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Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Rep. Mike Waltz Warns Billions in U.S. Troops’ Retirement Savings Funding the Chinese Military

Friday, April 24, 2020

Categories: ASCF News Emerging Threats Economic Security

Comments: 0

Members of the United States military are inadvertently funding the rise of their biggest 21st Century adversary — China — through their retirement savings, Army Green Beret and Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL) warned in an interview this week.

About $50 billion from the 401k-style plan that U.S. troops put their savings into is invested in an index that includes Chinese firms, some of which build weapons systems for the Chinese military, he said in an interview with Breitbart News on Wednesday.

“It’s insane,” he said. “This is the most dangerous adversary we have ever faced.”

Waltz said in a video he tweeted earlier this week:

Every month, me included as a National Guardsman, we contribute to this 401K-style plan. Well guess what? Billions of dollars from it are going over to Beijing and funding Chinese shipbuilding, plane building and all types of companies. Many of which are close to the Chinese Communist Party, some of which are even on the U.S. sanctions lists.

He added:

We cannot have the American military who’s out on the frontlines retirement account funding their biggest adversary in the 21st Century. America, we need to wake up. We are in a Cold War with China, they are certainly in one with us. And we would be no more funding their industry through our retirement than we would the Soviet Union and companies in Russia years ago. We need to think about this differently and this has got to stop.

Waltz is sponsoring a bill first proposed by former Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), now President Trump’s chief of staff, that would prevent those retirement funds from being invested in Chinese firms. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is sponsoring a companion bill in the Senate.

Waltz said another way to change this would be for President Trump to appoint a new chairman of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB), which oversees the federal retirement fund known as the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). The board‘s chairman is Obama appointee Michael Kennedy, a Harvard MBA.

Late last year, Kennedy overruled objections from both Republicans and Democrats to move forward with the decision to shift the TSP’s international fund index to the MSCI All Country ex-U.S.A. Investable Market Index, which invests in large, mid and small cap companies in 22 developed markets.

The move “constitutes a decision to invest in China-based companies, including many firms that are involved in the Chinese Government’s military, espionage, human rights abuses, and ‘Made in China 2025’ industrial policy,” Sens. Marcio Rubio (R-FL) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) wrote in a letter to Kennedy in November 2019, according to industry website Chief Investment Officer (CIO).

“Many of these Chinese companies may soon receive investments directly from the paychecks of members of the US Armed Services and other federal government employees because of your decision,” they wrote.

One Chinese company in the index is Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, which was placed on a trade blacklist last year because its surveillance technology is used in detention camps for China’s Uygher Muslim minorities, according to Reuters. Another company is avionics company Aviation Industry Corporation of China, which provides weapons for the Chinese military.

Lawmakers are also appealing to Secretary of the Department of Labor Eugene Scalia, whose department oversees the FRTIB, according to Reuters.

Supporters of FRTIB’s decision argue that the board is seeking the highest return on investment. But Waltz said it should not come at the expense of national security.

“I’m a free-market, pro-growth capitalist all day long. But not at the expense of national security. And China fully intends — it’s explicit in President Xi’s and many other officials’ speeches — to dominate the United States in the next 15 years, and we need to start treating this like the cold war that it is,” he said.

He said those opposing any change represent the thinking on China from the Obama-Biden administration, where the “rise of China was seen as peaceful” and that “if we just extend our hand and open ourselves up, that they will, too.”

“We’ve tried that for many years, and they’ve taken advantage of unfair trading practices, predatory cyber espionage, predatory mergers and acquisitions,” he said.

Photo: GREG BAKER/AFP/Getty Images

Link: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/23/rep-mike-waltz-warns-billions-in-u-s-troops-retirement-savings-funding-the-chinese-military/

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