Chinese nationals of military age are training at US flight schools, as revealed by Peter Schweizer’s newest book, The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon. This has led to action in Congress to outlaw the practice, extending a prohibition enacted on US flight training for foreign nationals from certain Middle Eastern countries after the September 11 attacks by Muslim extremists.
Appearing on The National Desk news program, Schweizer said thousands of Chinese nationals receive basic flight training every year at US aviation schools. These student pilots then return to China where the most promising are sent on to receive military flight training. This, Schweizer argued, strengthens China’s military and creates a national security concern for America.
“This is a strategic advantage to China. It’s a benefit to China. And I think it’s a practice we need to end in terms of protecting our national security,” Schweizer told reporter Geoff Harris of the National News Desk.
Current US law blocks individuals from terrorist-linked regions from accessing flight training but does not apply to adversarial nations like China or Russia. This loophole creates a direct national security risk and calls for immediate policy changes. US Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) alerted the Transportation Security Agency to the national security implications of US flight schools training large numbers of Chinese pilots, according to an exclusive report by National Review last month.
Banks’s letter cited Schweizer’s book, along with government research and academic scholarship to detail that Chinese pilots seek training in the US because China’s flight schools are unable to keep up with the civil and military demand for pilots, according to the report. The Chinese government permits prospective pilots to train at approved US flight schools.
In his book, Schweizer wrote, “Beijing needs five thousand pilot cadets every year to meet the demand for both military and civilian pilots. Because the Chinese military tightly controls the country’s airspace, it can domestically produce only about 1,200 pilots a year. So, Beijing quietly erected a system to train 3,000 of them a year in the United States. Across the US, at least sixteen flight schools, operating out of taxpayer-funded airports, are training Chinese cadets—sometimes without disclosing their foreign military ties. They do so by sending future military pilots to the United States posing as civilians to learn how to fly.” [The Invisible Coup, p. 103]
The book names several specific flight schools that have been “approved” for use by the Chinese government, including the Sierra Academy of Aeronautics in Atwater, California, which trains eight hundred Chinese pilots a year. And while the Sierra Academy describes the pilots it trains as civilian airline pilots, the reality is far more complicated, the book says. Sierra participated with several Chinese entities directly tied to the military-industrial complex to create flight training systems within China too.
“Documents show Sierra works with Chinese colleagues involved in aeronautical manufacturing, including those embedded with military contractors and talent pipelines to the communist government,” the book points out. [The Invisible Coup, p. 105]
China has also been implicated in recent cases involving smuggling of biological materials espionage within US defense industry and academia. “So, as the competition intensifies between these two great powers, we can anticipate there’s going to be more espionage and it’s going to be more extensive and intensive,” Schweizer warned.
