Chinese influence on the Panama Canal is a "national security problem," Erik Prince, veteran and founder of Unplugged Technologies, said during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday.
The post Exclusive — Erik Prince: Chinese Influence on Panama Canal a ‘National Security Problem’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Chinese efforts on the Panama Canal are a “national security problem,” Erik Prince, veteran and founder of Unplugged Technologies, said during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday.
“The Chinese have done the soft power move and taken over management, effectively, of the Panama Canal that the United States built more than a century ago, and then it was unwisely given up by Jimmy Carter in ’78 or ’79,” Prince began, describing this as a “national security problem.”
“Because if you have any kind of naval conflict, you have to be able to move our fleets from the Atlantic, Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. And the way you do that is through the Panama Canal. It saves you almost a month of transit time from going around the southern tip of Chile,” he continued.
Prince said it is “absolutely essential” that the United States have security overwatch of the canal for these very reasons.
“To let the Chinese run it is unacceptable,” he said, explaining that the issue of allowing China to dominate affects America in more ways than one, pointing directly to the fentanyl crisis.
“What the Chinese have been pushing with fentanyl has killed — you know that the published number is like 110,000 last year. The real numbers [are] 300,000 to 400,000 American deaths from fentanyl overdoses. So by comparison, we lost a total of 400,000 people in World War II, and now we’re losing that per year from fentanyl,” he said, bringing the staggering figures into perspective.
“And fentanyl is a basically supercharged drug that is laced with other narcotics,” he said, making it clear that in most cases, the drugs are “organized, funded, facilitated by the Chinese Communist Party, sending precursor chemicals into Venezuela, into Mexico, fabricated now into fentanyl and smuggled,” he continued.
“In many cases, it’s killing them dead instantly, and so — pushing back that kind of subversion,” he added.
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