• CHINA WATCHChina 'Spy Balloon:' Why Doesn't the Pentagon Shoot It Down?

    By Zulfikar Abbany

    Espionage is all about secrets — keeping and revealing them. But here’s what we can say about the alleged spy balloon.

  • CHINA WATCHWhen Could a College or a University Hosting a Confucius Institute Receive DOD Funding?

    A new report proposes a set of criteria for the U.S. Department of Defense to consider in developing a waiver process that would potentially allow U.S. institutions of higher education to receive DOD funding while hosting a Confucius Institute.

  • CHINA WATCHHow Chinese Companies Are Challenging National Security Decisions That Could Delay 5G Network Rollout

    By Ming Du

    In many countries, governments have decided to block Chinese companies from participating in building communication infrastructure in their countries because of national security concerns.  Chinese companies and investors often refuse to take such national security changes lying down. With varying degrees of success, firms have mounted a range of formal and informal challenges in recent years.

  • CHINA WATCHHow China’s Maritime Militia Takes Advantage of the Grey Zone

    By Masaaki Yatsuzuka

    In recent years, China has used paramilitary forces to put pressure on neighboring countries that have conflicting claims with Beijing. Japan has been one of the targets over which China seeks to gain dominance by deliberately creating grey-zone situations at sea.

  • UFOs2022 UFO Report Released by U.S. Intelligence Community

    The 2022 UFO report says that 510 objects were reported – they include 144 objects previously reported and 366 new sightings. Most of both the old and new cases were determined, after analysis, to exhibit “unremarkable characteristics.”

  • THE RUSSIA CONNECTIONWas George Santos Groomed to be a Russian Agent?

    By Ben Frankel

    Among the multitude of lies and falsehoods newly elected Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) has concocted, the most intriguing item – and likely the source of Santos’s most serious potential legal trouble – are his campaign finances. What is especially noticeable, and disturbing, are the generous contributions Santos has received from Viktor Vekselberg, one of Vladimir Putin’s wealthiest and most influential courtiers. “For all we know,” writes one commentator, “some foreign power may have bought itself a congressman. This isn’t outlandish speculation.”

  • CHINA WATCHChina Launches WTO Dispute Over U.S. Chip Export Controls

    By Lin Feng Liam Scott

    Capping a year of increasing tension between Washington and Beijing over advanced chips used in everything from smartphones to weapons of mass destruction, China has initiated a trade dispute at the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the United States for imposing wide-ranging semiconductor export controls on China.

  • ARGUMENT: CHINA WATCHNew Bill Proposes Banning TikTok in the U.S.

    Both the administration and Congress have moved to limit, or even ban, TikTok in the United States because of worries about China using the Chinese-owned platform to gather personal data on millions of Americans. Justin Sherman writes that “all told, it is a noteworthy piece of legislation, and it delineates between the risk of data access and the risk of content manipulation better than then-President Trump’s executive order on TikTok.”

  • CHINA WATCHU.K. Removes China from Sizewell C Nuclear Plant as Tensions Grow

    London has stripped Chinese firm CGN of its stake in the nuclear plant. British lawmakers were visiting Taiwan and China’s London ambassador was summoned over the alleged assault of a BBC reporter as tensions mount.

  • NORTH KOREAGermany Did Research with North Korea -- Despite UN Sanctions

    By Esther Felden

    Kim Jong Un wants to modernize his nuclear weapons. To stop him, the UN has banned research collaboration with North Korea. One Berlin institute continued to collaborate with North Korea on research projects — without flagging the risks.

  • R&D SECURITY“Safeguarding Science” Toolkit to Help U.S. Research Enterprise Guard Against Threats

    The National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) and its partners announced a unique collaboration between elements of the U.S. intelligence and scientific communities to help the U.S. research enterprise mitigate the broad spectrum of risk it faces from nation-state, criminal, and other threat actors.

  • JFK ASSASSINATION: 59 YEARS ONWho Was Lee Harvey Oswald?

    By Melissa De Witte

    Fifty-nine years ago yesterday, 22 November, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, was himself killed two days later in a Dallas police station by Jack Ruby, a local nightclub owner. A new book by Paul Gregory, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, recounts the author’s experiences knowing Oswald.

  • THE RUSSIA CONNECTIONAmerican Investor Known for Russian Nightclub Died of “Blunt Force Injuries” Due to Fall

    By Todd Prince and Mike Eckel

    An American stockbroker who made a fortune in the Russian market in the 1990s and 2000s and later co-founded a posh Moscow nightclub before leaving the country died of blunt force injuries suffered as a result of a fall from a Washington, D.C. building.

  • CHINA WATCHGermany’s China Policy: Has It Learned from Its Dependency on Russia?

    By Liana Fix

    The German economy remains heavily dependent on China, its largest trading partner, despite mounting geopolitical tensions between the West and Beijing.

  • CHINA WATCHFBI Says It has ‘National Security Concerns’ About TikTok

    By Masood Farivar

    FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday that the bureau has “national security concerns” about popular short-form video hosting app TikTok. The FBI’s concerns about TikTok include “the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users.”