It should be a fairly self-evident proposition that allowing military affiliates from our number one enemy to train here is a bad idea. And yet that is exactly what we do, according to an expert on Communist Chinese infiltration of the USA.
If we train Chinese pilots in the U.S., we are helping the Chinese Air Force out. Considering that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is extremely open about hating the United States and aiming to usurp our place on the world stage, even periodically threatening military action, we shouldn’t be allowing anyone connected to the Chinese military to train here. After all, the CCP reportedly told its people it was entering a war phase with the U.S. back in 2019, and CCP infiltration of our institutions has intensified in recent years. Why make it easier for them to sabotage us?
I recently highlighted warnings from Breitbart contributor and best-selling author Peter Schweizer that birth tourism could allow up to a million young people raised in China but considered American citizens to vote in our elections. Schweizer has a connected but different warning about Chinese pilots coming to America to train.
According to Schweizer, Chinese pilots can come to America with “virtually no oversight” to receive instruction before returning to China and joining the CCP‘s military or CCP-run companies. You see, the CCP needs 5,000 pilot cadets annually, both for military and civilian purposes. The latter division is somewhat of a distinction without a difference — the CCP practices “civil-military fusion,” where everything in the economic and tech spheres is accessible to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). But, Schweizer explained, the PLA’s authoritarian control over Chinese airspace means that the country can only realistically train about 1,200 pilots a year.
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The CCP’s solution was to make an arrangement with the U.S. to train 3,000 pilots annually in our country. “Across the U.S., at least sixteen flight schools, operating out of taxpayer-funded airports, are training Chinese cadets—sometimes without disclosing their foreign military ties,” Schweizer wrote. “They do so by sending future military pilots to the United States posing as civilians to learn how to fly.”
Most students at the Sierra Academy of Aeronautics in Atwater, California, are actually Chinese nationals, according to Schweizer. Even worse, the owner, John Yoon, owns multiple companies that have “extensive Chinese ties,” and he planned to build and operate a cargo facility at Castle Airport to ship to China, using “EB-5 money from China.” Sierra’s VP Brian Johnson openly bragged back in 2013 about working with the CCP. Sierra Academy even has ties to PLA military contractors.
Similarly, AeroGuard, near Phoenix, Arizona, trains hundreds of Chinese pilots and has an agreement with the CCP-controlled Cathay Pacific airline. Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) helped expedite federal approval for the program during the Biden administration, Schweizer wrote.
Both helicopter and airplane pilots from China receive training in the USA. “How this happened is a testament to Chinese ingenuity in manipulating our immigration system for subversive purposes and using our openness and generosity against us. It is also a tribute to American innocence, or at worst, ignorance,” Schweizer observed. He accused flight schools like Sierra Academy and AeroGuard of “selling both aviation training and U.S. residency — a double win for Beijing.”
Fred Warchel, a man who lives near Sierra Academy, dryly remarked, “This means if Chinese and American pilots ever engage in combat, both may be able to say: We received our training in America at the former Castle Air Force Base.” And that should worry all of us.
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