Chinese ‘Influence Operation’ Targeting Members Of Team Biden

Offering the latest hint that Joe Biden’s newly adopted ‘tough on China’ stance might be hollow posturing, Bloomberg just published comments from a top US intelligence official unveiling the existence of an ‘influence operation’ targeting top members of team Biden.

The comments come just days after Biden and his team announced their nominees for top foreign policy positions, along with key appointments like Janet Yellen to Treasury and other economic-policy posts. They have been sourced to Bill Evanina, the director of an obscure but critical intelligence agency known as the US NCSC. The comment was reportedly made during remarks at the Aspen Cyber Summit, which has reliably generated newsmaking comments and headlines in recent years.

That Evanina’s comments are even being picked up by the wires is almost surprising, considering that Bloomberg has a reputation for being soft on China for fear of compromising its terminal business.

But at second glance, it’s obvious why: Evanina also insisted that the 2020 election was flawlessly done.

A former Bloomberg editor attested a few years back that they were stopped from publishing stories about the accumulated, hidden wealth of President Xi and his family members. When Beijing launched its purge of Western reporters earlier this year, Bloomberg wasn’t hit nearly as hard as the NYT, WSJ and other American news organizations.

Continuing on the China theme, Evanina added that the world’s second-largest economy is now “the existential threat we face” in the US.

Indeed, as President Xi’s actions to punish foreign governments, as well as critics and dissidents both abroad and within its boarders, intensify, it’s more important than ever that an American president can stand up to the Politburo, and hold his ground.

Will Biden manage that? It remains to be seen. But some of these reporters about his son’s business activities (and purported influence-peddling) in China doesn’t exactly bode well.