State Armor, a group dedicated to fighting national security threats on the state level, announced its launch on Wednesday.
The group, founded and run by Michael Lucci, seeks to educate state lawmakers and push legislation designed to combat Chinese Communist influence operations and threats from other hostile governments.
“States are now on the front lines against foreign adversaries. In fact, for years states have been targeted by well-resourced, technologically sophisticated foreign adversaries, particularly communist China,” Lucci said in a statement. “The Chinese Communist Party is engaged in a broad effort to supplant the United States so it can rewrite global norms according to its authoritarian model. To achieve its goals, the CCP aggressively pursues a strategy to gain economic leverage over state and local governments, to make states dependent on their technologies, and to suppress the First Amendment-protected speech of Chinese dissidents within America.”
“China’s communist government is already succeeding in targeting U.S. critical infrastructure and is insinuating itself in the fabric of American society — our economy, even our children’s schools — for leverage it may one day use. They harass and intimidate Chinese dissidents and Chinese Americans in our own free country. It must end,” he said.
State Armor has broken combatting the threat from China into four parts: protecting critical infrastructure, creating and protecting supply chains, stopping influence operations, and preparing for armed conflict in the Pacific – a growing possibility as China threatens Taiwan.
China has made recent aggressive overtures toward Taiwan, which Beijing claims is part of China. The threats against Taiwan, the world’s leading producer of semiconductors, have complicated China’s relationship with the United States, which uses advanced Taiwanese semiconductors in many of its military weaponry.
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Lucci’s initiative has found support among top lawmakers and national security experts. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, praised State Armor in a statement.
“From CCP-affiliated purchases of agricultural land to efforts by the party to influence state and local politics, states are on the front lines of our New Cold War with the Chinese Communist Party. We may call this a ‘strategic competition,’ but this is not a polite tennis match. The most fundamental human rights and freedoms are at stake. I commend State Armor for acting with a sense of urgency to expose the CCP’s nefarious networks across our states and equip local lawmakers with the tools to fight this New Cold War,” Gallagher said.