The Psychology Behind the Cancel Culture Debate

ALTITUDE

News, Analysis and Opinion from POLITICO

Article by JOHN F. HARRIS — ALTITUDE is a column by POLITICO founding editor John F. Harris, offering perspective on politics in a moment of radical disruption.

Revenge, the old saying goes, is a dish best served cold. Indignant statements warning about the rotten state of contemporary political discourse, on the other hand, are dishes served hot.

Recent weeks have produced a rush of solemn manifestos and bristling jeremiads deploring cancel culture and the alleged demise of intellectual diversity and tolerance for opposing ideas in newsrooms and universities. These spurred counter manifestos and jeremiads deploring the deplorers as out of touch, privileged, prejudiced.

Fresh off the grill, these sizzling entrees are enticing. But left to cool even a few days it is striking how quickly they turn virtually inedible: How did a generation of journalists and public intellectuals suddenly become so sour and self-involved? Do the rest of us really need to take this debate as seriously as the debaters take themselves?

The July 7 letter in Harper’s by 153 prominent authors and academics had the sonorous tones of something written for the ages, a courageous expression of universal ideals, to be read and appreciated even years from now. It asserted a cleavage between liberal values, animated by “the free exchange of information and ideas,” and “the forces of illiberalism” on the left and right who seek to shut down people and opinions they find offensive through “public shaming and ostracism.”

But these are not really words for the ages. “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” likely will soon be viewed as an artifact of these particular time, just like “A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate” written as rebuttal.

That is because the exchanges are only on the surface about ideology and free speech. They are more fundamentally about psychology—in particular the mix of pride and anxiety that flow within even the most self-assured writers in this disruptive moment.

Chaos and anger are everywhere. The fight-or-flight instinct inside everyone has been activated. The writers who signed the open letter—including such famous names as Salman Rushdie, Malcolm Gladwell, and J.K. Rowling—decided to fight. But in trying to project collective strength they illuminated collective insecurities.

Among the most consistent critiques classical liberals have of a rising generation on the left is that they have been conditioned on college campuses to put undue emphasis on group identity. It’s common to hear people making fun of younger colleagues for the way they claim a right to protest that they feel “unsafe” around arguments and people they disagree with.

But race, sex and ethnicity are not the only categories of identity politics. Being a distinguished writer—for whom self-respect and the respect of others flows from success in a certain arena, where the prevailing customs, values and ego rewards are well-established—is itself a form of identity. Being disrespected and scorned by people you normally think of as the home team—not right-wing agitators but fellow progressives—does indeed feel unsafe.

The human instinct when something bad happens to someone you know is to establish psychic distance, to give oneself reassurance that this couldn’t have happened to you. (“Well, you know he was a smoker.” “What was she thinking, trying to fix the electrical system herself?”) 

The agitated tone of the Harper’s letter came precisely because its signatories easily could imagine bad things—firings, brutal public excoriation—happening to them. This is true in the case of journalists James Bennet, ousted as New York Times opinion editor after publishing an op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton that outraged many colleagues, or Stan Wischnowski, the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer who resigned after someone on his staff carelessly wrote a racially insensitive headline.

I was not asked to sign the Harper’s letter. (Oh, good suggestion: I will check my spam folder.) I am sympathetic to its arguments. The writers may be exaggerating the threat to liberal discourse but they are not imagining it. I am a strong admirer of Bennet, and we once published an interview discussion of themes highly relevant to the current uproar. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure I would have had the wit to anticipate that the writers were affixing a large kick-me sign to their backs. I wasn’t surprised people on Twitter and elsewhere accepted the invitation.  The better way to defend liberal intellectual values might have been through arguments that actually demonstrated liberal intellectual values.

The liberal mind, or so it seems to me, gravitates instinctually to the concrete and particular, as against the instinct of more rigid ideologues to embrace spacious abstractions. But the open letter in Harper’s seemed almost purposefully abstract: “We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.”

So if Fox News executives, due to the pressure of commerce or conscience, decide one night that this time Tucker Carlson has gone too far with his scab-picking monologues and kick him off the air, would that be another terrible example of cancel culture? No, no, most of the letter-signers would surely say: We are talking about protecting people making good-faith, intellectually honest arguments, not for-profit demagoguery. But that qualification makes the point: Context matters, and the letter-signers might have anticipated that their vague but emphatic generalities are not the best affirmation of liberal thought.

The Harper’s letter also denounces the tendency to dissolve complex debates in “a blinding moral certainty.” It is a laudable trait of the classically liberal mind to try to reckon with the potential merits of the opposing side’s view, rather than to simply assume or assert the other side’s iniquity.

But the open letter did not do that. While classical liberalism has a winning record within the broad history of American intellectual life, within the history most relevant to younger writers and activists—say the past quarter-century—it is not hard to see why this philosophy would look weak and timorous. The instinct of liberal intellectuals to see all sides, to critique the power establishment from within rather than attack it frontally from outside, arguably contributed to the debacles of the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crash. The tendency of liberal centrists to believe that political debate is basically on the level, while the right cynically exploits the reality that modern politics is often not on the level and is more about power than ideas, arguably helped vault Donald Trump to the presidency.

The historic weakness of classical liberalism is a tendency to equivocate and delay even on questions that do demand blinding moral certainty, like confronting the rise of fascism in the 1930s or Jim Crow for decades before the 1960s. The historic strength of liberalism is that it usually rises to the occasion eventually. A political philosophy that embraces relativism over absolutism, that prefers the practical over the theoretical, that encourages conflicting perspectives rather than orthodoxy, that appreciates contradiction and contingency, is a lot more durable over the long haul. Critics on the left who have disdain for this squishy worldview should acknowledge that historically societies that draw hard lines against offensive speech nearly always do so in the name of protecting established power, not attacking prejudice or empowering marginalized voices.

But this, too, is getting a bit abstract. And abstraction may be the greatest hazard to constructive political debate in this age, as we huddle at home on keyboards and see colleagues, if at all, by Zoom screens. What is striking about the various speech manifestos is how they refer to fellow writers who happen to disagree as though they are distant strangers, odious stick-figure characters. One feels this distance in both directions in Bari Weiss’ complaint to New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, in a public resignation letter, as she berates colleagues who she says bully her and allegedly regard “history itself [as] one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.”

One feels that distance again in the open-letter rebuttal to the Harper’s letter as it lashes signatories for invoking “seductive but nebulous concepts and coded language to obscure the actual meaning behind their words,” the aim of which is “to control and derail the ongoing debate about who gets to have a platform.”

These days, many more writers have a platform than ever before. The question is how to use it. The external world—its problems and remedies—is a more compelling subject than the internal psychology of writers. 

The Truth Is, Lying Might Not Be So Bad… Huh?

COMMENTARY by Steven K. Haught, Editor

Why do people lie? Such a simple question should come with a simple answer, but doesn’t, unfortunately. There are indications, that most of us share the same motives for telling lies and we do it often.  Becoming accustomed to telling a fib, altering truth, whatever you would like to call it, can and does have profoundly negative affects on human health.

With repeated lies, the brain becomes less and less sensitive to dishonesty, supporting ever larger acts of dishonesty. Humans become desensitized to telling lies ad the truth becomes harder to discern.

But why do we lie and is it such a terrible thing if we do?

In 1946’s production of A Night in Casablanca, Groucho Marx’s character says to a co-star, “You know, I think you’re the most beautiful woman in the whole world,” to which she eagerly replies, “Do you really?”

He answers, “No, but I don’t mind lying if it’ll get me somewhere.”

The character’s sentiment lightly illustrates a moral and practical dilemma that we face almost every day: Are there times when it’s OK to lie? More importantly, what if we fib for another person’s benefit, not just our own?

This discussion seems illogical, since you were probably taught, like me, to never lie.  Just don’t do it.   Your parents likely preached the power of the truth. You hear stories of liars suffering consequences for their deception. A few countries can punish lying with the death penalty. Your life partner told you honesty matters most. Why would lying ever be acceptable?

What is a Lie?  The boundary between lying and deception is often vague. It is even possible to deceive someone with the truth. I could, for instance, stand on the sidewalk in front of the White House and call the headquarters of Facebook on my cell phone: “Hello, this is Robert B. Devious… I’m calling from the White House, and I’d like to speak with CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.” 

Deception can take many forms, but not all acts of deception are outright lies. My words would, in a narrow sense, be true—but the statement is most clearly calculated to deceive. Would I be lying? Close enough in my humble opinion.

To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication. This leaves stage magicians, poker players, and other harmless dissemblers off the hook, while illuminating a psychological and social landscape whose general shape is very easy to recognize. 

People lie so that others will form beliefs that are not true. The more consequential the beliefs—that is, the more a person’s well-being demands a correct understanding of the world or of other people’s opinions—the more consequential the lie.

Even the most ethical among us regularly struggle to keep appearances and reality apart. By wearing cosmetics, a woman seeks to seem younger or more beautiful than she otherwise would. 

But honesty does not require that she issue continual disclaimers—“I see that you are looking at my face: Please be aware that I do not look this good first thing in the morning ...” A person in a hurry might pretend not to notice an acquaintance passing by on the street. A polite host might not acknowledge that one of her guests has said something so stupid as to slow the rotation of the earth. 

When asked “How are you?” most of us reflexively say that we are well, understanding the question to be merely a greeting, rather than an invitation to discuss our career disappointments, our marital troubles, or the condition of our bowels. Omissions and lack of clarities of this kind can be forms of subtle deception, but they are not quite lies. We may skirt the truth at such moments, but we do not deliberately manufacture falsehood or conceal important facts to the detriment of others.

As the philosopher Sissela Bok observed… we cannot get far on this topic without first distinguishing between truth and truthfulness — for a person may be impeccably truthful while being mistaken. 

To speak truthfully is to accurately represent one’s beliefs. But candor offers no assurance that one’s beliefs about the world are true. Nor does truthfulness require that one speak the whole truth, because communicating every fact on a given topic is almost never useful or even possible. Of course, if one is not sure whether or not something is true, representing one’s degree of uncertainty is a form of honesty.

Leaving these ambiguities aside, communicating what one believes to be both true and useful is surely different from concealing or distorting that belief. The intent to communicate honestly is the measure of truthfulness. And most of us do not require a degree in philosophy to distinguish this attitude from its counterfeits.

People tell lies for many reasons.  They lie to avoid embarrassment, to exaggerate their accomplishments, and to disguise wrongdoing. They make promises they do not intend to keep. They conceal defects in their products or services. They mislead competitors to gain advantage. Many of us lie to our friends and family members to spare their feelings.  The most severe usually involves at least one victim… and the least severe may be the polite lie of not telling someone the real truth; such as, “Your hairstyle is great… that dress looks terrific on you or your baby is soooo beautiful.”

Whatever our purpose in telling them, lies can be gross or subtle. Some entail elaborate ruses or forged documents. Others consist merely of euphemisms or tactical silences. But it is in believing one thing while intending to communicate another that every lie is born. We have all stood on both sides of the divide between what someone believes and what he intends others to understand—and the gap generally looks quite different depending on whether one is the liar or the dupe. 

The liar often imagines that he does no harm so long as his lies go undetected. But the one lied to rarely shares this view. The moment we consider our dishonesty from the perspective of those we lie to, we recognize that we would feel betrayed if the roles were reversed.

While most people are generally honest, the opportunity to deceive others is ever present and tempting, and each instance of deception casts us on to some of the steepest ethical terrain we ever encounter in life. Few of us are murderers or thieves, but we have all been liars. Many of us will be unable to get into our beds tonight without having told a few lies over the course of the day.

Studies show that the average person lies several times a day. Some of those lies are big (“I’ve never cheated on you!”) but more often, they are little white lies deployed to avoid uncomfortable situations or spare someone's feelings.

What does this bare-knuckled reality of lies and deception say about us as humans… personally and institutionally?

Trust is the bedrock of social life at all levels, from romance and parenting to business and government. Deception always undermines the foundations on which we construct our belief systems and world views. 

Because truth is so essential to the human enterprise, which relies on a shared view of reality, the default assumption most people have is that others are truthful in their communications and dealings. Most cultures have powerful social sanctions against lying.

There are two powerful institutions that influence every aspect of human life… politics and media.  Neither can function without the other and yet they seem unable to coexist in an atmosphere of honesty and truth.  Politicians frequently rail against the news media, but rarely has the criticism been as harsh as it is today. 

President Donald Trump has made little effort to conceal his contempt for the press, calling unfavorable stories “fake news” and the mainstream media “the enemy of the people.”

Research reveals that most Americans’ trust in the news media has declined, and conservatives and evangelicals show a marked lack of trust in all forms of media. 

However, it would be a mistake to attribute the recent drop “trust” to any one institution, individual or event. “The conservative skepticism of the media runs deep,” CNN’s S.E. Cupp wrote. “Believe me, President Donald Trump didn’t invent it.”

There are many government officials and leaders who believe the government has legitimate reasons to give out false information, based on the circumstances and desired result to be obtained from the lie. 

People who imagine that their government is on their side, you know the ol’ “We the People” notion… may wonder why a government should be endowed with the unchecked power to deceive -- a power that may be exercised without any judicial review or penalty.  

Are foreign policy and truth compatible? Some presidents have had their doubts. The Bush administration recently announced a plan to distribute misinformation to foreign media through the Pentagon's proposed Office of Strategic Influence. 

After misinformation hits the media, the “whisper down the lane” effect is quick and alters any semblance of truth.  The lies compound and compound becoming more intricate and complex  until some altered version becomes truth, even though it itself is far from what actually happened.  That’s what “media” does… sort out the versions of lies, filters them against ratings and declares one to be the truth.

The U.S. Government has often been caught in the lies it has disseminated in the interest of maintaining the global power balance.   Even a president can and has frequently done so, claimed to be acting on principle, for the benefit on the American people or in actuality something, a power struggle, the citizens know nothing about.  A leader can profess firm disapproval of any lying initiative, with a belief that telling the American people lies is good for our democracy.

Is lying ever justified? Depends on who’s doing the lying and how embarrassing the situation.  Bill Clinton clearly felt justified in lying to lawyers investigating his sex life. If they had no moral right to ask the questions, you imagine him reasoning, he had no moral obligation to answer them honestly. 

Richard Nixon retained tape-recorded evidence of his own lies about the Watergate break-in and other scandals, and felt so secure in the presidential power, that he did not fear being unable to morph another version of a lie” to distort truth and through off investigators from uncovering the real story.  If the Nixon affairs would have happened today, in the 21st century, he would have easily gotten away with his crimes. 

George W. Bush was only caught uttering relatively small lies.  The extraordinary secrecy that surrounded the Bush administration obviated some of its need to lie but, like the Catholic Church, it’s lies may someday come to light and those responsible held accountable for the moral corruption that secrecy spawns.  Probably not.

The worlds alleged moral exemplars, from presidents to popes, along with lesser beings (the rest of us) tell lies in the belief that they serve a greater good. 

Lies are often imbued with transcendent instrumental value by the individuals and institutions that utter them. Sometimes the lies are self-serving, but the tendency or temptation to lie in service of justice makes it virtually impossible to condemn all lying categorically.

Some events of history teach that lesson in hindsight… what would you do?  When the Gestapo bangs on your door, you had better lie about the Jewish family you're hiding in the basement. 

The moral choice, however, is not always so clear: Do you have a right to lie to governments or other interrogators whenever you believe they are acting unjustly? If you consider the tax code oppressive, are you justified in lying to the IRS about the false tax return you filed? 

If you oppose the death penalty because you consider it immoral, should you lie if you're called to serve on a jury in a capital murder case that could result in a death penalty being imposed? Should you tell the court that you have no quarrel with capital punishment in the hope of qualifying as a juror and thwarting an execution?

I'd tell the truth, partly in the belief that truth is easier to discern than justice and partly because I imagine that, if everyone always told the truth in court, we'd end up with more justice, not less. 

In such highly charged debates such as capital punishment, truth telling might be viewed as immoral, because taking a life even when seemingly justified is immoral.  That’s a dilemma most of us would like to avoid.

Still, truth often seems the safer choice in life, though it's bound to be the wrong choice on occasion. At least it saves us from the self-deception to which many liars are prone. To rationalize their lies, believing their private interests and desires as justified. 

Clinton may have lied to preserve his power while telling himself that he was lying to protect "the people" who benefited from his presidency. Liars, especially liars in power, often combine their interest with the public interest.

Or they consider their lies sanctified by the essential goodness they presume to embody, like terrorists who believe that murder is sanctified by the godliness of their aspirations. 

Sanctimony probably engenders at least as much lying as cynicism. We can't condemn lying categorically, but we should categorically suspect it.

VIEWPOINT: Trump Must Overcome Deluge of Lies

By Conrad Black, National Post - Canada

There has never in American history been a presidential election remotely like the present one.

It is not really between two candidates but between one candidate representing a moderate traditional view of the national interest and the nature of American government, and a coalition of interest groups and factions nominally headed by the opposition presidential nominee but whose campaign is entirely conducted by a comprehensive deluge of lies in 90 percent of the national political media.

The incumbent is running on his record and on a traditional value system; his credibility is somewhat undermined by his frequent lapses into what he generously calls his “constructive hyperbole,” and by recourse to louche methods and language. (An example was his nonsensical tweet on July 5 about Nascar and Bubba Wallace.)

Implicit in the promotion of his program is the destruction of what he has for the last five years described as a “swamp” of mediocrity that poorly served the national interest and that after the retirement of Ronald Reagan in 1987, was essentially sustained by both traditional parties.

His opponents defame the president and instead of an election, are trying to conduct a referendum on the president after they have succeeded in destroying him in public opinion.

His very eloquent address at Mount Rushmore on July 3 was his principal effort to date to turn the corner on the tactics of his opponents, deprive them of a rigged and artificial referendum, and present the election as a contest between traditional American patriotic values and media dishonesty, political corruption, and truckling to white-hating mob sentiment.

The Meaning of the Election

The extent to which it has become more of a contest over the meaning of the election than an election itself was well illustrated when Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) represented the president’s address at Mount Rushmore a few minutes after it ended, as “telling lies about dead traitors.” She was referring to the president’s passing reference to military bases named after Confederate generals.

As President Lincoln established, Confederates were secessionists, not traitors. Trump’s speech was almost entirely a celebration of the equality of all Americans and the greatness of those who subdued the Confederate insurrection and abolished slavery; all in the context of the revolutionary origins of the American pursuit of liberty, ultimately for all Americans.

Ms. Duckworth simply lied about the speech, serenely and justly confident that the national political media would not expose her falsehood or report the speech accurately themselves.

The president must dig himself out from under his own occasionally inopportune remarks and debunk the barrage of defamations directed at him.

Michelle Goldberg (New York Times and Daily Beast) made a point similar to Duckworth’s in Mercury News on Friday: that Trump had built his political career on racism and sexism and continues to do so. His large following was attracted by “race-baiting” and was buttressed with dollops of misogyny.

This too is an outright lie. Trump was a progressive promoter of female executives in his development business, has many women in his administration in senior positions, had in racial terms an equal opportunity record as an employer, has never uttered one word of disparagement of any ethnic group, (his complaint about illegal immigration was lack of process, lack of skill, and the presence of criminals, not ethnicity).

He had his moments as an energetic seeker of consensual heterosexual pleasures. But he is a paragon of uxorious fidelity compared to those two titans of recent Democratic lore, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, who were at times so profligate that misogynistic tendencies might be imputable to them. With the incumbent as with his predecessors, none of this has anything to do with their performance as president of the United States.

The racist charge against Trump is an insupportable, malicious, defamatory falsehood. It is in the same category as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s endless prattling’s about Trump’s supposedly inappropriate relations with Russia. There are and have been no such relations; Speaker Pelosi is simply lying.

Constructive Reform

The president’s challenge is to pierce the cloud of opprobrium which the smear campaign of his media enemies has enshrouded him in and to counter the Democratic media’s equation of his espousal of liberty for all as white supremacy as the Big Lie that it is; and to expose the spearheads of the anti-Trump opposition, Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa, as the racist, Americophobic, Marxist, hooligans and terrorists that they are.

It is startlingly indicative of the efficacy of the partisan national political media’s anti-Trump campaign that even after the infamies that BLM committed following the murder of George Floyd (supposedly in respectful memory of him), BLM is somewhat more popular than the president himself. This is because the unobservant haven’t noticed that black lives matter less to BLM than to the president, and that BLM rejects the formulation that all lives matter.

Despite the president’s dip in the polls of 3 to 5 percent under the buffetings of the pandemic, the economic shutdown, and the post-Floyd riots, in which he was represented as President Chaos, he still has an incomparable platform for his reelection appeal.

Unlike black-supremacist BLM, he believes in racial equality, and believes that traditional African-American economic disadvantage will best be combated by full employment, generous investment in enterprise zones to employ and train-up under-skilled people, continued heavy assistance to African-American universities and institutions, and penal reform that will eliminate what has long been the built-in bias against minorities in the U.S. criminal justice system.

This is a program of constructive reform that with the near elimination of illegal immigration, had brought the country to a position of unprecedented prosperity before the COVID-19 crisis and had generated swifter income growth in the lower 20 percent of the income scale in percentage terms than the most prosperous 10 percent, a breakthrough in the income disparity crisis that afflicts all advanced societies. This progress can be regained.

By continuing to promote a proven and practical program of economic growth and equitable prosperity increases, and by espousing the traditional view of America as an always well-intentioned, but often imperfect country (as all countries are), striving throughout its history to be a more just and contented society, the president has a natural majority.

If he sticks to his message, strictly respects the facts, and economic and public health trends continue, he should redress the gap enjoyed by his opponent in the polls by the end of the summer. Then the Democrats will have to cease pretending they are conducting a rigged referendum on Trump and will have to acquiesce in the public’s selection of one of the two candidates.

We know that the president is a competent if idiosyncratic executive; only a delusional optimist could imagine Joe Biden successfully executing the office in which the Democratic barons and media mouth-pieces are desperately trying to insert him.

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Conrad Black has been one of Canada’s most prominent financiers for 40 years, and was one of the leading newspaper publishers in the world. He is the author of authoritative biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, and, most recently “Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.”

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The CHINA you don’t know! The one that OWNS America’s future!

Article by Hollie McKay, Fox News Digital

China has slowly and quietly been buying big in America, dominating the global supply chain in an array of industries.  

The coronavirus pandemic may have shed light on China's influence in America over the supply chain, including life-saving medicines, technology and equipment, and some analysts believe the ongoing crisis exposes the inroads China has made on U.S. soil.

The American Security Institute recently released a report and launched a campaign, featuring a billboard in Times Square, to draw further attention to the extensive array of sectors the Chinese government and its partners have invested into. But, exactly how much does the nation own?

Medicine:

China produces 97 percent of U.S. antibiotics and about 80 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients used in American drugs, giving the Chinese Communist Party absolute control of potentially life-saving medicine. For example, Chinese pharmaceutical companies supply 70 percent of the world's acetaminophen, commonly used in Tylenol.

Food:

In 2017, the United States imported $4.6 billion in agricultural goods from China, which is also responsible for much of the global supply of soy and pea proteins that are found in nutritional supplements and synthetic meats. A Chinese firm has also purchased Smithfield, the world's largest pork processor and hog producer.

Education:

The Chinese government's theft of intellectual property has been an open secret for decades. More recently, U.S. authorities have discovered China is funding American university researchers, who don't always disclose those contributions.

Technology:

The manufacturing of smartphones and other household items is heavily reliant on China, which controls most of the rare earth minerals that make those items work. Additionally, China is seeking to build 5G networks in the United States and other Western countries, which could potentially feed personal information and sensitive data to the Chinese Communist Party.

Media:

Chinese firms have bought AMC Entertainment, Legendary Entertainment, and other media companies. Control of 8,000-plus of American theater screens and other media platforms allows China to project "soft power" and block unflattering depictions of the Chinese government from being presented, both in terms of creative production and mass distribution.

Citing the nonpartisan economic think-tank Paulson Institute, the American Security Institute report underscores that "Chinese firms and investors own a controlling majority in nearly 2,400 U.S. companies.”

These include: AMC Entertainment (entertainment), Cirrus Wind Energy (energy), Complete Genomics (health care), First International Oil (energy), G.E. Appliances (technology), IBM—P.C. division (technology), Legendary Entertainment Group (entertainment), Motorola Mobility (technology), Nexteer Automotive (automotive), Riot Games (entertainment), Smithfield Foods (food), Teledyne Continental Motors and Mattituck Services (aerospace), Terex Corp. (machinery), Triple H Coal (mining), Zonare Medical Systems (health care).

"Under China's Communist Party dictatorship, private companies are forced to bend to the government's will," the report states.

"A recently passed law in China requires companies to share data with Chinese communist spy agencies if requested. Under Xi Jinping, the Communist party has returned to being the ultimate authority in business," writes The Guardian. And Human Rights Watch has written that China is an 'existential threat' to human rights."

And while the U.S. grants China permission to buy its companies, China does not allow U.S. companies to operate the same way on their soil.

"The first priority is to reclaim our critical supply chains so that we can become self-secure instead of reliant on the Chinese government," Will Coggin, managing director of the American Security Institute, told Fox News.

The extent of Chinese investment in recent years has also raised red flags around U.S. national security, particularly in the realm of rare earth minerals. These are especially vital not only for high-technology products such as smartphones and electric vehicles but for U.S. frontline weapons including the F-35 fighter, which requires 920 pounds of rare earth minerals.

"In 2017, the United States produced zero rare earth minerals. China, on the other hand, accounted for more than 80 percent of the world's supply," the report stated

However, the full extent of the Chinese investment as it stands in the U.S. today is far from transparent.

"The Chinese have a strong foothold here in the U.S., and Chinese firms have access to what seems like infinite government lending, and because the country's goal of world dominance is ingrained into the minds of their business leaders," explained Paul Murad, president of Nevada-based real estate firm Metroplex. "It means our U.S. directors have a hard task on their hands when it comes to negotiation.”

Milos Maricic, an international affairs expert and World Economic Forum contributor, concurred that while China owns close to $150 billion in U.S. companies – not particularly huge in comparison to the U.S. economy – there is a lot about the available figure that we simply do not know.

"The number is very difficult to gauge correctly due to complicated ownership structures that the Chinese sometimes employ. It could be bigger," he surmised.

Some U.S. lawmakers are pushing back amid the coronavirus fallout, which ignited an initial panic over concerns of critical medical shortages and Beijing's threats to withhold the needed goods.

In late May, the Senate unanimously passed the bipartisan Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act in a bid to force foreign companies – with China at the likely forefront – to adhere to U.S. securities law, and compel some to be removed from American stock exchanges. The bill, which is yet to move through the House, would necessitate that "an issuer must make this certification if the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is unable to audit specified reports because the issuer has retained a foreign public accounting firm not subject to inspection by the board.

More than 200 foreign firms – mostly Chinese with a combined market capitalization of almost $2 trillion – are said to not be meeting this standard; so their stocks are traded, but U.S. investors have limited insight into what is going on internally with the companies. Subsequently, China and other international players would be obligated to accede to an audit that can be reviewed by the nonprofit Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which oversees audits of all U.S. companies that endeavor to raise money in public markets.

"Chinese companies have been carrying out unchecked reverse mergers for years now, and the media (influence) has been going under the radar for years now," Murad added. "Under President Trump, the U.S. was the first to recognize their nonstop deceits, and now the rest of the world has a clearer picture of China's ambition.”

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Hollie McKay has a been a Fox News Digital staff reporter since 2007. She has extensively reported from war zones including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, and Latin America investigates global conflicts, war crimes and terrorism around the world. Follow her on Twitter.