Bagram Airport Could be strategically Beneficial to China.

Former President Donald Trump recently expressed concern that the Chinese regime could gain control of Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, adding that his administration would have maintained control of the airbase upon a U.S. withdrawal from the country.

Back in June, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley told Congress that Bagram was neither tactically nor operationally necessary for the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Biden administration pulled out all U.S. troops from Bagram in July, more than a month ahead of the widely-criticized chaotic pull-out from the country.  The base, which was once the center of U.S. counterterrorism operations in the country, is about an hours’ drive from Kabul.

Trump on Nov. 7 Fox News interview, said his administration would have maintained control of Bagram Air Base because of its strategic location.

“We would have kept Bagram because it’s next to China … and now China’s going to take over Bagram, in my opinion,” Trump told Fox News.

Geographic Advantage Lost

Dan Steiner, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and global strategist, agreed with the former president, saying that its location close to China could have been valuable for the United States contending with the growing threat posed by the communist regime, including its expanding nuclear capabilities.

Using satellite imagery, recent reports detail the construction of three missile silo fields near the cities of Hami, Ordos, and Yumen in western China. The total number of long-range missile silos in China could now exceed 250.

“An earshot away from western China, there was clearly a strategic advantage to keeping Bagram Air Base,” Steiner said.

Retired Brigadier General Don Bolduc who served ten tours with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2013, similarly said that considering all threats from neigboring countries—China, Iran, and Pakistan—meant Bagram was strategically important.

With the United States out of the picture, the Chinese regime may want to keep it that way in Afghanistan.

“To prevent the United States from finding an excuse to return to Afghanistan to reoccupy an air base that is so strategically close to the Chinese regime’s nuclear weapons program,” Steiner said, “it’s not out of the question for the Chinese communists to want a footprint at this location sooner than later.”

The development of “a transportation hub” could be a perfect “dual-use scenario” for the Chinese regime to occupy the air base, Steiner said. There is precedent for this arrangement in South Asia: Pakistans’ Gwadar Port Authority is under the administrative control of the Maritime Secretary of Pakistan but operated by China Overseas Port Holding.

The idea of acquiring an air hub in a land-locked Afghanistan would be a “brilliant move on the part of Beijing,” according to Steiner. “It’s a very logical way for the Chinese to play chess, moving their piece into a square on the board that blocks the U.S. from moving back to the geographical location.”

To further an alliance between the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) and Taliban, Beijing could also use the threat of terrorism as a factor, he added.

“They could propose coming alongside the Taliban to confront the terrorist threat to the air hub as well as to western China, but at the end of the day, it’s just another means to get control of Bagram,” Steiner said.

While it may not be a Chinese military installation, per se, Steiner said it could easily be manned by members of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). “And surely this fits into the [regime’s] playbook of having control of Bagram.”

Big Business at Bagram

The Chinese regime recognizes the logistical and economic benefits to taking control of Bagram Air Field, according to Steiner.

“Should the Chinese gain an air hub in Afghanistan, it could be justified as a transportation point for airlift,” he said. Business contractors or even members of the PLA could be moved in or out of the country, or valuable minerals could be moved out, for example.

In an August 2021 op-ed for the New York Times, Zhou Bo, who was a senior colonel in the PLA from 2003 to 2020, wrote that “With the U.S. withdrawal, Beijing can offer what Kabul needs most: political impartiality and economic investment.” He went on to comment about Afghanistan’s estimated $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits, including industrial metals such as cobalt, copper, iron, and lithium.

In the case of lithium, the element is a key raw material for many batteries, including for electric cars. According to a report by the Institute for Energy Research, “China now dominates the world’s production of new generation batteries that are used in electric vehicles and most portable consumer electronics such as cell phones and laptops.”

China’s quest to continue to dominate lithium battery supply chains continues to move forward. For instance, China’s Ganfeng Lithium Company, the world’s top lithium company, recently signed a three-year contract to supply battery-grade lithium products to the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles Tesla Inc.

Because there is such “big business” associated with lithium and other mineral deposits, Bolduc said Beijing has been optimistic about contracting business in Afghanistan for quite a long time, He said the Chinese regime will likely be able to take advantage of the “less sophisticated, less bureaucratic government” of the Taliban to acquire all of what it desires.

“All China wants are the resources to maintain their global exploits—and as long as they’re granted the opportunity to get those resources,” Bolduc said, “it’s very likely they’ll pay or say whatever is necessary to get them.”

Negotiations Neglected

Maintaining control of Bagram Air Field was equally important to Steiner and Bolduc, as it could be for the Chinese regime. Bolduc said that a minimal presence of the United States military could have continued to help bolster peace in Afghanistan and throughout the region, while also keeping the CCP at bay. “And why not use an area that’s been used for 20 years as the base of operation for maintaining a regional footprint?” he said.

During U.S. negotiations with the Taliban, Steiner said the United States should have attempted to “maintain a location, like Bagram—much like has been done in northern Syria and Iraq.”

This is not unusual, as hundreds of U.S. troops remain deployed around the world in the fight against global terror. Bolduc said, “This should have been pressed for during the negotiation process, because it’s really the only way the U.S. could have ensured that the Taliban doesn’t go back to their own ways and allow Afghanistan to become the terrorist safe haven it will become.”

While the United States could have taken “a hard line” on the matter,” Steiner said, “the Taliban could have simply said no—and that’s probably something we’ll never know about the negotiation process.”

If China continues to bark and not bite we’ll see a leveling of the playing field due to the Disko-Nuussuaq project off the Western shelf of Greenland. Where artificial intelligence is being utilized to accurately locate various minerals for excavation including lithium. So if China plans to make any bold moves, sooner rather than later is in their best interest. The Taiwanese semiconductor market is at a grave risk of being controlled by the CCP in the near future, with global financial implications. So the bolstering of our mineral excavation, and technological manufacturing could give America a leg up in this dangerous tech race.

Souce: EpochTimes

Billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, etc. have banded together to purchase 900,000 square kilometers off the coast of west Greenland. Which is one of the last places to be prospected and mined for valuable minerals on earth. Bluejay Mining Co. has partnered with a company called KoBold Metals to revolutionize exploration geoscience. Kobold Metals is bringing Artificial intelligence into the equation to precisely identify ore deposits off the western shelf of Greenland.

According to Cambridge University press, researchers have discovered lithium deposits in Greenland ice cores (glaciers) measured by ion chromatography. Which is a convenient solution to the current lithium shortage for electric vehicle batteries. To pursue a climate change agenda, every single car on the road must be electric. So you can expect Bluejay Mining to do very well for itself in the next few years. Considering they’ll be finding various other precious metals & gems.

Breakthrough Energy, introduce themselves on their website by identifying as “a group of investors who are working together in a fund that is patient, flexible, and committed to the guiding principles of Breakthrough Energy – including supporting net-zero emissions technology and ensuring affordable, reliable, and clean energy for all.” Their board of investors is comprised of Twenty-eight billionaires, many whom you’ve heard of. One that stood out to me was a company called SOHO China.

They’re a Chinese building developer, primarily in the office and commercial sector, with some residential and mixed-use properties in its portfolio. The company, which uses the name “SOHO” in both English and Chinese contexts, was founded in 1995 by Chairman Pan Shiyi and CEO Zhang Xin. The name SOHO comes from the phrase “Smart Office, Home Office” as the company decided to combine office rooms and residential apartments in the same building to facilitate a comfortable and productive environment. The company has developed over five million square meters of commercial properties, And still holds 1.4 million square meters of office space in Beijing and Shanghai for long-term investment.

Who is Bluejay Mining?

So clearly there are some very deep pockets leaning into this project. Only one of the two companies carrying out the project required funding from Breakthrough Energy. But Bluejay Mining was self sufficient and retains the ability to self-fund to maintain a 49% ownership through to production, providing external public investors with the opportunity of investing alongside a private investment entity of this magnitude.

“It is focused on advancing its primary Dundas Ilmenite Project in Greenland, the world’s most significant, highest grade mineral sand ilmenite deposit, into production in the near term and driving value through the development of its other large scale high grade projects providing exposure to commodities including nickel, copper, lead zinc and platinum.”

Bluejay currently has four projects in Greenland, which it is actively developing. The Company believes that Greenland represents one of the last underexplored mineral regions that has the potential to contain globally significant resources. This is essential to provide the next wave of technological innovation.

So who’s KoBold?

KoBold is applying modern artificial intelligence and cloud computing technology to predict the composition of the subsurface. Their data platform, TerraShed, aggregates and structures vast collections of scientific data and makes it rapidly available for analysis. And their suite of algorithms, Machine Prospector, interrogates that data with a range of techniques—from ensemble machine learning, to full-physics joint inversions, to computer vision—to predict the composition of the subsurface in a statistically valid manner.

KoBold Metals is privately held and backed by investors committed to the long-term development of new battery metal resources. Their principal investors are Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate technology fund overseen by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and other global business leaders; Andreessen Horowitz, the premier Silicon Valley venture capital fund; and Equinor, the Norwegian state oil company.

How does it apply to the 4th industrial revolution?

New home office working conditions and increased home time led to a growth of 26.1% of traditional computer sales during the last quarter of 2020 – and thus, to the demand exceeding the production. In addition, the pandemic caused a fluctuating demand from the industry: some tech companies overstocked chips in advance, while others couldn’t acquire any. Many others, especially car companies, canceled chip orders, fearing that the industry was going to take a hit, so manufacturers adapted to the situation by switching their production to chips for consumer products. 

Unfortunately, things didn’t stop there: a winter storm pushed Texas semiconductor factories to shut down, while a fire in Japan’s Renesas plant caused delays – and this is where nearly one-third of the car chips used worldwide are produced.

Another cause could be the trade war between the United States and China. Restrictions placed on Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) pushed companies to rely on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) and Samsung but those manufacturers had already been working at their full capacity.

Conveniently enough, there’s political tension between China and Taiwan. So something has to give, and that’s the Disko project. This project will be more than self sufficient in terms of solving the chip shortage. In fact, it is in my firm belief that we’re about to be exposed to a whole new wave of technological innovation. With Mark Zuckerberg’s pivot to the MetaVerse, I think a dystopian technocracy is right around the corner. From the looks it, the list of investors is telling me this will be implemented globally.

The electronic tyranny of technocracy that is now being developed and implemented throughout the world is in preparation for the Antichrist’s rise to power. As we see this final empire taking shape in our day, we can know for certain that the end times is upon us and the coming of Christ is drawing near. Now is the time to take yourself off autopilot, turn inward and find Jesus. Stay inquisitive in the word of God, and the world around you.