The case of a Chinese cryptocurrency mining operation that set up shop next to the F.E. Warren Air Force Base is likely part of a much wider net of foreign companies strategically locating near sensitive U.S. sites, an American military expert in Cheyenne told Cowboy State Daily.
President Joe Biden shut down the operation and ordered it to divest itself of Chinese ownership earlier this month.
The comments follow a Wall Street Journal report on a hotel in the Swiss Alps bought by a Chinese family that butts up against an air strip that will be the future home of American F-35fighter jet.
“It just reinforces to me that the Chinese are voracious in where they are, and what they will do,” military expert and former commander of the F.E. Warren Air Force Base retired Col. Tucker Fagan told Cowboy State Daily. “We helped them get into the World Trade Organization believing that, ‘Hey, once they became a part of the trade throughout the whole world that would ameliorate some of their tendencies to be China first, last, and always.’ But it didn’t work. I mean, here we are.”
Tucker said recent worldwide activity has been telling, for those who track such things.
“They’re in the South China Sea and continue to threaten Taiwan, they’re all over Africa,” Fagan said. “And they routinely try to kill the trona industry in Wyoming. That’s what they do.”
With the latter, Fagan was referring to a tariff Congress passes every couple of years, prompted because China is underwriting its trona industry so it can offer lower-than-market prices, driving out competition.
“A lot of people here would say, ‘Well, that’s not really proper capitalism,’” Fagan said. “But, you know, you’re seeing their true stripes.”
Fagan said he’s been watching that same tactic targeting the U.S. trona industry with rare earths in America and Wyoming as well.
“We’ve had companies interested in rare earths in Wyoming for years,” he said. “But every time it came close to being accomplished, the Chinese would way undercut the cost of rare earths. And then the investors here in the United States would back out and say it’s not profitable.”
Tentacles Everywhere
It was just last year, Fagan said, that police in New York busted a secret Chinese cop shop that had set up an office in Manhattan’s Chinatown.
“They were enforcing communist Chinese ideas and behavior in New York City,” Fagan said. “They were in Chinatown in New York. And they were, if you didn’t tow the communist Chinese party line, they would beat you up or do different bad things to you.”
The New York Chinese cop shop wasn’t an isolated thing, either. Beijing has similar operations going in London, Rome, Tokyo, Toronto and beyond, according to nonprofit advocacy organization Safeguard Defenders, which published data on more than 100 Chinese police service stations in 53 countries that include the U.S., Canada, Nigeria, Argentina, the U.K., Spain and other places.
This growing network is part of a global influence campaign in Western countries, Safeguard Defenders said, as well as a means of targeting dissidents who have escaped from China to the West. The outposts also provide cover for misinformation and disinformation campaigns, and other tactics that might be too risky for diplomats to attempt.
While Beijing claims that these outposts are just “service” centers for Chinese people living abroad, so they can get drivers licenses renewed and get physical checkups, military experts like Fagan see them as part of a much bigger picture, one that shows, for those who are paying attention, what the Chinese mentality really is.
The Chinese word for China is Zhong-guo, a word that Fagan pointed out literally means middle or central kingdom.
“That’s who they believe they are,” Fagan said. “Their goal is to rule the world.”
Playing The Long Game
China has been trying for a decade to gather intelligence on America’s supersonic jets, which are essentially flying super computers in the sky, capable of targeting and killing any target long before it can be seen.
If the Chinese hoteliers in the Swiss Alps were part of an espionage ring, it would have been part of a very long game. The Wang family bought the property about 10 years before the F-35s were to arrive in 2028.
That’s not outside the bounds of possibility for the Chinese, Fagan said.
“Here in America, we are changing administrations every four years,” Fagan said. “We’re like, hey, ‘Let’s go Democrats. Oh, no, they suck. Hey, let’s go with the Republicans. On, no they suck, too.’ And then it’s back to Democrats.”
In China, though, there is no real election. Dictators might lead their country for five, six, seven decades at a time.
“There’s a book about that I read four, five years ago,” Fagan said. “China’s playing the 50- to 80-year long game. They have a goal. They understand where they’re going, and they’re using all their assets — money and manpower — to get to that long game where they think they’re going to rule the world.”
In that world, the yuan is the benchmark currency of the world, Fagan said.
And to the extent that Americans keep fighting with each other, that’s keeping American eyes off the real prize, he added.
“We keep going from one pole to another,” Fagan said. “We can’t get to the middle. We go way over there, and then we go way back over here. If we could get somewhere in the center, I think that would help us a whole lot more, but then, that’s what’s good and bad about a democracy, right.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
