China and Russia Play A Long Game; So Must We

Why should kids stay off the TikTok app, when all they want to do is dance, watch kids lip-sync and try out their comedy routines? Along with collecting the location, unique device identies and message content data of TikTok users that will last forever, just as Pavlov conditioned a dog to associate food with a bell, China can associate the images kids throughout the world see on TikTok with a warm and fuzzy feeling about all things Chinese. Big Bird helps kids learn on SESAME STREET. What can a Chinese cartoon character with a cuddly pet panda or "Mulan" do to grab a kid's attention and to begin conditioning him or her to ignore warnings about Chinese motives? This morning a PBS kids cartoon show already taught children to associate the "Golden Rule" exclusively with China's Confucius. China also is taking advantage of the opportunity to reach adults by running propaganda ads in TIME magazine and other respected, but revenue-starved, publications. Why not subsidize travel/study trips to China for high school and college students, offer senior centers a documentary about the advanced civilization Marco Polo found, not playing in a commercial's swimming pool, but in 13th century China or include a souvenier pin from the 2022 Winter Olympics near Beijing in cereal boxes? China's payoff would be worth these and other investments that dull US precautions, such as when a US graduate student obliviously agrees to help a Chinese professor obtain classified documents for a research project that compromises US national security. Similarly, a US business executive, conditioned over the years, may see nothing wrong with a sale that transfers US intellectual property to China. Chinese-Americans are especially vulnerable. Both fiction, QUANTUM SPY by David Ignatius, and the FBI case against Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, who worked 34 years for the US government, illustrate Chinese agents use a pitch asking them to start supporting their "motherland", not the "foreign" land of their birth. Russian agents use more traditional methods to recruit spies, but they too play a long game. They target those who have access to classified information who run into financial problems, are susceptible to compromising affairs or can be blackmailed because they are hiding a secret. A review of Catherine Belton's book, PUTIN'S PEOPLE, in THE ATLANTIC magazine (September, 2020), lists the Russian operatives who tracked Donald Trump for 30 years on the chance that he could be politically or commercially useful. Looking back at how Westeren democracies contained the USSR after World War II suggests a way forward. NATO brought together a coalition ready to deter Communist expansion. The US cannot go on blithely providing the food, commodities and safe financial haven China and Russia need, while these countries are free to concentrate on their legal and illegal efforts to make military, surveillance and other technological progress, as well as on using social media and other means to destabilize societies throughout the world. Neither on-again, off-again sanctions by the sole US government, nor agreements with and assurances from China and Russia, offer the promise of long-term peace the way a democratic alliance would. When Britain concluded a review of an April 24, 2019 decision to build its 5G (fifth generation) network with a limited amount of equipment from the Chinese telecom giant, Huawei, the decision was overturned on July 14, 2020. Following the UK's decision, Britain suggested forming a 10-country alliance of democracies to develop alternatives to Huawei and other Chinese suppliers. Such a NATO-like coalition of G7 members (Britain, Canada, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) and Australia, South Korea and India represents the brainpower, financing and determination needed to offset the continuing threat China and Russia pose.