Speaker A
Cheryl: New this morning, the FBI arrested a California realtor on charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent.
FBI arrests realtor for spying linked to China; expert discusses Xi Jinping's health, AI risks, bio-weapons, and China-US tensions.
Key Takeaways
- China uses covert networks involving ethnic Chinese and U.S. citizens for espionage.
- Xi Jinping's health issues may impact China's diplomatic engagements and summit outcomes.
- AI development must balance rapid progress with safety to prevent misuse.
- China's energy export policies may be strategic moves affecting global markets.
- Biological weapons research in China remains a critical security concern.
What the video covers
- FBI arrested a California realtor for acting as an unregistered foreign agent surveilling a relative of Taiwan's president.
- Chinese government allegedly weaponizes ethnic Chinese and U.S. citizens to collect intelligence illicitly.
- Concerns raised about biological weapons research at Wuhan Institute of Virology, including Ebola samples.
- Discussion on AI safety and competition, with emphasis on maintaining U.S. AI dominance over China.
- China's suspension of October fuel exports raises questions about their oil reserves and market strategy.
- Reports indicate Xi Jinping's frail health affected the summit agenda with President Trump.
- The summit between Trump and Xi was brief and lacked substantive dialogue, possibly due to Xi's condition.
- Back channel trade deal discussions continue despite summit challenges.
- Moonshot AI's investigation into AI misuse highlights potential for nefarious applications like biological attacks.
- China's violation of international biological weapons agreements is noted but unsurprising.
Chapters
- 00:00FBI Arrest and Espionage Allegations
- 00:31Chinese Government's Covert Operations
- 01:31Taiwan President's Son and Court Proceedings
- 02:12US AI Strategy and Competition with China
- 02:58Biological Weapons Concerns and Wuhan Lab
- 05:17China's Energy Export Suspension
- 06:34Xi Jinping's Health and US-China Summit
- 08:05Summit Outcomes and Trade Deal Backchannels
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
The 34-year-old was reportedly boarding a flight back to Shanghai when she was taken into custody.
Speaker A
The U.S. attorney wrote this: she traveled to Seattle in 2025 and, at the direction of PRC officials, surveilled a close relative of a Taiwanese government official, sending information to the officials.
Speaker A
The relative, according to the Wall Street Journal, is the son of Taiwan's president. I want to bring in Gatestone Institute senior fellow Gordon Chang.
Speaker A
Your reaction to the breaking news this morning? The Chinese government has weaponized ethnic Chinese, not only nationals but U.S. citizens, and this is across our country.
Speaker A
The FBI closed a Chinese police station in New York City in 2002, but according to Daily Caller and New York Post reporting, there are seven to nine more, and that's what the police stations do.
Speaker A
They are used for this type of activity: to get Chinese nationals to coerce them or entice them to help the Chinese government collect information in illicit ways. So this is upon us to break up these networks.
Speaker A
Because if we do that, we can partially solve this problem, but we've got to recognize we do have a problem, and the Chinese regime is behind it.
Speaker A
Cheryl: Well, I mean, also too, his son, the Taiwan president's son, working for Phillips up in Washington, working for a U.S.
Speaker A
company. He studied in this country, and the fact that whatever they're looking to do with this, whether to pressure Taiwan's president or some other reason, I mean, they're saying surveillance, stalking, harassment, so the charges are pretty serious.
Speaker A
We're expecting a court date today, a court appearance today, so we'll hopefully learn more.
Speaker A
The president also announced the creation of the new Super Intelligence Task Force, and this is going to keep America at the forefront of A.I., of course ahead of China.
Speaker A
White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett had a few thoughts on this. Watch what he said.
Speaker A
The bottom line is that these A.I. companies are moving fast, and we need to make sure that they're doing it safely, but we also want to not slow them down in a way that lets China win the A.I. race. And what they're
Speaker A
doing is thinking about how do we make sure we maintain A.I. dominance and keep people safe.
Speaker A
Cheryl: Moonshot is investigating one of its own bottles that it claims can be manipulated into creating biological weapons or potentially carrying out assassinations.
Speaker A
When you think about the potential of a biological weapon, go back to 2020 and China and the fact they had a virus that they hid from the rest of the world.
Speaker A
Yes. We know that China's continuing to look at biological weapons, especially with Ebola that's being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Speaker A
Ebola is not that transmissible, but it's highly deadly. Someone should be looking at that.
Speaker A
On the broader issue, Chinese A.I. models have the same problems as ours. But here I think that we have to look at that Fox News reporting that this was actually Moonshot A.I.'s problem, that it could be used for sarin attacks and other
Speaker A
nefarious purposes. Moonshot A.I. was looking at it only after Fox reported this, so the issue is whether the Chinese would report problems with A.I.
Speaker A
unless there was outside information pressuring them to. President Trump's A.I. initiatives, 100% right. You try to work with the big tech companies, but you don't regulate because once you regulate, you're going to kill the industry. So I think President Trump has got
Speaker A
the right approach here. Cheryl: Safe, make sure we stay on track. I want to clarify something.
Speaker A
You're saying the Wuhan lab is working on Ebola? Yes. We know those Canadian researchers who were studying Ebola at a national lab in Canada, they went back to China and took samples with them, and they are resident at the Wuhan
Speaker A
Institute of Virology, at least nine months ago. So they're looking at all sorts of diseases in China.
Speaker A
We shouldn't be surprised. Yes, this is a violation of China's obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention, but we're not surprised that the Chinese are not honoring their international obligations.
Speaker A
Cheryl: Look, considering what we've seen, the concern is a synthetic virus. We're going to have to watch that one for sure.
Speaker A
I want to get your take on the energy markets with regards to China because they say they're suspending October fuel exports to safeguard their domestic supply.
Speaker A
Beijing sends most of its products to Southeast Asia, Australia. This puts another strain on global supply coming from the Chinese.
Speaker A
The same country that's been buying from the Iranians. Your thoughts here? Yes. Everyone has said that they have a secure supply in its reserves, largest reserves in the world of maybe 1.3 billion barrels.
Speaker A
And so the question is why would they have an export ban if they have so much oil?
Speaker A
Now, maybe they're worried long term, or maybe they don't have as much oil as people have reported, or maybe they're just trying to disrupt global markets.
Speaker A
Because President Trump has this narrative that things are returning to normal, and we know that the Chinese are not happy when President Trump does well, so perhaps they're going after him.
Speaker A
I don't know. But this really is surprising that they would do this now. They did have, at the beginning of the war, an export ban.
Speaker A
They removed it because they felt they had enough, and now they're going back to it.
Speaker A
I just don't know what's going on here. Cheryl: Well, certainly, again, because the U.S. has isolated Iran from exports, that would be, I would think, a logical explanation as to why, Gordon.
Speaker A
Really quick before you go. The Wall Street Journal reporting Beijing reduced Xi Jinping's schedule during his summit with President Trump.
Speaker A
Here's what they wrote. Beijing officials told American counterparts they preferred more time for Xi to rest during the Washington visit.
Speaker A
The result was a roughly five-hour gap in the summit agenda, a long stretch of downtime during a visit that was barely two days.
Speaker A
In this report, the Journal's also saying that they didn't want to do a working lunch, that the Trump administration wanted a working lunch between Trump and Xi Jinping, the Chinese said no.
Speaker A
They said they took over a room in the White House, the Journal is saying this, that our officials had no access to, we couldn't go in.
Speaker A
What is going on here? Xi Jinping is frail. We saw this at the summit in New Delhi on September 12th and 13th, where he had a health incident at the opening ceremony where the prime minister had to stop mid-speech because of
Speaker A
something that happened to Xi Jinping. And also the other thing is that I'm sure Xi Jinping did not want to have a substantive success summit with President Trump.
Speaker A
It was less than two hours, and when you take out the time for translation, that means there was less than an hour for a meaningful dialogue.
Speaker A
I don't know what the point of this was. But yeah, Xi Jinping is not well.
Speaker A
And that means that this summit wasn't substantive. And this means continued talking to the Chinese, I'm not sure what it gives us.
Speaker A
Cheryl: At least you've got the back channel conversations going on with regard to the trade deals, so we'll follow it.
Topics:ChinaXi JinpingFBI arrestTaiwanespionagebiological weaponsWuhan Institute of VirologyAI safetyUS-China relationsenergy markets
