In my blog post, Big power competitions present big challenges, yesterday I mentioned: “A few days ago when President Biden gave his speech committing the US to aiding Ukraine and Israel, China was hosting their Belt and Road conference in Beijing, which is ostensibly about international cooperation. Putin was the guest of honor. The Taliban showed up… and so did Viktor Orban (the guy Tucker Carlson was fawning all over).”
In the above post on Twitter/X, the commander of US Southern Command, GEN Laura Richardson, explains the Belt and Road initiative in our southern hemisphere. This video clip is a minute long.
The US Chamber of Commerce on Latin America and the Caribbean conference where she made these remarks is on YouTube and there’s a moderator, along with US Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, who sounded a lot like Vice President, Kamala Harris to me – a challenge to listen to. General Richardson though is very knowledgeable and clearly explained US interests in the region and the challenges. This video has a lot of dead space and begins at 24:08 and their part in this conference ends at 56:46. I mentioned that because the entire video runs over 5 hours and has a lot of other speakers.
Richardson recommended watching this 60 Minutes interview of the Five Eyes intelligence leaders, which includes our FBI director, Chris Wray. Below is that interview and it’s 13:14 minutes long. I know a lot of right-wing Americans despise Chris Wray and rant about shutting down the FBI, but this interview is worth watching. Yes, I have issues with Wray’s focus on “white supremacy” and not on radical leftist groups in America, but this interview is about the threat of Chinese espionage in America.
Here’s a reminder that China also had that spy balloon that floated across America earlier this year and the Biden WH and the Pentagon told us there was nothing to worry about there, yet somehow that spy balloon managed to “float” over America’s most sensitive military sites. Here’s a September 17, 2023 CBS report, The bizarre secret behind China’s spy balloon:. The reporter, David Martin, asks:
So, Martin asked, “Bottom line, it was a spy balloon, but it wasn’t spying?”
Milley replied, “I would say it was a spy balloon that we know with high degree of certainty got no intelligence, and didn’t transmit any intelligence back to China.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-bizarre-secret-behind-chinas-spy-balloon/
There’s a lot of information available from the US government and umpteen reports, plus media reporting, if you decide to go sleuthing online. I’m going to end this post with a link to a You Tube video by Sensible Prepper and although the title might sound alarming, the preparedness advice they offer is practical and sensible – no hysteria or drama.
libertybelle diaries 
Heh LB. As you’ve got a lotta very good links for further reading allow me to add one more – albeit in a roundabout way. Recall Robert Gates? He’s the guy who made the observation that, “Joe Biden has been wrong about every ______________ [fill in the blank] decision.”
I mention “roundabout” owing simply to the fact that while I’ve a subscription to Foreign Affairs I’m simply having some difficulty linking it to you presently – It might be because the article, The Dysfunctional Superpower is too relatively recent.
However, looking around I espy a fairly good [accurate] descriptive analysis of what’s in Mr. Gates essay – I heartily recommend you try to find it in its whole original:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/10/23/bolstering_us_foreign_policy_by_repairing_us_dysfunction_149946.html
Thanks for this article, JK – I read the real politics one and will see about the Gates article. I don’t subscribe to Foreign Affairs.
Thanks for that link, JK. I was doing some reading older stuff lately… trying to refresh my memory on all that GWOT/Democracy in the ME/Arab Spring nightmare I had tried to forget.