The United States is under attack from Chinese and Russian information warfare aimed at destabilizing and ultimately destroying the American system and culture, according to a new book on the history of enemy subversion.
Sophisticated disinformation and propaganda programs designed to divide Americans and sow hatred for the United States began under the now-collapsed Soviet Union.
However, many of the programs from that period are now being carried out through the economically powerful Chinese Communist Party and non-communist but revanchist Russia under President Vladimir Putin, the book reveals in outlining the 100-year history of the campaigns.
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“The United States faces an existential crisis engineered largely by hostile foreign countries,” the book warns. “It is so severe because malign actors have recruited so many American citizens to support them and because American political and legal traditions, once a crowning success of governance, have vulnerabilities that malign foreign states exploit.”
“Enemy Inside the Gates: Malign Soviet, Russian, and Chinese Influence Operations Against America” was written by former CIA analyst John Gentry and published Monday.
The book calls for adopting new U.S. policies aimed at clearly recognizing the dangers posed domestically by Marxist radicals and working to counter their growing power.
Mr. Gentry told The Washington Times the book is not a happy read, as it highlights a severe national security ideological crisis that is largely misunderstood and has transpired under the radar.
“The message of this book is grim,” he said. “I am more discouraged by our situation now than I was when I began this project. But if we are to reverse continuing trends, we need to know what has happened and to act dramatically and soon. I hope we collectively will do so.”
Subversion efforts in the U.S. began after Vladimir Lenin’s 1917 takeover in Russia and the creation of the Communist International, or Comintern, a global campaign to promote the spread of Marxism-Leninism.
Today, subversion funded and orchestrated by Beijing has made significant progress in fomenting political polarization, radicalizing American youth in schools and colleges, infiltrating Marxists into leadership positions in the Democratic Party, and in growing the neo-Marxist Democratic Socialists of America, according to Mr. Gentry’s “Enemy.”
China’s disinformation and influence activities are driven by a CCP fearful of ideological threats from the United States, Mr. Gentry writes. Thus, the CCP is devoting massive resources to subverting the American system with influence operations organized through United Front, Beijing’s network of individuals and organizations charged with promoting the communist party’s interests domestically and internationally. United Front’s activities often skirt legal restrictions but have been very effective.
Unlike the Soviet Union and now Russia, China is using its economic power after modifying its communist system to allow market mechanisms to serve the ruling totalitarian party.
Beijing has gained considerable influence over U.S. banks, businesses and the movie industry by granting or denying access to its markets. China also has developed powerful influence agents within the American system.
Included among the CCP-designated “friends of China” that get favorable treatment are American firms such as Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Blackstone and Morgan Stanley, all prominent U.S. corporate giants that Beijing counts on, Mr. Gentry writes, to back Chinese interests in the U.S. and around the world.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, is described as viewing U.S. engagement as a capitalist plot to defeat both the party and its communist system, and to force Western-style democracy and free market capitalism on the regime in Beijing.
“The CCP has worried that the American ’plan’ might work and has taken many steps to ensure that it does not,” according to the book.
Beijing’s actions include strategic deception operations that seek to mislead the world about CCP ambitions and actions, while aggressively recruiting U.S. political leaders, academics, journalists and business leaders in its quest to make China the world’s sole hegemonic power.
“Enemy Inside the Gates” reports that Mr. Xi is an ardent Marxist-Leninist who regards unending “struggle against the United States as essential for global structural change to communism. The book notes that the supreme leader sees evolution as inevitable under Marxian dialectical and historical materialism. Both are central tenets of communism.
“CCP leaders now encourage blatantly anti-American nationalism at home and urge Chinese in all walks of life to ’fight’ to save the CCP and promote the China Dream. The competition is no longer covert,” the book states.
In what “Enemy” describes as part of China’s strategic deception efforts, Mr. Xi is quoted telling American business leaders in San Francisco in 2023 that it is wrong to view China as a threat.
Successive generations of American academics and policymakers have been deceived by China’s notion that its rise is peaceful and they falsely believed China eventually would turn away from socialism, the author writes.
“China still exploits naïve, wishful American thinking in many imaginative ways,” the book states.
China’s policies remain reflected in the 1999 book by two People’s Liberation Army colonels called “Unrestricted Warfare” that calls for using all forms of warfare to defeat the United States.
In recent years, Beijing has engaged in a wide range of activities that “Enemy” dubs “hybrid warfare” targeting the United States.
Some of those actions are preparation for military conflict, such as support for fentanyl smuggling, purchasing land near U.S. military bases and building biological warfare facilities. More evidence of China’s intentions can be discerned from the arrests of Chinese nationals caught smuggling agro-toxins into the U.S.
The book names numerous “fellow travelers” — supporters and influence agents of China, including Shanghai-based tech executive Neville Roy Singham, who congressional investigators have linked to funding anti-American protests and other activities.
Other key pro-China Americans, the book argues, are Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who in 2015 unsuccessfully asked Mr. Xi to name his newborn; Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn; Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates; Stephen Schwarzman, co-founder of Wall Street’s Blackstone; former Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla and SpaceX leader Elon Musk.
All have met with senior CCP officials and voiced support for Communist China.
Domestically, Mr. Gentry argues that the Democratic Party, a longtime target of the Soviet-controlled Communist Party USA, today has been co-opted by Marxist radicals using Soviet-era tactics to conduct a systematic infiltration of the party along with numerous other political and academic institutions.
“The Democratic Party has become, for most practical purposes, a Marxist-Leninist party, just as the CPUSA hoped in the 1930s to make it,” the book says.
Some Democrats, including socialists such as Sen. Bernard Sanders, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, are closet Marxists who advocate revolutionary policies that would transform the United States into an authoritarian state, “Enemy” reports.
In Congress, Marxists masquerading as “progressives” now make up a large share of House Democrats.
On the Democratic Socialists of America, the book explains how the DSA issued a largely Marxist political manifesto this year outlining its plans to transform the U.S. system.
The DSA is promoting radical reforms to “solidify Marxist control of the country,” including calls for adding new Supreme Court justices and reforming the U.S. legal system to support a Marxist political agenda.
Other measures designed to support Marxist policies include bills in Congress that would alter “voting rights” to allow Democrats to “harvest” votes, what the book calls a vaguely illegal form of voter fraud.
Illegal immigrants would be granted citizenship to bolster Democrats’ electoral goals under the DSA proposals along with a massive expansion of federal government power. The plan calls for imposing drastic cuts or the elimination of defense spending — ideas initially proposed by the Moscow front group the World Peace Council during the Cold War.
“Communists long have known that they only have to win one election to establish a permanent ’people’s democracy,’” Mr. Gentry writes.
President Trump has called DSA members “godless communists.” The DSA identifies itself as a democratic and socialist organization that includes Marxist factions. It has not stated its position as an organization on Marxism but has declared that it is “anti-capitalist,” a key Marxist tenet.
On Russia, Mr. Gentry argues that the country under Mr. Putin is no longer communist but is continuing Soviet-designed anti-American propaganda attacks with the goal of undermining U.S. power and creating social divisions among Americans through social media and disinformation.
The book also credits nefarious Russian influence operations for poisoning the views of many in the Republican Party.
Under Moscow disinformation and social media manipulation, the Republican Party has been changed from a party that under President Ronald Reagan was staunchly opposed to the Soviet “evil empire” into “a party of populist Trump boosters who often use Russian versions of history and bogus claims.”
Some MAGA Republicans now voice support for Russian interests, such as claiming that the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was justified.
Russian disinformation operations also have succeeded in influencing many MAGA Republicans into supporting Mr. Putin’s government.
“Some of Russia’s most successful recruits, witting and not, are themselves influencers,” the book states.
Mentioned in this category are former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and radio talk show host Alex Jones as among those captured by Russian disinformation operations. Both have promoted the views of Alexander Dugin, a Russian ultranationalist close to Mr. Putin who advocates restoring the Soviet empire.
According to the book, basic U.S. institutions built by founding Americans are being used as political transmission belts for promoting the goals of Karl Marx, Lenin and Mr. Xi.
The goals of the targeted transformation will likely be achieved unless Americans take decisive action to counter the threats and develop new defenses against information assaults, the book argues.
“Aggressive, committed Marxists have been trying to destroy the United States as we know it for over a century,” Mr. Gentry writes.
Historically, the Soviet Union was identified as the first to develop what the book calls relatively crude disinformation and “active measures” targeting the United States that Moscow viewed as the main obstacle to achieving a global communist takeover.
Communist China, a Soviet satellite until the 1950s, developed that foundation further using different influence tools and a modified objective but still joined Moscow in seeking the destruction of the United States as it exists.
China and Russia are not seeking the annihilation of the country with bombs but are following Marxist ideology that in the case of China looks to change the world into a communist state by radically revising the dominant political culture and governance system, the book says.
The attacks have divided the country to the point where it is now more difficult than in recent memory for Americans to work together constructively in a functioning democratic system.
The book concludes that “it should be clear that the United States is under attack” and that “the danger is imminent and existential.”
“The attackers are enemies who mean the country and most of its people major harm. They have faith in what they are doing, meaning they cannot be reasoned with. They must be defeated.”
Minor reforms and defenses at the current stage will be inadequate to defeat the malign influence.
Mr. Gentry calls for fundamental, required changes as part of a renewed national defense of the American system.
“Enemy” argues that Americans now under the sway of foreign powers are a difficult challenge, but should be rescued, while other opponents of democracy should be isolated. U.S. laws currently are inadequate to address sedition and subversion and must be revised to address the problem.
“We also need to remember constantly that Lenin declared war on the United States over a century ago and that malign foreign actors and their domestic allies have been fighting it ever since,” Mr. Gentry writes. “Very strong defensive and remedial actions are required.
Anything less is likely to fail, with catastrophic consequences.”
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