House Oversight Launches Investigation into Biden Administration’s Response to Shadow ‘War’ Waged by the CCP

The House Oversight Committee has launched a government-wide investigation into the Chinese Communist Party’s “ongoing efforts to target, influence and infiltrate every sector and community in the United States,” committee chairman James Comer announced Thursday.

The committee sent letters to nine federal agencies on Thursday seeking information on how officials are working to “thwart the CCP’s political and economic warfare campaign” across a number of sectors, including education, agriculture, critical infrastructure, research, energy, business, space, and technology.

“Without firing a single bullet, the Chinese Communist Party is waging war against the U.S. by targeting, influencing, and infiltrating every economic sector and community in America,” Comer said in a statement shared with National Review. 

“The lives and security of all Americans are affected. The Oversight Committee has a responsibility to ensure the federal government is taking every action necessary to protect Americans from the CCP’s ongoing political warfare,” Comer added.

The Kentucky Republican asked each of the agencies to provide staff briefings by March 20. Those agencies include the Department of Justice (DOJ), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the National Science Foundation.

“While we know that many federal agencies are undertaking efforts to counter CCP activities, what’s less clear is the overall federal strategy and level of coordination among agencies,” a senior Oversight Committee aide told reporters.

Comer’s announcement comes one day after a bipartisan coalition of House members approved a bill that would effectively force the Chinese parent company of TikTok to sell the video-sharing platform to a U.S. buyer or face a ban in American app stores. Lawmakers have voiced concerns about the CCP’s ability to surveil American users of the social-media app.

But the Oversight Committee aide says TikTok is “just the tip of the iceberg” of the Chinese national-security threat.

“The Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, is currently waging a successful non-kinetic war against the United States by targeting, influencing, and infiltrating American communities. This is recognized by China experts who have worked in national-security positions. Our oversight will amplify many of the concerns these experts have been calling out for years,” the aide added.

The letters to the agencies cover a host of CCP-related threats, from the flood of Chinese fentanyl entering the country to Chinese acquisition of U.S. farmland.

In letter to DEA administrator Anne Milgram, Comer says the committee is investigating the CCP’s “chemical warfare seeking to poison America with fentanyl, and how the Drug Enforcement Agency is responding.”

Fentanyl has emerged as one of the leading causes of death in the U.S., with the drug having killed more Americans in one year than eight years of war in Vietnam combined, the letter notes. Last year alone, the DEA seized more than 78.4 million fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills and nearly 12,000 pounds of fentanyl powder.

Much of the fentanyl entering the U.S. comes from CCP criminal organizations called triads, which work with distributors in Canada and Mexico to smuggle fentanyl and its precursors into the U.S.

The committee asks that a staff briefing from the DEA to explain, among other things, the agency’s outreach to the American public and media regarding CCP drug warfare operations; its outreach to police, government officials, politicians, and other community leaders to ensure that they are not compromised by triads or other CCP-backed criminal organizations; and its plan and approach to counter CCP drug warfare and triad smuggling in the U.S.

In a letter to Financial Crimes Enforcement Network director Andrea Gacki, the committee says it is investigating CCP money laundering in the U.S. through the business sector, including the real estate and casino industries. 

“These CCP operations—including partnering with drug cartels to acquire U.S. dollars while laundering drug proceeds—supply the Party with the financial means necessary to carry out its expansive economic and political warfare campaign against America,” Comer writes. “These activities allow the CCP to engage in corporate espionage, feed the fentanyl crisis in the U.S., influence our nation’s schools and culture, and otherwise advance destructive goals on American soil.”

And to the National Science Foundation, Comer raises concerns about the CCP’s “weaponization of U.S.–backed research and technology for uses that are contrary to U.S. national security and competitiveness.”

Chinese president Xi Jinping acknowledged during a National Congress of the CCP last year that it is important for China to “regard science and technology as [the Party’s] primary productive forces, talent as [its] primary resource, and innovation as [its] primary driver of growth.”

China’s efforts to influence and steal research “takes a holistic approach and includes covert and legal means,” Comer writes and asks the NSF to explain how research security fits into the agency’s latest annual budget request to Congress and what steps it plans to take to address the theft and exploitation of U.S. scientific research by Chinese entities.

Comer similarly asks what NASA is doing to protect its employees, scientists and the commercial space industry from the threats posed by the CCP to American intellectual property (IP), data, and technology. 

With NASA administrator Bill Nelson’s acknowledgement that the U.S. is in a “space race” with China, Comer cites “serious risks to American national security, leadership, and scientific progress around the world – particularly when the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) space program is properly understood for what it is: an arm of its military, the People’s Liberation Army.”

As for the EPA, the committee is investigating CCP infiltration of the U.S. environmental sector and the work the agency is doing to protect the multibillion-dollar American industry. 

China has become the top producer of traditional sources of energy, Comer notes, and it is also the largest coal and carbon dioxide emitter in the world — yet it is given a pass as a “developing nation” by international climate and finance associations.

“CCP operations have successfully pressured U.S. environmental players and industries into adopting initiatives that plainly benefit China at great costs to American businesses and consumers,” Comer writes. “EPA has important responsibilities to safeguard against the CCP’s influence over U.S. environmental policy, including through proxies such as green energy non-governmental organizations (NGO) with ties to CCP officials.”

An additional point of concern is the EPA Office of Inspector General’s finding last year that a loophole existed within the agency’s disclosure requirements for recipients of research grants. Grant applicants were required to disclose current and pending research support, including by foreign sources that could seek to influence researchers or gain access to scientific discoveries. However, the agency failed to require disclosure of foreign support that may have been received after a grant was rewarded. The loophole “raises serious concerns relating to the agency’s ability to protect researchers from foreign influence campaigns,” Comer alleges.

Now the committee is seeking information on efforts taken by the EPA to ensure that the CCP is not able to advance its goals through the theft of American intellectual property.

And in a letter to the DOJ, the administration seeks information about what the agency is doing to protect Americans from China’s “ambitions for global dominance,” including efforts to “safeguard targeted communities, including American businesses, Chinese Americans, and our country’s justice system from CCP warfare.”

Meanwhile, Comer tells USAGM the agency and its various entities, including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, “have important responsibilities in countering the CCP’s destructive narrative and to advance the Agency’s mission to disseminate news and information ‘in support of freedom and democracy.” 

The committee asks the agency to divulge any efforts to educate its employees and journalists about the CCP’s narrative dominance tactics, influence over and manipulation of public discourse, mass communications, and media in the U.S. and abroad.

In a separate letter, Comer addresses the issue of the CCP’s “active infiltration of American farming,” and asks what actions the USDA is undertaking to protect the American food supply and agricultural industry. 

“American farmers need safe and efficient farming policies and secure infrastructures which do not risk the threat of CCP control, espionage, or influence, especially in times of food shortages and foreign conflicts,” Comer writes, after citing reports that the CCP aims to control the U.S. food supply, influence U.S. agriculture, policy and global markets, and to increase American dependence on China’s non-market economy. 

Finally, Comer tells the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that it is investigating the CCP’s destructive aims in the energy field, including its efforts to control the global lithium-ion battery supply chain. 

“The Committee’s oversight effort encompasses the work that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is doing to safeguard against serious threats to American energy security,” Comer writes.

The committee says Comer intends to call on more U.S. agencies to provide information on how they are combatting CCP warfare in the coming months and that it plans to hold several hearings to address the threat. Ultimately, the committee aims to release a report with its findings and recommendations.

“Departments and agencies need to be taking immediate action to thwart China’s campaign,” the senior committee aide told reporters. “For instance, agencies need to be enhancing defense protocols, increasing coordination between agencies and targeted communities, and discouraging dangerous business, cultural and online engagement with nefarious CCP and CCP-backed entities.”