Free Republic

A 22-year-old University of Waterloo student made 24 trips across the U.S. border to covertly map critical airport infrastructure for a suspected Chinese intelligence handler. According to a 19-page FBI affidavit filed in federal court, Chinese citizen Weiheng Zeng was arrested at the Ambassador Bridge in August 2026. Surveillance cameras at Chicago O’Hare previously caught him climbing forklifts, walking fence lines, and trying to open locked shipping containers at a FedEx facility. He carried out a similar operation at Toronto Pearson airport after being confronted inside by an employee. To evade North American surveillance, Zeng used a dedicated Huawei phone...

A US citizen and scholar who vanished shortly after traveling to China has been designated as ‘wrongfully detained.’ Min Zin, a Myanmar scholar, was invited to Yunnan by a professor to attend a workshop on economic cooperation. But after landing on June 3, he suddenly disappeared, the Wall Street Journal reported. Min Zin sent his family a text in the afternoon: 'Just landed in Kunming.' They say they have not been in contact with him since he sent the message. On June 5, Sylvia, Min Zin’s wife, was told by the US Consulate in Guangzhou that he had been detained...

President Donald Trump has a simple proposition for Chinese automakers: if they want American customers, build the factory here and hire American workers.I understand the appeal.Trump said Saturday that he would be comfortable with Chinese companies manufacturing cars in the United States as long as they employ Americans. He contrasted that with Chinese manufacturers building vehicles in Mexico and shipping them north across the border.From Reuters:"If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, I'd be okay with that," Trump said in an interview on the Fox News program "The Ingraham Angle.""Japan does it,...

A Customs and Border Protection supervisor assigned to the Maine-Canada border has been arrested and charged after FBI agents say he was caught on hidden camera tearing apart government computers, ripping out processors and memory, stuffing in cheaper parts, and plugging the machines back into CBP’s network. Terry “Jiajia” Liu, 39, of Calais, Maine, described himself as a native of Guangzhou, China. He worked as a CBP supervisor at the Calais Port of Entry, with duties stretching to the Ferry Point and Milltown crossings. CBP officers are required to be U.S. citizens. According to The Maine Wire, Liu has posted...

Chinese entities supplied Iran with satellite images of an air base in Jordan before and after a deadly missile strike that killed three US service members, according to a report. The US has “connected” the high-resolution satellite imagery of Muwaffaq Salti Air Base to Iran’s July 17 ballistic missile attack on the facility, US officials told the Wall Street Journal. The officials declined to identify the Chinese companies that allegedly provided the images to Iran and didn’t accuse the Chinese government of direct involvement. The missile attack, which targeted a housing area on the base, killed Army Sgt. Angel S....

I have any number of issues with the number of Chinese nationals in this country getting caught for doing any manner of 'janky s**t,' as the man who should be LA's mayor calls truly questionable behavior. Our universities are packed to the gills with foreign-paying Chinese students who are all the children of party members. They wouldn't be allowed out of the country otherwise, for one thing, and for another, they probably wouldn't have had the hundreds of thousands in tuition to attend at full out-of-state rates. And they're all chemists and engineers - no basketweaving 'psychology majors' in that...

President Trump’s administration just landed a major blow against the industrial-scale scam networks stealing from Americans. In one coordinated operation, federal authorities restrained more than $52 million in cryptocurrency, sanctioned a Chinese-language criminal marketplace and helped foreign partners dismantle 13 Chinese-run scam compounds in Madagascar. This was not a small cybercrime bust. It was a strike at the infrastructure that allows fraud rings to recruit workers, build fake investment platforms, move stolen money and prey on victims across the world. The target at the center of the operation was Xinbi Guarantee, a Telegram-based marketplace that the Treasury Department says has...

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials appointed Sen. Mitch McConnell’s wife to multiple government positions, many of which partially overlapped with her two U.S. Cabinet posts, according to Chinese government and state media reports unearthed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Elaine Chao, who married the Kentucky Republican in 1993, has held numerous U.S. government positions since the 1980s, including serving as Department of Labor (DOL) secretary throughout President George W. Bush’s tenure and as Department of Transportation (DOT) secretary during President Donald Trump’s first term. After resigning from the Trump administration in January 2021, Chao then served on the board...

Roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm have quietly tried to influence Americans to oppose AI data centers on social media, X said Thursday night. Why it matters: The U.S. and China are racing to build the world's most advanced AI systems — and it appears Chinese propaganda has infiltrated American circles with the hope of slowing the U.S. down. Driving the news: The X Safety team probed suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified 200,000 accounts, including 200 accounts "posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy,"...

Cybersecurity researchers have found surveillance backdoors in Chinese carrier routers made by Zbtlink and the same software in a different Zbtlink-made router sold through Amazon. Chinese law requires telecom and internet companies to provide technical assistance to police and state-security agencies. In an Aug. 27 report, cybersecurity firm VulnCheck said it found two hidden programs in an $88 router bought through Amazon from a U.S. seller. One, which the researchers named Speakingstone, sends information about the router to a remote server and can receive instructions to redirect internet traffic, obtain login credentials, or take control of the device. The second,...

The U.S.–Canada trade talks broke down on Aug. 21. Although both sides hold completely different views, they agreed on two common dealbreakers: bilateral coordination on Canada’s future trade deals with third countries and how deep tariff-rate cuts should go across sectors like autos, steel, and aluminum. A third, exempting U.S. companies from having to feature French-language content on streaming platforms, was resolved on Aug. 27 when the United States dropped the demand. Analysts say both sides share one other thing: the China factor, which neither names but looms over both positions.Neither the Canadian Prime Minister Carney nor U.S. Trade Representative...

China has removed two top generals from its highest military command body and expelled two other senior commanders from a Communist Party-controlled legislature, as turbulence continues within the upper echelon of the country's armed forces.Once China's No. 1 general, Zhang Youxia, has been removed from the national Central Military Commission (CMC), according to a brief statement issued by the National People's Congress Standing Committee via state media Xinhua on Aug. 28.The statement didn't offer any reason for the swift dismissal of Zhang, who had served as vice chair of the national CMC since 2018.Zhang, also a member of the Chinese...

The Global Government Affairs team over at X dropped a bombshell Thursday night, revealing that the X Safety team had uncovered proof positive of a foreign influence campaign targeting the build out of AI and data centers in the United States. It turns out that, after launching an investigation, the team uncovered a massive bot farm consisting of roughly 200,000 "suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts," including hundreds that appear to have been trying to manipulate debate in the U.S. over artificial intelligence, data centers, and the associated energy costs. ... According to X, about 200 accounts within the bot farm network...

A 20-year-old Chinese researcher dressed in a red crayfish costume has become a symbol of Beijing’s ambition. At a scientific conference in Paris last fall, he explained that he was working on an important project. His plans would enable his country’s astronauts to prepare spicy crayfish soup, a Chinese favorite, on Mars. “That’s what we’re competing with. The vibe is good in Beijing,” Drew Endy, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, said in evidence to a Senate hearing last month. The hearing examined whether the US is losing its innovation advantage to China. Concerned senators saw the big red...

A government watchdog group is urging lawmakers to crack down on foreign money flowing into U.S. nonprofits that influence American politics and public policy, according to letters exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.Americans for Public Trust (APT) is sending letters to all 50 governors and officials on six congressional committees directing them to its newly launched FollowForeignMoney.org database, which has cataloged a running total of more than $5 billion flowing from foreign governments, foreign nationals and foreign charities into U.S.-based nonprofits .... The group is calling on state and federal officials to examine whether existing laws adequately prevent...

A ⁠robot ran the 100m in 9.32 seconds at the World Humanoid Robot Games on Saturday, beating Usain Bolt’s record. The machine reached a peak velocity of 14.5 meters per second during a test run before running face-first into a wall. The robot, named Lightning and developed by Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor, outran Bolt’s 9.58-second record set 17 years ago at the World Athletics Championship. The red and black humanoid also won the Beijing half marathon in April in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, surpassing the men’s world record set by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo earlier this year. Researchers later increased...

AI-powered cyberattacks are already here. Quantum computing could soon break the encryption underpinning the modern economy.

Peter Daszak, who as president of EcoHealth Alliance directed government funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, thanked a former Fauci aide in newly-released emails for helping shut down public speculation over the possibility that Covid-19 emerged from a lab. David Morens, a former senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to hiding federal records from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests during the Covid-19 pandemic. Investigators obtained emails between Daszak and Morens in which Daszak mentioned sending bottles of wine to Morens and thanked him for his “behind the scenes shenanigans.”...

Guo Degang was accused of “violating public order and good customs” after changing the lyrics of a classic Chinese revolutionary song during a recent performance.Prominent Chinese comedian Guo Degang has come under investigation after improvising new lyrics to a well-known revolutionary song, with a complaint accusing him of violating “social order and good customs”. The incident spotlights the fine line performers in China must navigate between creative licence and political sensitivities, amid Beijing’s continued emphasis on ideological discipline. Guo changed the lyrics of Playing My Beloved Pipa during a Peking opera adaptation of Ji Gong, a legendary Chinese Buddhist...

Unitree Robotics shares rose 542% in early trading Wednesday as the Chinese humanoid robot maker made its stock market debut in Shanghai. The Hangzhou-based robot maker, whose backflipping and dancing machines have drawn global attention, raised about 6.1 billion yuan ($905 million) in its IPO, according to its prospectus. Shares rose to 968.1 yuan apiece, after hitting as high as 1,100 yuan earlier. The IPO also drew backing from Chinese AI company DeepSeek, which invested about 140.8 million yuan, according to a company filing. Unitree’s existing investors also include Chinese tech giant Tencent. Unitree’s product lineup spans bipedal humanoid robots...