In an era when artificial intelligence is guiding drones in deadly attacks in Ukraine, it would be understandable to focus exclusively on what that now means on the battlefield.
This would be a grave mistake.
Few in the West have noticed that China just test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from a nuclear-powered submarine, using the waters of the South Pacific as their testing site.
SAN DIEGO — A sworn FBI affidavit unsealed Wednesday describes a seven-year investigation into a Chinese hacking operation that targeted NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Energy, the Justice Department, the National Institutes of Health and, this year, the United States Senate.
The filing says payments from China’s Ministry of State Security to Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Co. indicate that the private company conducted malicious cyber operations for Beijing. Some of its hackers were former members of the People’s Liberation Army who used their military connections to obtain contracts and subcontracts for offensive cyber operations.
In the wake of Ottawa’s forceful response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war, the White House on Wednesday said Canada “is joined only by the People’s Republic of China in choosing retaliation over negotiation.”
It’s a strange parallel for Mr. Trump’s team to draw – given Beijing fought the United States to a draw last year, winning concessions and breathing room to further shore up its economy against future U.S. pressure – but one that has also been made in China itself.
According to a Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) report released in March 2026, China views Canada as a “high priority” for foreign interference. The strategic rationale is straightforward. Our geographic, institutional, and cultural proximity to the United States means that a compromised Canada is a direct liability to Washington. If Beijing — America’s primary security challenger — can exert enough influence to misalign Canadian domestic and foreign policy from that of the US, it effectively renders North America vulnerable.
Lord David Alton of Liverpool, a prominent member of the House of Lords in the UK, recently condemned the 2018 provisional agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a “deal with the devil,” highlighting its complicity in “gross violations” of religious freedom and its resultant betrayal of the underground Church in the nation.
“In the case of the Chinese Communist regime, it is making a deal with the devil—a regime that has committed genocide against Uyghur Muslims and persecutes Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners, and Chinese Christians,” Alton said.
The dispute between Canada and the United States (US) is usually described as another argument over tariffs. Steel, aluminum, automobiles, and agriculture dominate the headlines, but those are the visible symptoms of a much larger disagreement.
Washington is trying to build a protected North American economic and security bloc capable of competing with China. Mark Carney is trying to reduce Canada’s dependence on the US by expanding trade with China, Europe, and other markets. Those strategies are now colliding, and Canada cannot pretend indefinitely that it can pursue both.
Brabim Karki’s piece here at The American Spectator on Monday about the breakoff in trade talks between the U.S. and Canada is a must-read, though it’s a little incomplete (and this column is an attempt to fill in a gap). Karki notes, and quite accurately so…
China has denounced the threat of US sanctions for its trade with Iran, saying any such measures would be illegal, and warned it would take “all necessary measures” to protect its national interests.
Beijing’s rejection of the US threat of secondary sanctions for any country or entity continuing to trade with Tehran had been predicted. China buys an estimated 80% of Iran’s oil exports and it has defied previous US efforts to limit the flow of revenue to the Tehran regime.
Its statement of opposition raises the question of how far the Trump administration would be prepared to go in confronting China and its financial system in the drive to isolate Iran.
China’s nationalist tabloid Global Times praised Canada’s retaliation against US tariffs, casting Ottawa’s move as validating Beijing’s opposition to Washington’s protectionist trade policies.
Calling Canada’s action “Chinese-style counterattack,” the newspaper said in an editorial Monday that the government’s decision shows that “more countries are realizing that concessions toward the US do not necessarily bring respect and stability.”
Carney does not want a deal, not with the US, unless China says so.
Oh look who’s back!
Canadians angry because U.S. trade approached cultural sovereignty issues. Canada then vows to influence American opinion.
Think about it. Let me know when you see it. https://t.co/ttQ19FA6Ao
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) August 23, 2026
OTTAWA — In this episode, I sit down with Indo-Pacific researcher Cleo Paskal and frequent Bureau guest Chris Meyer to investigate a part of the world that rarely commands sustained Western attention — but could determine the outcome of the next global conflict.
Paskal has testified repeatedly before the United States Congress and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. A former journalist, she has spent years travelling through the Pacific’s smallest and most strategically important states. The path that drew her into this subject resembles my own in Vancouver.
Six months after Mark Carney’s historic trip to China, the first for a Canadian prime minister in nearly a decade, CBC announced it will reopen its Beijing bureau. Pending final approvals, a Canadian journalist will be permanently working in mainland China for the first time in years.
The bureau shuttered in 2022, after Beijing would not renew its correspondent’s visa. But that was when the Canadian government viewed the country as one of our greatest security threats. Today, the Canadian government says China is our “strategic partner.”
More Canadian journalists on the ground to cover a world superpower is welcome news. But will they be safe from documented spying, arrest, and harassment? What will they actually be allowed to report on?
China is about to do to the global supply chains for grains, livestock and food products what it has already done to the world’s energy and transport systems.
The country is pursuing what amounts to world dominance in the mass manufacture of protein, launching a breakneck plan to end its strategic dependence on food imports and insure its people against the long-term famine risks of climate change.
This month, China’s Sea Legend Shipping launched the first regular container service through the Arctic, along what it calls the “Ice Silk Road.” The route, dubbed “China-Europe Arctic Express,” connects Ningbo, on China’s east coast, with England’s Felixstowe. The Chinese-run shipper plans eight voyages this summer season from this month to early October.
Sea Legend, which will use Russia’s Northern Sea Route, promises to cut in half the current 40-day sailing time.
OTTAWA — The House of Commons public safety committee will meet Monday to decide whether to investigate potential security screening failures, after a Canadian woman was arrested in Belgium for allegedly spying on NATO.
On July 25, Belgian authorities announced the arrest of a “Canadian national of Chinese origin” on suspicion of spying for a third country while working as an intern at NATO’s central military headquarters in southern Belgium. The suspect was subsequently identified as Biwei “Claire” Zhang, a computer science and systems engineering graduate in her early 30s who’d previously held positions at multiple Canadian federal agencies.
“For us this is not a trade war,” Jamieson Greer said last week.
It’s a statement at odds with how Canadians have viewed the ongoing trade dispute with the United States. It’s not the first time that Greer, Donald Trump’s chief trade negotiator, has made those remarks; he’s also not the first senior American official to dispute the idea that Canada is in a trade war with the United States.
