Jania Kelik (3:57)

And it creates this weird mixture because you have a whole bunch of people who are dissidents from communism, who deserve support 100%, who are gonna be amazing Americans. These are some of the. It's kind of shocking how many of the immigrants are so unbelievably pro American. Right. Cause we see the other side of that too. But now you have kind of this mix. So it makes it hard. Right. It makes it hard to kind of figure out who's who. And it's easy to attack also, hey, why are you against. Why are you against immigrants?

Peter Schweitzer (4:31)

Yes.

Jania Kelik (4:32)

Well, I'm not against immigrants. I'm just against those people. Yes.

Peter Schweitzer (4:36)

And the weaponization of immigration, I think what we have to understand is that immigration 50, 100 years ago, it was overwhelmingly people making individual decisions. I want a better life. And they would come here. And the expectation that they had and that fellow Americans had was they were going to assimilate. They want to become part of the American dream. Doesn't mean you forget the homeland, but you embrace those, you know, core American values. What happens with weaponized immigration is it's changed. You have these foreign actors that are manipulating our immigration laws to their benefit. And there's this real pressure that's brought by the Mexican government, by the Chinese government, that once migrants are here, they are attacked and ridiculed because they want to assimilate. You know, I quote in the book a senior ranking Mexican official with the Moreno party saying that Mexicans that Come to the United States and embrace American values. Are traitors. They're traitors to Mexico. And he says that President Sheinbaum agrees with him. So it's a very, very different dynamic. These foreign actors are manipulating, immig in a way that's tragic for our country, it's tragic for a lot of the migrants, and it's beneficial to our enemies.

Jania Kelik (5:56)

You know, just the. Even the concept. Right. That assimilation was something that was. We had to kind of focus on and make happen. Right. I mean, I am Canadian. We, you know, escaped communist Poland. We didn't want. My parents did not want to live in a communist society. That was the reason.

Peter Schweitzer (6:16)

Yes.

Jania Kelik (6:16)

We ended up there. Right. And so it was just obvious that. That we want to leave that part behind, but we want to learn Polish. I learned it. I'm a native speaker, you know, so exactly what you're talking about. But it never occurred to me until I did a few interviews back in 2019, 2020. The bad things of the culture can be important. And if there isn't an obvious expectation of assimilation, you're going to be importing that thing.

Peter Schweitzer (6:39)

Yes, exactly.

Jania Kelik (6:40)

And it's kind of obvious when you say it, but it wasn't obvious to me and probably still isn't obvious to a lot of people.

Peter Schweitzer (6:47)

Yeah. And, you know, when you're coming from a. Let's say, a country that's been torn by war, that. That has a. Oppression that has, let's say, some real cultural challenges, you're bringing that with you when you come to the United States and people don't choose where they're born. We understand that. But the notion that if you come here from a culture that, let's say, you know, has all sorts of issues in terms of the way they treat women, the way that they value or don't value private property and privacy and individual, that's going to have huge repercussions. And the problem is compounded by the fact that not only do you have these foreign actors that are fighting against assimilation, you have domestic actors. You know, one of the things I do in the book is, quote, a lot of progressive activists who talk about the fact that they favor mass immigration. Why? Because they see it as having a transformative effect on American society. It's the way to kind of remake society in the vision that they want, not where America is today or not where even the American people want to go. This is where I want to go as an activist, and I see these migrants as a tool for my political weaponization. And they're Quite explicit about it. I mean, that's the thing that's shocking. So I think we need to wake up to that fact. The migration we're dealing with today is weaponized. It's very different than 50 and 100 years ago. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't have immigration. My parents immigrated from Europe. I think it's a wonderful, beautiful thing. But we have to understand what's going on and deal with this weaponization first, and then we can have the broader conversation about the level of legal immigration that we want.

Jania Kelik (8:31)

And it's just the thing that really struck me reading your book. Right. Is that there's so many different players for whom this is a kind of a success. Right.

Peter Schweitzer (8:41)

Yeah.

Jania Kelik (8:41)

So you have people that are, well, okay, there's people that are looking to have, you know, increase the voting block, for example. They believe that. That that's going to work for them. Seems to see that seems to be one of the efforts. Another one is just people who want to destabilize. Right. This is going back to the Merrill boat lift. You think about this Clower Piven strategy type approach where, you know, you want to kind of like blow out the economy. Yeah. So you can transform it into a more social, socialist economy. That's nuts. But there's people, like, working on that too, apparently, right?

Peter Schweitzer (9:13)

100%.

Jania Kelik (9:15)

And then there's people like, for example, in the whole me example is fascinating. Right. This idea that there's this manifest destiny, we need to reconquer the south. And this, we. We can just do it. Even if there's a border, we can have it. Right. I mean, that's the kind of stuff you describe in there. It's kind of. So there's all these different actors, and it almost seems like there's a lot fewer up until recently that were like, hey, wait a sec. Right.

Peter Schweitzer (9:37)

Yeah. No, you're right. And what's funny about it is not funny. I mean, it's helpful in a way. But all the things that. That when you look at the motivations of these foreign actors, they're open about it. So, you know, when it comes to Mexico, this notion that Mexico views mass migration as a way of extending their sovereignty into the United States to reclaim portions of the American Southwest that they lost in the 19th century, they're actually openly saying it. I mean, these are senior government officials from various political parties that say this. Whether they actually mean that California will become a Mexican state is really not the point. The point is they believe that they are reaching critical mass in states and they're going to be able to exert a level of sovereignty in those states. And they're already kind of doing it. You have this bizarre situation where in the Mexican Senate and in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, which is their Congress, you have representatives that live in the United States, and their job is to represent Mexican Americans that live in the United States before the Mexican government. That's a massive intrusion in our sovereignty. So you have a Mexican senator who lives in Arizona, is representing Mexican Americans in Arizona, who is in the Mexican Senate introducing legislation, you know, voting on bills advising the government how to help Mexican Americans in the country. And they talk about the fact that the Mexican diaspora in the United States is a quote, unquote, strategic resource that can be used for the benefit of the Mexican government. To me, it's shocking.

Jania Kelik (11:19)

Well, and then just all these, an order of magnitude more consulates than even the Chinese have. The Chinese Communist Party has these police stations which act like these little outposts, but here you have what, 50 police plus overt actual consulates. I mean, that's beyond, I think, well beyond any other country.

Peter Schweitzer (11:39)

Yes. Yeah. If I remember correctly, China and the UK, I think, have six or seven consulates in the United States. Mexico has 53. And one of the things you discover is that these consulates, in addition to doing their sort of regular consular behavior, there's also a lot of evidence they're getting involved in American domestic politics, meaning, you know, supporting certain candidates, certain political parties. There was a meeting in. In May of 2024. We got a copy of the transcript of the meeting at the Mexican consulate in Oklahoma City, of all places. And they brought together consular officials from around the country. There were Democratic Party activists there. And the discussion was about how with the upcoming presidential election, how they were going to turn parts of the country from red to blue. And they talked about how they had done it in California, they'd done it in Arizona, and now how are we going to do it in the rest of the country? That is not the kind of conversation foreign diplomats are supposed to be having in the United States. At the same time, they're championing and supporting these violent protests. The ones we had in Los Angeles in 2025, the ones that we're having in Minneapolis in January of 2026. Consular officials are encouraging this behavior. One of the Mexican officials living in the United States said that he was organizing the milit and going around the country meeting with activist groups to try to ramp things up. So again, this is not stuff that foreign diplomats are supposed to be doing.

Jania Kelik (13:14)

And I mean, Mexico is an ally, right? Supposedly. I mean. Well, no, but I mean compared to the Chinese Communist Party.

Peter Schweitzer (13:22)

100%.

Jania Kelik (13:22)

Yes, it actually is, yes. So this is why, you know, this all kind of taking me for a spin here. I mean, this can actually be negotiated, potentially. Negotiation is possible here.

Peter Schweitzer (13:35)

Yes.

Jania Kelik (13:36)

On the Chinese Communist Party, that's a bit of a different discussion. Yes, right.

Peter Schweitzer (13:40)

Yes, it is. No, you're right about that. I mean, Mexico we do not view as an adversarial power the way that we rightfully view China as an enemy. And I think our tendency is, and this benefits Mexico and what they're doing, our tendency is to view the Mexican government as corrupt, maybe a little hapless. And I don't think that's really an accurate rendering. I mean, they actually do talk and they are engaged in activities in our country that I would argue are quite sophisticated and quite brazen.

Jania Kelik (14:13)

Sounds strategic is the term I was thinking.

Peter Schweitzer (14:15)

Yes, yes. And again, it's something that it's not just sort of one crazy politician popping off on. There are literally dozens of quotations in the book and they're very explicit and they see states like Arizona and California as examples of success. So we need to be aware when we're dealing with issues of mass migration and the Mexican border, we need to understand the way they view it. They do not view mass migration as a bad thing. They are not saddened by the fact that tens of millions of Mexicans have moved to the United States. They view it as a positive thing, not only because of the billions of dollars they get in remittances, but also because of this strategic sense that they have that California, Nevada, these states, the American Southwest, it's their land, they view it as their land. And this is an opportunity to reoccupy it and to use it in a manner that benefits what they call Greater Mexico.

Jania Kelik (15:18)

So now during what's been dubbed the surge, right, in the previous administration, all these people coming through, there was a sizable number of Chinese nationals. There were military aged males that were described. You don't focus on that aspect of the weaponized migration from the CCP side, from the Chinese Communist Party side. But how serious of an issue is that? Is this, was there a kind of a fifth column pushed into America through that? How do you view that?

Peter Schweitzer (15:48)

Yeah, I think so. And I mean you've, you've done some reporting on this as other people have. And I think it's, it's true when you realize that a lot of the, the criminal networks that operate in the United States, Chinese organized crime, these individuals would come and connect up with them. We know in the state of Maine, for example, you've covered this with all the illegal marijuana. Gross. When they go and find out who's running these operations, they're people that are illegally in the country, some of whom came through the border in Mexico. So are there individuals there that are escaping communism and want to be part of the American system? Yeah, there are. The problem is, as with the example of the Marielle boat lift, you don't really know who is who. And a lot of these individuals are coming into the United States. They're connected with the ccp, they're connected with Chinese organized crime. And this is, in part an effort of infiltration. And the fact that you have some people fleeing communism come across that border is perfect cover exactly the same methodology that Fidel Castro used in the Marielle boat list.

Jania Kelik (16:54)

I'm still blown away that I just simply. Well, it's not just me. I mean, I'm Canadian. Maybe I can be forgiven a little bit for not being aware. Right. But I mean, to me, it was revelatory that all this could be weaponized. When I started having guests who were saying, look, this is not normal. This is not organic. And of course, after a while it becomes obvious. But it's not like we didn't know that this method exists and has been done and apparently done wildly, effectively before. This is confusing, right?

Peter Schweitzer (17:27)

Yeah, No, I mean, it's been done well before. And if you look further in history, which I'm not as familiar with, but you look further in history on migration, migration has oftentimes been used as a weapon, a weapon of subversion, a weapon to overwhelm an enemy, a weapon to divide an enemy, a weapon to sow chaos. You know, I quote in the. In the book an immigration judge in the United States who says, look, I mean, the exception to the rule is sort of free immigration, where people just sort of organically that, by and large, this is. A lot of times this is enacted by states. And so the case. In the case of the surge from Mexico and the Biden administration, you had two explicit things that happened because we went from a trickle to a flood almost overnight. The first thing is, as I recount in the book, after Joe Biden won in November 2024, AMLO, the president of Mexico, called together Mexican legislators, and they enacted legislation that they knew was going to radically encourage mass migration to the United States. So they knew that that was the effect because that's what they wanted to Happen you had governments in Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, and you think, well, what could they do in Nicaragua? They decided, hey, we will allow anybody from anywhere on the planet, if they fly to Nicaragua, we will give them a visa and we will take them to the border so they can head north and going to the United States. And you literally had millions of people coming from Africa, from Latin America, from Asia, who flew to Nicaragua on these chartered planes and then would head north. So this was all intention and intentional and directed.

Jania Kelik (19:11)

And this is so. I mean, the really important thing is it's this mix. It's this mix of people, some of whom genuinely need help, some of whom are just economic opportunists, some of whom are actual bad actors, and some of whom. Who are criminals and insane people that are being pushed to destabilize.

Peter Schweitzer (19:29)

Yes.

Jania Kelik (19:30)

And you have to kind of. And it's obviously very difficult to sort out, especially when there's this kind of mass surge happening.

Peter Schweitzer (19:37)

Exactly right. I mean, and that's the. That's the dilemma when you have a country like the United States that, that. That immigrants helped to build. I mean, they were a vital component to it, helped build it. So important to our history. And we are a compassionate people in a lot of respects, but now that compassion is being turned against us and it's being used to manipulate us, and the cost is real, especially when you have domestic people in the United States, some of these NGOs who are telling migrants that come here from whatever intention, don't assimilate, and in fact, they pressure them and ridicule them if they do talk about assimilating, it creates a lot of tension and conflict in the United States that we don't need. And it is destabilizing, which is the intention of what is happening. So the challenge for America is how do we maintain this important part of our history of allowing immigration but vetting who is coming into the country? And that's not an easy thing to solve, but it begins with awareness. Let's begin with awareness of the fact that. That it is being weaponized. This is going on, and we have got to address it before it's too late.

Jania Kelik (20:51)

Well, you do have a chapter at the end of the book that tries to do that. And I mean, as I was looking through that, some of it is around shifting the incentive structures of people coming here. So, you know, a big part of what you talk about when it comes to the CCP's weaponization of migration is this birth tourism. So, I mean, and you. I mean, I mean, fascinating, shocking, and Deeply disturbing examples. But here's the. Rob. Right. You suggest, I think, that it could be there's a million American citizens, half a million to a million American citizens who have their allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party. Could be. And how do you get that number? I mean, that's a really large number of people.

Peter Schweitzer (21:38)

I agree. It's a really large number of people, and I was shocked by it. Yeah. The birthright citizenship issue to me is really central because it is a massive vulnerability and it's something that can be fixed. We'll see what the Supreme Court is going to settle on this. But the important thing, I think, for people to understand is the Chinese government, the ccp, is using birth tourism on an industrial scale. They are exploiting it on an industrial scale. So what do I mean? Well, any numbers that we have related to how many Chinese nationals are flying to the United States, giving birth here and then flying home with a baby, raising them in Communist China, and then when they turn 18, they're going to be citizens. They can vote and do everything. Our federal government has no idea. We don't track this information because you're given a birth certificate when your child is born here, whether you're an American citizen, whether you're a Chinese. Birth torture. You get a birth certificate does not list the nationality of the parents. Nobody tracks this. So our federal government says we have no idea. The number of half a million to a million, maybe more, comes actually from China. The Chinese government has looked at this and estimates. The Chinese government and some research firms say that over the past roughly 13 years, you have anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 Chinese nationals a year doing this for 13 years, which is stunning. And there's a lot of anecdotal evidence to support this. In addition to the data from China, reports of these flights from Los Angeles LAX to Shanghai, where the entire business section is largely populated by newborn babies. So it's a huge problem. And I think we have to dispel the idea that birth control, birth tourism, or birthright citizenship, I should say, is just something, you know, somebody comes across the border, they make a life here. They're here for 20 years, they have a couple of kids. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about very systematic, and we're talking about something China did in Hong Kong for a while. It reached the point around 2010 that half of all newborns in Hong Kong were Chinese nationals getting birthright citizenship in Hong Kong. The government had to stop it. The government in Hong Kong at that point had to stop it because they said, this is subversion. We can't allow this to go on. Something similar is playing out in the United States.

Jania Kelik (24:06)

And you're saying that these other research firms are kind of confirming the Chinese numbers because both you and I know that we can't put a lot of stock in the Chinese numbers.

Peter Schweitzer (24:17)

Yes, exactly. And what's interesting about that, you're right. You think, okay, the Chinese government's saying this. If anything, I would believe the Chinese government would want to understate. Would want to understate the numbers. So the fact that the Chinese government saying 50,000 a year, the fact that these research firms are saying 100,000 a year, one research firm said that in just a single year, I think it was 2018, they said there were 150,000. Now, I don't know if those are, you know, completely accurate, but those are the only numbers we have. And again, all of these sources would have reasons to sort of underestimate these numbers. And it would be fitting with China's methodology, which is very smart, very sophisticated at exploiting the weaknesses of countries that it regards as enemies, and that certainly the United States would fit in that category.

Jania Kelik (25:07)

I mean, it's. You're making me think of how we've had to try to estimate the numbers of these forced organ harvesting victims in China, because over there, it's a state secret in this case. Right. The real numbers. So you have to say, well, how many hospitals have been built? How many beds are in those hospitals? There's some of these numbers do exist that are focusing exclusively on transplants or how many wards. And eventually you kind of glean some sort of horrible estimate. Right. Which is what we've done, but we should be doing better with our statistics here. It's kind of unbelievable what you're telling me, because it's not like it would be hard to gather that data if you chose to.

Peter Schweitzer (25:47)

Yes, exactly. And. And what it really comes down to is local governments who are issuing birth certificates, locations of birth, nobody's collecting that data, and nobody is including the nationality of the parents. And. Yeah, I mean, which would seem like it would be an obvious thing to do.

Jania Kelik (26:04)

Right.

Peter Schweitzer (26:05)

So that would be beginning reform. I'm really hoping that when the Supreme Court looks at this issue of birthright citizenship. I'm not a lawyer, I'm not going to guess in legal details, but I do think that they would look at the fact that if you are going to have some form of birthright citizenship, the notion that somebody can literally drop off Their pregnant wife gives birth here. And as soon as the baby is able to get on a plane, you're flying back to China. That the 14th Amendment, which talks about under the legal jurisdiction thereof, would not apply.

Jania Kelik (26:42)

Right.

Peter Schweitzer (26:43)

If you, if you snuck across the border, you've been here for 15 years, you gave birth, you've got a five year old. I think people might be more understanding. But this, this mass industrial scale, it's a huge, huge industry. Not to even mention the issue of surrogacy, which is, which is an offshoot of that where you have, you know, politically connected elites in China who are hiring women in the United States to carry their children. They call them carriers. And these women, they're American citizens, they're paid 50, $60,000. They get the sperm, or maybe sometimes the sperm and the egg from a couple in China. The child is born here, the child is born here is not only getting citizenship because of birthright citizenship, they're getting it because the birth mother is an American citizen. And we have no numbers on that. We have a couple of anecdotal stories. We have a case, the Wall Street Journal mentioned, of one single man, a billionaire in China, who, according to the Wall Street Journal, has more than 100 children born this way that are presumably going to be American citizens. So it's a massive, massive vulnerability and we've got to wake up to it.

Jania Kelik (27:59)

Tell me about UN usa.

Peter Schweitzer (28:02)

Yeah, UN USA is one of these birth tourism companies. And what they do is they have websites, they freely advertise in China. I mean, here's the mystery point. I think we know the answer in explaining the motive of why China's doing this. But China began running articles in the People's Daily, the flagship publication of the CCP, began running articles in 2011 about how you have a right to do this. They're telling Chinese elites you have a right to go to the United States. The 14th Amendment is going to make sure that your child will be a U.S. citizen. And so the first question would be is why are they actually advertising this? And I think we know because, and.

Jania Kelik (28:42)

I'll just qualify here. This means that this is the regime saying, we want you to know this and we want you to do this. This is not casual.

Peter Schweitzer (28:50)

Exactly right. Exactly right. Signaling. Exactly right. Very, very well said. And the second part of that is there's a huge industry that does this that says, you know, pay us 70, $80,000. You know, we will fly you to the United States, we'll help you get through a customs and visa, we'll Help you explain how to lie on your visa. Tell people you're coming as a tourist. Don't tell them you're coming to have a child.

Jania Kelik (29:16)

Hide the belly.

Peter Schweitzer (29:17)

Yeah, hide the belly. Loose fitting clothing. They'll put them in a nice condo or hotel, primarily in California. They'll arrange all the medical procedures, they'll maintain everything that needs to be done and then they'll ensure that they get back safely to China. That's a huge industry. You can go on the Chinese Internet, which is highly, highly regulated. You've covered that. How much they censor, it's wide open. They don't stop any of that advertising from taking place. So you win. USA is one of dozens of companies that are doing this and they brag on their websites who their clients are. And their clients are, according to them, military officers, intelligence officers, CCP officials, people from the Ministry of Propaganda. So these are not dissidents, these are pillars of the elite. And UN USA is an example of one company that the Trump administration has tried very hard to clamp down on this. It's not illegal what they're doing, but what they charge them with, and I think rightfully so, is visa fraud. Because they're telling these pregnant women to lie on the visa saying, no, I'm not coming here for a medical procedure, I'm coming here as a tourist. And that is absolutely a felony.

Jania Kelik (30:33)

Well, and there's also kind of this mix of options because on one hand you have this kind of hotel, dormitory almost situation. On the other hand you have very high end services.

Peter Schweitzer (30:45)

Exactly. There's a menu that you can pick up. And so yes, in some cases you're in an apartment complex, it might be a three bedroom apartment, and there might be a pregnant woman or a woman with a newborn in all three of the bedrooms. And in some cases almost an entire apartment block in Irvine, California might have that. On the other hand, if you can afford to pay more, they'll put you up in a luxury hotel, they'll have a massage person come, they'll make sure that you have the best quality food, et cetera. And so you have. The child is going to be given U.S. citizenship by virtue of being born here. The parents will both be eligible for status as a permanent resident by virtue of their child. So the parents are incentivized because it will give them special immigration status to the United States as well.

Jania Kelik (31:40)

I wanted to touch on one more thing in that chapter, and this is just one chapter of your book is essential. I forget what you call it, the Manchurian Option. Or how.

Peter Schweitzer (31:49)

Manchurian generation.

Jania Kelik (31:50)

Manchurian generation, that's right. But you mentioned that the first baby born in 2025 in Saipan was one of these anchor babies. And it just reminded me, regular guest on the show Cleo Pascal talks about the vulnerabilities in this visa structure in Saipan, which, of course, is under auspices of the U.S. maybe if you could just speak a little bit to that and just that kind of bizarre reality on that island.

Peter Schweitzer (32:17)

Yeah, yeah. Saipan, of course, is this, I guess, American outpost in the middle of the Pacific. And it has some, you know, strategic value militarily to the United States. But because it is a US Territory, that means if your child is born in Saipan, according to this interpretation of the 14th Amendment, that is as good as if that child was born in California, Utah, New York or Florida. So it creates a powerful incentive structure for Chinese nationals to go there because the visa requirements are more loosely interpreted. They want, quote, unquote, tourists to come there because they don't get a huge number of them. And China sees that and has exploited it in a major way. So we need to look at that. We need to look at the larger issue of birth tourism. But we have to understand they are exploiting this on a massive scale. It's industrial, and we are completely oblivious to it. And we're looking at, beginning in 2030, a wave of what, according to Chinese estimates, is going to be 1 million citizens. I'm going to put that in air quotes, but they're US Citizens who have been raised in China. They were born here, shuttled back home, raised here. They're going to be voting in our elections. They're going to be donating to political campaigns. And let's remember the 2016 presidential election. It was settled by 72,000 votes. So a million votes is a lot of votes.

Jania Kelik (33:49)

No, it's obviously wildly significant. And I mean, let's go back to what I said about the incentive structures. I mean, US Citizenship ain't a bad one to have. Okay. Despite what some people will have you believe.

Peter Schweitzer (34:04)

Right.

Jania Kelik (34:05)

So, you know, this is kind of set up for exploitation. Like, everyone wants to have that opportunity for their kid. I mean, I'm just saying, like, you know, with your best intentions, you're not. You're not. We're not trying to be subversive. You just want to kind of a better life for your kid if you can, you know, do it here on American soil. You know, you could be thinking, hey, they'll be set for life. Right?

Peter Schweitzer (34:25)

Yes, absolutely. You would. And I understand the motivation there, the challenge with the birth tourism arrangement is the child is a US Citizen in name because they were born here, but they're not being raised here.

Jania Kelik (34:40)

Right. This is the clause that the Supreme Court is going to be assessing.

Peter Schweitzer (34:43)

Exactly right. And there's. And there's not. There's not easy answers in the sense that, again, I understand somebody who's made a life for themselves here, they've lived here 25 years, they've worked hard. They had a child, you know, 12 years ago. Should that child be a U.S. citizen? Maybe. But again, I don't see anybody that can make a reasonable case that a child that's born here and then put on a jet plane in business class to go back to China and has been raised there in this CCP bubble, How on earth we can count that person as U.S. citizen that has the ability to vote or get a government job or whatever?

Jania Kelik (35:19)

Well, obviously a massive national security implication. I don't even want to. It should be obvious on its face. Yeah, yeah. What was the most shocking thing you figured out that you didn't know? I mean, you've been looking at corruption for decades, you know, uncovering all sorts of things. What was the most shocking?

Peter Schweitzer (35:42)

You know, certainly the birth tourism is right up there. I think the most shocking is because it is so brazen and it's so visual and it's so visible, is the training of Chinese pilots in the United States. And this is something that, you know, you go back to 9 11. I'm old enough to remember 911 vividly. And we woke up to the fact after, you know, the dust settled and we buried the dead, that people from terrorist countries had come here and gone to flight schools. And remember, famously, they didn't want to learn how to land. They only wanted to learn how to fly. So they exploited our flight schools and we shut that down. We said, you know, we're going to do screening. If you're from certain regions of the world, you know, where there might be a jihadist influence, you can't go to flight schools. And then to wake up to the fact that we are training thousands of pilots in the United States from China, many of whom are going to be flying for the pla. That, to me was shocking because when you go on the website of these flight schools, you see 90, 95% of the students there are Chinese nationals. So that one probably for its brazen and in my mind, obvious nature.

Jania Kelik (37:00)

Okay, explain how this works, because this is not the military doing the training, obviously. Well, maybe not obviously, but hopefully Obviously. So how does it work? How is it that private aviation schools are training military pilots?

Peter Schweitzer (37:18)

So what happens is these training schools in the United States, they obviously want students and the tuition is expensive. It's $90,000 for basically a year of training. So the Chinese government has gone to these flight schools and China has a pilot problem because they need, according to their estimates, about 5,000 pilots a year, military and civilian, but they can only train about 1250 because the military restricts airspace usage in China. So they have to get them trained somewhere and they get them trained in the United States. And so what happens is the Chinese government pays the tuition. It's $90,000 a year, cash in advance. These schools get it and the pilots come and train here. It's basic flight training. When they go back to China, the cream of the crop, go to the PLA for more advanced training. So what you're, you know, becoming a pilot's a lot like becoming an athlete. You have to, you crawl, then you learn to walk, and then you learn to run. Well, we're teaching them to walk, we're giving them the basic flight training. And we should not underestimate that. I mean, this is a year long process. You're learning the basics of flight training. They wouldn't be learning this elsewhere. And the best of the pilots that are trained here are going to be training on advanced military aircraft in China and our pilots will be facing those pilots. So to me, that was shocking because of its brazen nature and it just seems to me kind of a slam dunk that we should say, you know, we're not going to do this, we're not going to train Chinese pilots to do this.

Jania Kelik (38:53)

Yeah, I mean, this is, you know, you've made a, you've certainly revealed a considerable amount over the years of this kind of the Chinese Communist Party taking advantage of, of the openness of US Society and in some cases the support of, you know, possibly aligned for nefarious reasons, possibly just out of convenience. Political actors.

Peter Schweitzer (39:19)

Yeah.

Jania Kelik (39:21)

And it just sort of. We don't even know like where this ends. I mean, it was stunning to me to this revelation as well. But how many other scenarios like this we just didn't think to look, exist right now?

Peter Schweitzer (39:35)

Oh, yeah. I mean, look, I spent two years researching this book with my research team. We didn't find everything. No way. We found everything. And that's what worries you? The things that we found worry me because of the vulnerability. But at least now they're visible and in the open and if we can have leadership in our country take the proper steps to deal with it. That's great. But you think about, you know, the things that are going on that we're not aware of. I mean, the research you're doing right now and the horrific situation with, you know, the organs and the. And the body parts in China. I think you probably have a more complete picture than anybody else does. But there are things that still go on in the dark recesses that you don't even know about. And so you struggle with that. As you know, you probably have the same thing.

Jania Kelik (40:25)

I'll give you an example. I mean, you know, so. So I've been working on exposing this forced organ harvesting, I mean, murder for organs industry and Communist China for 20 years on and off. You know, a big part of the problem was that it's just so extreme industrial scale. You know, you use that term. They're good at that over in China, unfortunately. You know, murder of people for organs. People just at some point would clue out and not want to know. And I understand. And I was sympathetic because I was the same way at the beginning. I got a report probably six months ago about farming of children for this. Okay. And the moment I saw it, I mean, those same feelings. I've been desensitized to forced organ harvesting. I've been working on it for so long. But this just took me back to me not wanting to know. Took me days to read the report in the first place, but I kind of knew already because of the twisted incentive structures that exist that, I mean, it's almost certainly happening. And, you know, now that we're digging in to try to understand what's the scale, how much of this is happening, you know, using surrogacy, it's just kind of an obvious system that could be used for organ transplants. Is horrific to contemplate, right? Yeah, but. And yeah, it's, it's.

Peter Schweitzer (41:39)

And there's. And there's a. There's. There's sort of. For people that are just learning about that story or the stories I'm working on, but there's this sort of cognitive disconnect because it seems so divorced from what they believe is. Surely somebody's taking care of that. Surely if this harvesting is taking place, the major media outlets would be covering it. No, it's not. So it takes a while for the imagination of the general public to really catch up with the facts and what.

Jania Kelik (42:14)

The reality are, and we just don't want to know. And I mean, this is what. I mean, the moment I conceived of it from this report, I knew it was almost certainly happening, and now just a matter of figuring out how and the details and so forth. But until I conceived it, just like you, you weren't expecting to find that there's all these flight schools, training pilots. Because why? Because it's so brazen? Because it's so, you know, it's just. By the way, thank you for endorsing the book. It's helping.

Peter Schweitzer (42:42)

I'm very, very, very glad to do so. It's fantastic journalism. It really is. And I. I don't say that to a lot of people. People will ask me a lot of times, and I'm not familiar with them. And a lot of times people use just almost exclusively anonymous sources. You don't do that. So it's a great piece of work, and I'm very excited that you took it on, and I know it had to have been emotionally and journalistically challenging to do so, but I'm glad you took it on. It's a great work.

Jania Kelik (43:07)

I'll Just for the benefit of those who might want to buy a copy still, I'm saying it's called Kill to Order. And I mean, that's. That's the nature of what we're talking about.

Peter Schweitzer (43:16)

Yes, yes. And it reveals what this regime is capable of. And in my book, I'm highlighting on their activities, their efforts to exploit our weaknesses for their strategic gain. And they really do believe that they are engaged in a civilizational war against the United States. This is not about just spheres of influence or military competition or. We want more of this market. That is all a byproduct of this civilizational war. What you've really touched on is the nature of the regime and the real human cost of this regime. And so the two are, in a sense, either close cousins or siblings, because it's two sides, really, of the same coin, when you think about it.

Jania Kelik (43:59)

And you said it incredibly well. If we really grasp, I mean, I hope that this issue just sort of bringing it more into the public consciousness. I think it might be the first time, really, that we're ready for that. We'll kind of, if we know who we're dealing with. I'm not an isolationist. We need to engage with whatever powers are out there, whatever they're doing, but we need to know who we're dealing with. Yes, right. And I'm afraid we haven't really.

Peter Schweitzer (44:24)

I agree, I agree.

Jania Kelik (44:26)

So thank you. Your book actually helps explain that, too.

Peter Schweitzer (44:29)

Well, thank you. Yeah. I, you know, sometimes think we've got these vast oceans. Let's just sort of do Fortress America. But it's not realistic. It's not. You know, I've said several times, I believe in America first, but not America only. And there's a big difference between the two. And you can know of horrors that are happening in your neighborhood and turn a blind eye. It's the same thing in the world. You can say there's a whore going on. I'm just going to pretend it's not here because it's a lot more convenient to not deal with it. But in the age in which we live and the nature of the Chinese regime, you can't ignore it because their ability to cause damage and destruction in undermining the United States is very real, and we should not underestimate that.

Jania Kelik (45:14)

And subversion is a central project of every communist regime, including Cuba. Has been, I mean, as you demonstrate. Right. Has been unbelievably effective as this tiny country. Right.

Peter Schweitzer (45:27)

Yes.

Jania Kelik (45:27)

But with this revolutionary fervor, has been incredibly effective in harming this country. And, I mean, the CCP is just a whole different scale, right?

Peter Schweitzer (45:34)

Yes, yes. And the question for me is I do believe freedom wins in the end, but I don't say that naively, that, oh, it's just going to kind of happen. You have to actually fight for it and make it happen. But I do believe it's the superior system, it's the more humane system. It's the one that people generally, not everybody, but generally people want to live in this kind of system. They don't want to live in that system. But when you're dealing with fear, when you're dealing with a tyrannical government that sows fear, and you're dealing with a regime that is using our good nature against us in the subversion form, whether it is birthright citizenship, whether it is the training of pilots, you have to wake up to that fact. Just because we have the better system that people aspire to does not mean we're actually going to win. We have to make sure that we win. And that begins with, I think, waking people up to what they are exactly doing in our country.

Jania Kelik (46:34)

Peter Schweitzer, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.

Peter Schweitzer (46:37)

It's great to be with you always. Thank you so much. And I'm very much looking forward to your book.

Jania Kelik (46:42)

Thank you all for joining Peter Schweitzer and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Janje Kellick.