(NewsNation) — The Biden administration this week issued an order blocking a Chinese cryptocurrency mining company from owning land near a nuclear missile base in Wyoming, citing national security risks.
The company, MineOne Partners, has Chinese backing and operates less than a mile from FE Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne. The administration called the approach a “national security risk.”
The Treasury Department said “specialized foreign-sourced equipment that may facilitate surveillance or espionage” was part of the order, but did not elaborate on the risks.
MineOne purchased the land in 2022 but did not follow the proper procedures to report the purchase. Ultimately, the information released alerted authorities to a potentially suspicious motive for choosing that location.
U.S. authorities are sounding the alarm over the increasing number of foreigners making recordings at U.S. military bases.
According to the Daily Mail, Chinese nationals attempted to enter U.S. military facilities more than 100 times last year, posing as tourists or DoorDash food delivery drivers.
Gen. John Teichert, a retired Air Force brigadier general, told NewsNation that this surveillance tactic by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not new, and “it’s certainly not the only way they’re actively monitoring the United States.” he said.
“Just by observing life patterns and gathering open source intelligence, we have a lot of opportunities to understand our security practices,” Teichert said. “When you connect these many data points together, you get a holistic idea of our capabilities, our readiness, and our vulnerabilities.”
In a statement to NewsNation, DoorDash said, “We find these reports extremely disturbing and take any allegation that our platform is being misused very seriously.”
The order gave MineOne 90 days to remove structures and equipment and 120 days to sell the property. However, Teichert cautioned that if bad actors have already collected the information, it may be too late.
“Whether it’s Chinese Communist Party clubs on college campuses, Chinese police departments in American cities, or the Chinese Communist Party’s theft of $700 billion in intellectual property a year,” he said. “Unfortunately, they’ve been implementing that strategy for the past 25 years, and to some extent we haven’t been as vigilant and diligent as we need to be to stop them.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice and TikTok have asked a federal appeals court to expedite a ruling on a new law requiring China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. assets by January 19. It called for otherwise face a ban.
