Communist leader Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, aka Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, is reputed to have said, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."
Whether Lenin said this or not, the message is prophetic. For the sake of cheap labor, some large corporations in America are selling the United States down the river, and they have the cooperation of President Joe Biden's administration in doing so. This is the 2021 version of "The Devil and Daniel Webster," except, this time, "Old Scratch" is not Satan; it's the People's Republic of China.
For years, the PRC has been stealing -- mostly from the U.S. -- technologies it needs to gain economic and military superiority over America and our Western allies. Under the Biden administration, China need not trouble itself with stealing. American companies are licensing critical technologies to the PRC and contracting with Chinese companies to manufacture essential goods. The previous administration took a strong stand against China's efforts to gain world dominance economically and militarily, but the Biden administration seems either unconcerned about the issue or at a loss as to what to do about it.
One example of an American company making a deal with the devil is the establishment of a new, wholly owned, onshore mutual-fund business in the PRC by BlackRock, an American investment firm in New York City. This is a classic example of letting a fox guard the proverbial hen house.
Access to America's economic hen house is through Wall Street, and BlackRock just gave the PRC a key to the gate. Giving Xi Jinping's PRC access to Wall Street gives "America's number one adversary" access to invaluable data about our nation's businesses, information which will be used to gain advantage over American firms and undermine our economy. We warn of this kind of thing, "unarmed warfare," in our book, "We Didn't Fight For Socialism: America's Veterans Speak Up."
On the subject of warfare, those who doubt the PRC's ability to reverse engineer the technologies it licenses and steals from the U.S. should consider its development of a hypersonic nuclear missile. A hypersonic missile travels at more than five times the speed of sound, making a "swarm" of these weapons impossible to interdict by current U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile defense systems. In congressional hearings, the Pentagon has warned China launched such a missile in August 2021. The U.S. currently has no defense against such a missile and is far behind developing our own hypersonic missiles or defenses against them.
The PRC's next step in their strategy for becoming the world's strongest superpower is the semiconductor industry. The PRC is now stealing and "licensing" skills necessary to rapidly develop its own advanced microchips and semiconductors.
These are the most essential components in all electronic devices from toasters to trucks, autos and military hardware, including hypersonic missiles.
The PRC currently manufactures semiconductors, but it relies on Western technologies to do so. China must import most of the equipment and materials needed to produce microchips. Much of this essential technology comes from the U.S. The PRC's near-term inability to manufacture these devices in sufficient quality and quantity is just one more reason the Chinese Communist Party is casting covetous glances at Taiwan. Together, Taiwan and South Korea manufacture more than 70% of the world's semiconductors.
Jinping's hypersonic missiles and his goal of having the PRC dominate global semiconductor production didn't make it on the agenda at last week's G-20 "hydrocarbon summit" in Rome. He didn't bother to attend.
Oliver L. North is a combat-decorated U.S. Marine, No.1 bestselling author, founder and CEO of Fidelis Publishing LLC and Fidelis Media LLC. Find out more about him at www.olivernorth.com. David Goetsch is a Marine Corps veteran, member of the Florida Veteran's Hall of Fame, professor of business, Christian counselor, and author of 77 books. Find out more about him at www.david-goetsch.com. Get the full story in "We Didn't Fight for Socialism: America's Veterans Speak Up" at barnesandnoble.com or amazon.com.