In Episode 190 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Josh Rogin, a Washington Post foreign-policy columnist and author of the book Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century.
Rogin’s book explains for mainstream audiences how the Chinese Communist Party works: its history, nature, motivations, operations, and objectives. It does so in a language that is both accessible and at times entertaining because it’s full of personal anecdotes colored by Josh’s own reporting which is a testament to his skill as an investigative journalist and as someone with a reputation for breaking big stories.
While we don’t break any stories today, some of what you will hear in this episode is probably going to be news to you. You are going to learn how CCP influence operations work, who they target, and how they compromise influential individuals in both the public and private sectors, including CEOs, University administrators, and elected officials, along with their spouses, friends, and family members. You’re also going to learn how the CCP uses tactics of blackmail, repression, and counterprogramming, both within and outside of China's borders in order to coerce and drown out its critics as part of a relentless culture of intimidation that is foundational to the party’s identity and history as an underground influence organization. Lastly, you’re going to learn why all of this matters to those of us living outside of China and how Western governments should respond to a threat that is no longer gathering but is in fact quite clear and immediate to those of us who have devoted time and attention to understanding this very important issue.
In the subscriber overtime, Kofinas and Rogin delve deeper into the financial side of this story, and how for years, the CCP has used US financial markets to fund the buildout of not only China’s military but also its surveillance systems, including those used to monitor and control repressed minorities in the country’s autonomous regions. Most notable among these is Xinjiang province, where over 12 million Uyghurs are currently living under what international human rights organizations and governments agree are genocidal conditions that involve atrocities such as forced labor, compulsory reeducation, and coercive harvesting of hair and bodily organs. We also delve into Josh’s independent reporting on the origins of Covid-19, the troubling connections between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and America’s own public health officials, and why the lab-release hypothesis is actually much more credible than the mainstream media would have you believe.
This is a serious conversation. No doubt about it. But everything that you are about to hear today has been widely reported on and is becoming increasingly well understood among those in positions of power within the corporate and policymaking communities. The rise of China in this context signifies something very different than what most of us imagined and hoped for at the beginning of the 21st century. Confronting it demands urgency and resoluteness that is arguably comparable to that last seen in our collective response to the Soviet threat enunciated most clearly in George Kennan’s seminal 8,000-word telegram to the US State Department in 1946. It is a challenge that we can and will overcome, but it’s time that we all get on the same page about what it means, what is required of us in order to confront it, and how our lives will drastically change as a result.
You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 05/04/2021
