Start with ownership. Syngenta, the world’s largest crop protection company, is a subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned conglomerate ChemChina, which sits on the Pentagon’s 1260H list of Chinese military companies. The Department of Defense is barred from contracting with 1260H entities, yet Syngenta still sells seeds and chemicals to American farmers with no comparable restriction. Smithfield Foods, which controls a large share of U.S. pork, is majority-owned by Hong Kong’s WH Group, an acquisition originally financed by a Chinese state-owned bank. These are not passive investments. Chinese law dictates that they cannot be. China’s National Intelligence Law obligates every Chinese company and citizen to support and cooperate with state intelligence work on demand, and its Data Security Law extends Beijing’s reach over the data that those firms hold. This includes the agronomic data that companies such as Syngenta collect across the American heartland. CCP dominance of important facets of our crop input and protein supply chains could be weaponized in a war between the U.S. and China in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea. Then there is the land. By the Department of Agriculture’s count, Chinese-linked entities control at least 277,000 acres of American farmland, including parcels near sensitive installations. In 2022, Fufeng Group - a Chinese firm with reported ties to the CCP - bought 370 acres about a dozen miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. In July 2025, the USDA published maps identifying Chinese-owned land near more than a dozen other military installations from Arizona to North Carolina. Washington has begun to respond. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins’ 2025 National Farm Security Action Plan was the first serious effort to treat agriculture as a national security domain.

I n July 2024, a customs officer at Detroit Metropolitan Airport found four baggies filled with reddish plant material hidden in the backpack of Chinese national Zunyong Liu. The substance was Fusarium graminearum, a crop fungus that attacks grains and produces toxins that sicken humans and livestock. Prosecutors called it a “potential agroterrorism weapon.” Liu worked as a researcher at Zhejiang University, which holds classified government research credentials and which the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party found has conducted cybersecurity research funded by China’s Ministry of State Security. Liu’s girlfriend, Yunqing Jian, worked in a University of Michigan lab. Both had received Chinese government funding to study the pathogen, and investigators uncovered evidence of Jian’s loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. Unfortunately, the “Fusarium couple” was not an aberration. Over months, prosecutors charged a string of Chinese researchers tied to that same university, including a Wuhan doctoral student who mailed four packages of roundworm material and three colleagues at the lab who refused to cooperate with an internal review and were stopped at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport attempting to flee to China. This continual transit of pathogens and personnel must be understood not as an immediate vector for agroterrorism, but as a pipeline across the ocean. Under Beijing’s unrestricted warfare policy and civil-military fusion strategy, the line between academic research and military application is deliberately erased. American university biosafety rules were built to prevent accidents, not to screen for adversaries arriving on research visas with foreign government grants. What stopped these illicit transfers was ultimately a handful of dedicated federal agents and customs officers. While we take a reactive posture, the Chinese Communist Party has been strategically positioning itself within every layer of U.S. agriculture, not just in the lab.

Americans created airplanes, computer chips, the internet and automobile assembly lines across 250 years of industry - but they’ve also invented unheralded gems such as refrigerators, barcodes, washing machines and Doppler radar. Historians say Saturday’s anniversary of the country’s founding offers a chance to recall these unsung inventions, which have improved modern life as much as light bulbs and indoor plumbing. Analysts and experts interviewed by The Washington Times said unsung American inventions have given the world faster shoemaking, more accurate forecasts and speedier shopping. ▲ Refrigerators : One of America’s earliest forgotten inventors was Thomas Moore, a Maryland engineer who lived from 1760 to 1822 and invented the icebox in 1802. In 1802, Moore received a patent for a fur-lined wooden box with a tin chamber inside that he created to cool food for transportation. He dubbed the invention a “refrigerator” and sent a letter inviting Jefferson to see it. New York University marketing instructor Angelica Gianchandani said Moore’s creation solved a problem that had plagued societies since the ancient Greeks and Romans first cooled food with ice blocks and cold cellars. ▲ National parks : Americans were also the first to create a system of conserving public lands - a legacy that historians say has cemented the nation’s reputation as one of the most beautiful places to visit. President Ulysses S. Grant made Yellowstone the world’s first national park in 1872, setting the land aside as a “public park or pleasuring-ground” to protect its geological beauty and natural wonders from privatization. Americans invented the clothes washer, Doppler radar - which enabled more accurate forecasts - the barcode, and rock music, among other innovations.

Danoff said he and Nivert were planning to try to sell the song to Johnny Cash, but when they played an unfinished version one night in their apartment for their friend John Denver, the singer-songwriter convinced them to let him record it instead. The song, released in 1971, turned into Denver’s biggest hit and has been a mainstay for decades. “I don’t know all of the ways that song must have touched people, but I’m grateful that I have somehow been able to say something that has meaning for others,” Denver wrote years later. Denver died in a plane crash in 1997. According to The Athletic, FIFA officials added “Country Roads” to its postgame playlist options in hopes of creating a shared moment between the U.S. team and its supporters. It made its debut at the end of the U.S.’s second match as the players celebrated their 2-0 win over Australia in Seattle. The song was an immediate hit both inside the stadium and on social media, as fans embraced the scenes of U.S. players waving to fans as they sang the lyrics. “You could feel the connection with the fans,” midfielder Weston McKennie told reporters after the match. John Denver’s song didn’t get quite the same reception on June 25 at Los Angeles Stadium, as it came after a deflating, though insignificant, last-minute U.S. loss to Turkey. But it came back in force Wednesday evening in Santa Clara, California, as the U.S. defeated Bosnia-Herzegovina to advance to the round of 16. Perhaps none were more enthusiastic than midfielders McKennie and Sebastian Berhalter, who swung their arms wildly as they wandered around the field while singing to the fans. During matches not involving the U.S. team, the song has frequently been played during hydration breaks and has also been met with roaring approval from fans who, moments previously, had been booing the start of each hydration break. It’s hardly the first time that “Country Roads,” has been used by sports fans. It has long been a mainstay at West Virginia University football games, where Mountaineer fans serenade the team after its home victories.

It’s become one of the enduring scenes of the U.S. team during this World Cup: jubilant U.S. players joining tens of thousands of fans in singing John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” at the end of their matches. The John Denver estate told The Associated Press that it is “thrilled” by the song’s latest revival at the World Cup, saying “Country Roads” has endured because its message transcends geography, and that its “simple, clear, and relatable” lyrics make it perfect for a sing-along. “Everyone knows what ‘Take me home to the place I belong’ is about,” the estate said Thursday. “It’s not limited to West Virginia.” Here’s how a song inspired by a Maryland drive became a World Cup anthem. The song has its origins in Maryland, not West Virginia Despite the lyrics’ heartfelt embrace of West Virginia, “Country Roads” cowriter Bill Danoff has said the inspiration for the song came from a drive he and his then-wife, cowriter Taffy Nivert, took along Maryland’s winding Clopper Road to attend a family reunion in Gaithersburg, some 25 miles east of the West Virginia border. “I just started thinking, country roads, I started thinking of me growing up in western New England and going on all these small roads,” Danoff told Washington’s WRC-TV in 2020. “It didn’t have anything to do with Maryland or anyplace.” At the time, Danoff hadn’t spent considerable time in West Virginia. He was familiar, though, with Appalachian music broadcast from Wheeling, West Virginia’s famous WWVA radio station, which he listened to while growing up in Springfield, Massachusetts. Danoff said he was also inspired by the West Virginia-born actor Chris Sarandon, as well as the West Virginian members of a commune who would frequently attend his gigs.

The latest is Netanyahu has reluctantly agreed to cease military operations against Lebanon. But blink, and that will change. Hezbollah terrorists will start firing again, as they always do; as Iran knows they do; as Iran will no doubt even encourage them to do. How is Israel expected to stand by and allow unanswered strikes by Hezbollah against their Jewish nation? For how long? Iran’s biggest designs are to develop nuclear weapons and destroy the state of Israel. America, especially under Trump, has been Iran’s biggest obstacle to achieving these goals. But if Iran can turn Trump against Israel, and more importantly, America, then the regime can be on its merry way back to reaching its wicked goals. America should beware. The turning is in the works. Trump, in recent remarks, said, “Without me, there would be no Israel.” Vance, in recent remarks, set Israel on notice by basically saying hey, sit down and shut up because America’s your only friend. Thin veil, meet eye-opening warning. “Israel stunned by Vance attack and implied US weapons warning,” Ynet News wrote. And then comes this, from Newsweek: “Most Americans don’t see clear US gain from Iran deal: poll.” That’s because there isn’t any clear gain - because there isn’t even any clear deal. Most voters in America care more about the price of gas than they do about the pressures of Israel. The bigger winner here is Iran. If the White House lets Iran get by with turning America against Israel, the war against the regime will have been for naught. And biblically speaking, the larger and longer-term danger is this: read the prophetic verses. In the end times, all nations turn against Israel. Let those with ears hear.

Israel, however, is a sovereign nation and not subject to any terms of peace struck between America and Iran. Israel has also been engaged in defensive military operations against Hezbollah, one of Iran’s proxies, for years; Hezbollah took advantage of the Oct. 7 savage Hamas attack against the Jewish nation, for instance, to restart its own strikes against Israel. So while the IDF was waging war against Hamas in Gaza in the south, its northern borders were being hit by Hezbollah terrorists. Trump may call Hezbollah a “little pinprick” ? but to Israel, the terror group has killed and injured scores. The group’s not a pinprick to the families who’ve needlessly lost loved ones. Besides, Israel’s recent pushback into Lebanon is akin to America’s unleashing of strikes against Iran after the regime shot down an Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz. That is: just as the United States has a right to defend itself militarily when attacked, so, too, does Israel. But back to the 14-point memorandum: Iran knew that by stipulating a cease and desist of military operations that included those in Lebanon, it was putting it on Trump’s shoulders to force Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop firing at Hezbollah. This was a win-win-win situation for Iran. If Israel stopped attacking Hezbollah, then Hezbollah gets to attack Israel with impunity. If Israel didn’t stop attacking Hezbollah, then Iran could cry afoul with the terms of the 14-point memorandum and break it. If Israel didn’t stop attacking Hezbollah and Iran therefore broke the terms of the memorandum, Trump would appear weakened on the foreign policy front. In order to save the deal, Trump would have to pressure Israel to stop firing on Hezbollah. And pressure he did. “Donald Trump Mocks Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” AOL wrote in one headline. “Trump goes after Netanyahu, as he pursues deal with Iran, putting their friendship to the test,” The Associated Press wrote in another headline.

Just hours before Vice President J.D. Vance was heading to Switzerland to lead up new peace talks with Iran about its pursuit of nuclear weapons, the meeting was canceled. Iran pulled back, citing Israel’s ongoing military attacks against Hezbollah as cause for the cancellation. So now the deal to end the U.S.-Iran war that was supposedly previously signed, but not really, is again up in the air, and peace that had been previously agreed upon, but not really, is again in the stalled talking stages. Whom to blame, whom to blame. Looks like Vance is going to be the administration’s fall guy - but really, the whole idea of forging a deal with a regime that only wants an end of the Jewish people, the destruction of the state of Israel, the eradication of America, and the downfall of the entire West and all Western society seemed fated from the get-go. How to make peace with a people whose primary goal is to murder you - and not just any old murder, but the most savage of kinds it can invent? Iran is playing America. Iran is playing President Trump. Iran is taking a victory lap over its latest strategic dodge of peace. “Iran Claims Victory, Calls Trump Deal An ‘Admission of Failure,’” The Times of India wrote. “Iran declares victory over US,” Big News Network wrote. Well, Iran can take its so-called victory and put it where the sun don’t shine because the bombing campaign American unleashed months ago obliterated much of the regime’s nuclear capabilities. Trump did that. And Trump should get credit for that. Iran is certainly not victorious when it comes to withstanding America’s military might. Where Iran is making inroads, though, is with its deceptive influences through the world’s media. Iran has been able, through its on-again, off-again, on-again maneuverings of the peace deal, to put America in the role of Critic Of Israel. Point one of the 14-point memorandum of understanding that was supposedly an end to America’s war with Iran was an immediate end of military strikes on all fronts - including those between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Six months ago, millions of Iranians poured into the streets in open defiance of the Islamic republic. They called for an end to the Islamic republic and for a future rooted in secular democracy and national sovereignty. Yet now, as Washington pursues a deal with Tehran, the Iranian people are nowhere at the table. The very people who have suffered the most at the hands of this regime, including the loss of at least 40,000 lives in January, are being treated as spectators to negotiations over their own future. Worse, the deal being discussed would not weaken the Islamic republic. It would rescue it. In early January, just days into Iran’s national uprising, President Trump warned Iran against killing peaceful protesters. As the crackdown continued, he told Iranians that “help is on the way.” Washington seemed to frame its escalation as an intervention on behalf of the Iranian people, urging them to take control of their institutions and targeting parts of the political leadership. Yet after many deaths, extensive military damage and a heavy economic burden, the United States now appears prepared to shake hands with the very government it once told Iranians to rise against. This deal would hand a regime on the brink of failure the time, legitimacy and money it needs to survive. This deal teaches Tehran - and all our other adversaries watching - that killing its own citizens, threatening global energy markets and escalating nuclear blackmail can force the world into capitulation. For the regime, the deal is a victory. For the Iranian people, it is a betrayal. The new avenues of destabilizing leverage a deal would encourage are already visible. The choice before Washington is not between war and diplomacy; it is whether America will stand with a dying authoritarian regime or a nation fighting to be free. As long as the Iranian people are kept outside the room, any deal with Tehran is destined to fail.

Global energy markets are changing for good. Asian nations that suffered the most from the closure of the strait are unlikely to allow themselves to be vulnerable again. Alternatives to Qatar’s liquefied natural gas are being built, and by 2030, we could have a glut if the strait reopens. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are expanding oil pipeline capacity to circumvent the strait. New port and rail capacity will be built. Adding in Brazil, Canada and the United States, the Western Hemisphere now produces more oil than the Middle East. Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and TotalEnergies are exploring drilling prospects in Africa, South America and the eastern Mediterranean. Entering the war, the global market had a considerable cushion of oil in storage and in transit, as well as the strategic reserves of Western governments and China. Those are running down, and oil prices should rise still further. The U.S. could suffer a brief recession, but increased oil export revenue will provide a counterweight to the drag on domestic demand from higher fuel prices. We should not simply accede to Iran’s demand for cash for peace nor accept an end to the war that concedes to Iran control of the strait or the capacity to build nuclear weapons. We cannot let a new status quo emerge where Iran can terrorize its neighbors or is permitted, by American default, to become a regional hegemon. Hence, we must repair, harden and maintain our bases in the Middle East. Yet we must also demand that Saudi Arabia and others do more to aid their own defense, not simply by buying American weapons but also by using those in concert with our military to answer Iranian attacks. Defense cooperation in the Middle East should, in principle, mirror the policy the Trump administration is shaping in Asia. In a thoughtful speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a gathering of defense officials, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the United States seeks “a favorable but durable balance of power in which no state, including China, can impose its hegemony or call into question the security or prosperity of our nation and our allies.”