Tag: Pentagon

Chinese-Owned EV Company Showered Dems with Campaign Contributions

South Carolina Sun Staff
BYD Car

The U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer and its top executive have given hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash to Democrats in recent years.

Stella Li, a top executive for BYD Americas, and the company itself have given tens of thousands of dollars in campaign cash to Democratic candidates and organizations in California and beyond over the past decade, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of federal and state political spending records. Based in China, BYD is the biggest EV producer in the world, and Congress moved in January to ban the Pentagon from buying its batteries due to security risks, according to Bloomberg News.

Read More

Navy’s Suicide Rate Soars to Record High in First Three Months of 2024

South Carolina Sun Staff
Navy Funeral

The Navy reported a record-high number of suicides in the first three months of 2024 amid previous reports of poor quality of life and high stress for members of the branch, according to new data from the Pentagon.

There have been 24 reported suicides among sailors in the first quarter of 2024, the highest quarterly sum the service has seen since 2018, which was the first year such data was made available, according to the Pentagon. A service wellness survey conducted in February by the Navy found that more than a third of sailors were suffering from “severe or extreme levels of stress” in 2023, up from roughly a quarter who reported so in 2019.

Read More

Pentagon Doesn’t Know If It Funds Dangerous Biological Research in China, New Audit Reveals

Just the News
Medical research lab

Despite years of warnings that China operates an illicit biological weapons program, the U.S. military remains unable to determine whether it sends American tax dollars to Beijing for research that could make pathogens more dangerous or deadly, the Pentagon’s chief watchdog declared in a stunning new warning to policymakers.

“The DoD did not track funding at the level of detail necessary to determine whether the DoD provided funding to Chinese research laboratories or other foreign countries for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential,” the Pentagon inspector general concluded in a report released this month.

Read More

Pentagon Sued for Records About Deletion of ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ from Mission Statement

Just the News
West Point

Rather than the words “Duty, Honor, Country,” the new mission statement includes the words “To build, educate, train, and inspire.”

The U.S. Defense Department is facing a lawsuit to turn over emails and documents about how the agency came to delete the phrase “Duty, Honor, Country” from the mission statement of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Read More

Biden and the West Increase Involvement in Russia-Ukraine War

South Carolina Sun Staff
Biden and Ukraine

As Russia’s war against Ukraine drags on, the U.S. and the NATO alliance are increasing their involvement in the conflict, presenting risks for a more direct confrontation with Moscow.

President Joe Biden reportedly gave Ukraine the green light in May to start firing U.S.-provided weapons directly into certain parts of Russian territory, as NATO members consider a similar policy and the possibility of sending trainers to train the Ukrainian military. The new initiatives would represent a shift in NATO’s policy of engagement in the war and could further escalate the proxy conflict with Russia.

Read More

Military Could Hit Troops with Court-Martials for Refusing to Use Preferred Pronouns, Experts Say

South Carolina Sun Staff
National Guard troops

The military could seek to formally punish service members for refusing to use another service member’s preferred pronouns under existing policy, according to military experts.

A 2020 Equal Opportunity law opened the door for commanders to subject someone who refuses to affirm a transgender servicemember’s so-called gender identity to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) for charges related to harassment, Capt. Thomas Wheatley, an assistant professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Such a move would likely infringe on a servicemember’s constitutional rights to uphold their conscience, but it might not prevent leaders from employing more subtle ways of disciplining service members.

Read More

Lawmakers Decry U.S. Military’s Drift to DEI Culture

The Center Square
Pentagon

The U.S. military’s ongoing embrace of the far-left culture war has drawn increased attention and ire from lawmakers.

Despite Pentagon officials waving off concerns, a steady stream of evidence has shown that the most progressive ideas on race, gender and sexuality have become the norm, in particular within the administrative parts of the U.S. military.

Read More

Former D.C. National Guard Officials Criticize Pentagon Leadership in Assessment of J6 Response

Just the News
Command Sergeant Major Michael Brooks

Four former D.C. National Guard officials turned whistleblowers excoriated military leadership for their response to the January 6 riot at a hearing held by the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight Wednesday.

Based their firsthand accounts, they said that senior leadership failed to act decisively to authorize the deployment of the D.C. National Guard to the Capitol and subsequently crafted a misleading narrative about their actions that day to paper over the delays.

Read More

Chinese Military Companies Have Spent over $24 Million Lobbying the U.S. Government in Recent Years

South Carolina Sun Staff
Chinese Military

Entities the Pentagon classifies as “Chinese military companies” have spent more than $24 million lobbying the U.S. government since 2020, a Daily Caller News Foundation review of lobbying disclosures found.

Some of the biggest spenders on lobbying included corporations directly tied to human rights abuses and Chinese military research, like telecom giant Huawei, facial recognition software developer Megvii and genomics company BGI Shenzhen. Chinese military corporations cast a wide net across the American government, lobbying the House, Senate and various parts of the executive branch, including the office of the president, often setting their sights on proposed policies that would impact their U.S. operations, according to a DCNF review of congressional disclosures and legislative records.

Read More

The Pentagon is Paying a Chinese Communist Party-Linked Venture Capital Firm for Tutoring Services

South Carolina Sun Staff
Chinese Students

The CEO of a Chinese venture capital firm that quietly bought up a U.S. education company holding a Pentagon contract has long-standing connections to multiple Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence units, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

Primavera Capital, a Hong Kong-based venture capital firm, was an early investor in TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, and owns Princeton Review and Tutor.com. However, a review of the firm’s Chinese-language website found that CEO and founder Fred Hu has extensive ties to the Chinese government and belonged to organizations that the U.S. government has identified as part of the CCP’s “United Front” system.

Read More