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[0] A new investigation by Peter Schweitzer and the Government Accountability Institute documents China's strategy of what it calls disintegration warfare against the United States.
[1] Powerful Chinese governmental and business entities, Schweitzer's new investigative book, Blood Money Claims, are deliberately fueling America's fentanyl crisis, promoting radical ideology, and influencing American politicians in order to weaken the West.
[2] In this episode, we talked with Schweitzer about what he warns is a multifacisting, a threat to the U .S. that's already done severe damage.
[3] I'm Daily Wire, editor -in -chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
[4] It's Saturday, March 9th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.
[5] Joining us now to discuss his new book, Blood Money, which shines an alarming light on China's attempt to engage in what they call disintegration warfare against the U .S. is best -selling author Peter Schweitzer.
[6] Peter, thank you for coming on.
[7] Absolutely.
[8] Great to be with you.
[9] Now, what you lay out in blood money is clearly sending some shockwaves through many circles.
[10] Let's start big picture with the premise of the book.
[11] What did your research about China's relationship to the U .S. lead you to conclude?
[12] I think there's two stages to the story, John, and it really, I think, is best demonstrated by a picture.
[13] The picture, I think, is America's on fire.
[14] There's a lot of things going on, a lot of turmoil.
[15] America's on fire.
[16] China's holding an empty can of gasoline.
[17] And some of our leaders are aware of it, and they're not saying anything.
[18] So it's really about two things.
[19] Number one, China has a strategy called disintegration warfare, which is designed to literally disintegrate the United States, get us to turn on each other, social division, social chaos, death, et cetera.
[20] But the second part of the equation is that our political class in Washington really has not talked about it and will not confront China on these points.
[21] Those, I think, are the two important elements to this story.
[22] want to ask you more about both of those claims in a second, but first, you make a point of emphasizing that every claim in your book is backed up by verifiable documentation and sources, and indeed the footnotes run some 100 pages.
[23] You're famous for digging up information no one else was able to find.
[24] What were some key materials that you unearthed for this book?
[25] Yeah, we made use of a lot of leaked documents from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, Department of Justice.
[26] We also made use of documents that were hacked, not by us, but were hacked by other parties that were released by journalists in Mexico.
[27] These are internal communications from the Mexican police.
[28] And what we find is that these materials can be very valuable, especially if you know what you're looking for.
[29] A lot of times when hacked materials or leaked materials are released thousands of pages, people are looking for low -hanging fruit.
[30] We find it much better and you can be more successful by actually going in knowing what you're looking for, knowing that you're panning for gold so you know where to look for the gold.
[31] So those were very, very important tools.
[32] And then the third component was materials and documents from China itself.
[33] We were able to get access to, not classified by any means, but restricted Chinese military documents and government documents from the Ministry of Propaganda.
[34] We got access to those by essentially spoofing an account, a domestic account with the domestic Chinese phone number that we really didn't actually have to gain access to documents that gave us very interesting insights into what they are saying about TikTok.
[35] And it's quite different, obviously, than the debate we're having in the United States.
[36] You know, I found it really striking in the introduction to the book where you described the influential documents for the Chinese military that lay out a strategy and talk about this disintegration warfare.
[37] Can you unpack some of the information you learned from those Chinese military documents?
[38] Yeah, I mean, disintegration warfare, which is a book, published in 2010, and there's been all sorts of follow -on reports and pronouncements from President G and others, is predicated on the idea that, you know, the best way to defeat your enemy is by not fighting them.
[39] In other words, you are the supreme strategist, as Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese scholar would have said, the supreme strategist is the one who defeats his enemy without actually firing a shot.
[40] And that's the strategy.
[41] I think, you know, we focus on aircraft carriers and missiles with regard to the military bounce with China, and I'm not saying we should neglect that, but that's not their play.
[42] Their play is to look at our weaknesses, what they call our soft underbelly, which are divisions that we have in this country, and to exploit it, to turn American against American, to play off of our decadence.
[43] And I would say the strategy is working quite successfully.
[44] If you just look at fentanyl, for example, it's now the leading cause of death for people under the age of 45 in the United States.
[45] The vast majority of people dying don't even know they're taking fentanyl.
[46] And this is a Chinese operation.
[47] People want to talk about the Mexican cartels.
[48] They're really the junior partners in this.
[49] The Chinese are running this along every link in the chain.
[50] And yet, this is a strategy that they call a murder with a borrowed knife.
[51] In other words, try to kill somebody, but use somebody else's knife to do it.
[52] So while our focus is on Mexico and the drug cartels.
[53] This is actually a Chinese operation designed to undermine us.
[54] It's a great example of disintegration warfare.
[55] In blood money, you track how China controls every chain in the production delivery and even the money laundering involved with fentanyl.
[56] Can you describe some of that process?
[57] Yeah.
[58] Fentanyl starts with precursors in China.
[59] A lot of people know that China provides the vast majority of the precursors that the cartels use to make fentanyl.
[60] But what people probably don't know was those precursors are shipped 90 % of them to a port in Mexico called Manzanillo.
[61] And people wonder, why can't they stop it in this port?
[62] Well, the problem is the international terminal run in Mexico in Manzanio is actually run by a Chinese company that's close to the Chinese military.
[63] So the precursors come in from China.
[64] They're then shipped to a small city in northern Mexico where, according to our federal government, there are 2 ,000 Chinese nationals.
[65] just happen to live in this Mexican city that basically create the fentanyl out of these precursors.
[66] They do it for the cartels.
[67] Now that the cartels have the fentanyl, they need to put them into pill form because, again, people that are dying from fentanyl overdoses, they think they're taking a Vicodin or an Adderall.
[68] They're actually taking a look -alike pill that is laced with fentanyl.
[69] So they need pill presses.
[70] Where do the cartels get the pill presses?
[71] Well, those are imported from China.
[72] And according to the Department of Homeland Security, the Chinese are selling these to the drug cartels at cost, meaning they're not trying to make a boatload of money.
[73] They're selling it to the cartels at cost.
[74] They have little molds that make them look exactly like the real pills, even though they're fake pills.
[75] They now have the pills, John.
[76] They need to distribute them in the United States.
[77] If you're a drug cartel, you need secure communications.
[78] So what do the Mexican cartels use?
[79] They use Chinese apps and Chinese communication devices.
[80] They're encrypted in China, and they know that the Chinese will not share those with U .S. law enforcement.
[81] And then the final component is if you are a drug cartel like the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico and you've made all this money, you have to launder the money.
[82] Now, in the old days of cocaine, you would have laundered this in Latin American banks.
[83] Today, the cartels are laundering their money in Chinese state -owned banks.
[84] And according again to our federal government, they are oftentimes using Chinese students in the United States on education.
[85] visas to do so.
[86] So again, the cartels are the junior partners here.
[87] This is a Chinese operation.
[88] Unbelievable.
[89] One more question about the Chinese connection to these drug cartels.
[90] You also outlined some other ways that they're sowing chaos in the U .S., including through the illegal gun trade.
[91] Can you speak to that process?
[92] Yeah, there's a very small device called an auto sear switch or sometimes called a Glock switch.
[93] Highly illegal in the United States, you have to have a very, very, very specific permit to get it.
[94] It's hard to get.
[95] And the reason is that this very small device, if you attach it to a Glock handgun, it turns a Glock handgun into an automatic machine gun.
[96] One pull of the trigger and you empty the magazine.
[97] And you can put a 50 -round drum magazine on this handgun.
[98] And now you've got a machine gun.
[99] And beginning in 2018, the Chinese were smuggling these into the United States.
[100] They would sell them on Alibaba and other Chinese language sites.
[101] They would be written, advertised in English.
[102] But according to the federal government, the Department of Homeland Security, these were specifically marketed by the Chinese to criminal gangs and felons and drug cartels operating in the United States.
[103] And as a result of this, John, the amount of machine gun fire in the United States in America's cities is risen by some 5 ,000 percent over the last five years.
[104] And again, this is to sow chaos.
[105] It so's chaos.
[106] And of course, what China does as they run stories on Chinese state media about look at all the crazy chaos in America.
[107] You can hear the machine gun fire in the streets.
[108] Of course, they never disclose that they're actually the ones that distributed those and continue to distribute those to criminal gangs operating in the United States.
[109] And again, is the money actually the motivator here?
[110] How much money can you make off these criminals or gangs?
[111] Or is this really about sewing chaos?
[112] It seems like the latter is the truth.
[113] Yeah, I think it's mostly about chaos.
[114] You know, it's interesting.
[115] about making the money, as our customs department has gotten better about intercepting these when they're sent by mail to criminal gangs from China, what they've done now is these companies of China have basically sold equipment to the drug cartels in Mexico, and they're starting now to produce these Glock switches, and they're smuggling them across the southern border into the United States.
[116] So it doesn't seem to be a monetary issue.
[117] It seems to be a chaos issue.
[118] And let's remember, there were several instances in the 1990s where the Chinese were caught trying to smuggle fully automatic AK -47s into the United States through the port of Long Beach and elsewhere.
[119] Those were pretty famous cases.
[120] In those instances, they were actually large guns.
[121] The beauty or the scary thing about these devices is they're very small, and there are, you know, thousands, if not millions of Glock handguns in the United States.
[122] So it really is a frightening scenario.
[123] So as with fentanyl, very hard to track.
[124] Now, you also followed the money on China's influence on social justice activism here in the U .S. I found this particularly interesting and eye -opening.
[125] This includes the transgender movement in the United States.
[126] What did you learn on that front?
[127] Yeah, this was the most surprising finding that I had because I didn't expect it.
[128] But what we found was that two of the biggest funders of the trans movement in the United States are billionaires based in China.
[129] which is kind of a shocking thing when you look at it.
[130] And what's particularly surprising about this, John, is that these two billionaires do not advocate for these issues in China itself.
[131] One of them is an American named Roy Singham.
[132] He sold his company ThoughtWorks to a investment fund that's partly owned by the Chinese government.
[133] That made him a billionaire.
[134] He's long time been sympathetic to the CCP.
[135] And when he made his billion plus dollars, he promptly moved to China, which is where he now lives.
[136] He's friends with CCP officials.
[137] He gets invited to their events.
[138] He advocates for them.
[139] But he's also poured more than $160 million into radical causes in the United States, including the transgender movement.
[140] And again, he is not advocating for these views in China itself.
[141] The second one is a guy named Joe Tsai.
[142] Joe Sai is actually from Taiwan, but what connects him to China is that he was a co -founder and is the current chairman of Alibaba, which is the Amazon of China, one of China's biggest, most successful companies, Joe Tsai is worth probably $25 to $30 billion.
[143] He has poured tens of millions of dollars into this cause in the United States.
[144] And again, he's not transgender, doesn't seem to have any family members that are transgender, and certainly is not pushing for these ideas in China.
[145] So that to me is another example of social chaos at work.
[146] If you truly believe, in these issues, you would be advocating for them everywhere, especially in a place like China where it's far less open than it is in the United States.
[147] But the fact that it's one -sided leads me to believe that this is part of this destabilization effort.
[148] Several prominent political figures make appearances in this book.
[149] And you paint a very troubling picture about their attempts to basically maintain status quo with Chinese government and business operations.
[150] You name political figures from both sides of the aisle.
[151] Let's start from the top, Joe Biden.
[152] What did you find in terms of his ties to China?
[153] Yeah, we first exposed in 2018 the fact that the Biden family was getting money from China, and we've now got a House Oversight Committee, of course, investigating that, and they're confirming what we had reported earlier, which is tens of millions of dollars have flowed to the Bidens.
[154] What makes it particularly troubling and that we add to the story in blood money is that the Bidens actually are one degree separated from the actual fentanyl trade itself.
[155] The Sinaloa cartel in Mexico are the kings of fentanyl.
[156] They are the ones that are responsible for bringing more this poison to America than anyone else.
[157] It has widely been reported in Mexico that they were set up as the kings of fentanyl by a Chinese criminal syndicate called UBG, which is headed by a gangster named Zhang Anlo, who's, of course, close to the CCP.
[158] He goes by the nickname White Wolf.
[159] So White Wolf is the head of the criminal gang that set up the Kings of Fentanol in Mexico.
[160] White Wolf has a business partner named Yang Yimin who gave the Biden's $5 million in an interest -free, forgivable loan in 2017, which they have never paid back.
[161] So think about that.
[162] There is one man, Yang Anli, who sent this money to the Bidens, that's one degree of separation between this fentanyl trade and the Biden family.
[163] And I think that's one of the reasons Joe Biden simply will not confront China on this issue.
[164] He says when he meets Wajid that he raises the issue, but he's always quick to say there's no finger pointing involved.
[165] Finger pointing is exactly what needs to be taking place.
[166] But he doesn't want to have this conversation, I believe, because these entanglements would create a very embarrassing blowback to him and to his family.
[167] And you make a point of stressing that you're not saying that Joe Biden and these other political figures are directly benefiting from the sale of fentanyl or something like that, but that these entanglements are making them less likely to take action.
[168] Is that correct?
[169] Yes, that's correct.
[170] Yeah, I'm not suggesting they're involved in the trade.
[171] They're profiting from the trade.
[172] But again, it's too close for comfort, I think, because if you start saying we need to crack down on these Chinese criminal gangs, we need to sanction these guys.
[173] I mean, the Biden administration has a strategy of sanctioning individuals involved in the fentanyl trade.
[174] And some Chinese officials have been sanctioned, but they joke about it.
[175] But curiously, White Wolf, Zhang Anlo, the head of this gang who's set up.
[176] the Sinaloa cartel has not been sanctioned by the Biden administration.
[177] And again, I don't think it's because they're profiting personally from it, but they have received millions of dollars from people who are business partners with these criminals.
[178] So sort of a soft blackmail is one way of perceiving this.
[179] Yeah, I think that's a very, very good word for it.
[180] And look, the sanctions, Joe Biden says his strategy to deal with fentanyl or these sanctions, they laugh about this.
[181] There was a Chinese businessman named Juan, WAN, who was sanctioned by the Biden administration saying, you know, you can't do business in the United States because you're tied to the fentanyl trade.
[182] Three months after he was sanctioned, he was given an award by the CCP.
[183] And he gave a rousing speech talking about how he and other criminal gangs were united in helping China defeat the United States.
[184] So, you know, what he is saying, his hard action is against China.
[185] They're just laughing at.
[186] A couple more people.
[187] Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California.
[188] You also uncovered some details about him.
[189] I think I heard you say that you were actually a little bit surprised by the degree of connection or links to China there.
[190] Can you explain some of that for us?
[191] Yeah, I mean, Gavin Newsom has had a long association in multiple ways with individuals that are tied to Chinese organized crime, and these are figures that are involved in the drug trade.
[192] If you go back to when he was mayor of San Francisco, he appointed as the head of the economic development for Chinatown in San Francisco, a guy who ended up, his name is Alan Lung, he ended up being a dragonhead, which is a mafia boss, a head of a Chinese organized crime syndicate.
[193] Gavin Newsom became friends with another dragonhead, a guy named Shrimp Boy, who was supposedly reformed, but there's pictures of Gavin Newsom with Shrimp Boy, and he actually, Gavin Newsom actually sent taxpayer dollars to his nonprofit.
[194] Turned out that Shrimp Boy actually was involved in a murder for a higher plot, involved in the drug trade, et cetera.
[195] There was another gentleman who was on his transition team as mayor of San Francisco.
[196] Turns out he was involved with Chinese organized crime, and he was reported at the time by Democrats to be a regular fixture in the mayor's office.
[197] When he was mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom started a project called China SF to bring Chinese investment dollars into the Bay Area.
[198] He could have picked any businessman in China to partner with.
[199] he picked Vincent Lowe.
[200] So they signed this agreement together to bring investment dollars to San Francisco.
[201] Vincent Lowe, it was already reported publicly had ties to Chinese organized crime.
[202] And in fact, when businesses started setting up shop in San Francisco from China, several of those, as I highlight in the book, had ties to Chinese organized crime.
[203] So, I mean, I could go on and on and on with Gavin Newsom.
[204] The bottom line is there are ties there in an abundance.
[205] And again, no finger pointing to, China.
[206] When he went to China, 182 Californians died of fentanyl overdoses during his trip.
[207] He said he raised the matter with President G, but again, no finger pointing.
[208] Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell also comes up in this book.
[209] Can you briefly describe some of his ties and handling of China?
[210] Yeah, Mitch McConnell, long -time ties to China.
[211] He will say occasionally things about China with regards to Taiwan and their naval power in the Pacific, but he doesn't talk at all about these issues.
[212] And the reason is that his family has deep abiding ties to China going back 30 years.
[213] In 1993, then Senator Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chow and his father -in -law, James Chow, went to China as guests of the Chinese state shipbuilding corporation.
[214] As the name implies, this is a Chinese government entity.
[215] It's actually the biggest military contractor in China.
[216] And they basically made a deal with the Chow family.
[217] The family had this smallish shipping business called foremost shipping, and the Chinese government said to the three of them, hey, you know, we'll build the ships for you, we'll build these big ships for you, we'll finance the construction of those ships through our banks, we'll help you find crew members to crew these ships, and we'll give you contracts with Chinese state -owned companies to ship their goods around the Pacific.
[218] And the Chow said, we'll take that deal.
[219] So it took a small shipping company and made it a large shipping company.
[220] And Mitch McClough, McConnell personally benefited from this, James Chow sent him a gift between $5 and $25 million.
[221] So, you know, the short end of it is if Mitch McConnell were to really call out China in any major way on these issues, they could destroy the family business overnight.
[222] And that's the kind of leverage they have over Mitch McConnell.
[223] And that seems to be the key.
[224] Leverage seems to be the play in all of these entanglements, as you've called them.
[225] Look, final question.
[226] What are some solutions here?
[227] How does the U .S. begin to combat this quiet campaign against us?
[228] First thing we need is we need awareness.
[229] I mean, my favorite figure from the American War for Independence was Paul Revere.
[230] So we've got to alert people to what is going on.
[231] There's a lot of misnomer's.
[232] People look at China through the prism of kind of a cold war on the Soviet Union and they have tanks and they have ships.
[233] Yeah, they do, but they approach their battle with the United States in a totally different way.
[234] it's a war and they're engaged in war already.
[235] So the first thing is awareness.
[236] The second thing is look at your own investment portfolio.
[237] There are too many investment firms that allow Americans to invest in Chinese companies that are tied to the military industrial complex.
[238] Don't invest in Chinese companies.
[239] You may think, oh, my little retirement account, it's no big deal.
[240] But if you add it all up, it amounts to billions of dollars that are invested in basically funding our enemy.
[241] And then the final thing I would say is talk to your elected officials, not just your congressmen and senators, but your local state representatives.
[242] There's a lot of things going on on the state level in states like Florida and Texas and Tennessee, but it can be happening elsewhere, initiatives that can be taken at the local level to start dealing with this threat.
[243] We need our public figures to explicitly call out and identify what China is doing.
[244] Until they do so, we are not going to be prepared for this war and we will lose.
[245] Peter, thank you so much for coming on and good luck with this book.
[246] It's already selling really well.
[247] Excited to see what action it prompts.
[248] Thanks, John.
[249] That was Peter Schweitzer, the president of the Government Accountability Institute discussing his new investigative book, Blood Money, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.