Personal story: years ago when going to college and before having any association to the DoD (Besides through family) I went as a student to a German school in Darmstadt. At the time the school was called THD, today TUD. I was amazed at what I saw going on. You had guys (usually younger men that were a bit older than the rest of the student population) who were from the PRC attending the university, all in scientific and engineering tracks. When talking to them for a while you almost always eventually found out that they were actually still in the Chinese military, simply on a break and in civilian cloths getting an education in Germany. One of them “coincidentally” worked at Frankfurt Airport adjacent to Rhein Main AFB, so did another, and some other ones worked in other locations which also were coincidentally close to US military installations. I didn’t say or do anything, would not have mattered anyhow. I figured maybe I’m just reading to much into it. But this wasn’t a single case, and intentionally I went out of my way a little bit to talk to a few of these guys and sort of collect on them (for my own reasons) and there was an undeniable pattern (all military trained men, all in science/engineering fields, all near US instalations Rhein Main/Ramstein/Lindsey Air Station. Personally, I have no doubt that what the Chinese are doing is using the international student exchange program as a way to train their military officers in science and engineering fields. Furthermore, there is no doubt that these guys are also used as collection sources while abroad. But that’s just my personal analysis.
Bingo!
That is precisely how they function here as well.
For purposes of discussion, lets assume:
- That there are 200,000 college students from the PRC in the United States taking undergraduate and graduate courses in every state in the Union.
- That 50% of them are officers in one branch or the other of the PLA.
- That since they started attending U.S. colleges, these PLA officers have been collecting detailed information on critical U.S infrastructure nodes and developing detailed operational plans on how to attack then.
- That the “students” are organized into regional divisions for ease of administrative control, operational planning and execution, and logistic support.
- That all the supplies and equipment (including firearms and explosives) needed to execute attacks on critical U.S. infrastructure have already been prepositioned in secure locations throughout the United States either through direct purchase from U.S. sources or by being smuggled in using as cover the flood of containerized shipments coming into the United States from China. (Only 1 to 3 % are ever inspected.)
- That the communications system for activation of the operational plans and for reporting their execution has long since been developed, deployed, and tested for security, integrity, and redundancy.
How do we defend against simultaneous attacks by say, oh ... 50 well-organized, well-briefed, well-trained and well-equipped PLA regiments that suddenly just seem to APPEAR inside the United States and begin operations to support PRC war plans when the balloon goes up over Taiwan or some other issue? Such units could probably activate nearly as fast as the National Guard and Reserves can. And if the NG/Reserves did manage to beat them to their primary targets, thorough war planning would have identified many other important targets for attack.
A critic of this possibility might say that the Department of Homeland Security has already done a survey of critical infrastructure nodes and developed appropriate AT/FP plans.
Oh, really? Against what type of attack? What scale of threat? Does the critical node planning include say, defending against coordinated company, battalion, regimental and brigade-size conventional attacks on them?
Yeah...I didn't think so.
Sort of like the Japanese in the 1930s? I recall a story from 1942 (details are fuzzy). After the surrender of US Army personnel to the Japanese at Battan, the Japs, as a matter of course, stole cigarette lighters, wrist watches and rings from the surrendering American troops.
As they were marching away into captivity, an English speaking Japanese officer came along the line of American prisoners, calling out "Who here graduated from USC in 1932?"
A bedraggled officer spoke up that he had. The Japanese officer held up a recently looted gold 1932 USC class ring, and asked if it belonged to the American officer. When the American officer admitted that it was his, the Japanese officer handed it to him, then pointed to the gold USC class ring on his own hand and said "Class of '36."