American Thought Leaders - Peter Schweizer: Inside the CCP’s Fentanyl Warfare Strategy to Kill Americans

Episode Date: April 20, 2024

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2The fentanyl scourge—the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45—is a “CCP-run operation,” says investigative journalist Peter Schweizer. He’s the author of, most recently, “Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans.”In this episode, he breaks down the Chinese regime’s disintegration-warfare strategies to destroy America from within—from killing young Americans with fentanyl to radicalizing protests in America so they adopt increasingly violent tactics.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

This is a CCP run operation and you can look at every link in the chain. The precursor chemicals that make fentanyl, those come from China, 90% of them. Those precursors arrive overwhelmingly in a single port in Mexico, the port of Manzanillo. The international terminal at the port of Manzanillo is not run by a Mexican company, it's not run by an American company, it's run by a Chinese company. Investigative journalist Peter Schweitzer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute. Mexican company, it's not run by an American company, it's run by a Chinese company. Investigative journalist Peter Schweitzer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute and author of, most recently, Blood Money, by the powerful turn a blind eye while

China kills Americans. A lot of the radical protests that we've seen in the United States, the violent protests dating back even before 2020, is the work of two very radical groups. These are two organizations that have explicitly pledged their allegiance to the CCP. So what unrestricted warfare said is we're going to broaden the definition of warfare, and it's going to include everything, including drug warfare, environmental warfare. The goal is going to be to seek to fragment and disintegrate the United States internally. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.

Before we start, I'd like to take a moment to thank the sponsor of our podcast, American Hartford Gold. As you all know, inflation is getting worse. The Fed raised rates for the fifth time this year, and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is telling Americans to brace themselves for potentially more pain ahead. But there is one way to hedge against inflation. American Hartford Gold makes it simple and easy to diversify your savings and retirement accounts with physical gold and silver. With one short phone call, they can have physical gold and silver delivered right to your door or inside your IRA or 401k. American Hartford Gold

is one of the highest rated firms in the country, with an A-plus rating with a Better Business Bureau and thousands of satisfied clients. If you call them right now, they'll give you up to $2,500 of free silver and a free safe on qualifying orders. Call 855-862-3377, that's 855-862-3377, or text AMERICAN to 65532. Again, that's 855-862-3377, or American to 65532. Peter Schweitzer, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thanks so much for having me. Peter, fentanyl has become the number one killer of Americans under 45. It's about 100,000 people overall per year. I mean, kind of an astonishing number. Now, you make the case that it's actually the Chinese regime, the CCP, that's deeply involved

in every stage of the process of those deaths. So break that down for me, please. Yeah, I think the mistake that people make is they assume that the major problem here with fentanyl poisoning in America, which is now the leading cause of death for people under the age of 45, is that this is basically about the Mexican drug cartels. The drug cartels are certainly involved, but they're the junior partner. This is a CCP run operation, and you can look at every link in the chain and discover that. So the precursor chemicals that make fentanyl, a lot of people already know those come from China, 90% of them. Those precursors arrive overwhelmingly in a single port in Mexico, the port of Manzanillo on the West Coast.

The international terminal at the port of Manzanillo is not run by a Mexican company. It's not run by an American companyillo is not run by a Mexican company. It's not run by an American company. It's run by a Chinese company. And I think that's one of the reasons they have a hard time stopping this flow of precursors. But those precursors then are moved from the Port of Manzanillo up to a town in northern Mexico where they are joined together to create this deadly cocktail of fentanyl. And there are, according to the Department of Homeland Security, some 2,000 Chinese nationals that are helping the drug cartels do this. So there's a Chinese influence, CCP influence, even at this level. Now, once they've created this

fentanyl poisoning, the vast majority of people that are dying of fentanyl overdoses don't even know they're taking fentanyl. It's being laced into illegally made pills that look like Vicodin and Adderall. And the drug cartels to do that, they need pill presses and they need pill molds. These small molds that make these fake pills look like the real deal. Well, they get those pill presses and they get those pill molds, the drug cartels do, from China. And according to the Department of Homeland Security, China is selling those to the drug cartels basically at cost. In other words, they're not trying to make money off of the deal. Now, once they've created these pills, they smuggle them across the border. The Mexican drug cartels need a secure means of communication.

So what do they use? They use Chinese apps and they use Chinese encrypted communication devices because they know that China will not share those communications with U.S. law enforcement. And then the final sort of link in this chain is, of course, money laundering. Every drug cartels needs to launder these large cash profits. It used to be in the old days that the drug cartels use Latin American banks when they were selling largely heroin and cocaine. These days, that's changed. The Mexican drug cartels now use Chinese state banks to launder their money, and they oftentimes use students, Chinese students in the United States on education visas to do so.

So the cartels are involved, but they are the junior partner. Without China's involvement, we would not be facing this scourge in America today. And I think it's part of this broader disintegration warfare that China's involved in. Well, actually, I definitely want to get back to that, the disintegration warfare concept. But something you bring up here is very interesting. So it's not commonly known still today, for example, that there's this unholy trinity of cooperation between Chinese state security and influence operations and these wealthy Chinese business tycoons and the organized crime itself. And it strikes me that for what you said to work, actually all three are again required.

It highlights that relationship as a kind of a powerful driver of corruption via the Chinese regime in America and the West? Yeah, I know that that's a very, very important point, because oftentimes people will mistake that Chinese organized crime is kind of like organized crime in the United States. They're kind of outsiders looking in. The fact of the matter is that the CCP and the Chinese triads organized crime basically made their peace in the 1980s when Deng Xiaoping sat down with triad leaders. And essentially he said, look, as long as you are patriotic, meaning you are pro-CCP and you're not committing major crimes within China itself, we will provide you safe harbor. We will work with you. You know, in other words, direct your activities against the West. And

they've done so. And so what you find today is that, and I highlight this in the book, there are numerous senior organized crime figures that are members of consultative bodies that the CCP has set up. These are individuals that are known to be linked to Chinese organized crime, and the CCP has brought them into the fold. We know that President Xi himself has a cousin, which has been linked to organized crime. And we know that a lot of the Hong Kong-based billionaires have been identified in intelligence reports in Canada, in the United States and elsewhere as being both pro CCP and linked to Chinese organized crime. One of those would be Lee Ka Shing, the Hong Kong investor who happens to own Hutchison, which is the company that runs that port in Manzanillo, Mexico, that I talked about. He has been linked to Chinese triads over the course of decades,

and he's very close to the CCP. So when you see Chinese organized crime engaged in activities and behaviors in the West, whether that's human trafficking, whether that's drug distribution. This is part of a cooperative effort with the CCP. The CCP protects these individuals when they're in China. There are numerous instances of this, including President Xi when he was the head of Fujian province. He absolutely did this and he continues to do this today. And it's part of this sophisticated form of warfare that China is using against the West. It gives them plausible deniability, but it has these very damaging results on the West nonetheless.

Peter, in your book, you mention unrestricted warfare, this famous or infamous book that was written by the two Chinese colonels. This is, of course, warfare with no rules whatsoever and using all these different methods, for example, like the three warfares that you also... I love how you cover all these things in the book. These are things that are kind of not well known, like, for example, the CCP's rampant use of legal warfare and psychological warfare to influence outcomes in America. Now, how is this disintegration warfare that you mentioned earlier as part of this, I guess, the drug warfare that the CCP is using with fentanyl, how does that fit into the picture?

Yeah, that's a great question. Unrestricted Warfare, the book that you mentioned that was published in 1999, essentially sought for China internally to reset the rules of the conflict with the West. Because the book basically says, and this continues to be the Chinese approach, we don't want to have a kinetic war with the United States. Yeah, we're building aircraft carriers, we're building military capabilities, but the U.S. has military superiority on every level. So if we had a kinetic war with America, it would be severely damaging to China itself. So what unrestricted warfare said is we're going to broaden the definition of warfare, and it's going to include everything, including drug warfare, environmental warfare, and nothing is off the table. What Disintegration Warfare does, this is a book that was published in 2012 by two senior military officers.

What it really does is it sets up the goals. What is the goal? And the goal is, as the title implies, to disintegrate or fragment the United States. And on the cover of this book, Disintegration Warfare, there's a very famous quote from Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese strategist. And the quote says that the best strategist is the one who defeats his enemy without actually fighting him. And that's what Disintegr warfare is about. And what it says is essentially we're going to apply unrestricted warfare. And the goal is going to be to seek to fragment and disintegrate the United States internally. We're going to do that by certainly

leading to the deaths of people, whether that's fentanyl or stoking internal violence in the United States. We're going to do that by trying to pit American against American by exacerbating social divisions. So it all fits closely together. And the problem is that in Washington, D.C., to the extent that people are talking about the China threat or the China challenge to the United States, the focus is almost exclusively on a kinetic war. So the response is, well, we need to build more aircraft carriers and we need more power projection into the Pacific. I'm not opposed to any of that. But the problem is you are preparing for a different war than China is and that China is already engaged in a war that is leading to casualties, social division and chaos in America. And you're not even paying attention to that, Washington,

D.C. You're focused on the prospect of a future war that may never happen because the war that China is fighting right now is successful and I think is yielding great results for them. Well, and I might add that they are officially fighting a kind of war. You know, Xi Jinping calls it the People's War, which he announced in 2019. That's also something I'm kind of shocked to discover a lot of people aren't aware of. No, that's exactly right. And I think the thing that a mistake that a lot of people are making is that, you know, President Xi, I would argue, is a different leader than Hu Jintao and that we see from CCP leaders going all the way back. But President Xi, I would argue, is tougher and more aggressive than previous leaders. And I think there's really only two stories that I could tell that illustrate that point and make that point.

The first one is that President Xi is married to a very famous singer in China. And what's curious is that after the troops in China went and committed the massacre at Tiananmen Square, it was President Xi's wife who serenaded those troops right after the massacre. That to me tells you something about how these people think and where they are coming from. The second story I think that highlights where President Xi is coming from is his relationship to his father. His father was a revolutionary figure. He was purged. He then was resuscitated.

President Xi deeply admires his father. He even built a mausoleum in his honor, which sort of celebrates his career and highlights from his career. One of those highlights occurred when Xi's father was 14. His father tried to poison his teacher because his teacher was not sufficiently revolutionary. President Xi thinks this is a good and noble thing that his father tried to do. So the point is, this is a political head of state who has a distinctly different view than American or European politicians and appreciates and respects a certain hardness that has been demonstrated by both his wife and his father. And I think it's important for us to understand precisely who President Xi is. You know, this is kind of fascinating because you're bringing out a few...

Did you have a chance to see that clip that everyone's talking about from the Three-Body Problem, that sci-fi series from Netflix, showcasing the Cultural Revolution, what a struggle session really looked like back then? Yes. Yes, I have. It is stunning. So just what strikes me here is that we have Xi Jinping's father trying to poison his teacher as part of that revolutionary fervor that we see in the three-body problem. I mentioned that

because that's something I think a lot of people have seen, and probably many of them were shocked at the barbarity and just that the kids were so-called running the insane asylum at the time, and killing someone wasn't actually a big deal. It was something they appreciated. Well, that same man later was purged, and she himself was part of that. He had to go into the countryside. He was kind of in disrepute and spent a lot of his life kind of getting back that stature. So it's very interesting to me how it is that he ended up becoming the paramount leader after seeing what happened to his family. Yeah, it's interesting because I think the reaction a lot of us would have would be to recoil and reject such a system that had such a devastating effect on our family. That is certainly not President Xi's reaction.

And I think we need to understand when we're talking about things like the fentanyl crisis in America, when we're talking about some of the other things that I highlight in the book that lead to the deaths of Americans, we can't mirror image and say, well, no, it's hard for me to imagine a leader wanting to do that. You have to, I think, show the due respect to the foreign official, meet them where they are, look at what they value, look at what they think is noble behavior and understand them accordingly. And certainly when you're talking about President Xi, the notion that you would kill 100,000 Americans through fentanyl poisoning in alliance with the Mexican drug cartels, do it in such a way to where

you kind of avoid blame. They, in their strategic doctrine, call it murder with a borrowed knife. In other words, if you're going to kill somebody, do it with somebody else's knife so they get the blame. But again, it's not a far stretch when you look at President Xi's history, what he values and who he admires, to see that this would, in his eyes, be a totally legitimate strategy to employ against the United States. Peter, one thing that strikes me here is that there's a piece of this drug warfare that in a sense is in America, in a very real sense, and that's the use of this harm reduction strategy. And the harm reduction strategy on the streets of America effectively makes it so that people, you're not allowed to prevent the addict from taking their drugs. In fact, you facilitate them that maximally for them, which creates these what have been dubbed open air drug markets where

you see in LA and San Francisco, most notably. And that strikes me almost as like a part of that whole system which delivers those 100,000 deaths per year. Now, the thing is, is the CCP somehow involved in that? You know, it's possible. I don't know. But I think that the notion of treating fentanyl like any other drug issue, whether it's heroin or cocaine, I think completely misses the mark. Because, yes, you do have some people in San Francisco and other urban areas who are knowingly taking fentanyl, which is a terrible idea because it is so potent and you get the dosage wrong, you're immediately dead.

But the vast, vast majority of people that are dying have no idea they're taking fentanyl. They are college students who are studying for a final exam and a roommate said, well, here, take this Adderall because it'll help you concentrate. They take the Adderall and they overdose because it actually wasn't a legitimate Adderall. It was something somebody bought on the street, made in Mexico, and they got the formula wrong, so to speak. There's too much Adderall in it and they died. So the problem of treating this as a drug addiction problem like heroin or like cocaine, I think completely misses the mark. And it's also

extremely convenient, I think, for the Biden administration, because by treating it as a quote unquote drug addiction problem, rather than what it is, a poisoning, it absolves you of trying to confront the CCP on this, because you're essentially saying this is a human nature problem in the United States. Here's the reality. Fentanyl overdose deaths are a massive problem in the United States. They're a problem in Canada. They are not much of a problem in Europe right now. But the network and the supply of pharmaceuticals there is going to rise and they're going to face the same challenge. And if you don't believe fentanyl is a China problem, just look what happened during the COVID crisis, the pandemic in 2020, when fentanyl deaths actually went down because supply chains precluded precursors from even getting to Mexico or the United States.

That's been demonstrated in medical journals. So they are completely off base in the approach that they're taking towards this. And it allows them to avoid having to confront China, who is really the one behind this poison that is killing so many Americans. How easily could Xi Jinping stop this supply chain? He could stop it overnight. It's simply a question of banning the production, enforcing the ban, and throwing the people into jail for actually producing this stuff. A lot of the research demonstrates that about half of the companies that are advertising for fentanyl precursors online, that in other words, drug dealers or other people in the West buy them from, half of them are officially registered companies.

And as I highlight in the book, many of them are politically connected. So these are not people in a back room somewhere in Shanghai that are throwing this stuff together and shipping it covertly to the West. These are large chemical companies, politically connected, that are doing it. The fact that they do not cooperate with U.S. law enforcement when it comes to people that are involved in the fentanyl trade, the fact that the CCP embraces drug pushes, brings them in as advisors in advisory capacities to the CCP is clear evidence to me that they don't care. And if they decided to fix this, they could fix it. They just won't. I'll give you one brief example from 2021. The Biden administration sanctioned a Chinese gangster named Broken Tooth. That's what

he goes by. Our Treasury Department sanctioned him in 2021 for his involvement in the fentanyl trade. Three months later, the Chinese government gave him an award for his activities. And during that award ceremony, he gave a rousing speech where he said he was proud of what he did. So this is out in the open. It's not being sanctioned. And the notion that, oh, China's trying very hard, but they can't fix this is an absolute joke in my mind. Given everything you just told me, and it doesn't really sound like rocket science to me, and I don't think it is. Why isn't the U.S. government doing anything here? Well, I think there's a couple of reasons. One is once you acknowledge the reality of what China's

doing to the United States in the area of fentanyl, in some of the other areas that I highlighted, you realize pretty quickly you cannot have a normal, ordinary relationship with this government until these problems are fixed. And that makes life very complicated for political figures in Washington. There are some that are talking about this, but a lot of them, frankly, are go-along-to-get-along. They don't want the heavy lift of having to make hard choices, having domestic lobbies, big tech, Wall Street coming at them saying you can't disrupt our ties to China. So that's part of the broader problem. More specifically, you have political figures in the United States who have deep financial entanglements. Some of them brush perilously

close to the actual fentanyl trade itself, which mean that if you highlight this issue, it can be deeply embarrassing and damaging to you. I'll just give you two brief examples. One would be the first family of the United States, Joe Biden. We first reported back in 2018 that these commercial ties exist between the Biden family and these Chinese financiers. Well, when you trace back in 2017, the Biden family received a $5 million interest-free forgivable loan from a Chinese businessman who, it turns out, was business partners with a Chinese gang leader who goes by the name White Wolf. White Wolf and his gang are the entity that set up the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico in the fentanyl trade. So you literally have the Biden family and the fentanyl trade. You have one degree of separation, and that is this businessman that gave them this $5 million interest-free loan that, of course, the Bidens had never repaid.

So, you know, honestly, does Joe Biden want to have a conversation about Chinese involvement in the fentanyl trade? I kind of doubt it. The other person I would look at is Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate. His family does actually have a legitimate business, a shipping business. But the problem is that they are wholly dependent upon the good graces of the Chinese government to function and make a profit. The Chinese government has built a lot of their ships. They finance the construction a lot of their ships. They provide crews for those ships. And some of their clients and customers are Chinese state-owned companies. So again,

I ask you, does Mitch McConnell really want to call out the Chinese government on this account? I don't think so, because the Chinese government could destroy the family business overnight. That is the more specific problem that we have. And unfortunately, these people with entanglements are oftentimes at senior positions in our government. You know, something that just struck me here. Well, first of all, you describe a kind of relationship that a great many, let's call them elite Americans, are in. There was this huge push, you know, especially from the beginning of the 2000s, to get into China at any cost, including setting up these partnerships where you transfer your intellectual property. This has fueled a huge technology transfer. That's a whole other discussion that we could have.

My point is that there are a lot of very affluent Americans that are in the kind of relationships that you just described. The thing that strikes me here is there was a recent editorial in the Global Times, which is one of the mouthpieces of the Chinese regime, the Chinese Communist Party. And, you know, Graham Allison, one of the paramount scholars of China from Harvard, notably for writing the book about the Thucydides trap, as China and America play different roles in this. I know you're very familiar with this. He describes in this interview that China and the U.S. are inseparable. They're like conjoined Siamese twins. He says, if one tries to strangle the other, they share a nervous system, they share a gastrointestinal system, it would be suicide.

So it kind of gives me a hint, okay, based on what I just said, like why he might say that, right? It's based on perhaps it has to do with these very high level financial relationships. But overall, how would you view that statement? Well, I think it's ridiculous on multiple levels. And look, if you look at what Graham Allison has written in the Thucydides trap, for example, his prescription is essentially give China what it wants. You know, he says that the United States is this sort of established power. China is this rising power. And his view is that inevitably conflict will result unless both powers act accordingly. And his basic prescription for the United States is give China what it wants. Everything will be fine, which I think is a ridiculous notion. So no, there is not, we are not conjoined twins. We have very different nervous systems, which is part of the problem. And China certainly does

not view the United States as somebody that, you know, that they cannot abuse, that they cannot manipulate, that they cannot do damage to. They do it all of the time. So this is kind of straight out of the tradition of Henry Kissinger. Kissinger said in the 1970s that as we opened up to China, China would become more like us. That certainly has not happened. So I don't give a lot of credence at all to this establishment line. It has not worked out at all as they predicted it would. It has not mellowed China. It has emboldened China and it has put the United States in peril. And to your broader point, this is one of the challenges that we face because as our business community has embraced China, China has been able to turn to our business community and effectively use them

as de facto lobbyists against their own government. Let's remember that when the Trump administration imposed tariffs on Chinese goods and products, set aside whether one thinks that's a good policy or not, what did China do? They didn't go to Washington to complain about it. They went to Silicon Valley and they went to Wall Street and said, you go to Washington and complain about it. And that's exactly what these entities did. So it is a dangerous, perilous path. China calls this elite capture, when you essentially get the elites to do your bidding. And what they're looking for is big help with a little bad mouth. A little bad mouth means if you want to talk about the Uyghurs, if you want to talk about human rights, if you want to talk about Taiwan, that's fine. But help us on the big things, which is access to your technology, to your capital markets, and to your commercial markets. And if you give us those things, we are going to be very, very happy. And that is exactly what America's elites have done over the last several decades. And Beijing has to be exceedingly pleased with it.

Well, and arguably, you know, the U.S. basically financed building the world's biggest dictatorship. And I'd say arguably, I think, you know, in a vast part, the financing has come from the U.S. It has. And again, it's, you know, you think of the old John Maynard Keynes line that if I owe you a thousand pounds, I have a problem. If I owe you 500 million pounds, you have a problem. This dependency, the fact that our companies have so

invested heavily in China, but have a very difficult, if not impossible time pulling their assets out of that country, it creates a sense of extortion where you are leveraged with America's political elites. And it's the reason they don't want to raise questions about fentanyl. They don't want to raise questions about TikTok or many of these other problems, because if they do so, China can damage them overnight. Just look at the relationship with the American investors in ByteDance, which is the parent company of TikTok. I was stunned. I didn't even realize this until I read it in Fortune magazine. The American investors in ByteDance, and there are a number of them, signed an agreement when they became shareholders of that company, which says if they disparage or criticize ByteDance publicly, their ownership stake in the company can be seized without compensation. Think about that for a

second. Think about that. No, that would not be something that would be legal in the United States, but that's the agreement in China. So what's happened? You now have these major investors, the Carlyle Group, Jeff Yass, who are major shareholders in ByteDance, who cannot honestly talk about the fact that ByteDance is a threat to the United States, because if they did so, they would lose their, you know, multi-billion dollar stakes in that company. That's just a small microcosm of the kind of leverage that China exerts over America's financial and political elites. Well, that's an astonishing fact, indeed, that you just mentioned. Let's talk about TikTok.

This is something that is very important to me. I'm kind of on record saying that I think of the many weapons, and by the way, in Blood Money, you do an astonishingly good job of detailing all the various unconventional weapons that China, under the Communist Party, wields against America and wields against the West. I actually argue, having thought through many of them, that TikTok might actually be the most pernicious and the most terribly effective. So you're welcome to comment on that. But I'd like you to outline for me, and you make a great case in a whole chapter on this, where is this TikTok threat really? Yeah, no, I think I would agree with your assessment. And here's why.

ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is not just a Chinese company. I mean, that's a challenge in and of itself. You're a Chinese company. You are going to act at the behest of the CCP, of the Ministry of State Security. But ByteDance is not just a Chinese company. It is a Chinese company joined at the hip to the Chinese military intelligence complex. What do I mean? Well, first of all, the algorithm, the all-important algorithm that TikTok uses to effectively addict users in the West and to give users exactly what they seem to be looking for, or at least what people think they're looking for. That algorithm is certainly a company secret,

but the CCP has designated it also as a state secret. So this is not just a normal, you know, proprietary thing that a company in China happens to have. This is something that's valued highly by the Chinese state itself. That should be a red flag already. The second thing, though, is that ByteDance, the parent's company, which is located in Beijing, its headquarters is not far from the Ministry of State Security, which is the super spy apparatus of China. It's the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, all those intelligence agencies rolled into one. But ByteDance actually does joint research with the Ministry of State Security. And one of the things they research is how to manipulate people online. So my point is, it's not just a Chinese company. It is a Chinese company that works closely with the Chinese

intelligence apparatus. The second point I would make is, while there's all this debate on Capitol Hill, might China use this as a form of propaganda? Might they use it to manipulate young people? They're not having that debate in China. I think my favorite section of Blood Money is where I quote from Chinese officials, Chinese military officials and propaganda officials, describing how to use online platforms and how they are using online platforms like TikTok to manipulate people in the West. I quote extensively from them because you don't have to believe me, believe what they're saying. And they talk about how TikTok is the perfect platform because it's such an emotional medium, especially for young people. And their belief is that if they can get a young person emotionally wrapped

up in a video, the young person embraces what they're feeling as a sign of their own righteous indignation. They are choosing as a sovereign person to be moved by this video when in fact they're being manipulated. And the propagandists say, once they cross that line and think they own that feeling, then we've got them because now we can steer them in the direction that they want to go. And they are already doing that. So, you know, my view is that this is a highly potent weapon. And the notion that we are going to allow a entity, which is joined at the hip with the Chinese Ministry of State Security, to have unfettered access to our young people. And we're going to say, hey, we're not going to worry about it. Or, hey, they're 13. They can figure it out on their own

is patently absurd. So I would agree with your assessment. I think the bill that has been introduced in Congress is a good bill. Certainly, there are problems with other big tech companies, including those in the United States, but it's not an either or thing. We need to be dealing with both. And the CCP threat from TikTok is absolutely clear and real, and it's already yielding results. That's certainly what they're saying in China about it. Well, you know, many people have seen The Social Dilemma, this excellent documentary that explains how social media companies create these detailed profiles on each of us that know things about us that we didn't know ourselves and also cater information specifically to manipulate, to addict, to get them to use these platforms more.

There's an ample body of information showing how these various social media giants manipulate people. What ethical barriers does the CCP have here? It's almost an odd question to ask, but I think it's important because the things that we've been discovering over the past years is that there's a much lower level of ethical scrutiny on the side of, say, some of these social media companies or even our agencies in the U.S. I want of contrast that to the CCP a bit, because I find it that because people get so caught up in this reality that for many of us is new and really disturbing, you can kind of lose the context here. Yeah, I think the context is key. So my you know, my view is whether it's Meta or Microsoft, you know, these other companies that have these platforms, when you have the right political leadership, you in the United States, you can have accountability.

You have shareholders, you have shareholder meetings where people actually raise these issues and can raise these issues. So there are ways to publicly pressure American companies. Are they doing a good job of that on Capitol Hill? Not really. I'd give them a C. They're talking about it, but they're not doing enough. The problem with a Chinese entity like ByteDance is completely different. First of all, you don't have the ability to pressure through shareholder action. You can have U.S. regulators bring, you know, somebody who's picked to lead the American branch, TikTok, come and testify before Congress. But ultimately, if decisions are made, he's not the one that's going to make it. The decision makers are back in Beijing.

And then you add to the fact that the Ministry of State Security is so closely working with ByteDance, it adds a completely different element to it. So to me, you can't compare the two. And again, it's not an either or question. We should be dealing with both. But the levers and the ability that we have to hold into account American tech companies is 10 times greater than our ability to try to hold into account a foreign entity with an algorithm that is a Chinese state government secret, an entity that is working with the foreign spy apparatus that has a massive propaganda operation that is working overtime to try to capture the hearts and minds of young people in the West and is doing so. And let's remember, they're very sophisticated about

this. It's not as if they're going to be sending feeds on TikTok of placards of Chairman Mao marching through Tiananmen Square. They're much more sophisticated about that. And that's what people have to be worried about. If they're confident that they can recognize CCP propaganda and they don't need to worry about it, that is the first indication that they are subject to it and could easily be manipulated by CCP propaganda. You know, I just might add that based on the 2019 National Intelligence Law, they are required to spy without telling anyone they're involved with that they're spying for the benefit of Chinese state security. So there's multiple layers, not to mention the doctrine of military-civil fusion, which is one of the top priorities in Xi Jinping's mind. Whenever

there's an opportunity for there to be a military application, it must be enacted based on Xi Jinping's policy directions. One more thing I wanted to mention here. TikTok isn't actually available in China. That's right. They have their own version. I think it's pronounced Doyun. And it is a domestic version of TikTok that is very different. And this is part of what, again, quoting Chinese officials, not me, Chinese officials call cognitive warfare, this desire to sort of dumb down the West. So what you get with TikTok is, you know, somebody with blue hair screaming about something. It's basically cotton candy. Largely what you get on TikTok is entertainment, you know, pranks and that kind of content. The Chinese version is very different. They lead with educational, cultural, engineering, scientific videos and evidence and experiments that supposedly contribute to the cognitive development of young people in China. So our kids are getting cotton candy from ByteDance. Children in China

are getting spinach. And again, this is part of cognitive warfare, something they've defined. They want to match the intellectual capabilities of their young people with ours. They are engaged in a whole host of destructive behaviors, TikTok being one, the fact that they are involved with massive illegal marijuana grows in the United States, highly potent marijuana, three times more potent that they are selling illegally in the United States is also part of this cognitive warfare. That is a design campaign to, frankly, dumb down Americans. And you have to look at the results and see that it's absolutely working. Well, and I might add one more thing as we finish on this topic specifically. I recall during the BLM riots, BLM-Antifa riots in 2020, that there were instructional videos on TikTok. There were. There were instructional videos on TikTok. There were. There were instructional videos on TikTok. There have been other videos on how to engage in criminal behavior. Some of these TikTok pranks

that have gone viral are dangerous. One of them involved loosening the lug nuts on tires, on people's cars. So yeah, this is very, very damaging content culturally in the United States. It also works to attempt to sow division and chaos in the United States. Videos get pushed, push content that are highly divisive in the United States. And again, this is part of the Chinese strategy of using TikTok as a mouthpiece for China to manipulate Americans. I quote, one Chinese official is saying that TikTok is basically China's Trojan horse to use against the West. Yeah, that's interesting. I've seen that headline, but I didn't realize this is actually kind of from the horse's mouth, so to speak. It absolutely is. They're very bullish on TikTok. They like the fact that it's this

Trojan horse, again, as one official calls it. They like the short video format because they feel like it is addictive and it's emotive. And they believe that by using that emotion, they can steer the values in which people have. And one Chinese military official believes that TikTok is a key ingredient in basically defeating the West without firing a shot. In other words, this is the sort of ancient Sun Tzu strategy of trying to defeat your enemy without actually fighting him. Whether TikTok is that potent, who knows? But absolutely, China is bullish on it and sees it as a very, very powerful tool that they're using against the United States already. So one of the provisions in the legislation is that it gives the president discretion to basically

target a particular country, a particular app. And the fear is that this discretion will be used, as we've seen by our own government. There's been a lot of abuse around the issue of free speech, and there's cases at the Supreme Court. the question is, well, actually twofold. One, does this legislation give the American leaders too much discretion to use the kind, to force divestment, so to speak, right, on American companies, not just on Chinese-owned companies? And secondly, the question is, TikTok under control of U.S. actors might also prove to be highly problematic. Yeah, I think, and those are legitimate questions to ask. My view is to quote Winston Churchill, you can't make the perfect the enemy of the good.

You know, look, there's going to have to be some decision making mechanism to decide, you know, if there's a forced divestiture that takes place. And I'm not sure where you put that authority other than the president. And I'm sympathetic to the notion that you can see abuses of power. I mean, we have RICO statutes, right, racketeering charges that were the laws were set up to deal with organized crime networks that are now being used against Donald Trump in Georgia. That certainly seems to be an abuse. But I don't think the solution is to say, well, we don't want to have RICO statutes then. What we have to have is a vigorous judiciary, and you have to make sure that the law is specific

enough to address concerns about abuse. So could the law be abuse? It might be make sure that the law is specific enough to address concerns about abuse. So could the law be abuse? It might be. But what the law specifically says is that a foreign media company that is owned by a foreign adversarial power. So immediately it is saying if it's a U.S.-based media company, if it is, let's say, Donald Trump's True Social, it would not fit the definition. And were a president to try to abuse that and to force a divestment of that company, it would certainly be challenged in the courts. And I don't see how that could be upheld.

So I think that it narrowly defines it enough that it's foreign media companies owned by adversarial powers. I think that is important. Then the second question becomes, who would end up in this scenario where, let's say, TikTok, there's a forced sale, who would end up owning that entity? And what the law also says is that the purchaser that would acquire those assets or acquire that company in the United States, that would have to be approved also past scrutiny with regulators, including the Federal Trade Commission. So what that means, for example, is Jeff Zuckerberg, who already controls Facebook, who already controls Instagram, there's just no way that the Federal Trade Commission would approve Jeff Zuckerberg

to be able to be actually owning this actual, I should say, Mark Zuckerberg should be allowed to actually own this entity. So I think there are enough constraints on it. The question is, if it's not this law, how do you improve this law to make it better? If you make it specific to TikTok itself, which some people have said, I believe that would be declared unconstitutional almost immediately. You cannot pass a bill, I think, that is related to one specific company. So I think there are constraints in place. We have an independent judiciary that would, I think, restrict abuses or efforts by a president to abuse the authority. But I believe that, you know, when it comes to TikTok, action has to be taken.

And I think that this law is a good one. Well, because the issue at hand, right, to me, and a final commentary on this is twofold. One is that these types of apps have an inordinately huge influence on their users. And that structure or that ability to weaponize our psyches is sort of arguably the most potent in TikTok. And it's in the hands of the foreign power, which seeks us ill, as we've been discussing throughout this episode. And the second part is, of course, the vast intelligence gathering

that this particular app also does. Above and beyond, and you document this, above and beyond even the greatly invasive information that these other apps that are U.S.-based take in. The combination of that makes it that this is absolutely a national security issue, not a free speech issue, which is how it's portrayed. And as we finish with this topic, actually, now, I want you to sort of just explain to me that tension, because this is the fear is, and this is a very real fear, that freedom of speech is being curtailed systematically

in America. It is being curtailed in America. I think in the case of TikTok, it's not a free speech issue. The only one that would make it a free speech issue is the CCP, because what they've essentially said is that if you force the sale of TikTok to American-based investors from our ownership in China, we're going to shut the app down. I mean, in other words, what they have basically said is we are going to eliminate this platform, which they have the right to do. They own it. But to me, that's indicative of what their true interests are here. It's not to provide a platform for commercial activity. It is to create a platform as a influence operation. Free speech is a major issue. And the problem is, I think, when you have concentrated power by a handful of companies.

So I think certainly in the case of ByteDance with the forced sale, what you're going to have is a new company emerge that would be unique specifically to TikTok. And that would be a good thing. We don't want it controlled by another big tech company because that further concentrates and restricts authority. And again, what we need is we need in Washington, D.C., vigorous political leadership that is holding these major platforms into account. And there are reforms and things that can be done on that level. But but again, I think you put it well, ByteDance, TikTok, this is a unique circumstance because of the Chinese ownership and the Chinese control and manipulation that exists uniquely on this app. So, Peter, I mentioned earlier these instructional videos for Antifa or BLM to how to kind of write better that we're on TikTok. Part of my thinking around that, and of course, these types of things may appear on other

social media, and I think did. TikTok provides this kind of unique opportunity to promote those things to audiences. But there is a significant part of this very far left protest movement, and you document this in Blood Money, is actually very closely tied with the CCP. And I think that's something that a lot of people don't understand and kind of deny the connections when they are faced with it. So I'm wondering if you could kind of in a fine way, you know, detail for me how that works? Yeah, I mean, this was probably one of the most surprising findings in the book. You know, China's strategic thought here is captured in the phrase, watch the fire burn from across the river. In other words, maybe you fan the flames of the fire, but you sort of detach yourself and say, we're not involved in that. The fact of the matter is

that a lot of the radical protests that we've seen in the United States, the violent protests dating back even before 2020, is the work of two very radical groups. One is called FRSO, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. The other one is called PSL, the Party for Socialism and Liberation. These are two organizations that have explicitly pledged their allegiance to the CCP. They view them as fraternal parties. That's not just friends, that's fraternal parties. They cheer on the CCP. They are supportive of the CCP. We know that some of the leaders in these groups have traveled to China. We also know that some of these groups get money from China, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. And we also know that Beijing tracks these groups.

I actually quote from an organization, a CCP party organization in Wuhan, which tracks the activities of these groups domestically in the United States. And what they see is that these groups have been very, very successful in radicalizing the conversation in America. So many of the most violent radical protests in 2020 were organized by FRSO, PSL. And you might have had people that showed up that wanted to peacefully protest about race relations in America. Maybe they wanted the police to try to handle situations slightly differently. These organizations were all about all American cops are racist, and we need to abolish the police. And they shut down cities like Philadelphia. They also showed up in small towns in America. They were very radical groups. And according to reports in China, FRSO essentially

captured and took over by the late summer of 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement and ended up radicalizing it. So that's an important component of this, because if the TikTok represents and the work that China is doing in cyberspace represents the air war, this is kind of the ground war, the kind of boots on the ground, radical social protests in America. And those protests have continued. They're now under a different label. They are now pro-Hamas or pro-Palestinian rights protests. But again, if you look at a lot of the organizers, they are FRSO, PSL. Look at who the keynote speakers were. They were leaders from FRSO, PSL. There was more than half a million protesters that shut down Washington, D.C. So again, the goal here is to radicalize the movement. They don't want peace in the Middle East. They want a Hamas victory. And then you can look at some of the social movements that are occurring in America,

the emergence of the so-called trans movement. Again, very surprising here because two of the biggest funders of that movement in America are Chinese-based billionaires. One is an American who sold his company to an investment fund partly owned by a Chinese sovereign wealth fund. He moved to China. He's pro-CCP. He has poured tens of millions of dollars into the radical protest movement, including the trans movement in America. And so has Joe Tsai, who is the co-founder of Alibaba. He's now the chairman. He has poured tens of millions of dollars into the trans movement in America. And of course, the thing that I think tips off as to what their goals are, neither of these individuals are actually supporting this movement in China itself.

They only advocate it for it in America. And I think that's because they know it's divisive. They know that it sows division and distrust in America. And that is part of the agenda socially that they are trying to push in the United States. So the first billionaire that you're referring to, I think, is Roy Singham. And he also, as I understand it, funds Code Pink. And I've seen Code Pink protesters multiple times coming to these select committee on the CCP events in Congress, arriving just at the beginning to kind of protest the activities of the group, and just at the beginning to kind of, you know, protest the activities of the group, and then they kind of leave very quickly. Yeah, that's exactly right.

In fact, Code Pink and Roy Singham fought aggressively to try to prevent that committee from even being formed. They didn't even want a committee of Congress, a select committee, a bipartisan committee, to actually even to look into what China was doing. So yes, Roy Singham absolutely has played a major role in that, as has Code Pink. And again, these are not people who are normal, regular peace activists. These are not people who want a negotiated solution. They believe that the entire error is with the United States as opposed to China in the tensions between those countries. And they believe that the tensions between Hamas and Israel are totally the result of what Israel has done. And this is part of the effort to radicalize

and divide and sow social division in America. As one Chinese official, as I quote, says, this internal tumult in America is sapping America of its strength. So this is part of a broader strategy in addition to many of the other things we've talked about. And of course, you cover that very, very well in Blood Money. And again, I'll have to wholeheartedly recommend this book to all our viewers. It's kind of one of the best compilations of all of these, I guess, different methods that the Chinese regime has been using and meticulously researched. So thank you for that. Any final thoughts, Peter, as we finish up? No, it's just this is such an important topic. You and your news organization have been at the forefront of this. I'm encouraged that people are becoming more attentive to these details. But the problem is the clock is ticking and China's strategy is working. It's causing American casualties. This is not an abstract future war. It's a war occurring right now. So I just pray and encourage everybody to be vigilant and let your elected officials know what's going on so

they can take this seriously and confront it. Peter, I have one more question because there's a narrative that's been appearing, which I was frankly very surprised by in multiple media. I think I first saw it in Politico. And it's this idea that the CCP is somehow trying to help former President Trump get reelected. How do you react to that? Yeah, I don't find that very credible. I think that's an example of disinformation. Look, the bottom line is, is that Joe Biden has essentially given the CCP everything that they want. It's not to say that I would say Trump was perfect in his approach towards China, but there were so many things that he did that were disruptive to their efforts. The fact that he was able to vocalize what a lot of people feel about the threat. So I don't give

that any credence whatsoever. I think all you have to do is look at the results of what the policy prescriptions that Joe Biden has given them, and he's given them what they want. He's given them big help with a little bad mouth. And Donald Trump has certainly challenged them, I think, in very important and significant ways. Well, and perhaps the most significant was, I think it was the first real challenge to this whole engagement philosophy, right, which has dominated the State Department and frankly, the whole U.S. establishment for decades now. I mean, the Graham Allison School, right? And Kissinger School, right? Yes, that's right. And that, I think, is now in the minority of view for most people. And I think Trump's election and his administration's policies

on that front have really changed the conversation. So the statements of Graham Allison or the worldview of Henry Kissinger, I think, is no longer the consensus view among the American general population. It is among American elites because, of course, they profit from that kind of arrangement. But by the broader public, I think there's a lot more skepticism about what the CCP is actually about. And I think that's a good and healthy thing. Well, Peter Schweitzer, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you all for joining Peter Schweitzer and me on this episode of American Thought

Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.