(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) President Joe Biden approved a Chinese company’s purchase of 370 acres of land only 12 miles away from the Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, a decision that critics and security experts said could lead to “sabotage of operations.”
With Fufeng USA’s purchase of a $700 million corn milling plant in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the Chinese military will be able to intercept American military communications and to jam signals, the Gatestone Institute reported.
Fufeng USA operates under a Chinese company based in Shandong province, China.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which decides when the federal government may block land sales to foreign nations, found that the property was not a “covered transaction.”
The CFIUS said Section 721 of the Defense Production Act of 1950 did not give them the authority to intervene in the transaction.
Alan Tonelson, a researcher at the Business and Industry Council Educational Foundation, said the committee “did not need more than five minutes to determine that it did not have the authority to stop the sale.”
The CFIUS could not act because Congress failed to include the Grand Forks Air Force Base Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 in its list of “specific airports, maritime ports, or military installations.”
“Grand Forks Air Force Base did not make the cut,” Tonelson said. “The decision of the Congressional authors of the recent CFIUS reform to permit any foreign purchase of any land near any U.S. military installation was a clear case of legislative malpractice.”
Fufeng USA cannot ignore the Chinese Communist Party’s request to spy on American military installations. Under Articles 7 and 14 of China’s National Intelligence Law of 2017, all Chinese companies must comply with orders to spy on foreign militaries.
“The worst-case scenario involves active sabotage of operations at the Grand Forks facility,” military expert Brandon Weichert points out.
“Should the U.S. and China end up in a shooting war over, say, Taiwan, Fufeng’s property near the Air Force base could be used to send malicious signals to jam passing satellites or disrupt the operation of drones. We have made ourselves vulnerable on our own territory,” he said.
