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Vandenberg Flash Focus: China's Great Heist

According to The Great Heist: China’s Epic Campaign to Steal America’s Secrets—a new book by David Shedd and Andrew Badger—one critical but often overlooked explanation for China’s meteoric rise has been the scale, scope, and pace of its unprecedented state-sponsored espionage campaign. This effort has been specifically designed to strip the United States of our economic, technological, and military edge, and we have not been doing nearly enough to stop it. David Shedd, a Vandenberg Coalition Advisory Board member and former deputy director and acting director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, joins Vandenberg Senior Policy Director Corban Teague to discuss China’s campaign to steal America’s secrets and what we can do to put a stop to it. You can listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts, and you can watch this episode as a video here.

Vandenberg Flash Focus: The PLA Purge

Last week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping placed his most senior general, Zhang Youxia, under investigation, deepening what has become one of the most sweeping purges in the history of the People’s Liberation Army. Xi has now removed nearly the entire top tier of PLA leadership, raising important questions about the message he is sending to domestic and international audiences, what it means for a potential Taiwan contingency, and how it should inform the American approach to the Indo-Pacific. Jackie Deal—co-founder of the American Academy for Strategic Education, President of the Long Term Strategy Group, and Vandenberg Coalition Advisory Board member—joins Vandenberg Executive Director Carrie Filipetti to unpack what these purges mean. You can listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts, and you can watch this episode as a video here.

Featured

Trump’s Greenland Deal: Defending the Arctic With America Leading and NATO Following

TVC Advisory Board Member Clifford May | The Washington Times | January 27, 2026

Bottom Line: To the relief of many, Mark Rutte, the extraordinarily capable secretary-general of NATO, came up with a “framework” in Davos last week for a long-term agreement that appealed to Trump. If Trump had his druthers, Greenland would become an American territory like Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands. If the United States now leverages expanded authority to detect, deter and, if necessary, defeat threats on the world’s biggest island while Denmark retains sovereignty, history will record it as a significant Trump achievement.

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What Trump’s National Defense Strategy Gets Right — And Wrong

TVC Advisory Board Member Mark Montgomery & Bradley Bowman | Real Clear Defense | January 29, 2026

Bottom Line: The administration calls for a “clear-eyed” and objective assessment of threats, yet there is little indication in the NSS or the NDS that the administration understands that Beijing’s ambitions extend well beyond the Pacific and that the PRC is engaged in current aggression against the United States in the cyber domain. The U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment and the Pentagon’s 2025 report to Congress demonstrate this understanding, but it is less evident in the NDS. That does not bode well for the strategy.

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Trump Voters Don’t Want to Appease China: The White House Should Listen

TVC Media Fellow Michael Lucchese | Washington Examiner | January 30, 2026

Bottom Line: While a crisis is certainly brewing in the Far East, it is not too late to reestablish deterrence through American leadership. And if one thing is clear, it is that the people elected Trump because they wanted him to be bolder than his Democratic predecessors on national security. They are tired of the D.C. elite’s decades of retreat and appeasement. They want their president to demonstrate real strength. The question is, will he listen to them?

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To Rebuild America’s Defense Industry, Unleash Private Capital

Rep. Zach Nunn | Defense One | December 3, 2025

Bottom Line: During the Cold War, joint public-private investment produced technologies that built the modern world: GPS, satellite communications, the internet, lithium-ion batteries, and more. Government provided early risk capital—and later, standards and regulation—but it was private industry that scaled and dominated global markets. We must harness this dynamic for a new generation.

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