What's Next for House Committee on Intelligence?

Fresh from their head-line grabbing investigation of Chinese Telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE, Chairman Mike Rogers and Ranking Member C.A. Ruppersberger of House Select Committee on Intelligence (the spy kind and not related to IQ kind) announced that the Committee will next investigate how the Chinese acquisition of AMC Theaters will adversely affect national security.

AMC is the second largest chain of cinema theaters in North America with over 5300 screens. Each screen is a potential conduit for messages to corrupt our American youth, Chairman Rogers said.

Studies have shown that flashing subliminal messages at the moviegoers in between frames can induce involuntary purchase of soda pop and junk food. The Committee intends to ask Dalian Wanda, the acquirer, if the company intends to insidiously suggest to the American audience to gorge on chop suey.

The Committee also intends to ask Dalian Wanda as to its connection to the Chinese government and the PLA. Given that the company is based in the city where Bo Xilai was once mayor, we can presume the company has unsavory intentions and the Committee intends to find out what that is.

Dalian Wanda might offer to let an independent third party vet all the prospective projectionists before they are hired but that proposal will be rejected by the Committee. It will be too easy for the Chinese owner to slip in secret agents while the operating projectionists go on bathroom breaks and insert messages that turn the minds of American youth into mush. (Thanks to video games from Japan, the minds of American young people are already in a fragile state but that's a topic for another investigation.)

Chairman Rogers regrets that he did not initiate similar investigations when Wanxiang began to acquire auto parts companies in the US, including many in his home state of Michigan. Now Wanxiang USA is probably too big to tackle.

While the acquisitions saved many of those companies from going out of business and thus kept many employed, there is no telling what dastardly deeds that can be done to undermine the security of the US. For instance, spare auto parts could be manipulated to fail when put into American made cars and thus give Chinese cars an unfair economic advantage.

Sensors on the auto parts can be designed to send sensitive intelligence (the spy kind, not the smarts kind) back to Beijing and we wouldn’t even know it. For instance, the sensor could be telling Beijing that certain Senator is not at the office but his car is parked in his mistress’s garage.

As investigations by the Cox Committee have proven a decade or so earlier, every entity from China registered in the US is spying on us. If we begin on the presumption that the Chinese are up to no good, we will be able to sleep better at nights.

The House Select Committee on Intelligence (the spy kind not related to intelligence) intends to safeguard our national security. We stand on the premise that we don’t want the Chinese here and we don’t want Chinese investments here. They can take their American dollars and invest elsewhere.

This pseudo press release with tongue firmly planted in the cheek may seem ludicrous but is inspired by the actions of the House Committee on Huawei and ZTE and the pervasive paranoia currently afflicting American politics.