For years, Americans assumed China’s loan diplomacy stopped at dusty ports in Africa or half-built rail lines in South Asia. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was something that happened “over there.” A distant problem. Someone else’s crisis. But the newest data tells a different story — a darker, more unsettling one. The United States, the richest nation on earth, is now the single largest recipient of Chinese lending. (RELATED: Foreign Affairs Features a Recipe for Defeat in Cold War II) More than $200 billion has flowed from Beijing into nearly 2,500 American projects, according to AidData’s sweeping report. Critical infrastructure. Energy. Data centers. High-tech acquisitions. Port terminals. Even Fortune 500 giants have latched onto China’s bottomless bankroll. What once felt like an abstract geopolitical contest suddenly lands on American soil with a deafening thud. (RELATED: America’s Strategic Blind Spot in the Global Chip Race) The question is no longer how China influences developing countries. The question is how far into America this influence already runs. China never gives anything away. Not money. Not materials. Not “partnerships.” Every yuan comes with a string, and every string is part of a chain. Once that chain tightens, it does not loosen voluntarily. China understands something American politicians often forget: control the infrastructure, and you control the nation. This is why Beijing’s move into wealthy nations matters more than anything it has built in the developing world. When China bankrolls an airport terminal in Los Angeles, a natural-gas project in Texas, or a data center in Northern Virginia, it gains something far more valuable than profit. It gains presence. It gains leverage. And slowly, almost invisibly, it gains power over the pipes, ports, grids, and digital arteries that keep the United States alive. (RELATED: Some Dare Call It Treason) China understands something American politicians often forget: control the infrastructure, and you control the nation. These loans do not simply finance construction. They shape dependency. Imagine a future scenario in which U.S. policymakers attempt to crack down on a Chinese tech giant siphoning American data. Beijing would not need to threaten war. It could quietly remind U.S. officials how many major projects — pipelines, energy terminals, transportation hubs — rely on Chinese capital or Chinese contractors. (RELATED: How To Beat China in the Great Power Competition) And history shows how China uses this leverage. Countries from Sri Lanka to Montenegro learned too late that Chinese financing is not a gift but a mortgage, one backed not by goodwill but by state power. Ports end up leased for 99 years. National budgets buckle. Surveillance tools appear in “pilot programs” that never seem to end. Chinese security firms arrive to “manage risk.” Before long, a sovereign country must ask Beijing’s permission to move inside its own borders. Now imagine that template placed atop the United States. Data centers funded by Chinese state lenders. Supply chains tied to Chinese creditors. High-tech firms acquired with significant Chinese backing. Airports whose major expansions were paid for by the same country that funnels fentanyl precursors to criminal networks in Mexico. Energy corridors built with money from a Communist Party that openly says it intends to surpass — and, when possible, weaken — the United States. (RELATED: Trump’s Intel Holding: Will It Help US Defeat China, Inc.?) Once you accept the money, you accept the leverage. Money is never neutral, and China never plays for second place. China’s strategy is simple: If you can’t conquer a country, bankroll it. If you can’t beat America militarily, bind it financially. A superpower leaning on foreign cash is already halfway compromised. This isn’t paranoia, but pattern recognition. There is also a cultural cost. A country that outsources its ports, pipelines, data centers, and high-tech assets is a country outsourcing not just infrastructure, but independence. Great nations are built on self-reliance. The more China bankrolls American essentials, the more America resembles a client state pretending to be sovereign. This path leads somewhere dark. Imagine a decade from now. China escalates pressure over Taiwan. The U.S. considers sanctions or naval deterrence. Beijing responds not with missiles but with ledgers. It signals that freezing Chinese assets, blocking Chinese firms, or restricting Chinese technology may trigger defaults on American projects financed with Chinese credit. Jobs would be threatened. Supply chains disrupted. Energy grids destabilized. U.S. officials, fearing domestic chaos, hesitate. And that hesitation becomes victory for Beijing without firing a shot. This is how modern conflict unfolds: subtle at the start, a stranglehold at the end Breaking this chain will not be easy, but it is still possible. America must ban Chinese financing in critical infrastructure. No exceptions. No loopholes disguised as “private partnerships.” If it powers the country, moves the country, feeds the country, fuels the country, or stores the country’s data, it must not be backed by Beijing. Next, Washington must rebuild what it allowed to decay. Ports, pipelines, semiconductor plants, rare-earth supply chains — these must be American-built with American capital or from trusted allies who share its security concerns, Transparency is essential. Every American should know which companies depend on Chinese credit. Every state should know how much of its grid, freight, or broadband relies on Beijing’s banks. Finally, Congress must treat economic security as national security. Because it is. America cannot remain free if its infrastructure is rented, its supply chains borrowed, and its digital backbone indebted to an authoritarian rival. If the chain is broken now, the nation keeps its footing. It stays sovereign, steady, and capable of resisting outside pressure. But if nothing changes — if the loans pile up, the leverage deepens, and the illusion persists that a superpower can borrow from its chief rival without consequence — then the next crisis will not arrive with troops or missiles. It will arrive through contracts, debts, and obligations accepted because they seemed easy in the moment. Armies seldom bring nations down. Bad decisions do. And China is banking on a few more bad decisions being made. READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn: Trump’s Third-World Ban Misses the One Thing That Actually Matters Why Is Italy Killing Its Women? A PSA to Women: This Type of Man Won’t Save You When It Counts

Arguments for the H-1B foreign worker visa come from a globalist worldview that sees the state not as a nation but a team competing for capital — including the human kind. It’s one of those rare issues that finds supporters and opponents alike across party lines because both parties’ elites, by and large, oppose American workers’ interests — and neither party establishment fundamentally believes in the nation-state. (RELATED: The New H-1B Tax: An Exercise in Crony Capitalism) Every few years, the same ritual plays out in Washington. The tech industry, immigration law firms, and so-called free-market think-tank mouthpieces all lobby for more H-1B visas. Their argument always runs the same: America needs the “best and brightest” from around the world — or we’ll fall behind. They trot out the same handful of success stories: Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and, of course, Elon Musk. The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B. Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot… — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 28, 2024 Without foreign geniuses, these advocates insist, the U.S. will become a technological backwater, threatening both our economy and national defense. But many of these poster children didn’t even arrive on an H-1B. Elon Musk, for instance, came on a student visa and could have naturalized years earlier if he’d wanted to. But even if the H-1B success stories weren’t so thin — even if the CEO of every single Fortune 500 company had arrived on an H-1B visa — it would not justify keeping this visa program going. (RELATED: Elon Musk v. MAGA: H-1B Visas, Foreign Workers, Big Tech, and America First) Replacing Americans with Foreigners Won’t Make America Great Again Vacuuming up the planet’s best and brightest is not “winning.” President Donald Trump understood this when he ran for president in 2016. In the Republican primary debate in Miami, he came out strongly against the H-1B visa — not to reform it, but to end it: First of all, I think and I know the H1B very well. And it’s something that I frankly use and I shouldn’t be allowed to use it. We shouldn’t have it. Very, very bad for workers. And second of all, I think it’s very important to say, well, I’m a businessman and I have to do what I have to do. When it’s sitting there waiting for you, but it’s very bad. It’s very bad for business in terms of — and it’s very bad for our workers and it’s unfair for our workers. And we should end it. There are currently over half a million H-1B workers in the U.S., roughly 90 percent of whom will receive green cards. This will then allow them to bring their family members through our chain migration laws, ballooning the unskilled labor pool as well. (RELATED: Tech Companies Are Laying Off Americans to Replace Them With H-1B Workers, Vance Warns) Because of this reality, encouraging kids to become store managers and plumbers simply won’t work. The former H-1B visa holders’ wives and cousins will underbid wages in those industries, not just in Silicon Valley. It makes immigrants’ lives great. It makes companies great. It makes shareholders’ bank accounts great. But none of this makes America great. For American-born graduates who studied hard in school, remained sober enough to graduate college with a useful degree, and paid their dues in entry-level jobs, the H-1B visa is a kick in the teeth — before they’ve even landed on their feet. To add to that humiliation, their country’s elected officials and intellectual “betters” try to convince them that it’s actually a good thing they’re having to compete against the cream of the global crop, people accustomed to earning the equivalent of fast-food wages. Rather than becoming embittered or voting against the system that’s undermining their birthright, these young Americans are supposed to celebrate their replacement by a globalist all-star team. (RELATED: Big Tech’s Political Takeover Threatens All Americans) The irony, of course, is that many of these “all-star workers” hail from China and India — countries we’re supposedly competing against — who will never be loyal to the U.S. and the American people. Not only do you have to compete against H1-B cheap labor, but now your boss and coworkers don’t even speak English at work. They couldn’t care less that you don’t understand them. pic.twitter.com/JBCeHQBYcU — J. (@PresentWitness_) November 10, 2025 To Get Homegrown Talent, Change the Incentive Structure The H-1B program was sold to the public as a temporary patch for labor gaps. It was never meant as a permanent brain-drain pipeline that lets India, China, and Eastern Europe replace the tough work of raising high-IQ, highly disciplined American kids. In 1998, amidst the tech boom, Congress bowed to tech industry lobbying and raised the H-1B cap. But it also taxed companies that used the program extra and used that additional revenue to train future American workers, a policy aimed explicitly at “reducing dependence on foreign labor.” That noble goal has, of course, fallen by the wayside as companies see no need to lobby for improving the talent pipeline or fix that pipeline with their own money. Why spend the money to recruit and train excellent students in small, regional universities when you can just hire an experienced 35-year-old Indian? Even if the U.S. were poor, and American workers could outbid most foreign labor competition, drawing from such a massive talent pool would still make companies and the education system lazy. But America is not a poor country, which means not only can that 35-year-old outperform the 21-year-old American, but he’s also willing to do so at a much lower pay grade. If the most expensive K–12 system on earth, the biggest university apparatus in human history, and a culture that invented the transistor, the internet, and the airplane can’t produce enough coders and engineers without strip-mining the planet’s talent, something is deeply broken in the incentive structure. America’s poor education system and lack of on-the-job training is a symptom, not the problem. The education system doesn’t adequately prepare students for available jobs, and companies don’t spend big to recruit and train young American adults because they don’t have to. Instead of putting in the effort to fix our education system, our families, and our culture to improve American human capital, we just import the finished product. Imagine a family with four kids, none of whom are on their school’s Honor Roll. Instead of tutoring their own children, helping with homework, and improving the schools, the parents choose to shop for new, straight-A foster kids. Then they turn to their biological children and say, “Don’t worry, these new kids will carry the family name and make us look good in town. We’ll all benefit from the improved reputation, and when your adopted siblings grow up and make more money than you, maybe they’ll share some of it with you.” Every one of those kids would understand the message: We’re not good enough. We’re being replaced. That’s the real H-1B debate in a nutshell. Many of the people who scream loudest about “meritocracy” don’t seem to believe Americans are capable of winning in one. Meritocracy is fine if it’s limited to the 330 million legal residents of the U.S., just as a limited social safety net is fine when it’s limited to Americans. But globalists demand meritocracy for seven billion people, just like the Left wants the American safety net to cover anyone who wants to cross our border. In both cases, foreigners are prospering at our expense. We’ve forgotten that countries are not all-star teams or corporations; they’re extended families. Japan invests in its own people without raiding Romania for coders. South Korea doesn’t poach German engineers. They jealously guard their labor markets and intellectual property while cultivating homegrown talent that builds world-class companies. Yet American firms — driven by globalism and profits rather than patriotism — prioritize imported elites from rivals like China and India, deluding themselves that these elites will one day prioritize America over their own native countries, when at best, they’ll favor the left-wing, globalist culture of Silicon Valley. America’s poorly trained workforce is a consequence of the perverse incentive structure produced by our longstanding labor replacement policy. If we want a highly trained, competent American workforce, we must pull the H-1B rug out from under American corporations. It’s time to stop telling our kids they need to compete with the entire planet for the privilege of living a full life in the country their ancestors built. Start telling them the country expects them to be the best — because it’s theirs. READ MORE from Jacob Grandstaff: The Anti-Colonial Shadow Over Mamdani’s Socialism SCOTUS Just Missed a Big Opportunity to Stop Election Meddling It’s Time to End Universities’ Foreign Tuition Dependence Jacob Grandstaff is an investigative researcher for Restoration News.

While Tuesday's meeting in Moscow, which went for about five hours, was characterized as constructive and substantial, it yielded no results in ending the war.

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