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WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), joined Greta Van Susteren on Newsmax to discuss the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Defense tracking more than 100 incidents of Chinese nationals posing as tourists to attempt to breach U.S. military bases and other federal sites.
On Chinese Nationals Posing as Tourists to Breach U.S. Military Sites:
“There’s over 100 of them they've caught, or they've identified, but there could be thousands that are doing this, and nobody knows anything about it. There are things that can be done and should be done, but we have to have an administration that's willing to do them—like when we had when Mike Pompeo restricted the B-2 visas to one entry within a month, not multiple entries over the course of 10 years, which is something the Biden administration did away with as soon as he became president.”
On Pushing Back on China Investment and Interference:
“We could probably look back on history and wonder how much data was collected by the spy balloon fiasco, and if they did it once, how many times did they do it when we didn't know they did it? I suspect the intelligence agencies may have some information, but the bigger question is, what are we going to do about it going forward? That’s why I joined Senator Rubio's bill which would ban CCP members from even getting a B-2 tourist visa or B-1 business visa at all. I think the bigger challenge here is, how seriously do we take China? I take it very seriously. Lots of people take it very seriously. This administration has now sent four high-ranking officials to China to meet with their counterparts for talks. I just think we're naive at best, if not compromised.”
On the Chinese Spy Balloon:
“What I'm not completely satisfied with is do we yet know how much data they were able to collect? Whether it's images from the ground or communications between space and the ground or aircraft. I think that's what we don't know at this point.”
“But the other problem is how are we going to prevent this from happening in the future? Remember, at the heart of the spy balloon situation, the intelligence agencies knew as soon as the balloon took off, they were familiar with the program. Everybody knew about it, but they didn’t pass along the information onto the NORAD NORTHCOM commander until the balloon gets into our airspace. There's got to be better communication than those silos that really don't provide much transparency at all. It's certainly not an adequate timely response.”