Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 601 | Food Shortages & Supply Chains: What’s Coming? | Guest: Ross Kennedy

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Today we're talking to Ross Kennedy of Fortis Analysis about the food shortages and supply chain issues happening due to world events like COVID and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It seems the sanctions that the U.S. put on Russia have had little, if any, effect, and this move has only pushed Russia farther into the arms of China's CCP, which is helping Russia circumvent Western financial sanctions. We talk about the consequences of this and what the emergence of a China-led group of nations would look like for the world of the U.S. and its allies. Ross also breaks down what's going on in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where a Chinese company is trying to construct a corn-processing plant. The thing is, Grand Forks is also home to an important Air Force base. We discuss how Chinese companies are able to do this and why neither high-level Democrats nor Republicans seem to care about stopping it. Then, Ross explains what's going on in Shanghai and why the CCP is imposing such a brutal lockdown on so many people. --- Today's Sponsors: Pre-Born has a passion to save unborn babies from abortion & see women come to Christ. Will you help rescue babies' lives? Donate at Preborn.com/ALLIE or dial #250 & say keyword 'BABY'. Dwell has over a dozen recordings of the Bible in the best versions of the Bible too, like ESV, NIV, KJV, NLT, & others. Get started at DwellApp.io/RELATABLE to save 10% off a yearly subscription or 33% off Dwell for life! Good Ranchers delivers steakhouse quality beef, chicken, & great seafood to your door, at a locked-in price when you subscribe! Go to GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE to save $30 off your first box. Carly Jean Los Angeles is a Los Angeles-based capsule clothing company & they've done the hunting for you, providing clothes that are effortless, easy, & flattering on any shape, size, age, or season. Go to CarlyJeanlosAngeles.com & use promo code 'ALLIEB' to save 20% off your first order! --- Previously Mentioned Episode: Ep 505: Food Shortages & Slow Supply Chains: What's Going On? | Guest: Ross Kennedy https://apple.co/3ryYpVk --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV

or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey guys, welcome to relatable. Happy Monday. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. American meat delivered right to your front door. Go to good ranchers.com slash alley. That's good ranchers.com slash alley. All right, guys, today we are talking to our friend, Ross Kennedy. He is an expert in logistics and supply chains. We talked to him last year in October to tell us why the heck we are not getting the supplies and the food that we need, why are there food shortages, all that kinds of scary stuff. And he really walked us back from the ledge and explained why everything is going on, but that it's going to be okay. And so go listen to that episode

if you haven't. It's actually one of my most popular episodes ever. You guys loved it because he is so good explaining complex things in a way that the average person can understand. So he's going to do that again today. We're going to talk about the state of supply chains, why we are still unable to get the things that we want to get, but also need to get. And how is Russia and Ukraine affecting that? But also, how is China and their current actions and places like Shanghai affecting that? We're also going to talk about this fascinating story that's happening in Grand Forks, North Dakota,

where a Chinese company is trying to build a plant there that is strategically close to an Air Force base. And what is happening there? Is that project going to go forward? What does that mean for our national security? And it's not just happening there. That kind of thing is actually happening in strategic places across the country. What? That's crazy. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about what we can do as an average citizen. and he's going to kind of paint a picture of worse and best case scenarios for just kind of the state of the world, geopolitics in general, but also specifically supply chains, what he thinks we can expect over the next couple of years. He is a great guest. You're going to learn a lot from this. It's probably going to blow your mind at points. And so I'm excited for you to hear it.

But before we get into the conversation, just on a little bit of a lighter note, I hope that you guys had a wonderful Easter. We had a bonus Easter episode on Saturday. It was just a little mini episode just talking about the gospel and why the resurrection matters and why we care about Easter. I tweeted about Easter this week and a few times and most of them were received how I wanted them to be received. They were well received. But I sent one tweet that caused controversy among Christians that I didn't mean for it to. I guess I should have communicated it more clearly. but I said something along the lines of, you know, the fact that Google doesn't do a little doodle for Easter, if they do a doodle for so many other, so many other holidays, including other religious holidays,

but they don't do one for Easter. And a lot of Christians are upset about that or they point out the bias, which I totally understand. I'm not knocking them for pointing out that bias. However, I'm kind of glad that they don't. Like, let's not allow Easter to be more commercialized than it already is. lot of people celebrate Christmas, whether they're Christians or not, but the resurrection is different. It's different. And of course, Christmas is just as sacred for Christians, but the resurrection is less commercialized than Christmas is. And I think that that's a good thing. Like, it can't be boiled down

to this, like, trite little doodle on Google. It is offensive. The resurrection is offensive. The resurrection is controversial. The resurrection is polarizing. And I don't mean it's controversial. among Christians. Like we don't know whether it happened or not, which is what some people strangely thought that I was saying. I mean, there were literally people who follow me underneath saying, wow, you hate Christianity. You're calling the resurrection controversial.

You hate Christians. Try to hate other religions. I'm like, oh my gosh, can we just take a little fraction of a second to put our thinking caps on for one second and realize that when I say the resurrection is controversial and polarizing and that it's okay that Google doesn't use. is a doodle. I am not saying that it's bad. I'm saying that that's what Christianity is. It's always been controversial to the world. It has always been polarizing to the world. It has always been the receiver of scorn of the world. It's always been the,

it's always been a victim, although I don't really like to use that, use that term, I don't know, recipient of persecution in the world since it's very beginning. the cross is controversial and offensive. The gospel is controversial and offensive. Genesis 1-1 is controversial and offensive. That God made the world and he is the authority over all of it. If you believe that, then you can believe the rest of the Bible. If you don't believe that, then the rest of the Bible is going to be really hard to understand. And most of the world does not believe Genesis 1-1. And they sure as heck, don't believe John 146 that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one can come to the Father except through him. The fact that our God or that all

our God, that he became flash, and that he rose from the dead. That is what sets Christianity apart. That is the controversial part of it. And that's what I was saying. I don't care if Google likes Easter. Let them be offended by Easter. Let them hate Christianity. I really think it's more of like an anti-West pro-CCP bent that they have than like truly disagreeing with the resurrection or Christian theology. But it is a spiritual problem. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with Google who I think really operates in some ways in an evil way, understanding the gravity and the seriousness and the controversy surrounding Easter and not celebrating it. I don't need them. I don't need them. We're going to celebrate the resurrection as we have for the past 2,000 years and we are going

to embrace whatever rejection or criticism or hate or hostility comes from that. That's what I was saying. Also, over the weekends, I ate healthy. as I said on my Instagram story. I did. I'll just be perfectly honest because we're holding each other accountable. I did eat some like candy Easter egg, the small little candy Easter eggs on Saturday. If you don't know, I'm doing like a 30 day healthy eating plan and working out for at least 10 minutes a day every day for 30 days with my husband who has been doing that and more for 75 days. But anyway, and so I did cheat over the weekend on Saturday. But it's okay. On Sunday, I really wanted to. Okay. So I'm just going to, I'm just going to pat myself on the back here. I really

wanted to. I really wanted one of those like Reese's bunnies. I really did. And one of those or, it's like an Oreo bunny or no, sorry, the Reese's eggs. And then like the little Oreo bunny, I really, really wanted that on Saturday. And when I was sitting there in the afternoon on the couch and my husband was playing golf, I was like, it would be okay. It would be fine. I could just have a couple. And guys, instead, instead what I did was go work out. I went outside and worked out instead of eating the chocolate that I wanted to eat. And then what did I do?

I made myself some guacamole and a turkey patty. That is not what I wanted to do. But let me tell you, I'm just on a serious note, is that I do think, and those of you who are super disciplined in that, you know this, like making those little decisions, it does it does build something up. Like it builds up discipline so that the next day you say, you know what? I went the whole day yesterday without giving in to that temptation or whatever it was. I'm not talking about like sin temptation, but temptation to break the rules on your healthy eating plan.

And I didn't do it. I resisted it. And so today I can do the same thing. It's the same thing like when I was talking about training for the half marathon every week, you know that all you have to do is run one or one and a half miles more than you did last week. And you can handle that because you've already prepared. you've already prepared so much before this moment. It's the same thing, I think, with healthy eating or with any really hard decision.

I actually found that's true in my career, too. And I didn't mean to go off on this tangent. But maybe it'll help some of you that whenever I was nervous, I remember the first time that I came to the Blaze in 2017 and I was like doing a Facebook live. And they wanted me to do a Facebook life. And I was so nervous. And I didn't know if I could do it. But then I did it.

And it was good. And it was fine. And then everything after. that was like, well, I did that and I was nervous and it was fine. And then the first time I was on Fox News or whatever, I'm like, well, I did that and I was nervous and it was fine. And every moment kind of builds on the last moment. And that's why preparation and discipline and doing scary things and doing hard things is so important because it helps you for whatever moment God is going to bring you to. And God is so strategic and he's so providential that he plans those moments and those risks that you take

in your life so that you can be prepared and have the practice to face whatever challenge is coming. All right. That's the beginning of this. Kind of went a lot of different places. It doesn't have anything to do with what we are about to talk about, but I hope it encouraged you. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Ross, thank you so much for joining us. You joined our show in October, but could you just remind everyone who you are and what you do? Yeah, so I'm the founder of a company called Fortis Analysis, amongst the many things that we get up to, primarily a strategic consulting firm dealing with

logistic supply chain and national security issues. I have numerous different stakeholders around the U.S., around the world, and a finger in a lot of pies as far as data information. data and information and seeing how these things are, you know, these complex systems are, sometimes they work. Sometimes they are in the midst of a cascading failure like we are right now. And so it's been useful, I guess, to, you know, data feed and to be able to explain to people, kind of what's going on in the world in a way that helps them understand. So it wasn't the initial intention of Fortis, but it's certainly become, you know, part of what we're doing now. Well, logistics is typically behind the scenes. As we talked about last time, most people today don't really think about how our orders get from point A to point B, how our food gets in our grocery store. We start to order it when the thing that we want is unavailable. Either the service that we want is unavailable or the item that we want is unavailable or the renovation is going to take longer than usual or we can't buy a used car or even a new car. And really for the first time, just your average

person has really started thinking about supply chains. In October, we talked because there were many news stories about these shipping containers off the port of Los Angeles and in different parts of the country and the world that were unable to unload and were stuck in some cases. And people didn't really know why. And we kind of blamed it. A lot of Republicans just blamed it on Joe Biden or blamed it on Gavin Newsom. But you really kind of walked us through how the whole supply chain catastrophe that really started to bubble up for the average person at the end of last year. The average person started to notice it. It really goes back before Joe Biden a lot longer than just in the past few months.

It's not the fault of any one politician. Can you tell us what has happened since October when it comes to supply chains? Because yes, people still notice this, but I think people have gotten used to it. I don't know. Tell us what has been going on behind the scenes and what we should. should still be paying attention to and looking out for. Yeah, of course. You know, you made a really good point there that, you know,

even as recently as October, people were still wondering, well, what's going on and why are these containers stuck and what's in the containers and why are my shelves empty? And, you know, that's normalcy bias, right? They want to get back to what they had, you know, understood or had known for the longest time. And now I think, you know, we're sick. months on from that and and we've sort of you know whether it's good or bad I'd say

we've we've certainly established something of a new normal with regard to we're just kind of used to not having the availability of product and kind of spoiled for choice the way we were the newer and interesting developments are really kind of happening there's there they're twofold first is the Russia Ukraine invasion which has been discussed once or twice and a couple of different forms, right? And the significance of that has really been the disruption to major sources of energy that Europe and the rest of the world rely on, which is, you know, Russian natural gas and crude oil. You're talking about Ukrainian wheat and corn and industrial chemicals and products

that are also made in Ukraine that are not able to really get out. And that whole Black Sea region, I think has been very overlooked for most people, just like the container sitting off the coast of California. It had been a months-long issue before people really picked up on it, I would say, at a normal observer level. And it's the same for the Black Sea. The Black Sea is one of most heavily watched regions of the world for commodities traders. What happens there has an enormous, you know, like a butterfly effect on different markets

around the world. And so we're seeing some really significant fears of. lack of grain being able to get to the global market out of Ukraine and Russia, some constrictions on energy trade. We're also seeing the impact of sanctions and how that's forcing various nations that trade, you know, primarily China and India, that trade with Russia. They're now denominating their trades in different currencies in order to get around sanctions. And so there's this major global trade realignment that's happening as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war. The other big thing is going on. I just want to pause. I just want to pause.

right there and dig a little bit into that. And then if you could pick up the thought that you were about that you were about to explain because you tweeted it was at the end of February. And we originally talked about having you on to talk about this. So I'm hoping that you can still recall and explain this. So you tweeted at the end of February, what happens when Russia calls the West Bluff and begins transacting business outside of Swift using Yuan and CIPS as clearing houses for trade. The bifurcation is here, I think. Can you explain what you mean by that? Does that have to do with what you're talking about right now? Yes, absolutely.

So CIPS is sort of the Chinese version of Swift. And Swift is a Western, a European U.S. Payment transaction system that allows for companies that are operating in different countries to be able to safely conduct business with one another and know that the documents are going to be secure and that the money it will be transacted properly. And so we use the SWIFT system as a way of transmitting money from bank to bank worldwide for international trade. And it's really been, since it emerged, it's really been the dominant way that global trade gets done is denominated in the major currencies, the euro and the dollar primarily.

And that includes for things like oil. That's where we have the petro dollar where the price of crude oil is denominated in U.S. dollars. And so what China is now trying to do is utilize this opportunity and has been for some time planning to try to disrupt or disintermediate the Western system or SWIFT as the way of settling trades by using their CIPS system and denominating trades against the Juan, the Chinese currency. So what I was saying in there is that in order for these countries to really break away from Western control and, you know, the threat of sanctions being such an impactful way to be able to modify behavior. Russia kind of thumb their nose at the whole thing and said, we don't really care about your sanctions. We're just going to start turning the gas off to Europe.

We're going to start turning off the tap of crude oil unless you want to, you know, we'll figure out some mechanism to do these deals outside of the Western system. And so you're seeing, you know, a rupee and ruble, what we call swap or a transaction in those two currencies. you're seeing ruble wand swap, you're seeing rupees in one, you're seeing these other major currencies begin to emerge that don't utilize the dollar, don't utilize the euro to facilitate these transactions. And that's really a sea change. It's taken away an enormous amount of influence and capacity that Europe and the U.S.

have to kind of try to keep a lid on some of the more aggressive behaviors of country like China or Russia. And so that bifurcation, the world's, now sort of starting to split into two big spheres of commerce and trade, which is the BRICS countries, Brazil, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, kind of leading the charge in that way. And then Western countries, which is primarily, you know, what we would call the transatlantic relationship between North America and Europe. It's really beginning to split apart and become two totally separate things, whereas before, you know, the BRICS, you know, kind of had to be a bit, you know, tied to the U.S.

in Europe. So tell me what you think some of the consequences are because obviously we still rely on China for most things. And so it's not that like we can just split, at least not very easily, between kind of, I guess it's not necessarily the East and the West, but kind of how we would understand it. What are the long-term consequences of that? If we rely on China, not just for the goods and supplies that you buy in Target, but we're talking about like medical equipment, we're talking about medication. We rely on them for so much. What is it going to look like if we are bifurcating in this way for the United States? Well, short term, it means a lot of pain. We don't make a lot of the things for ourselves that we need to that we would consider critical technologies or critical goods,

for example, like pharmaceuticals. So we're going to have to figure out pretty quickly, you know, do we want to be a, be a democracy and decline, so to speak, or a, a, a, a, a global power and decline where we're sort of subservient to whatever the wishes are of China and their allies and partners because we don't feel like making those things for ourselves. Are we going to sort of take the bull by the horns and understand that, you know, this short-term pain also is an opportunity for us to reclaim some of our manufacturing and economic sovereignty and reshore or near-shore bring these plants, bring this production back to the U.S., back to the Western Hemisphere or to Europe where we, you know, have more, you know,

traditional stable allies and then say, okay, what can we bring back for ourselves? And then what do we need, you know, because we can't make the materials here, we don't have access to them, whatever, where do we need to facilitate better trade relationships in order to balance the scales? So if we do those things, we're going to be okay on an intermediate or long-term basis. On the short-term basis, though, we certainly have some major strategic vulnerabilities that we do need to be aware of and that we do need to be addressing, you know, yesterday. It seems like there are people on both sides of the aisle that are opposed to the self-reliance and manufacturing that we're talking about who just seemed to be more interested in the interest

of the CCP than they are in the United States. I mean, there are many ways that we could go through that it seems like the United States acquiesces to the CCP. And so I'm a little concerned that they're not going to take your advice, the people who are in charge in trying to re-up the manufacturing here and try to stave off or try to help some of the pain that you're talking about feeling. And so I just really, I wonder, like, if we don't take that route, if we don't decide to try to move towards self-reliance and we do continue to rely on China for the things that we need to literally survive, what that will look like. I guess it'll just look like China solidifying its place is the global world power and us truly just doing whatever

they want to do. Now, if there were a lot of conversations just a couple months ago, and as we just kind of mentioned about, I think it was Saudi Arabia starting to use the, what was it, was it like purchasing oil or the purchases of oil in Saudi Arabia no longer being in the U.S. currency, but in Chinese currency, and what that would mean for the U.S. dollar. Am I getting that right? Yeah, so for a long time, you know, like I said earlier, the dollar was really the currency that the global commodities are denominated in. And that's a function of us being the global reserve currency of the world where pretty much every currency can be pegged against the dollar. And so the stability of our economy, the stability of our governance, the stability of our fiscal policy has always been sort of the benchmark, or at least for quite a long time, has been the benchmark that all. of the other global economies kind of measured themselves against and use as a supporter a

stabilizing mechanism. So what Saudi Arabia was proposing was to no longer just exclusively transact in dollars. They were, they were, you know, the proposition was, well, if the dollar is not going to be stable, the U.S. is no longer going to be sort of this, this great stabilizing force for trade and for, you know, global economics, then we need to consider utilizing other currencies as well and maybe doing some of these deals and the currencies of other large countries. In this particular case, it was suggested that it would be China and you have a petro-wan. We haven't seen that happen yet, to my knowledge, but certainly plans are underway and a lot of people are beginning to hedge their bets against the U.S. and towards China. That carries

some real risks for everybody. China in no way is a stable economy or a stable actor, but the U.S. Also, we have to keep our house clean and do everything we can to begin to reassure allies and to reassure the world that we're not a basket case and that we're going to be able to stabilize ourselves and make sure that we push through the next couple of years without causing any additional issues. I'm not super optimistic about that. As much as I do love this country, I'm not sure if under our current leadership, we scream stable.

Okay, speaking of the CCP, I want to get in a little bit more to, what we had messaged about what is happening in North Dakota with something called the Fu Feng Group. I'm really interested to hear what this is and to hear you just kind of dig into it. What the heck is this? Why should we care? How is this connected to what we're talking about? So at this most basic level, Fu Feng Group is a Chinese producer of human food and animal feed ingredients. They do this via wet corn milling. So we have wet corn milling operations, numerous of them in the U.S. They make different products. You can make almost 30 different products just from corn.

Starches, sweeteners, texturizers, among them as well are things like lysine or phalanine, deomothionine, threanine. These are all things that go into animal feed and help keep the animals healthy and increase their productivity, whether it's eggs or milk or their meat to the quality of their meat. And so these are very kind of unknown but critical things. if you look on the back of any bag of pet food, for example, you'll see almost all of those ingredients named, and they're all made from, you know, in some way,

they're derived from corn processing. So Fufeng is a very large and prominent and politically connected company in China, and they want to come to the U.S. and build a wet corn mill in Grand Forks, North Dakota. And they started that process in middle of 2020. Just to make money, or is there a bigger goal there? I would not put a wet corn mill in Grand Forks, North Dakota, if I had other options available to me.

There's a lot of reasons for that. Availability of the feedstock, which is corn, water concerns as well. But there is something in Grand Forks that continues to seem to be a target of interest for what you would call subnational Chinese influence campaigns, which is trying to work directly with local or city and state leaders without the involvement of the United States government. So these subnational campaigns continue to target Grand Forks, North Dakota, mainly because they have a little known but very important Air Force Base called Grand Forks Air Force Base. So this is, it's certainly from the national speedy side. I'm frightened by this already. But, okay, continue. Yeah, so it's, like I said, from an economic

standpoint, there are a lot of places that, you know, Fufeng allegedly considered in Nebraska or Iowa or Illinois where it would make a lot more sense to put a wet corn mill. But, you know, they down-selected to Grand Forks and the city officials, by and large, of Grand Forks, North Dakota are looking at this purely on its economic merits, whatever they may or may not be, and, you know, really disclaiming or disregarding any sort of potential risks to U.S. national security for a CCP-linked company, establishing itself, you know, 13, 14 miles from this Air Force base. There are bigger economic interests at work in the community

and in the state that you're seeing the state level push for this as well. It's somewhat complex and certainly don't want to bore the listeners, but the Fufing project has sort of looked out as a phase one to dramatically increasing natural gas transmission through the state, allowing the state of North Dakota to drill more, you know, to frack and pull more oil out of the ground so that they don't have, you know, They have caps on how much methane or natural gas they can flare off for their oil production. So utilizing that and piping that natural gas allows them to drill for more oil.

And it also unlocks a much larger economic project, even than the Fufang one, which is the Northern Plains Nitrogen Project in Grand Forge. So you're seeing a lot of these interests on the economic and political side come together and then be harnessed and weaponized and taken advantage of by China subnational. campaign apparatus and really getting American political and economic officials to ultimately do the bidding of what the CCP wants, which is just to put one of their own companies right there next door to an Air Force base. But what do they plan to do with the Air Force Base?

Well, the Air Force Base, you know, there are aspects of the base that are not publicly disclosed in terms of mission sets or things that they do there. there is certainly a role that the base plays from a surveillance and reconnaissance standpoint. It's the primary home for the Arctuphoric Global Hawk Fleet, which is our long-loiter surveillance drones, and those are publicly acknowledged, you know, not revealing anything that's not out there. So those are based out of Grand Forks. It has a major mission set, both from a Space Force side and an Air Force side for management and monitoring of things that go on in the skies above.

whether, you know, a little bit closer to Earth or in outer space. And so you're talking about something that's sending a lot of data up and down and around the world to various U.S. installations and allies. And so being able to co-locate a very low visibility monitoring or even signals capture capability on, you know, the infrastructure of a cornmeal, for example, there's a lot of metal. There's a lot of towers and there's a lot of, you know, just, physical things that would be very easy to sort of lose some low visibility technology and be able to intercept or monitor some of those signals. So it's really not a wise move. And given the push

that the company has on for Grand Forks when they had much better options available to them, economically, it really kind of begins to show us how China and U.S. officials sort of work hand in hand for their own interests instead of the interests of the United States citizens. Wow. Is this happening in other parts of the country? Because I've heard things like this before, that there are other Air Force bases where suspiciously Chinese groups, companies have decided to build or they've bought land. I think in Texas this has actually happen. Do you know of this happening in other parts of the country? Yeah, Texas is the most famous and, you know, God love Kyle Bass and his team and people that he works with for

really blowing the whistle on that and turning it into a major national issue because it needed to be. You had a PLA, People's Liberation Army, which is the military arm of the CCP in China. You had one of their former, a high-level officer in the PLA, come to the U.S., established residency here and begin purchasing, I think by the end of it, he had accrued almost 50,000 acres of land in Texas that was allegedly for a wind farm. But the property was directly in the flight path of and very close to Laughlin Air Force Base in South Texas, which is where we do a lot of our, you know, combat pilot training for the Air Force. So all of the major platforms that the U.S. Air Force operates from a fighter jet standpoint, the F-35, F-22, F-16, F-15, all of those have a

presence there at Laughlin because it's a major training installation. And so we had 50,000 acres of Chinese own land that was right, you know, right adjacent to those properties. So again, a very clear and deliberate, you know, pattern of purchases and commercial deals, you know, that are disguised to mass Chinese involvement or Chinese interest close to our military installations. Wow, this is insane. I mean, there's so much that goes on with the CCP and our government. and even academia. And I remember being very disturbed when it was announced at the end of February that the Biden DOJ is ending a national security initiative aimed at countering China amid complaints

about bias. There was this Trump era program that I guess was investigating Chinese espionage. And because I don't know, there were some people who complained that it was targeting people within the program or it was unfair or it was biased against. to Asian Americans. The Biden administration ended it. Of course, there is this story, which we won't get into with you right now, but we've talked about before with the possible ties between the Biden family and the CCP. And I don't really think this is just a Democrat issue. It also seems like this is a Republican issue as well. And it's just amazing to me that we've allowed this to happen.

Republicans and Democrats have not just allowed our manufacturing to be outsourced to China, but we're actually allowing Chinese groups that are, I'm sure, under the direction of the CCP to do things here on our land that is threatening our national security. And I'm just wondering, like, what is being done about it? We're talking about it, but what is actually being done about it? Like, do you have any optimism there on any of the friends that we're talking about, whether it comes to manufacturing or whether it comes to actually protecting our national security

and not just looking at economic interest when a company from, China comes in and says they want to build something or buy something. Yeah, there is some really good work being done on that. Thank goodness. And, you know, you touched on it. But really one of the most powerful quivers in the CCP, you know, arrows in the CCP's quiver, rather, is this conflating of problems with the CCP as being a racial attack that's directed against, you know, Chinese Americans or Chinese nationals. Oh, yeah. They love that.

And it couldn't be, it couldn't be further from the truth. The CCP does not represent the will of the Chinese people in total. It's a uniparty country. It's a, you know, I think Steve Bannon has somewhat accurately described it as a transnational criminal organization that happens to run, you know, first or second, depending on what metric views, but first or second largest economy in the world. And it's very mafia-like. There's, you know, there's 90 million members of the Chinese Communist Party in a country that has 150 or 1.5 billion people. So very small percentage whereas in the US, you know, we're a two-party system.

But still is a huge number. It is a huge number of party members, you know, by proportion much less than, you know, what we have in America as far as registered Republicans or Democrats, but still a vastly powerful political party and, you know, infrastructure at the top of that country. But having issues with the Chinese Communist parties like saying, well, because I have issues Republican Party, you know, I hate all Americans. And that couldn't be further from the truth. It's, you have issues with the specific faction or group. But they utilize that very, very effectively as a propaganda tool. And you see that pushed. I mean, there's billions of dollars

a year thrown into these influence operations that are part of the United, you know, United Front Work program, which is this huge web of government directed or CCP directed propaganda operations worldwide. Many of them are operating in the U.S. very effectively. And, and influencing the highest levels of our government. So is it a Democrat problem? No. Is it a Republican problem? No, it's an everybody problem, particularly when it comes to D.C. and particularly when it comes to state and local politicians who are, you know, I think easily co-opted by, you know, if I bring this project to town or if I just do this one favor, I just do this one thing. That's going to help my career, help my constituents. It's very easy for us to lie to ourselves

and say we're doing the right thing when there's personal interest on the line. You know, on the Republican side, you've got, you know, I can't think of anybody who's been a bigger advocate over the last 20 to 25 years for the interests of the Chinese Communist Party in the U.S. than Mitch McConnell and his wife, Elaine Chow. And I know those are big words. Oh, yeah. Tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah. Explain that a little bit more. Yeah, so Elaine Chow is the daughter of an individual who owns foremost, you know, founded and owns foremost group. It's one of the more powerful shipping concerns. So they're originally a Taiwanese family,

but very, very closely linked to, in particular, Zhang Jamin, former president of China, who's actually a rival faction to Xi Jinping. But so Elaine Chow's family company, foremost group is very, very, very large, very prominent. Her sister, Angela, was on the board of the Bank of China, is very politically connected. So the McConnell's have a very deep and long history of being very soft on China, being very friendly towards Chinese business interests. And that's on the Republican side. On the Democrat side, you know, pretty famously, you've got Diane Feinstein,

who is probably the most co-opted politician in the U.S. from being a captured interest of China. So we have to get our own house clean in a very real way and get serious about understanding that, you know, our greed at the political level, our desire for good stories to tell, All of that is really something that is used against us very, very effectively by the CCP. When it comes to commentating on this, it does seem like it is almost an exclusively conservative position to point out the problems going on in China with China. It does seem like the left in general, I'm sure that there are many exceptions to this, but in general really don't want to talk about the problems with the CCP like we saw with the Beijing Olympics.

You had NBC and other pundits on other liberal networks basically repeating CCP talking points about how amazing of a job the CCP did or China did in hosting these Olympics and how it was so amazing when a member of, now I'm forgetting, a Uyghur Muslim, like lit the torch at the Olympics. And NBC was like, wow, this is such a monumental moment. they seem to be so much more susceptible to CCP propaganda on the left than we are on the right. And it's strange because obviously I think that Putin is an awful dictator in what he's doing in Ukraine is awful. Yes. But it's strange how quickly, especially people on the left, but a lot of people in the United States immediately, corporations included, condemned everything Russia is doing, put, you know, Ukrainian flags in their. bio and are so quick to highlight the corruption and the depravity that is going on in Russia, which that's fine. But when you ask them about China, what's been going on in China,

the kind of corruption and oppression and abuse, even in Shanghai. We're not seeing a whole lot of commentary from the left on that. And I just think that that is odd. I think that that's, is like a intersectionality thing because Russia is white. They feel like they can criticize them more than they can criticize China. I don't know. But I actually think that it, does the United States in our national security and our interests a disservice when only one half of the country is really willing to talk about that yeah, hey, Russia is bad. But look what's been happening over here under the reign of the CCP. And I just happen to think that the CCP is a lot more powerful than Russia. And the strategies that we're talking about them employing in

the United States, they're also employing in many different countries and poor countries around the world in much more draconian ways throughout Africa and South America truly colonizing them. I don't know. It's just strange to me. It's strange to me that this does become a left-right issue when it comes to people giving their opinions about how dangerous the CCP is. Why do you think that is? Why do you think it just tends to be conservatives who are sounding the alarm about this? Well, you're talking about a bit of an unsquirable circle. And it's an important thing to note. So you're right that by and large the outcry on the left against Russia is. been incredibly loud and, you know, deservedly so. I mean, you're talking about, you know,

one country has invaded another country and war by any measure, regardless of who the actors are involved, is a really horrible, terrible thing. And so war has been visited on Ukraine by Russia. And so that has been, you know, condemned loudly by, you know, a lot of people who are of the, you know, center left or leftist camps in the U.S. And you're right, at the same time, they do everything they can to fall all over themselves to apologize, you know, and run air cover for things that the CCP does in China. And I think a big part of it is, is that China is a, you know, still actively a communist country. It has an authoritarian model and that strain of appreciation for a specific type of authoritarianism that runs through the cultural left of the U.S. There's still very much a

a strong solidarity that a lot of leftist Americans have and progressives have for Marxist-style authoritarianism. And what, you know, Putin's particular type of, you know, gangster capitalism and totalitarianism is probably more aligned a little bit with the way we would think of like, you know, historically rightist, you know, right as fascist movements in Europe, like Nazism or, you know, like the fascist party in Italy. And so there's this, you know, I think reflexive antagonism towards that from the left, but you know, almost a reflexive desire to defend the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.

And at the same time, the third rail of that that nobody wants to acknowledge is the very tight interdependence and cooperation of Russia and China in working against the shared, you know, you know, shared interests of the of Europe and the U.S. So it is a worldview that's full of internal contradictions. I think it's a lot easier just to say against corruption and totalitarianism in whatever form it appears in. So if people are being subjugated and harmed and not the natural rights of man not being respected, that, you know, life, liberty, and happiness, then, you know, we as Americans really do have an obligation to stand against that as well. But like so many other things, you know, we've discussed here that, you know,

and that's discussed elsewhere, these internal contraditions exist largely so that our own, you know, political, you know, needs and economic needs here in the U.S. can be satisfied in whatever way is most convenient. Yeah. I think even on the most superficial level, people associate wrongly, I think, Russia with Trump. They still believe that there was Russian collusion. And so because that was a narrative that was spun for four years, that Trump is in bed with Putin. I think that there are a lot of people on the left who just, that's really as deep as it goes for them.

They just think that, you know, Russia is right-wing. Russia is Trumpist. Trump likes Russia. Everyone on the right likes Russia, which I think there are some weirdos on the right who think that they do like Putin's authoritarianism. But I think that they are definitely the exception. So I think that's as far as it goes for some people. And just to reiterate, what we're both saying is, yes, we can decry what's happening

in Russia. but look, like, let's not turn a blind eye to what's happening in China. And as you mentioned, it's not the Chinese people. It is the CCP. I think there is no greater example of that than what's happening in Shanghai right now. People are locked in their apartments. They're locked in their homes for the past few weeks. Many of them without food and water.

We're talking about children being separated from their parents. If they test positive, if someone in someone's building test positive for COVID, they all have to be quarantined for 14 days. These are people who are stuck in isolation. there's reports of a large number of suicides and, of course, self-harm. And there's been an attempt to protest. But the video is coming out of these police officers just beating these people, taking children away from their parents, beating dogs, putting cats in bags.

I mean, it's just awful. And again, I don't think that it's getting the coverage that it should. I mean, we are talking about a humanitarian crisis just as evil, just as wicked is what is happening in Ukraine. And we should definitely be putting our attention and putting our eyes there. And yet the reaction, unfortunately, for a lot of people here, seems to just be disproportionate. Tell me, I guess just your thoughts on what's happening in Shanghai, but also how is that affecting everything that we're talking about? How is that affecting supply chains? How is that also affecting, I guess, the need of China to present itself, just like American needs to, to present itself as kind of a

stable force that this now their side of the bifurcated world can really rely on, if that makes sense. It does. It's something I've said from the beginning. I think a lot of people bought into the whole narrative that Xi Jinping and the CCP, you know, put out of, you know, zero COVID. And that's the, that's the goal. And some people, you know, bought into and promulgated the whole mandate of heaven thing and the pestilence and disease is a sign that the mandate of heaven is no longer on, you know, Xi Jinping. And it's really not about that. I've said from the beginning that the targeting of Shenzhen, the targeting of Shanghai

for these extremely repressive and in the case of Shanghai, violent and deadly lockdowns, is not about COVID. It's not about the CCP have an egg on its face as COVID continues to spread. COVID is really no worse there than it has been all along. this is 100% about the fact that in October, the party Congress is going to meet again as they do every five years. And Xi Jinping has done everything he can to clear all the roadblocks that exist, you know, legislatively and internally in the Chinese Communist Party. And he's, you know, going to make a run at being elected, you know, essentially president for life. How does this help that?

Well, so Shanghai is the base of power for Jane Chameen, who is, you know, a former, former president of China, who is himself, you know, still a very, very, you know, that faction, the Shanghai gang or the Jameen faction are still very, very, very prominent and powerful in China. And increasingly over the last few years have been the target of corruption probes, the target of anti-businessmen probes, because that is the business class and the financial class of China. It really is, you know, located in and around Shanghai. Historically, that's been their base of power. And the reason for that is that Shanghai is absolutely one of, you know, as a economic region, one of the manufacturing powerhouses of the world.

But it's also the gateway for the Yenksu River, which brings about, I think, 20% of the goods in China transit on the Yanksy River and come out at the port of Shanghai and all the various terminals there. So Shanghai, and is also a very powerful and important transshipment point for global cargoes that, you know, smaller ships that may run. run throughout Asia and along the Chinese coastal waterways bring smaller volumes of cargo and then they get on the huge ships that can load at Shanghai and they come to the U.S. or go to Europe or whatever. So you're talking about a city that, you know, financially, economically, from a manufacturing standpoint, geographically and logistically, is really one of the lynch-pin cities and regions of the world. And the whole thing is completely locked down because the faction that comes from there that's still, you know, that's its base of financial and political power.

as a threat to Xi Jinping into his faction in the October elections. And it almost baffles, you know, or boggles the mind that we're seeing such a overt exercise of authoritarian and dictatorial control over such a massive, you know, economic region and body of people. But that's exactly what we're seeing is this is an output of internal, you know, communist politics in China. It has a devastating impact not only on the residents there in a very real humanitarian way. From a supply chain standpoint, it has a very large impact on the U.S.

You're seeing an awful lot of what is still being manufactured in China and regions that aren't locked down. Can't get out of China because the vessels are stuck there waiting to load or unload. So it's, again, just like so many other things that we've seen, we've got these massive bottlenecks happening at one end of the Pacific Ocean or the other and has significant downstream impact to the U.S. economy because we're not getting the things that we need, whether it's pharmaceuticals or electronics or whatever it may be, because they're stuck in China. If you were to predict how all this is going to unfold over the next year or two, when do things get better? Do they get better? Do they get worse before they get better?

Give us a best case and worst case scenario, and then I've got one final question. Sure. Best case scenario? We start to see this. clear up sometime around the end of, you know, sometime around the end of quarter one, early quarter two, about this time next year. These are the kinds of delays that take months to really clear out and to, you know, to normalize. The tale of this is, you know, potential disruption to Chinese and American companies that don't have the cash flow and financial resources to weather this storm. So you'll see a lot of them go out of business and or get, you know, consolidated into or bought up by larger competitors that have the ability and resources to do that.

So that's the best case scenario. As you see some, you see some companies go away that previously were here, but, you know, trade does continue to somewhat flow. You also see a push towards reshoring. And the U.S. gets, you know, fairly serious about that as an economic and national security matter. The worst case scenario is that we really learn nothing from this. And we put our heads in the sand and say, hey, we'll just. we'll muddle along the best we possibly can and everything eventually will get better. But choosing not to act is, is in fact making a decision.

And it's the wrong decision. My sense is that we will land somewhere in the middle of the two, probably more towards the worst case scenario here. And that we will, you know, unfortunately see a mix of stagflation leading eventually into recession in the U.S. here over the next year to two years. We're already seeing demand destruction happen in the U.S. inventories are growing in the U.S. and ordering from U.S. manufacturers into China is slowing down.

So we're already starting to see the beginning of that. We're going to see home prices begin to level off and possibly even fall here in the next few months where it's been pretty much red-hot going all the way back to the beginning of the Trump administration. So a lot of these things are negative signals for the U.S. economy. But I do believe in America, I do believe in Americans more than I, much more than I believe in our political class.

But I do know some people that are doing, you know, really heroic and amazing things at trying to mitigate and fight back against CCP propaganda and influence and commercial programs in the U.S. I know some people, you know, commerce and treasury in the White House, Department of Defense, and all these other agencies that do take this very seriously. That's good. Yeah. And so that's pain for the short to intermediate time. but I think, I hope and I believe that this will be the time we do learn our lesson.

And by 2030 and into 2035, you know, certainly my children and everybody else's children who are elementary and junior high and high school age will, I think, really begin to see the fruits of that and have very, very good and prosperous adult lives as we come out of this period. Wow, I hope so. That is very optimistic. I think that's what we're all thinking. There are so many moms that listen to this podcast. And that's what we're most worried about what is this world, what is this country going to look like by 2030 by 2035? And I hope that your vision is right. And I hope that your optimism is right.

We all want to feel that too. What can the average person do? We don't work in logistics. We don't work in politics. We don't work in the White House. What can the average person do to push back against some of the stuff that we're talking about? At the local level.

And I have to really give a shout out as it were to a lot of the amazing people in Grand Forks, North Dakota, with this Fufang project and its impact on the community, they are really modeling exactly what I hope every community who runs into these projects. You know, not all of them are going to be as, you know, big on the order of half a billion dollars as the Fufing project is in Grand Forks, but, you know, in ways large and small, what we're seeing up there is as a group of committed and resilient and dedicated individuals, put their time and money and effort into saying, no, this is wrong. Here's why it's wrong. And they're using every, you know, legal and political and economic means at their disposal

to push back. And my goodness, that's just inspiring. It's really the first time. Is it working? It is working. It is working. I think, I think when we're going to, you know, we look back in a year and that project is not going to have moved forward. It's going to be stalled or completely dead in the water. And that's, that's 99.9% due to the effort. of the citizens of Grand Forks that are organizing and rallying. And so in that way, what's happening there is very much for, in my view, a model for what people can do in their and their local and county communities at the state level is identifying when these things are, you know, it's sort of the old, if you see something,

say something, you know, these sketchy projects are everywhere. And if people just use their common sense and dig a little bit and use the resources that are easily available and the biggest thing is to not have fear and to ask the questions that make city council members and mayors and economic development people uncomfortable, put them on the spot and make them answer for the ways in which, you know, U.S. states and communities have sort of become these vectors of Chinese influence against the United States interests. Yes.

So pay attention, ask questions. Absolutely. Dig. Organize. Raise a respectful ruckus, as we like to say on this podcast. Hold the people in charge accountable. It doesn't matter. Republican Democrat. Republicans are very susceptible, I think, to economic deals because we,

you know, I mean, we want a good economy, of course. Everyone wants more money circulating in your economy and that's a good thing. But it's not a good economy at all cost. A good economy has to be defined by more than just more dollars, more than just a transaction. And so I am so encouraged by what you are seeing in North Dakota with that community. there, and I do encourage people to look more into it themselves and try to model any efforts in your own community after that. Well, Ross, thank you so much. You left us on a positive note last time, even though we're talking about pretty complex and kind of sometimes depressing things. I do appreciate your optimistic outlook. Thank you so much. How can people follow you and support

you? So really the two main ways are ones on Twitter. I'm at man underscore integrated. And then Fortis Analysis.substack.com. The link's also in my Twitter bio. And you'll occasionally see things reposted on Zero Hedge and a few other places. Epic Times is another one that's been a really kind and generous platform as far as allowing me to help speak on some of these things. So it's out there. And certainly my messages are widely open. And a lot of people in ways large and small take advantage of that opportunity.

and I try to be as generous as I can with my time and information. Certainly this isn't about money. It's just trying to help people, you know, learn and live a little bit better. You know, here's Americans. Yeah, and I appreciate that so much. Thank you, Ross. Thank you, ma'am. Hey, this is Steve Day.

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