into more effective weapons. During the Second World War, the oceans once again became battlefields. The fighting proceeded in a way Mahan himself had never envisioned, as fleets faced off against ships they could not even see, launching waves of aircraft against each other. In the end, the war was won not by bullets or torpedoes but by the American maritime industrial base. The United States began the war with 790 ships in its battle force; when the war ended, it had more than 6,700.

No nation could come close to challenging the American fleet, commercial or naval, on the high seas after the war. So great was its advantage that, for decades, no one even tried to match it. In concert with allies, the United States created an international system based on free and unhindered trade. It was the culmination of the Mahanist Age.

For the first time in history, open access to the seas was assumed—and so people naturally gave little thought to its importance and challenges.

A new seapower strategy involves more than adding ships to the Navy. A new strategy must start with the economy.

For 40 years, we have watched domestic industries and blue-collar jobs leave the country. Now we find ourselves locked in a new great-power competition, primarily with a rising China but also with a diminishing and unstable Russia. We will need heavy industry in order to prevail. The United States cannot simply rely on the manufacturing base of other countries, even friendly ones, for its national-security needs.

In 1993, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Perry invited the executives of leading defense contractors to a dinner in Washington—a meal that would enter national-security lore as the “Last Supper.” Perry spelled out projected cuts in defense spending. His message was clear: If the American defense industrial base was going to survive, then mergers would be required. Soon after, the Northrop Corporation acquired the Grumman Corporation to form Northrop Grumman. The Lockheed Corporation and Martin Marietta became Lockheed Martin. A few years later, Boeing combined with McDonnell Douglas, itself the product of a previous merger. Among the shipbuilders, General Dynamics, which manufactures submarines through its Electric Boat subsidiary, bought Bath Iron Works, a naval shipyard, and the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company.

These mergers preserved the defense industries, but at a price: a dramatic reduction in our overall industrial capacity. During World War II, the United States could claim more than 50 graving docks—heavy-industrial locations where ships are assembled—that were greater than 150 meters in length, each one able to build merchant craft and naval warships. Today, the U.S. has 23 graving docks, only a dozen of which are certified to work on Navy ships.

The United States will need to implement a seapower industrial policy that meets its national-security needs: building steel plants and microchip foundries, developing hypersonic glide bodies and autonomous unmanned undersea vehicles. We will need to foster new start-ups using targeted tax laws, the Defense Production Act, and perhaps even a “Ships Act” akin to the recent CHIPS Act, which seeks to bring back the crucial semiconductor industry.

We also need to tell the companies we once encouraged to merge that it’s time for them to spin off key industrial subsidiaries in order to encourage competition and resilience—and we need to reward them for following through. In 2011, for example, the aerospace giant Northrop Grumman spun off its shipbuilding holdings to form Huntington Ingalls, in Newport News, Virginia, and Pascagoula, Mississippi. Adding more such spin-offs would not only increase the nation’s industrial depth but also encourage the growth of parts suppliers for heavy industries, companies that have endured three decades of consolidation or extinction.

Shipbuilding, in particular, is a jobs multiplier. For every job created in a shipyard, five jobs, on average, are created at downstream suppliers—well-paid blue-collar jobs in the mining, manufacturing, and energy sectors.

Most of the civilian merchant ships, container ships, ore carriers, and supertankers that dock in American ports are built overseas and fly foreign flags. We have ignored the linkage between the ability to build commercial ships and the ability to build Navy ships—one reason the latter cost twice as much as they did in 1989. The lack of civilian ships under our own flag makes us vulnerable. Today we remember the recent backlog of container ships in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, but tomorrow we could face the shock of no container ships arriving at all should China prohibit its large fleet from visiting U.S. ports. Today we’re proud to ship liquefied natural gas to our allies in Europe, but tomorrow we might not be able to export that energy to our friends, because we don’t own the ships that would carry it. We need to bring back civilian shipbuilding as a matter of national security.

To revive our merchant-shipbuilding base, we will need to offer government subsidies on a par with those provided to European and Asian shipbuilders. Subsidies have flowed to commercial aviation since the establishment of commercial airlines in the 1920s; Elon Musk’s SpaceX would not be enjoying its present success were it not for strong initial support from the U.S. government. Shipbuilding is no less vital.

Reindustrialization, in particular the restoration of merchant-shipbuilding capacity and export-oriented industries, will support the emergence of a new, more technologically advanced Navy. The cost of building Navy ships could be coaxed downward by increasing competition, expanding the number of downstream suppliers, and recruiting new shipyard workers to the industry.

Wherever American trade goes, the flag traditionally follows—usually in the form of the Navy. But the new Navy must not look like the old Navy. If it does, we will have made a strategic mistake. As rival powers develop ships and missiles that target our aircraft carriers and other large surface vessels, we should make greater investments in advanced submarines equipped with the latest in long-range maneuvering hypersonic missiles. We should pursue a future in which our submarines cannot be found and our hypersonic missiles cannot be defeated.

The Navy, however, is not just a wartime force. It has a peacetime mission unique among the military services: showing the flag and defending American interests by means of a consistent and credible forward presence. Commanders have identified 18 maritime regions of the world that require the near-continuous deployment of American ships to demonstrate our resolve. During the Cold War, the Navy maintained approximately 150 ships at sea on any given day. As the size of the fleet has fallen—to its present 293—the Navy has struggled to keep even 100 ships at sea at all times. The service’s admirals recently suggested a goal of having 75 ships “mission capable” at any given moment. Right now the fleet has about 20 ships going through training workups and only about 40 actively deployed under regional combatant commanders. This has created vacuums in vital areas such as the Arctic Ocean and the Black Sea, which our enemies have been eager to fill.

The chief of naval operations recently called for a fleet of some 500 ships. He quickly pointed out that this would include about 50 new guided-missile frigates—small surface vessels able to operate closely with allies and partners—as well as 150 unmanned surface and subsurface platforms that would revolutionize the way wartime naval operations are conducted. The frigates are being assembled on the shores of Lake Michigan. The construction of the unmanned ships, owing to their nontraditional designs and smaller sizes, could be dispersed to smaller shipyards, including yards on the Gulf Coast, along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, and on the Great Lakes, where ships and submarines were built for the Navy during World War II. These types of ships, combined with advanced submarines, will allow us to exert influence and project power with equal vigor.

Across the 50 years of my life, I have watched the importance of the oceans and the idea of freedom of the seas largely fade from national awareness. The next great military challenge we face will likely come from a confrontation on the sea. Great powers, especially nuclear-equipped great powers, dare not attack one another directly. Instead, they will confront one another in the commons: cyberspace, outer space, and, most crucially, at sea. The oceans would be battlefields again, and we, and the world, are simply not ready for that.

Our economy and security rely on the sea—a fact so fundamental that it should be at the center of our approach to the world.

Some voices, of course, will argue that America’s interests, diffuse and global, might best be served by expanding our commitments of land forces to places like Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South Korea as demonstrations of American resolve, and that air and naval forces should be diminished to pay for such commitments. Others—those in the “divest to invest” school—believe in the promise of future technology, arguing that more traditional warfare platforms and missions should be phased out to fund their newer and more efficient missiles or cybersystems. The first approach continues a path of unnecessary entanglements. The second proceeds along a path of promise without proof.

A seapower-focused national-security strategy would give new advantages to the United States. It would not too subtly encourage allies and partners in Eurasia to increase investment in land forces and to work more closely together. If they build more tanks and fully staff their armies, the United States could guarantee transoceanic supply lines from the Western Hemisphere. The 70-year practice of stationing our land forces in allied countries, using Americans as trip wires and offering allies a convenient excuse not to spend on their own defense, should come to an end.

A seapower strategy, pursued deliberately, would put America back on course for global leadership. We must shun entanglements in other nations’ land wars—resisting the urge to solve every problem—and seek instead to project influence from the sea. We must re-create an industrialized, middle-class America that builds and exports manufactured goods that can be carried on U.S.-built ships to the global market.

We knew all this in the age of Alfred Thayer Mahan. The Chinese are showing us that they know it now. The United States needs to relearn the lessons of strategy, geography, and history. We must look outward across the oceans, and find our place upon them, again.