“If you own an Android phone, everything you’re talking on right now is going back to China,” said Democrat presidential candidate Joe Sestak — former representative of Pennsylvania’s 7th congressional district and retired 31-year Navy veteran who reached the rank of three-star admiral — in a Monday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.
Countering geopolitical threats from China should be done in concert with America’s allies, advised Sestak.
“[Donald Trump] needs to go back and not retreat from the world, but take control of the WTO and change the rules because China is using it and beginning to dominate it,” Sestak said. “We need our allies. It’s not just us with China. The greatest power we have is the ability to lead people around our values and how we want the rules to be done.”
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Sestak remarked, “We need to go into the WTO … [to] change the rules and make them set boundaries for what is proportional retaliation so retaliation can be tougher. We make them understand that we’re going to redefine what is an arm of the Chinese government. And then we’re going to expand the scope of banned subsidies, and we’re going to change the organization much like we changed NATO after the Cold War ended. We expanded NATO [and] changed it. But we haven’t changed WTO. … China does so much stuff that is harmful to our economy.”
Recalibration of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), said Sestak, would help curb geopolitical threats posed by China.
“We need to re-engage in the TPP out there in Asia-Pacific,” Sestak declared. “That is a national security issue. We’ve got to fix it a little bit. … We need to bind those nations to us together.”
Sestak added, “The real challenge to America today is the new illiberal world order, where might makes right of China. I don’t care if it’s the 70 countries that they now have, that they have signed up, not only to the Belt and Road initiative where predatory loans are enslaving them — in fact, the prime minister of Malaysia has said it’s a new form of colonialism … We have now lost command of the seas in the western Pacific. “
Sestak warned of China’s intention to dominate 5G telecommunications technology and embed surveillance tools into its global architecture.
“You know what the bigger threat than that is?” asked Sestak. “The 5G network. Once we sold Lucent, we don’t even make the parts for us to build that one component that everything goes through. Whoever builds it, owns it. When you sign up to the Belt and Road initiative, you must sign up for [China’s] Digital Silk Road. Now they will have eyes on everything without having to hack. It could be a commercial business meeting, and they will listen in. Not only that, it’s one way to take down your critical infrastructure in moments of high tension.”
America’s procurement of certain technologies from China with military applications undermines national security, assessed Sestak.
“We are outsourcing our national security,” concluded Sestak, “as microchips are being put into those servers and motherboards from Amazon to Aegis ships. Or if you own an Android phone, everything you’re talking on is going back to China.”
Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 weeknights from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern or 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific.
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