Tag: National Security

American Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan Returning to Washington as Tensions Heighten

Michigan Star Staff
John Sullivan

United States Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan said Tuesday that he was returning to Washington for “consultations” with top American officials as tensions increase between the two countries.

The former deputy secretary of state and appointee of former President Donald Trump said that “it is important for me to speak directly with my new colleagues in the Biden administration in Washington about the current state of bilateral relations between the U.S. and Russia.”

Sullivan added that he was returning to see his family, and that he would “return to Moscow in the coming weeks before any meeting” between President Joe Biden and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Read More

Trump National Security Official Says Evidence for Wuhan Lab Error ‘Far Outweighs’ Other Theories

Michigan Star Staff

Matt Pottinger, who served as deputy national security adviser under former President Donald Trump, said Sunday that the evidence that the coronavirus resulted from human error in a Chinese lab “far outweighs” other theories about the origins of the pandemic.

“If you weigh the circumstantial evidence, the ledger on the side of an explanation that says that this resulted from some kind of human error, it far outweighs the side of the scale that says this was some natural outbreak,” Pottinger said in an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

Read More

Commentary: Biden Signals Pivot Back to China with Controversial National Security Council Pick

Michigan Star Staff

President Joe Biden is signaling a pivot back to China with his most recent choice to sit on the National Security Council, former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell.

Campbell wrote the book, “The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia,” where he argued, “While the Asian Century detoured to the Middle East in the years following the September 11 attacks… the United States has led a ‘Pivot’ (or ‘rebalancing,’ as many prefer) of American diplomacy toward the nuanced yet demanding tasks of engaging a rising Asia. The Pivot is premised on the idea that the Asia-Pacific region not only increasingly defines global power and commerce, but also welcomes U.S. leadership and rewards U.S. engagement with positive returns on political, economic, and military investments.”

Read More

Second Judge Blocks TikTok Ban in Latest Setback for Trump Administration

Michigan Star Staff

A federal judge blocked the Department of Commerce’s proposed restrictions on Chinese-owned social media app TikTok in an order Monday evening.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols’s order is the latest setback in the Trump administration’s attempt to effectively ban TikTok from the U.S. over national security concerns, according to Reuters. Nichols is the second federal judge to block the Department of Commerce’s TikTok restrictions after Judge Wendy Beetlestone blocked them on Oct. 30.

Read More

Commentary: America Needs a Stable Bipartisan Consensus on National Security

Michigan Star Staff

Those of us who remember the years before Vietnam remember when, in foreign policy matters, “partisanship ended at the water’s edge.” There wasn’t much foreign policy in the United States until a rending national debate over participating in the League of Nations in 1919 and 1920. President Woodrow Wilson invented the League and asserted that, in entering World War I, the United States was waging “a war to end war and to make the world safe for democracy.” 

Read More

Michigan: Ground Zero for Biden-Led Chinese Acquisition of Automotive Manufacturer with National Security Implications

Laura Baigert

A key presidential election battleground state of Michigan is also ground zero for a Chinese company’s acquisition of an automotive manufacturer with direct involvement by one of Hunter Biden’s businesses.

The transaction gave Chinese companies direct control of technology with possible military applications and, therefore, has national security implications.

Read More

U.S. Bans WeChat, TikTok from App Stores Citing Security Risk

The Associated Press

The U.S. Commerce Department said Friday it will ban Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat from U.S. app stores on Sunday and will saddle the apps with technical restrictions that could seriously limit their functionality in the U.S.

The order, which cited national security and data privacy concerns, follows weeks of dealmaking over the video-sharing service TikTok. President Donald Trump has pressured the app’s Chinese owner to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations to a domestic company. It is not clear how the latest prohibitions will affect a deal recently struck by California tech giant Oracle aimed at satisfying U.S. concerns over TikTok’s data collection and related issues.

Read More

Commentary: Chinese Market Meddling in Pebble Mine Threatens National Security

Michigan Star Staff

One of America’s foremost energy experts is raising alarms over China’s latest meddling in U.S. mineral production. Dan Kish, a distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, says the attempt by a dubious Chinese investment firm to undermine Alaska’s Pebble Mine is one of many “war tactics” China is using against the United States.

Read More

Border Patrol Catches Child Sex Offender Attempting to Illegally Enter the US

Michigan Star Staff
CBP detainee

Border Patrol agents on Thursday apprehended a 29-year-old Honduran national after he unlawfully entered United States territory via the Arizona-Mexico border.

Rudy Chirinos-Hernandez was arrested by agents patrolling the desert near Sells, Arizona, according to a press release by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Following his apprehension, agents conducted a records check and discovered that Hernandez had been convicted of sexual assault against a minor — a felony offense — in 2012 in Dallas, Texas.

Read More

Commentary: The Genius of Trump’s Terrorist Designation for Mexican Cartels

Michigan Star Staff

President Trump last week signaled his intention to designate the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTO). In doing so, he takes the most aggressive step yet toward addressing the brutal violence that plagues Mexico and is fueling a migrant crisis at the southern U.S. border.

Read More

Commentary: ‘Orange Man Bad’ Becomes Foreign Policy

Michigan Star Staff

Have you noticed an uptick in the appearance of a specific talking point from the political and military elite about President Trump’s recent drawdown in northern Syria? It goes something like this: Yes, the president was in a tight spot in Syria – caught between Turkey, a NATO ally, and the Kurds, who we were allied with against ISIS. But the president was wrong to pull U.S. forces out of northern Syria the way he did. Very often, these detractors say the president ordered the precipitous drawdown of U.S. forces in Syria without “consulting the Pentagon.”

Read More

The Tennessee Star Report: ‘Transnational Crime is the Real Threat to America’, says Former Director of Special Ops Division Derek Maltz

JCarr

  On The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Leahy was in Washington, D.C. last week talking to Derek Maltz who is the former Director of the Special Ops Division with 28 yrs in…

Read More

Commentary: Deficits Are Secondary to What You’re Paying For

Michigan Star Staff
US Capitol

“I am not worried about the deficit,” Ronald Reagan famously said. “It is big enough to take care of itself.”

If you pay attention to the libertarian purists, President Reagan earns mixed reviews on his economic policies. After all, in 1983, the federal budget deficit exceeded 6 percent of GDP. But Reagan was untroubled by federal budget deficits for at least two reasons, and in both cases he has been vindicated by history.

Read More

Democrats Join Forces to Urge the Supreme Court to Block the Southern Border Barrier Based on ‘the Environment’

Admin

by Kevin Daley   Environmental groups and House Democrats urged the Supreme Court not to disturb a lower court order blocking the reallocation of military funds for border wall projects. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to put that ruling on hold while litigation continues July 12. Granting that request — called…

Read More