Pompeo Warns of China’s Hidden Influence in America

It sounds like an episode of “The Americans” or a best-selling Tom Clancy novel. But when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo looked into the faces of 40 governors and warned them that China had infiltrated their states, he wasn’t kidding.

They’re hiding in the shadows of our schools, our lobbying meetings, even our business dinners. And no one, he said evenly, knows it’s happening.

“These aren’t hypotheticals,” Pompeo insisted. “We’ve allowed this to continue without a deep awareness from the American people.”

And what is “this,” exactly? According to top State Department officials, we’re talking about a massive network of Chinese communists fanned out across the country with one goal: penetrate U.S. security, education, and financial systems—then, create chaos.

“It’s happening in your state,” Pompeo insisted, “with consequences for our foreign policy, for the citizens who reside in your states, and indeed for each of you … The Chinese government has been methodical in the way it’s analyzed our system … It’s assessed our vulnerabilities, and it’s decided to exploit our freedoms to gain advantage over us at the federal level, the state level, and the local level.”

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[Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a former United States Army officer, was a member of the US House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017, and was Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from January 2017 until April 2018.]