The Forgotten US Territory Where Chinese Birth Tourism Thrives | Cleo Paskal

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] There’s one place in America where Chinese nationals can enter without a visa.

It’s called the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a U.S. territory in the Pacific, right by Guam. And it has become a major security loophole for Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence operations as well as Chinese organized crime and birth tourism ventures, said Cleo Paskal, a senior fellow at the Compass Institute.

Yet there has been little political will in Washington to close this loophole, Paskal argues.

In this episode, Paskal breaks down the CCP’s aggressive influence and gray-zone warfare operations in this region—areas critical to U.S. defense in any Taiwan conflict—and why this matters for U.S. security.

Every U.S. president who served in the Pacific theater in World War II understood that the security of the American mainland depends on a secure Pacific perimeter, Paskal said.

As such, in addition to two U.S. territories in the region, the United States has maintained Compacts of Free Association with Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands since the end of World War II.

These treaties give the U.S. military exclusive defense and strategic access to these countries in exchange for U.S. security guarantees and economic support.

But the Chinese Communist Party has sought to aggressively expand its influence in these islands through pressure, gray zone warfare, and disinformation campaigns. Amid all this, U.S. funding for these compacts nearly lapsed in recent years, because many in Washington apparently have forgotten their importance.

In this episode, Paskal walks me through a key question: if the security of America’s mainland has always depended on control of the central Pacific, what consequences will we pay now that so few Americans know these islands—or their citizens—even exist?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:

Cleo Paskal, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Cleo Paskal:

It’s great. Great to be here. Good to see you again. Thank you.

Mr. Jekielek:

Recently, there’s been a lot of discussion about birth tourism in America. There’s actually one place in America where Chinese nationals can come without a visa. And you are deep into understanding what’s going on there. Tell me what’s happening.

Ms. Paskal:

So the U.S. has 50 states and five inhabited territories. One of them is the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands [CNMI], which is just north of Guam. It’s contiguous to Guam. In fact, Guam is the southern of the Southern Mariana Islands, and then this is the Northern Mariana Islands. So it’s an island chain. It’s the newest part of the U.S. It joined the U.S. in 1976.

In 1975, the year before, was the time when the Vietnamese refugee situation was at its peak. And so Guam had about 100,000 Vietnamese refugees on it waiting to be sent to other parts of the United States. And when it joined, it said, we’d like to join. They had a referendum, but we’re a little bit concerned that our population of tens of thousands might be overwhelmed. And so, could we please have some control over our immigration and our labor laws? Because also, they had a very different economy.

That initial control over immigration was designed to keep the population stable in the context of the Vietnamese refugees, but it then evolved into a situation where they started letting in Russians and Chinese without visas for tourism reasons. The visa free entry for the Russians was revoked for national security reasons, but the Chinese one wasn’t. And so the Chinese continued to come in without a visa, creating all sorts of issues.

I would say right up front the justification that’s still used is they need the Chinese tourists, but the Korean tourists have vastly outnumbered the Chinese tourists for at least a decade, even though the Chinese tourists don’t need a visa. So the tourism argument doesn’t really make that much sense to me.

In fact, what they’re actually saying is that we want the Northern Mariana Islands to appeal to the Chinese that can’t get a visa to the rest of the US. So, their unique sales point from a tourism perspective is you can’t get a visa to Michigan, come to CNMI, where you don’t need a visa for the two weeks.

Mr. Jekielek:

And not everybody stays in CNMI when they arrive there.

Ms. Paskal:

No. So, this has contributed to a whole vast array of problems. And I’ll give you the example of one guy who is now in jail. He came in without a visa through this visa waiver thing in 2016. He overstayed his tourist visa. He set up a birth tourism industry where at least 200 Chinese came in and gave birth to little Americans. Then he started dealing with

methamphetamines. We think that through forged documents he went to Guam military bases.

This is a consistent problem where you have people coming in from China without a visa and then illegally going to Guam because they’re not supposed to leave the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, but it’s only 60 miles to Guam by boat. And we’ve seen that happen in the hundreds, including showing up on military bases. And that’s what he did.

Then he went to the neighboring country of Palau and was involved in a murder and was finally extradited back to the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, where they threw him in jail for importing methamphetamine in liquid form in lava lamps.

So, this is a guy who started off with the visa waiver, sold meth, brought in birth tourism, and was involved in a murder. None of that was caught in the U.S., that was only caught once he was in Palau, and then now he’s in jail.

But it gives an idea of how not just this is coming in and bringing in criminal activity, but it’s contributing to birth tourism and it’s contributing to insecurity in neighboring countries and potentially compromising the security of the U.S. military.

Mr. Jekielek:

I want to dig into CNMI a little bit more, but just on the issue of Palau, what does Palau think of this waiver program and the fact that people like this have made it to Palau?

Ms. Paskal:

A lot of the criminal activity that they’re seeing in Palau comes into them through the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands and through Guam. So the U.S. is seen as a security risk to its neighbors in the region than the U.S. does in the same location, in the same part of the Pacific.

Mr. Jekielek:

And this is also particularly relevant, I think, because the Chinese Communist Party has a particular interest in Palau for a whole suite of reasons, but especially because Palau recognizes Taiwan.

Ms. Paskal:

Yes. So Palau is just the other side of the Philippines. So if China wants to break through the first island chain and hit the second island chain, they can squeeze the Philippines. From both sides, if they have the ability to do so from Palau. Palau is highly strategically important, which is one of the reasons why the U.S. is engaged in things like putting in an over the horizon radar installation there. But also, this is a location where a lot of Americans died.

So if you know your World War II history, Palau is the Battle of Peleliu. The Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands is the Battle of Saipan, and Tinian. 80 years ago, this was an area of high strategic importance if you’re dealing with an aggressive Asian power that is trying to get across the Pacific.

Mr. Jekielek:

With a massively growing Navy, for example.

Ms. Paskal:

Yes, just for the sake of argument.

Mr. Jekielek:

But the vast majority of these people that are getting the visa waiver are not like this criminal, presumably.

Ms. Paskal:

Presumably. But the thing that is confusing to me is this has become a major issue on the Hill. So, there have been multiple congressional letters. So, this visa waiver thing is strictly the Department of Homeland Security [DHS]. It can be changed in a stroke of a pen. Throughout multiple administrations and multiple Congresses, there have been congressional letters sent to Secretary Mayorkas and Secretary Noem to ask for this loophole to be closed. And there is a persistent push to keep it open. And that’s perplexing to me.I don’t understand why, because the argument that is consistently presented is that it’s necessary for tourism.

But as I’ve said, that’s not reflected in the numbers. Chinese do not need visas to go into CNMI now, and yet still they’re being outnumbered by tourists from Korea. So why not work on tourism markets from Japan? Why not work on cabotage, which would allow other carriers in the region to hop from one U.S. administration to another so that they can jump from, for example, CNMI to Hawaii, which would increase tourism from other locations. There are all these other solutions, a ferry from Guam to CNMI to increase tourism within the region there. There are all these other answers, but those aren’t the ones being pushed. It’s consistently letting in Chinese without a visa.

Mr. Jekielek:

Spell out for me in the most simple terms why you view this as a national security threat.

Ms. Paskal:

A lot of focus on Taiwan for obvious reasons. But what’s less discussed is if China moves on Taiwan in whatever capacity, it has to take Guam and the Marianas, Northern Mariana Islands, off the risk map, put it that way.

These are places that are maybe, like, for example, the U.S. is only 1,700 miles from Taiwan. That’s how far Guam is from Taiwan.

Mr. Jekielek:

Hawaii, for example, just to give perspective.

Ms. Paskal:

Yes, it’s an eight hour flight from Hawaii to Guam, and it’s about four hours from Guam to Taiwan. So the U.S. is very close. And if China’s going to move on Taiwan, it has to make sure that Guam can’t respond and CNMI can’t respond. Part of that is, I think, likely going to be cyber. I think they would prefer not to kill Americans.

The lesson learned from Pearl Harbor is once you kill Americans, then it becomes, you know, the American people very rightly want to do something about it. So if they can just disable Guam and CNMI and the military installations there and buy time, then that may be preferable. To do that, it helps to have people in place.

We are seeing that Volt Typhoon is already in the cyber, it’s already affecting their critical infrastructure. But having people on the ground in place to do other things would be very helpful. And you’re seeing, for example, in the CNMI, the woman that ran the Bureau of Motor Vehicles selling U.S. driver’s licenses to Chinese, which is the first step towards a whole bunch of other things. And the birth tourism issue is already coming into play.

The first fentanyl case in Yap, Micronesia, which is another country, but right nearby, was an ethnic Chinese guy who was born in CNMI.

So he’s now an American citizen, which makes it much more difficult to prosecute. And you certainly can’t deport him because he’s an American. So you’re starting to see that criminal activity overlapping with targeting of critical infrastructure and getting people in place, that if I was the PLA [People’s Liberation Army], I would want to have already in case something was moving on Taiwan.

Mr. Jekielek:

And there is clear interest from the U.S. military and obviously Guam, where there’s a base, but also CNMI, from what I’m hearing.

Ms. Paskal:

Yes. So there’s a massive rebuilding of the Northfield site, which is where Northfield on the island of Tinian was the busiest airport towards the end of World War II in the world because that’s where the B-29 bombers were taking off from to hit Japan, including ultimately the Enola Gay Bockscars. Well, that’s where those flights took off from because they can range Japan.

It’s only a little bit over a three hour flight from Tokyo to Tinian or Saipan today, which is good for tourism. Those fields are being rehabilitated, and the main runway in Tinian is being rehabilitated, and there are increasing exercises being done in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands.

In Guam, you’re also seeing a substantial shifting of some of the resources from Japan to Guam and a building up of capabilities. Because if you’re the U.S., you have Hawaii and you have Guam, that’s an eight hour flight, right? If there is a battle over Taiwan, that is really far to get supplies across the center of the Pacific. And this is what caused the problems during World War II, that distance. So, the buildup in Guam is critical. And I would argue you’re going to have to see the ability to manufacture as well because you can’t, you know, ammunition and things like that.

The supply chains are really, really long.

And I don’t know if we’re going to talk about it, but countries like Palau and CNMI are in the middle between the two. And if the Chinese can make that a hellscape, for want of a better term, then being able to resupply the Americans sitting on that front line becomes increasingly difficult. So it’s increasingly important, it’s increasingly contested, and the U.S. has this open door to China right into that location.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, and there’s been a lot of Chinese money coming into CNMI as well.

Ms. Paskal:

Yes. So this is where you start to realize how kind of off the chart crazy the situation in CNMI is. 2014, 2015. And in the first three months of operation, a Chinese casino, Chinese-operated, with most of the money coming from China, had $5.3 billion worth of money passing through that casino in the first three months and billions more after that.

Mr. Jekielek:

In three months. Okay. So spell out to me what that means, please.

Ms. Paskal:

So Bloomberg did an article about it in 2018, a very good article, where they interviewed people who know how casinos work better than I do. Their assessment was it’s very difficult to see how this isn’t a money laundering operation. Maybe it’s not, but it certainly is a very peculiar thing. And of course, as you know how the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] works, they’re not about to let billions of dollars of money out of the Chinese economy unless they’ve got some sort of at least okay with it.

This actually coincided with the cracking down on some of the Macau casinos. This seems to be another way of getting money out of the country at the very least. There were some very high profile Americans associated with that casino as well, including the former director of the CIA, James Woolsey, was on the board of the casino. Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, was one of the advisors. As soon as the Bloomberg article came out, Louis Freeh cut ties, as did several others. But it gets into this linkage between what happened.

What happens in the Western Pacific is actually not staying in the Western Pacific. A large part of it is about what happens in Washington. Everything that I’m describing, this keeping the loophole open, the easy access for the Chinese, the lack of prosecution around a lot of these issues, comes back to Washington, which I would be happy to argue.

Mr. Jekielek:

I remember there was a case where the former governor was impeached, right, and there’s just like a whole lot of, I don’t know, dodgy activity around that.

Ms. Paskal:

Where to start? Okay, so the governor that you’re talking about is Ralph Torres. The people of CNMI, Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, never wanted a casino. They had referenda where they voted against a casino. He went on a trip to China and he came back as a big supporter of the casino and helped put in place legislation that helped the casino get stood up.

Again, according to the same Bloomberg article, the people associated with the casino did quite a few land deals with his relatives and stuff that just doesn’t look good. And if I were him, I would like it investigated and cleared up. He was the governor up until 2023. There was a lot of ARPA [Merican Rescue Plan Act] funding and COVID-related funding, over a billion dollars that went into CNMI at that time. There’s on the record available invoices for things like sanitation services at $4,000 an hour associated with this funding. Very peculiar, very large amounts of U.S. taxpayer money that was never properly accounted for.

When a new governor came in in 2023, Governor Arnold Palacios, he immediately and publicly in congressional hearings requested information and investigations. I’ve never seen an American government official say what he said, which was, just look at all of our books, rip it apart, let the chips fall where they may.

The Commonwealth of North American Islands is a very small place. It’s about 40,000, 50,000 people. Everybody’s related to everybody. They’re very tight. He knew that if an investigation happened, it’s very likely some of his relatives might get caught up in it. But he was so concerned about the future of his community, that he was willing to do it. But no investigation was ever brought to completion.

He sent a letter in April of last year, 2025, saying that he had proof of high level corruption in the government. And he wanted that letter to go to Director Kash Patel of the FBI. But subsequently, that investigation didn’t come to anything, and he died suddenly in July of 2025. Ralph Torres had an investigation into him domestically.

Recently, the Assistant Attorney General, who was charging him in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, cut a deal with him where Ralph Torres paid $20,000 to $25,000 in fees and then was given immunity for anything he did while in office. That was such a clearly bad deal that the assistant attorney general was subsequently fired. But the Senate of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands has now hired him as legislative counsel for the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands.

Now, Ralph Torres is positioned to run in the 2026 gubernatorial elections in the Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands. So I would say there is this cloud of perception of corruption over the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, which dates back to the garment factory days and Jack Abramoff and all that sort of stuff, and it is impeding investment.

Mr. Jekielek:

Jack Abramoff, you mean like sort of lobbying efforts around facilitating cheap labor? I just want to kind of flesh out a little more what you’re saying.

Ms. Paskal:

So to go back to our discussion from about 15 minutes ago, when we talked about how they had control over their immigration. One of the things that happened was they used that control over immigration and labor to set up mostly Chinese-linked garment factories, which had very poor working conditions. And this was before China entered the WTO [World Trade Organization]. So by setting up these very poor condition garment factories on U.S. soil,In the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, they could stamp it made in America and send it right into the U.S. market.

There were human rights investigations into it and attempts to shut it down.

One of the most prominent of the companies involved had links to China. You can see it on YouTube. The main guy involved, Willie Tan, talks about how Tom DeLay, who was very influential in Congress at that point, wasn’t going to be pursuing that legislation. The implication was that Jack Abramoff, who is this lobbyist who subsequently ended up in jail, was brokering some sort of lobbying to impede that sort of investigation.

This is in the 90s. For decades, you have had influential people within the CNMI knowing how to use lobbyists to advance these things. This is all legal, except for some of the other stuff Jack Abramoff did, which got him incarcerated. But using lobbyists to affect legislation that would advance their interests is legal. That’s been going on in CNMI for decades, and it seems to be continuing to this day.

Mr. Jekielek:

But basically, you’re saying that the Chinese Communist Party has been effective, so how is the Chinese Communist Party involved in all of this?

Ms. Paskal:

So, you know what it’s like. It’s always hard to get the fingerprints, although I think we’ve got something in Solomon Islands, which we can talk about after. What I can say is that CNMI has been enacting policies that are not in the best interest of U.S. national security. But if I was in China’s Ministry of State Security [MSS] or the CCP, I would think that this is a great thing and I would like to see it continue.

Mr. Jekielek:

So let’s talk about the Solomons. I mean, there was a pretty significant election in the Solomon Islands. And again, let’s start by just geographically locating the Solomon Islands for people, the reality there. Now, this is not an American territory, this is a separate country, but with a lot of Chinese Communist Party influence and documented, but remarkable election. And so just tell me a little bit about this.

Ms. Paskal:

Right. So the Solomon Islands is where the Battle of Guadalcanal was, for example. A lot of Americans died there. It’s off the coast of Australia. So now we’re talking about the Southern Pacific. In 2019, it switched from Taiwan to China. And there was remarkable resistance on the ground by some who were very concerned about what the full force coming in of Chinese Communist Party operations would do to their societies.

One of the incredibly courageous people involved in that, you interviewed a man called Daniel Sudani, who was the premier of one of the provinces in the Solomon Islands. They put out the Auki Communique, which is the name of the capital, which put a moratorium on CCP linked businesses operating.In the province. There was a whole list of things that they were concerned about.

One of them was freedom of religion. They didn’t want a systemically atheist operation operating on the ground there. That was a very serious cognitive warfare impediment for the Chinese Communist Party because it called them out in a way that people in Washington wouldn’t. But also, it was an operationally difficult thing for them because they, for example, were putting in Huawei towers everywhere else in the country, but they couldn’t put them into Malaita, so they went after Suidani.

One of the first things that happened was he needed an MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] scan. He got sick. He needed an MRI. There’s no MRI in the country. The national government said, okay, well, we’ll fund your trip to go get an MRI if you let the Chinese Communist Party in. And he said, no, just to give you an idea of his sense of principle and courage

Through friends in India, he ended up getting to Taiwan for the MRI. But in the meantime, they, I think this is the first case this happened, the federal government took away his elected seat because he wouldn’t recognize the one China principle. So this is the first time I’ve seen that Beijing had a veto over a democratically-elected representative.

They lawfared him, they flipped his legislature, and his health was very severely affected. Throughout it all, he had a man called Celsus Talafilou by his side, who is one of the best geostrategists I know. Daniel Sudani fell ill again recently, I think partially because of the stress from the lawfare. He went into kidney failure and he went into the local hospital.

There was only one dialysis machine, it was a machine donated by China and run by a Chinese doctor. He didn’t get dialysis and he passed away. That was the state of how things were in Solomon Islands. I would argue that this is an exporting of the social credit system that you see in China, and you’re starting to see much more across the region the use of medical access and medical care as a component of Chinese political warfare.

For example, in the Federated States of Micronesia, there are a lot of U.S. military veterans. They can serve in the U.S. military. The U.S. Veterans Administration is supposed to provide medical care and isn’t. The Chinese medical team now currently in the hospital in the Federated States of Micronesia is providing medical care to U.S. veterans and getting whatever information they can out of them in the course of their treatment.

Mr. Jekielek:

Sounds kind of outrageous. Does this sound outrageous?

Ms. Paskal:

Yes, it’s wrong. I mean, it’s morally wrong and it’s strategically wrong. So back to the Solomon Islands. Okay, the point is that things have gotten very bad, and you would often hear people say, Oh, the Solomon Islands are lost. I know the people of the Solomons, and my argument was always it’s only lost when you give up, when you quit. But the people of Solomons didn’t quit. There wasn’t an election.

What happened was there was a reconfiguration, there was a vote of no confidence, essentially, and a reconfiguration of the existing parliament. And a new leadership came in under Prime Minister Matthew Wale, and his special advisor is Celsus Tala Filou. The current Secretary for Development is Peter Kenilorea, who was given the Courage Award from the Inter- Parliamentary Alliance on China last year, and is now a minister in their government. So it’s a transformation, and they’ll be in Washington this month.

We’re in July. And there’s this little window where the Chinese Communist Party response isn’t quite in full action to cut the legs out from under them, where they’re trying to create all sorts of other relationships. They’d like to set up an embassy in Washington. They’re going to be going to Japan. They’ve visited Australia and Papua New Guinea. They’re reaching out.

I have to be very clear, because it is often asked, are they pro-China, or are they pro-U.S.? They are pro-Solomon Islands. And if you are pro your own country and your own sovereignty, you don’t want to be associated too closely with the Chinese Communist Party whose goal is to create vassal states.

So, what they’re trying to do is bolster their own sovereignty through a whole new range of relationships. And if you expect them to openly say aggressive things about China, you don’t know their operating environment. They are a very delicate situation. So, their foreign minister recently just went to China, for example. They’re going to try to increase their sovereignty, but they’re coming to you.

So far, they’re not being met by Rubio or Vance or the president. This is a prime minister of Solomon Islands. They can’t move like a big country could move. They’re doing the best they can in the circumstances they have, but expecting them to make stands that the U.S. doesn’t make is unrealistic.

The president of the U.S. went to China, and so how can you expect them to just suddenly make these very open statements. They are trying to increase their own sovereignty for the sake of their own people and not to act as a proxy for Western interests or anything else. So it’s very important to understand how it looks from their point of view.

Mr. Jekielek:

Yes, but they understand what it means to be under the CCP umbrella, it sounds like what you’re telling me.

Ms. Paskal:

Celsus Talafilu was a key component of the group that put together the communique in 2019, which was such an incredibly powerful and eloquent statement about the dangers of letting the CCP into your economy and society. So they certainly know it. But when, for example, Daniel Sudani was ill, the Australians didn’t help him. They know that they can be left hanging very quickly if allies’ economic interests are involved.

Mr. Jekielek:

The bottom line is that someone’s going to have influence there. I guess it’s a question of who steps up to do it.

Ms. Paskal:

Well, they’re going to. So we tend to think of, you know, the U.S. and China as kind of being the only options. But for example, the fact they’re going to Japan is very interesting, you know, and perhaps the Philippines or India or whatever, but basically, the free world. There are a lot of different components of the free world that can be helpful. People, they don’t need that much, but they do need protection. And a lot of this is happening in the cognitive warfare domain.

Mr. Jekielek:

Okay, explain what you mean by that.

Ms. Paskal:

So, one of the things that she has said is on the record is, I mean, we’ve got the quote, is that if you can break down people’s mental resistance, then everything else becomes a lot easier. So, that’s kind of the cognitive, getting into your head. And you do that.

Mr. Jekielek:

Like resistance to having the CCP dominate.

Ms. Paskal:

There’s that. They aren’t seeing the world from the CCP. So the one that drives me a little crazy is the Thucydides Trap stuff.

Mr. Jekielek:

Yes, that drives me a little crazy too.

Ms. Paskal:

Yes, and what I do when China…

Mr. Jekielek:

I’ll just spell it out, right? So that China is the rising power and the U.S. is the declining power. I mean, that’s the subtext of saying Thucydides Trap.

Ms. Paskal:

Yes, and that it’s natural that a rising power would militarily overtake the declining power. So whenever China does something like that, I always go, what about India? Because India is also a rising power. I mean, in fact, it’s got a larger population than China. Its economy is growing faster than China’s. It is, in all those other respects, a rising power.

But it’s not putting together a military designed to destroy the United States. So the logic makes no sense. And that’s the same true, you know, that century of humiliation. India had like three, four centuries of humiliation if you’re talking about colonization, and they’re not using it as an excuse to attack the United States.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, you know, I’ll just mention this because we were talking about Japan. There’s, you know, a big reason why, let’s say, China didn’t suffer a lot more at the hands of the Japanese is the United States. And they often don’t mention that.

Ms. Paskal:

Oh, because it doesn’t help with the cognitive warfare.

Mr. Jekielek:

Right.

Ms. Paskal:

Yes. I apply the India test to a lot of those grand statements about Chinese aggressive inevitability, Chinese Communist Party, and they fail on all of those counts, right? Yes, so that’s cognitive warfare. Getting into your head to, first of all, justify the aggressive behavior of the Chinese Communist Party and to lower your resistance to their influence operations.

There was a very interesting case of cognitive warfare in Solomon Islands recently when the exact same article with the same title and the same content appeared in two different Solomon Islands newspapers under different bylines.

Mr. Jekielek:

And you call it the smoking gun, yes. I read the piece, yes.

Ms. Paskal:

And what was the article about? It was about how Palau needed to de-recognize Taiwan, especially in advance of the big Pacific Island forum meeting coming up in Palau. But it was specifically a Chinese Communist Party talking point. The authors in both cases had vague, anglophone sounding names, and the byline said they were from Australia.

So I talked to the editor from one of the newspapers. One of the newspapers, Solomon Star, is known to have taken Chinese money. On the record, known to have taken Chinese money. The other one’s a very good newspaper or news site. So I asked them what happened.

They said, well, actually, what happened was they got this anonymously submitted from a WhatsApp number in Australia. And they need, you know, a lot of, they didn’t say this, but I know that they often need content, right?

Because if you’re a newspaper or news site operating in the region, you know, it doesn’t pay much, if anything. And so, getting content sometimes is difficult.

If it looks like it’s vaguely about the region, they might have lower standards for including it, and the Chinese know that. So, they flood pieces into the kind of smaller regional newspapers that then feed up into sometimes larger ones. Sometimes the story gets picked up. I suspect also sometimes, if they do it enough, it’ll feed into AI-type narratives and things like that. And that’s what happened to them.

Mr. Jekielek:

Part of the cognitive warfare.

Ms. Paskal:

Yes. And as soon as they found out what had happened, they pulled the piece. But the other newspaper has since published two other pieces by the same non-existent person, again on Chinese talking points. So, again, sort of feeding into that cognitive domain. So, the point of that is we’ve got this never give up, right? The good guys in the Solomon Islands never gave up. They’ve got a small window, but even now, with that small window, there’s such penetration on the ground by Chinese operations that they’re getting into the local media and using Solomon’s local media to attack countries that recognize Taiwan and other parts of the Pacific.

Mr. Jekielek:

You know, we’ve talked about how you view these small islands as a kind of a, because the populations are so small relative to, say, the United States, the Chinese influence operations are a lot easier to see in a sense, right? Because they’re much more acute in a sense, not sort of spread across the giant population in giant ways. So, this is kind of a window, right, into not just what happens over there, but what’s actively happening over here.

Ms. Paskal:

Yes. And more than that, you know, we can. I mentioned that the articles in Solomon’s papers and news sites were about this upcoming Pacific Island Forum meeting in Palau that’ll happen at the end of August, beginning of September. The Pacific Island Forum is a very important target for the Chinese Communist Party.Tried to manipulate it. The last meeting was actually in the Solomon Islands under the last pro-China administration, and they put pressure on that government to block the visas of the Taiwanese.

Then, in order to justify blocking the Taiwanese from coming, the Solomon Islanders basically blocked everybody else from coming, all the development partners from coming. So the U.S. couldn’t come, India couldn’t come, nobody could come. But the Chinese were already on the ground for the Chinese to have a large amount of access during the Pacific Island Forum meeting in the Solomons. We’ve seen this pattern of focus from China on trying to ensure that Taiwan doesn’t have a role because three of the Pacific Island countries recognize Taiwan; Palau, Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu.

So we have this very unusual situation where we know where there will be a political warfare attack, which can include cyber, cognitive warfare, all sorts of stuff, on Palau around the timing of the Pacific Island Forum meeting at the end of August, beginning of September. This is a good place to start to practice how to counter it. We know there’s an attack. What are we going to do about it?

Palau is a country of 18,000 people. Let’s put together our counter-political warfare team to try to protect this close ally of the United States, a country that recognizes Taiwan, we know there’s going to be an attack. It’s a good place to see how the operations work, but let’s sandbox how to counter those operations so that when they happen in other places, we’ve already refined the techniques and the approaches for doing it.

Mr. Jekielek:

I’m just recalling my interview with President Panuelo, the former president of the Federated States of Micronesia, who was telling me how the Chinese ambassador had the gall to be kind of telling him who he should be allowed to talk to and not as he was at a prominent Japanese function, if I recall. I mean, it’s astonishing the gall that some of these officials have.

Ms. Paskal:

Yes. So there have already been direct threats made by Chinese officials to leadership in Palau about how.They should be hosting the Pacific Island Forum meeting, including threats of retaliation if they invite Taiwanese officials over a certain rank, for example. Now, Palau has a phenomenal president who is going to do whatever he wants to do that he thinks is in the best interest of his country. So there have been apparently some semi-public, fiery exchanges already.Chinese are definitely, Chinese Communist Party officials are already threatening economic retaliation and other things. We know there’s going to be targeting. We see it happening.

I think that probably there’s some protection on the cyber front, but the cognitive warfare domain is something that the U.S. is really,hasn’t been focused on. This used to be something that during the Cold War that the US was quite good at. And the advantage that the US has is it has truth on its side, right? So actually, this is something that makes its way through Congress and then doesn’t really get very far.

But one of the things that petrifies the Chinese Communist Party is the idea that the financials of its leadership would be exposed. How much money does Xi Jinping and his family actually have? That sort of thing is cognitive warfare domain stuff. And in that context, truth is on our side. It’s on the side of the free world. So exposing all of this, which used to be what journalism did, is just very, is the best defense.

Mr. Jekielek:

And we are hearing that something like that is in the pipe, right?

Ms. Paskal:

Hopefully, yes. Because the first piece of legislation produced a very anodyne report that was largely a kind of a rehash of an old Bloomberg article. So hopefully there’s a better investigation that will be done. It’s not, the stuff isn’t hard. But you see it all the time. So if you don’t do it, even the best laid plans get twisted.

So the president of the Senate of Palau, so it’s a country that recognizes Taiwan, the country we’re talking about, the president of the Senate was designated by the State Department recently. Designated means that he and his family can no longer travel to the U.S., specifically for being tied to Chinese corruption operations. So you’d think that that would be beneficial for the side of good.

However, the case files were never transferred to the attorney general in Palau and no charges have been laid. So he is in a position to say, this is just a political hit job from the U.S. If you think I’m corrupt, prove it. Instead of being a story about going after corruption and cleaning up the systems, it becomes a story about how the U.S. is trying to use the State Department to punish people who are standing up to U.S. policies.

Mr. Jekielek:

I mean, these files could still be transferred.

Ms. Paskal:

Yes, and they should be transferred. I mean, if you’re serious about it, you coordinate across government. And you’re starting this block and build strategy that we’ve talked about, where if you want to build up sovereignty and resilience, you need to block. What the Filipinos call illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive activity, specifically from the Chinese Communist Party, at the same time. You need to do both at the same time. And the U.S. has tried to do this in Palau.

At the end of December, it signed a series of agreements where it said it would send investigators to help the Palauans go after corrupt activity. It hasn’t quite happened yet, but they said it would. And at the same time, it helped stabilize the pension fund and promised to.Build a new hospital. So there is an understanding within the US government of what needs to be done, but it hasn’t quite got there yet.

Mr. Jekielek:

So now the follow through is the key it sounds like in a whole suite of areas that we’ve just been discussing.

Ms. Paskal:

Yes, I think there’s definitely an understanding of what the problem is, but the connective tissue is kind of missing or weak.

Mr. Jekielek:

Is it just simply that because the U.S. has really ignored this area for too many decades? And we almost forgot to fund the compact. Maybe just quickly tell me what that is.

Ms. Paskal:

So there are compacts of free associations with three countries. If anybody asks you which three countries are the closest allies of the U.S., it is Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, and Marshall Islands. To the Philippines, more or less, are these three countries. This is where so many Americans died during World War II, in the Battle of Peleliu and the Battle of Kwajalein.

This is an area of such strategic importance to the U.S. that they were given these compacts of free association, which are agreements the U.S. has with nowhere else.

These are citizens of their own countries. They’re Palawan, Micronesian, Marshallese, but they can freely live and work in the U.S. They can get off a plane in Oregon and get a job. They can study with in-state tuition rates anywhere they want in the U.S. Their mail is considered domestic mail. The FAA runs their airports, and the U.S. has strategic denial over that whole area, so they can say no other militaries can dock here. And the U.S. can put in bases, which they have done in places like Kwajalein and which they’re starting to do in other places.

But there’s an over the horizon radar installation in Palau. There are Marines currently now on Peleliu, rebuilding the airfield on Peleliu. That’s how close these relationships are and how critical they are to U.S. strategic infrastructure. You can’t get to the first or second island chain unless you can get across the center of the Pacific. Every U.S. president from 1961 to 1981 was in the Navy. Carter served in the Pacific during World War II. They knew people who died in the Pacific. They didn’t want it to happen again.

And so, along with George Bush Sr., who also served in the Pacific, they created this very unique arrangement: these compacts of free association with these three countries. The financial component and services component comes up for renewal every 20 years. It was up for renewal recently. And as you said, it just kind of languished to the point where they actually expired and had to be put into continuing resolutions until finally some great congressional staffers got it all figured out and got it renewed. But it was a very close run thing.

So, yes, even in that context, there hasn’t been an awareness of the Pacific and including the Americans in the Pacific, in Guam and CNMI, which is how you end up with these huge gaps in awareness of what’s going on in places like the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas where people can arrive, Chinese can arrive without a visa and all that sort of stuff.

Mr. Jekielek:

So, bottom line, as we finish up, you just mentioned this lack of awareness about U.S. territory, far, far west. Why is this important to America?

Just briefly spell it out.

Ms. Paskal:

Okay, so these are not accidental pieces of geography. It’s difficult for the U.S. to accrue new parts of the U.S. There has to be a fundamental strategic importance for that piece of geography, for not just the president, but Congress to say, yes, we’re going to make this part of the U.S. Greenland aside. But in fact, not Greenland aside, because that is part of the thinking that goes into Greenland.

Guam came into the U.S. as part of the Spanish American War. McKinley made it very clear that was because first the U.S. needed a place to refit on that side of the Pacific for the Navy to base. And so he took the Philippines and Guam, but he didn’t take the center of the Pacific. The Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands became part of the U.S. in 1867, was offered that membership, as in fact were all of those compact countries. Palau, Federation of Micronesia, Marshall Islands were all offered to join the U.S. because of their strategic importance.

But there was an awareness since the McKinley era, and in fact, since before, and it was part of the annexation of Hawaii, also in 1898, that if a hostile foreign power was in the Pacific, mainland U.S. wasn’t safe. So at the time, it was the European colonies, it was the Spanish, to some degree, the French in the 1850s. Then it was the Japanese, now it’s the Chinese Communist Party. So there is an awareness that mainland U.S. is not safe without a secure perimeter on the other side of the Pacific.

If you look at a map of the U.S., the easternmost point is the U.S. Virgin Islands. The northernmost point is Alaska. And Alaska is a Pacific story. If you look at Billy Mitchell and the whole kind of Air Force thing, control over Alaska is very much control over the Pacific approaches. The southernmost point of the U.S. is American Samoa. And the westernmost point is Guam and the Commonwealth under the Mariana Islands.

So if you do those points on a map, if you’ve got the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and Marianas, Alaska, and American Samoa, you can see the heart of the U.S. strategically is actually around Hawaii. It’s the Pacific. That was the conceptualization that was very clear very early on to American strategists that the economic development is going to be to the West, and that the economy and those sea lines of communication need to be secured through naval power, and you need positioning on the Western side of the Pacific for that to be possible.

So, the Chinese know that the U.S. vulnerability is the center of the Pacific, which is why Admiral Keating testified before the Senate in like 2008 that some Chinese official had asked him, why don’t you take Hawaii East and we’ll take Hawaii West and don’t worry about it, we’ll keep that whole zone secure, right? But they were ignoring the Americans sitting in CNMI and Guam. The strategists and political leaders of the past didn’t want us to ignore the center of the Pacific. That’s why they invited Guam and CNMI.

Well, they took Guam, but they invited CNMI to join the U.S. so that there would be this kind of marker to say, this is all the U.S. All of this needs to be secure in order for any of it to be secure. So those Americans that are sitting in Guam and CNMI, they know everything I’ve just told you.

They know that, you know, they are on the frontier of American security and prosperity. Many of them have been through hell and their families have gone through terrible things.

Guam was occupied by the Japanese. The people of CNMI had to hide in caves during the American bombardment. They have witnessed war on their own soil, which is now American soil, in a way most Americans never have. They know what it means. And they are, many of them, fighting for their own independence and security in the face of this onslaught that’s coming in through political and cognitive warfare. All of the help that the rest of the U.S. can give them.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, Cleo Paskal, it’s such a pleasure to have had you on again.

Ms. Paskal:

Thank you very much. Always good to be here.

This interview was partially edited for clarity and brevity.