Gordon G. Chang on the arrest of two U.S. Navy sailors for allegedly spying for China

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This is just an excerpt from The Ezra Levant Show. To see new, ad-free episodes, which air Monday - Friday @ 8 p.m. ET | 6 p.m. MT, become a subscriber to RebelNews+. This episode originally aired on August 4, 2023.

On last night’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra spoke with Gordon G. Chang, an expert on China-America relations, about the recent arrest of two US Navy sailors on charges of allegedly spying for China. 

Gordon explained the known facts about the case:

Of course, these are just allegations not yet proven in court, but they sound pretty like pretty serious allegations. Yeah, the Justice Department wouldn't bring charges unless it had the goods on these guys. And you know, there are two sailors, one of them gave information about the plans of ships. The other one was I think even more concerning because he gave plans on radar in Okinawa, which is going to be a place of great consequence. If there's a war, that war will be fought in the first hours in Okinawa. And so what this is, is something of vital interest to China. Now, of course, these are just allegations, but it appears as in prior cases that, these allegations are true.

Ezra commented on the amount that the sailors were allegedly paid by the CCP:

One of the things that's interesting and I was reading, some of the coverage in the ABC news was that the spies were allegedly paid a sum of money in one case $5,000, in another case, about $15,000. What struck me was how small those amounts of money are. I mean, I suppose it's not, that's not really the point but I mean, the secrets and the technology and the information took millions or billions to create, I suppose, and the fact that that could be stolen through industrial and military sabotaged for a rounding error, that was astonishing. I suppose there was some ideological or national motivation too because, I guess it's not just the cash, I suppose. What do you think?

Gordon explained that the motivation for revealing U.S. secrets may not have been financial:

Got to remember that these are two ethnic Chinese, and what's going on here is that Beijing I'm sure told them, 'Look, if you don't cooperate, we are gonna make life very difficult for your relatives still back in China' or they made the nationalist pitch. So money, I don't think really was a major factor and you're right, it, it's not a large amount in either case, but I think Beijing was using coercion more than anything else.