Fox argued that the Air Force would have little ability to detect any electronic surveillance on drone and satellite transmissions being conducted from the Chinese property. “Passive collection of those signals would be undetectable, as the requirements to do so would merely require ordinary antennas tuned to the right collecting frequencies,” he wrote. “This introduces a grave vulnerability to our Department of Defense installations and is incredibly compromising to US National Security.”
Still, that’s not the Air Force’s official position. An Air Force spokeswoman said Fox wrote the memo on his own: “In an effort to raise awareness of what he deemed concerning with respect to the company in question moving into the Grand Forks area, Maj. Fox submitted his personal assessment of potential vulnerabilities to the Grand Forks Air Force Base Office of Special Investigations,” Lea Greene, spokeswoman for the base, said in a statement.
The company at the heart of the debate argues that its project will helps Americans, not hurt them. Eric Chutorash, chief operating officer of Fufeng USA, the U.S. subsidiary of Fufeng Group, dismissed concerns the plant could be used to spy on the Air Force base.
“I can’t imagine anyone that we hire that’s going to even do that,” Chutorash said. When asked if he could definitively say it wouldn’t be used for espionage, he responded, “Absolutely.”
“We’re under U.S. law, I’m an American citizen, I grew up my whole life here, and I am not going to be doing any type of espionage activities or be associated with a company that does, and I know my team feels the exact same way,” Chutorash said.
But Fox is not the only official concerned about the farmland in Grand Forks.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission cited Fox’s intelligence concerns in a May 26 report, writing, “the location of the land close to the base is particularly convenient for monitoring air traffic flows in and out of the base, among other security related concerns.”
Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/01/chinese-purchase-of-north-dakota-farmland-raises-national-security-concerns-in-washington.html