A few days ago, we began discussing the continuing buildup of tensions in the US-PRC relationship over Chinese entities buying land in the United States that may have strategic importance.

Many US leaders worry that companies with ties to the Communist Party of China can use landholdings in the United States to launch disruptions against US activities with devasting effect. Their concerns for the continuity of operations that support US lifestyles range from military preparedness to safe and reliable delivery of energy, water and telecommunications.

Let’s start with a case study: GH America. Tied to both the PRC’s western most administered province and the PLA, GH America bought almost 200 square miles of Texas ranch land near Laughlin Air Force Base in South Texas and, significantly, underneath Laughlin’s air space. The company also sought to connect electric generation equipment to the Texas grid. Its acreage position underneath flight training airspace for military aircraft and near one of United States’s most important air bases lays a foundation for GH to correlate the range of identifying characteristics of aircraft that the United States sends into war. An electrical connection to GH’s land could power an extensive array of sensors to accomplish the intelligence gathering operation. An electrical connection also creates a capability for GH to crash part of the Texas electrical grid. Analyses of the potential for cascading effects on the grid remain unreported.

WH Group, another PRC enterprise with headquarters in Hong Kong and longtime ties to PRC influences, reflects Communist Party of China priorities and reveals its maneuvers to finance its priorities with US investment funds. Because the Communist Party exercises ultimate control over both GH America and WH Group, Smithfield’s owner, the behavior of one of the two corporate bodies can foretell how the other may behave. Now, imagine magnifying the security concerns that GH Americas created with financial leverage from US investors.

WH Group seeks that leverage. Earlier this month, it announced plans to list Smithfield Food’s operations in the United States and Mexico on an American stock exchange. The Communist Party does little to assuage concerns about what WH Group could do with either Smithfield Foods’ acreage positions or its position in the US food supply chain as the world’s largest pork processor. Now, it plans to solicit American investors to provide resources that augment Communist Party disruptive ambitions. Think about it: WH Group raising money from Americans by selling stock to Americans for Smithfield’s Communist Party-directed operations that could damage US security.

Soon, we’ll discuss countermeasures with more precise targeting than sanctions and tariffs.