Tag: China

Unrestricted Warfare: The Front Line Moved Into the Paycheck:  How a 1999 Chinese Military Doctrine Helps Explain Cultural, Corporate, and Cognitive Conflict, if you are against Data Centers and AI, you are helping China win against America

A state can be defeated without a single soldier crossing a border and without a single missile leaving a rail. That sentence used to sound like science fiction. It is now closer to a working description of how power is actually contested. The old picture of war—troops, tanks, flags, and a declared beginning—still exists. It is no longer the whole picture. The more important contest often happens in finance, law, media, software, supply chains, classrooms, and the human-resources office that decides which attitudes are allowed at work.

I have talked about this for years, including when War Room and other outlets treated the subject as strategy rather than slogan. I still own a promotional shirt from the Atlas Shrugged film cycle that advertised in October 2012. The story in those pictures was about producers versus the people who live by controlling producers. This essay’s argument is related, but colder. It is not only about bad policy. It is about a style of conflict designed to make a free country less competitive without looking like an invasion.

What follows is part brief, part review, and part field note. The brief is the 1999 book Unrestricted Warfare, written by two People’s Liberation Army officers. The review is how that book’s logic shows up in gray-zone operations, cyber incidents, sanctions fights, and what NATO now calls cognitive warfare. The field note is personal. After decades in one workplace, I’ve talked to different people, in different rooms, under different rules. The rules often arrive as kindness, inclusion, and “compliance.” The effect is something else: a society trained to police its own energy.

  • What Clausewitz Said, and What the Colonels Rewrote

Carl von Clausewitz gave the West its most famous definition: war is an act of force to compel the enemy to do our will.[1] That definition assumes you can see the force. It assumes a distinction between peace and war, soldier and civilian, battlefield and marketplace. Those distinctions were never perfect. In 1999, two PLA Air Force senior colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, published Chao Xian Zhan—warfare beyond limits—arguing that the distinctions were collapsing on purpose.[2][3]

They were writing after the Gulf War, which had advertised American conventional superiority in brutal high definition. If you cannot beat a superpower on its preferred field, you do not accept the field. You change the game. You use economic pressure, legal process, media, networks, finance, culture, and technology as weapons in combination. You aim at political results, not at a parade of wrecked tanks. In a June 1999 interview, Qiao put the doctrine in one line: the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, and nothing is forbidden.[4]

Using all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one’s interests.

That is still Clausewitz’s object—compulsion of will—with the means blown wide open. The authors were not shy about the catalog. They discussed psychological warfare, media warfare, cultural warfare, financial warfare, trade warfare, network warfare, legal warfare, smuggling, resources, and more.[5] They also insisted on combination. One tool is a dispute. A dozen tools timed together are a campaign. If you hit a currency, seed social discord, and probe a power grid in the same season, the target spends its energy arguing about which event “counts” as war. Meanwhile, the damage accumulates.

The most important sentence in the book is not the slogan about rules. It is the claim that the battlefield is everywhere. Ground, sea, air, and space remain battlefields. So do politics, economics, culture, and the psyche.[6] Once you accept that sentence, a lot of modern life stops looking like “politics as usual” and starts looking like low-intensity conflict that never has to declare itself.

Combination Warfare and the Vanishing Front Line

Traditional strategy likes a map with a front. Unrestricted warfare looks like a web. The authors talk about “addition”—stacking methods until the opponent cannot find the line of contact. Later PLA political work formalized a related toolkit as the “Three Warfares”: public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare, written into regulations in 2003.[7] Those three are not a substitute for the 1999 book. They are one way the same instinct was institutionalized: shape what people believe, shake what they are willing to endure, and use law as a weapon rather than a fence.

This is why “hybrid warfare” and “gray zone” became fashionable terms in the West. Russia’s campaign against Ukraine before and after 2014 mixed information operations, energy leverage, proxies, and cyber operations. On December 23, 2015, attackers attributed to the Sandworm group shut off power to roughly 230,000 customers in Ukraine. It was the first widely acknowledged successful cyberattack on a power grid.[8] No tank had to roll for the lights to go out. Plausible deniability did part of the work. If activists, criminals, or “unknown actors” can be blamed, a conventional military reply becomes politically and legally expensive.

International law was built for visible armies. The Geneva tradition assumes you can tell a combatant from a civilian. A server room, a social platform, a ratings agency, or a human-resources policy shop does not wear a uniform. The Tallinn Manuals—first in 2013, then 2.0 in 2017—tried to apply existing law to cyber operations. Most of what unrestricted warfare describes happens below the threshold of an “armed attack.” States like the ambiguity. Clear rules would bind them too.[9]

Economic tools sit in the same gap. Sanctions can wreck a financial system and still fail the legal test of armed attack.[10] That is a feature if your doctrine says the point is political collapse or capitulation, not a formal declaration. The violence, when it comes, may be late. The conference room and the data center get there first.

Cognitive Warfare: The Target Is the Decision Itself

NATO and allied research communities now talk openly about cognitive warfare: operations aimed not only at what people know, but at how groups perceive, trust, and decide.[11] Artificial intelligence lowers the cost of volume. You do not need a master propagandist in every town. You need models that can generate tailored narratives, test what spreads, and keep the target public arguing with itself.

This is the frightening part of the 1999 thesis updated for 2026. The original colonels talked about media and psychology. They could not fully describe algorithmic amplification, deepfakes, or automated social engineering. The logic did not need those tools to be valid. The tools made the logic cheaper. If you can degrade collective cognition—attention, memory, trust, and the willingness to pay a cost—you do not have to occupy the capital. You occupy the argument.

Hardware races in the same direction. Autonomy reduces the political cost of using force because fewer of “your” people come home in boxes. That drops the barrier to kinetic conflict even as non-kinetic conflict is already permanent. The two trends reinforce each other. A society that is internally confused is easier to pressure. A society that is internally confident is harder to push around with either drones or narratives.

Cultural Warfare Does Not Arrive Waving a Foreign Flag

Here is where the argument gets personal, and where a serious reader should keep two ideas in the same hand.

First idea: Unrestricted Warfare names cultural warfare as a method. Weaken an adversary from the inside. Make the opponent less cohesive, less fertile, less industrious, less willing to defend its own standards. You do not need every Western fashion to be a Beijing plot for that method to be real. You only need the method to exist, and you need American institutions to be available as terrain.[12]

Second idea: over the last decade, much of American corporate culture has trained people to treat productivity, punctuality, sex differences, and plain speech as moral problems. The memos did not say “this is how you lose a contest with a mercantilist authoritarian state.” They said “values,” “belonging,” and “compliance.” The question worth asking is not whether every diversity officer reports to the PLA. The question is whether a rival who studies cultural warfare would look at the results and smile.

I think the rival would smile. I did not come to that as a theory first. I came to it after watching people obey rules they could not defend. During COVID, I watched institutions in Ohio treat CDC language as liturgy. Court challenges were slow. Social punishment was fast. I put a phone on speaker and called people who were supposed to know the law. That is how I got through it. Plenty of workplaces did not have anyone willing to do that. They complied because compliance had become the local religion. An enemy watching from outside would have learned something useful: large parts of the American professional class will enforce a rule before they will examine it.

That is the footprint. Not tanks on the lawn. A workforce taught that the highest civic virtue is not causing trouble.

The HR office as terrain

Human resources is where abstract ideology becomes a condition of employment. I have had HR people report to me. When I asked where an idea came from, the face-to-face answer was often some version of “we will do better.” The inbox told a different story. Newsletters and vendor templates arrived with the new values. The people sending them were frequently the age of my children, not villains in a movie. They were following a script that had already been professionalized.

Onboarding at many firms now spends a remarkable share of time on identity rules and sensitivity machinery. Time spent teaching a new hire to be useful—show up, learn the work, look your coworkers in the eye, carry weight—gets crowded out by time spent teaching the new hire which sentences are dangerous. If you are an older man who talks like work is a duty, you can be framed as a climate problem. If you ride a bicycle twenty miles to a job because the car is dead, that used to be called character. In some offices it now reads as “intensity,” which is a polite word for unwanted masculinity.

I am not romantic about every man over fifty. Some of them are tired and rude. I am romantic about the old expectation: if you are sick enough to stay home, stay home; if you are not, go. If it snows, go to work anyway; your co-workers are counting on you.  Make yourself useful. That ethic built payrolls. The substitute ethic—work from the living room, treat output as optional, treat feelings as infrastructure—does not build payrolls. It manages them downward.

Masculinity, entertainment, and the cheapening of standards

Culture is not a side show in this doctrine. It is named terrain. When a commercial sport that sells collision and spectacle starts treating the halftime eye-candy as a seminar in preferences, that is not the end of the republic. It is a tell. Men who paid for front-row seats to watch a game and see women dance are not required to pretend they paid for a lecture. If saying so sends you to an HR office, the office is no longer just administering benefits. It is administering taste.

The same pattern showed up in film. The hard, unsmooth male lead became a problem to be managed. You can call that progress. You can also notice that a civilization in a long contest with a high-discipline mercantilist rival might not want to train its young men to be ashamed of drive. Beards and tattoos on men in their thirties are not a military doctrine. They are sometimes a leftover male signal in a workplace that punished the older signals. The strategic point is simpler: if you flatten the people who like to compete, you flatten the economy that depends on them.

Sexual identity fights belong in the same file. A free country can leave adults alone. A strategic culture that turns every workplace into a referendum on private life is doing something else. It burns attention. It splits coalitions. It makes ordinary competence look like aggression. Unrestricted warfare does not need to invent the fight. It only needs the fight to continue.

COVID as a rehearsal

I keep returning to COVID because it was the week the mask slipped on the machinery. Policy moved faster than evidence in too many rooms. Dissent was treated as dirtiness. The people who said “just follow the rules” were often the same people who could not name who wrote the rules. “We are a culture of compliance” is not a boast in a republic. It is a vulnerability report.

A rival does not have to love the virus to love the data. How quickly did professionals accept workplace punishments for speech? How quickly did schools take over children’s moral education while parents were isolated? How quickly did “expert” language replace judgment? Those are cultural measurements. They tell you how much friction an influence campaign would meet.

Corporations, LinkedIn, and the Myth of Neutral Policy

American business is not the Chinese Communist Party. Conflating the two is sloppy. What is not sloppy is noticing that global firms optimize for access, risk reduction, and reputational peace. If the cheapest way to keep markets, banks, campuses, and NGOs quiet is to import a values language that flattens conflict inside the firm, many firms will import it. They will call it best practice. Vendors will sell the templates. LinkedIn will reward the slogans. Smaller companies will copy larger ones because lenders, insurers, and talent pipelines punish deviation.

That is how you get a one-way ratchet without a conspiracy chalkboard. Beijing does not have to draft the memo if the memo already weakens the only large open society that still out-innovates it. United Front work, elite capture, research partnerships, and capital access are the documented channels. Cultural mimicry is the force multiplier—retired Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding and others have argued that if you watch Chinese behavior since 1999 through the lens of the book, the picture snaps into focus.[13] You do not have to accept every page of that popularization to accept the narrower point: connectivity is a weapon as well as a market.

Cashless systems, monitored transactions, and centralized payment rails belong to the same family of tools. They can be convenient. They can also be turned. A society that cannot complete a private exchange without a third-party ledger is a society that can be throttled. Again: not every debit card is an invasion. The doctrine says look at the combination, not the single instrument.

The Defense Paradox: How You Lose by Winning the Wrong Way

Qiao and Wang understood something Western liberals are late to admit. A society that lives by open rules can be made to trip over those rules. Lawfare ties up the opponent in his own courts. Media warfare uses the opponent’s platforms. Cultural warfare uses the opponent’s guilt. If the target responds by building a surveillance state to stop the influence, the target has paid in the coin the influence campaign wanted: less freedom. If the target refuses to notice the campaign, the target stays open and stays cut.

That is the lose-lose proposition. Defend badly, and you become the thing you were defending against. Decline to defend, and you are disarmed in the only war that is already underway. Critics of the 1999 doctrine are right that it treats human rights and international law as just another front. That is not a misunderstanding of the text. That is the text.

The Western answer cannot be “no rules, nothing forbidden.” That is how you cease to be the West. The answer is narrower and harder: name the methods, refuse the scripts that make you weaker, keep due process, and rebuild the habits that make a high-trust, high-output society possible. Resilience matters more than the fantasy of blocking every lie. Recovery speed and social trust are the actual defenses. A country that still believes its own people can work, argue, worship, raise children, and laugh at bad art is a hard country to hollow out.

What This Means on the Ground

If the battlefield is the paycheck, then the first duty is not a new missile. It is a refusal to treat the workplace as a reeducation camp. Hire for output. Measure output. Stop confusing moral fashion with risk management. Parents who want children should not have to apologize to a values slide deck. Men and women are not a paperwork error. Speech about all of that should not be a firing offense.

Political leadership matters because only the state can answer state-backed capital, theft of intellectual property, and platform manipulation at scale. Business leadership matters because most Americans meet the new rules at work, not at a Senate hearing. Voters who want people who have signed payrolls are not being crude. They are asking for officials who recognize a negotiation that smiles in public and competes in private.

I have watched firms that still recruit hungry people—SpaceX is the example everyone uses because it is obvious—outperform firms that recruit for the seminar. That gap will widen as the space economy and other fast industries punish delay. A culture that cannot tell a worker to come in when it snows will not beat a culture that can. This is not poetry. It is arithmetic.

Education is the long front. If the schoolhouse becomes the delivery system for political fashion, the family loses the first chance to form character. You do not need foreign infantry in the hallway after that. You need time. Time is what unrestricted warfare buys when it stays below the threshold of open war.

Conclusion: The Winner Integrates the Board

The authors of Unrestricted Warfare said the winner would be the side that can play on a board that keeps expanding, while the loser keeps staring at the old squares. Missiles still matter. So do grids, ports, chips, and ships. So do birth rates, work rates, attention spans, and whether a man can say he prefers female cheerleaders without being marched into a conference room. The last item sounds small until you notice the method: make the confident people tired, then call the tiredness progress.

I was insulated from a lot of this for a long time: same place, same people, same expectations. Coming back into a wider set of rooms felt like being thawed out of ice. The tools were new. The weakness was not new. It was the old American temptation to believe that because we mean well, the contest must be a seminar. It is not a seminar. It is a continuous campaign against cohesion.

Sun Tzu wanted victory without battle.[14] The 1999 colonels wrote a modern manual for that instinct and published it openly. They could afford to. A book is not dangerous to the side that is already inside the institutions of the other side. The dangerous thing is a public that still thinks war only looks like a landing craft.

Understand the doctrine. Keep the distinction between evidence and suspicion. Then look at your own shop, your own school, your own screen, and ask the only operational question that matters: does this rule make us harder to beat, or easier? If the honest answer is easier, it is not “best practice.” You have donated terrain to someone who is not confused about whether this is a contest.

Selected Bibliography

Clausewitz, Carl von. On War. 1832. Book I, Chapter 1.

Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. Unrestricted Warfare (Chao Xian Zhan). Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1999. English selections via FBIS.

Schmitt, Michael N., ed. Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Schmitt, Michael N., ed. Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Spalding, Robert. War Without Rules: China’s Playbook for Global Domination. New York: Sentinel, 2022.

Sun Tzu. The Art of War.

Jamestown Foundation. “The PLA’s Latest Strategic Thinking on the Three Warfares.” China Brief, 2016.

NATO Science and Technology Organization. Materials from HFM-361, Mitigating and Responding to Cognitive Warfare (Madrid, November 2023), and related Chief Scientist reporting on cognitive warfare.

MITRE ATT&CK. “2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack (Campaign C0028).”

Wikipedia and contemporaneous technical reporting on the December 23, 2015 Ukraine power-grid cyberattack attributed to Sandworm.

U.S. Marine Corps University. “To Win without Fighting” and related essays on PRC political warfare and unrestricted warfare.

RSIS Commentary. Nan Li, “Unrestricted Warfare and Chinese Military Strategy,” 2002.

Author’s Note

This essay is written in the first person on purpose. The strategic literature can be cited. The workplace scenes cannot be footnoted like a statute. They are offered as testimony from one American who spent decades in a single shop, then walked into the new rules and recognized the old doctrine. Readers who want only the book should stop at the bibliography. Readers living under the new rules already know why the paycheck is the front line.

Notes

[1] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book I, Chapter 1: “War therefore is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.”

[2] Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999). English selections circulated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).

[3] The original Chinese title is Chao Xian Zhan (超限战), literally “warfare beyond limits” or “warfare beyond bounds.”

[4] Zhongguo Qingnian Bao interview with Qiao Liang, June 28, 1999; FBIS translation OW2807114599. Qiao: “The first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden.”

[5] Qiao and Wang, Unrestricted Warfare. The authors list methods including psychological, media, cultural, financial, trade, network, legal, smuggling, drug, resource, and ecological warfare.

[6] Qiao and Wang write that “spaces in nature including the ground, the seas, the air, and outer space are battlefields, but social spaces such as the military, politics, economics, culture, and the psyche are also battlefields.”

[7] The “Three Warfares”—public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare—were written into PLA Political Work Regulations in 2003 and elaborated in subsequent PLA teaching texts.

[8] On December 23, 2015, attacks attributed to the Russian group Sandworm disrupted electricity for roughly 230,000 customers in western Ukraine. It is widely cited as the first publicly acknowledged successful cyberattack on a power grid.

[9] Michael N. Schmitt, ed., Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Tallinn Manual 2.0 (2017). Legal literature has discussed work toward a third edition through 2025–2026.

[10] U.S. and allied legal analyses generally hold that ordinary economic sanctions, however severe, do not by themselves constitute an “armed attack” under Article 51 of the UN Charter. That legal line is precisely why economic and regulatory pressure is attractive in unrestricted-warfare thinking.

[11] NATO Science and Technology Organization materials from the HFM-361 symposium (Madrid, November 2023) and subsequent Chief Scientist reporting treat cognitive warfare as influence operations aimed at human decision-making, accelerated by AI and digital platforms.

[12] This section states the author’s interpretive thesis. It is not a claim that a single CCP memo authored every Western HR policy. It is a claim about effects, incentives, and the kind of battlefield the 1999 doctrine described.

[13] Robert Spalding, War Without Rules: China’s Playbook for Global Domination (Sentinel, 2022), popularizes the 1999 text as a standing playbook rather than a one-off essay.

[14] Sun Tzu, The Art of War: the highest excellence is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Qiao and Wang explicitly place their argument in that lineage.

Rich Hoffman

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About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.

The Case of Jack Ma: China would never put up with a person like Elon Musk

I have been thinking a lot lately about what it actually takes to push a civilization forward, and the more I dig into the mechanics of power, the clearer it becomes that the decisive factor is rarely the collective. It is the rare individual who refuses to accept the current ceiling. Rainer Zitelmann’s New Space Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars is one of those books that lands at exactly the right moment because it forces the conversation back onto that hard truth. The foreword by Newt Gingrich sets the tone, but the real value is in how Zitelmann lays out the entrepreneurial path to the stars without the usual romantic fog. He understands that the technical pieces are largely in place; the missing ingredient has always been the institutional and cultural permission for individuals to own the risk and the reward. 

I have read a lot of books on strategy over the years. Robert Greene’s Power series is solid, particularly when you need to see the patterns that keep repeating across centuries. But the concepts only become useful when you translate them into the actual arena you are operating in—whether that is a small business, a national culture, or the emerging space economy. That is why I wrote The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business the way I did. I wanted to strip the abstraction away and show how leadership actually works when the consequences are real—the same principles scale. At every level, the decisive question is the same: does the system protect and amplify the person who is willing to impose a higher standard, or does it systematically cut that person down to the level of the committee?

That is the danger I keep returning to when I look at the post-colonial messaging that has saturated our universities and media over the last generation. The surface story is that colonialism was uniquely evil and must be endlessly atoned for. The stronger effect is to pathologize the very traits that built the most productive societies in history—individual agency, technological dominance, the willingness to claim and develop resources. A lot of money flows into that messaging, and not all of it is organic. Anyone who has watched the funding streams into American higher education over the last fifteen years knows that Chinese influence, both direct and through corporate intermediaries that depend on the Chinese market, has been substantial. The same pattern showed up in Hollywood a decade ago. The first weekend China box-office number became the make-or-break figure for big studio releases because a hundred-million-dollar Chinese gross was realistic for a major title. Studios adjusted content, softened political edges, and chased that market until the politics shifted and the arrangement began to sour. 

China does not need to kick the door in. The preferred method has always been to work the cultural and regulatory back doors until the target society starts policing its own exceptional people. That is the real war, and it is fought at the level of incentives and narrative long before any kinetic phase.

Zitelmann devotes time to the Chinese model and is careful not to caricature it. Roughly 60% of China’s economic activity is in the private sector. The catch, and it is the entire ballgame, is that private ownership does not equal private control. You may hold the equity, but the Party retains the right to manage the owners. The individuals who generate the wealth remain on a short leash. That arrangement can produce impressive aggregate numbers for a while. It cannot produce, and will not tolerate, an Elon Musk.

The clearest demonstration of the difference is the story of Jack Ma. In 2020, at the height of the COVID lockdowns in the West, Ma was still the richest man in China, with a fortune north of $50 billion. He had built Alibaba and Ant Group into engines that actually moved the Chinese economy. Then he made the mistake of publicly criticizing the financial regulators. Within days, the Ant Group IPO—the largest in history at the time—was suspended. Ma disappeared from public view for months. When he resurfaced, he was a chastened figure operating under much tighter constraints. The message was unambiguous: you can get rich, but you will not be allowed to become independently powerful. The state will let you own the assets only as long as you accept that the state ultimately owns you. 

That is the model. And it is the model that certain elements within the United States have been trying to import for years through regulatory pressure, board governance norms, and a cultural campaign that treats exceptional individuals as threats to the collective. Look at the pattern. Steve Jobs was pushed out of Apple in 1985 by a board that preferred managerial predictability over the difficult personality who actually created the products. The company nearly died until they brought him back. Sam Altman was removed from OpenAI by the board in 2023 because he was insufficiently candid with them; employees and the market forced a reversal within days because everyone understood that the board lacked the vision Altman did. Travis Kalanick was forced out of Uber in 2017 after investors decided the founder’s edge had become a liability. Jack Dorsey, Jeff Bezos at various pressure points, Elon Musk himself more than once—every one of these people has faced the same institutional reflex. The committee always prefers the safer average over the dangerous high performer. 

I call the people who staff those boards Normies. They are not evil in the cartoon sense. They value belonging more than they value results. Their deepest instinct is to reduce variance, and high-agency individuals are the ultimate source of variance. When that instinct captures the governing institutions of a society, the society begins to select against the very people who generate its outsized economic output. Less than one percent of any population produces the breakthroughs that the other ninety-nine percent live off of. If you systematically attack that one percent—through regulation, through cultural stigma, through the soft coercion of “stakeholder” governance—you do not get a more equitable society. You get stagnation, then decline.

China understands this dynamic perfectly and has weaponized it. The goal is not to out-innovate the United States in a head-to-head contest of free individuals. The goal is to change the cultural and regulatory climate in the United States so that the next generation of American Elons Musks never has the room to operate. That is why the post-colonial curriculum, the DEI machinery, the reflexive hostility to “tech bros,” and the expanding regulatory state all point in the same direction. They are different instruments playing the same tune: exceptionalism is the problem, collective management is the solution.

SpaceX is the living counter-example, and that is why the recent IPO matters so much. Elon waited until the Starship factory was producing vehicles at a cadence that actually changes the economics of access to orbit. Only then did he open the capital floodgates. The risk of going public is real—once the ownership base expands, the pressure to behave as a normal public company intensifies. But the dual-class structure and the sheer scale of the opportunity give him a window. The capital will accelerate the cadence from monthly launches to weekly, and eventually to daily. That is how you open a multi-trillion-dollar space economy. It is also why the same forces that neutralized Jack Ma have been trying for years to neutralize Musk through every available regulatory and cultural lever. 

I supported Trump for the same reason Musk did. Both of them saw the pattern clearly. Another four years of the prior trajectory would have continued the slow strangulation of the independent centers of production. The Chinese model does not need to conquer America by force. It only needs America to adopt the habit of cutting its own high performers down to size. Once that habit is locked in, the GDP gap closes on its own.

The real debate almost nobody is willing to state plainly is this: China wants to destroy people like Elon Musk. America, at its best, wants to create the conditions that produce more of them and then get out of their way. Everything else—trade policy, university curricula, board governance norms, the cultural treatment of ambition—is downstream of that single civilizational choice. Zitelmann’s book is valuable because it keeps the focus where it belongs. The stars will not be reached by committees optimizing for consensus. They will be reached by the rare individuals who refuse to accept the current limits, and by the societies that still know how to protect them.

Footnotes

1.  Rainer Zitelmann, New Space Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars (Skyhorse Publishing, 2026), with foreword by Newt Gingrich.

2.  On the sixty-percent private-sector contribution figures and the limits of private control in China, see Zitelmann’s earlier analysis in “State Capitalism? No, The Private Sector Was And Is The Main Driver Of China’s Economic Growth,” Forbes, September 30, 2019, and the discussion of Chinese commercial space companies in his 2026 work.

3.  Jack Ma’s October 2020 speech criticizing Chinese financial regulators, the subsequent suspension of the Ant Group IPO, and his months-long disappearance from public view are documented in Bloomberg, “Jack Ma’s Empire in Crisis After China Halts Ant Group IPO,” December 22, 2020, and contemporaneous reporting from The Guardian and Wired.

4.  Steve Jobs’s 1985 ouster from Apple and 1997 return are standard corporate history; see, among many sources, the accounts in Walter Isaacson’s biography and contemporary board accounts.

5.  Sam Altman’s removal by the OpenAI board on November 17, 2023, and rapid reinstatement are detailed in OpenAI’s official announcement and subsequent reporting by The New York Times and CNBC.

6.  Travis Kalanick’s forced resignation as Uber CEO in June 2017 under pressure from major investors is covered in The New York Times, June 21, 2017.

7.  SpaceX’s June 12, 2026 IPO, the $135 share price, approximately $75 billion raised, and roughly $1.75 trillion valuation are confirmed in the company’s S-1 filings and contemporaneous Reuters and CNBC reporting.

8.  On Hollywood’s dependence on the Chinese box office in the 2010s and the resulting content adjustments, see the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report “Directed by Hollywood, Edited by China” (2015) and later analyses of the market’s decline after 2019.

Bibliography

Davenport, Christian. Various reporting on commercial space.

Greene, Robert. The 48 Laws of Power and related works.

Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business.

Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs.

Zitelmann, Rainer. New Space Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars. Skyhorse Publishing, 2026.

Zitelmann, Rainer. “State Capitalism? No, The Private Sector Was And Is The Main Driver Of China’s Economic Growth.” Forbes, September 30, 2019.

U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “Directed by Hollywood, Edited by China.” 2015.

Contemporary reporting from Bloomberg, Reuters, CNBC, The New York Times, and The Guardian on Jack Ma (2020), Sam Altman (2023), Travis Kalanick (2017), and the SpaceX IPO (2026).

Rich Hoffman

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Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.

New Space Capitalism: The future everyone needs to understand

I recently finished Rainer Zitelmann’s New Space Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars, and I keep coming back to it the way you return to a tool that finally fits the job.¹ The book lays out, without apology, why private entrepreneurial energy is the only force capable of turning space from a government prestige project into an actual economy. It is timely in a way that feels almost engineered. SpaceX just put Starship Flight 13 into the Indian Ocean on July 24, soft splashdown, vehicle intact, heat shield looking better than anything we have seen before.² The ship floated. They got the data they needed. Flight 14 is already being talked about as the first attempt to catch the upper stage with the tower arms the same way they have been catching the boosters. That is not incremental progress. That is the difference between a science fair and an industrial process.

I have been telling people for years that you do not get rich having a job. You get a job so you can generate capital to invest. The job is the seed. The investment is the harvest. Space capitalism is simply that principle applied at planetary scale. The people still arguing for socialism or some managed industrial policy while this is happening are arguing from a world that no longer exists. China has spent years trying to close the gap by copying hardware and flooding the sector with state capital. They just managed their first controlled recovery of an orbital-class booster on a sea platform in July.³ That is real progress for them. It is also roughly where SpaceX was a decade ago. Meanwhile Falcon 9 boosters are routinely flying into the mid-thirties on the same airframe, with landing success rates above 98 percent across hundreds of attempts.⁴ SpaceX flew 165 orbital missions in 2025 alone and accounted for roughly half of all global launches and the overwhelming majority of mass to orbit.⁵ That is not a technology lead. That is a cultural lead.

The difference is not the Raptor engine or the stainless steel or the heat tiles. Those can be photographed, reverse-engineered, and eventually duplicated. The difference is the rate at which the organization turns failure into usable information and then into the next vehicle. SpaceX treats a destroyed Starship the way a good machine shop treats a bad casting: examine it, learn the exact failure mode, change the process, and build the next one faster. Legacy aerospace still largely operates on cost-plus contracts and risk-averse engineering cultures that treat every anomaly as a reason to add margin, add process, and add schedule. The result is that the customer pays more, the schedule slips, and the learning rate collapses. SpaceX inverted the incentive. They absorb the cost of the explosion so they can keep the learning curve steep. By Flight 13 the heat shield held, the engines relit for landing, and the vehicle came down where it was supposed to. That is what iterative capitalism looks like when the capital is allowed to take real risk.

I watch the documentaries SpaceX releases about the troubleshooting and I see the same pattern every time. A giant bicycle-chain style link on the tower fails to release. Someone drives through the night, pulls a spare from Cape Canaveral, hauls it to Boca Chica, and the schedule holds. That is not a process document. That is a producer culture. You cannot copy that with spies or with five-year plans. Communist systems excel at mass production of known designs once the design is frozen. They struggle when the design is still moving and the only people who can keep it moving are the ones who will crawl through broken glass at two in the morning because they own the outcome. Measure engagement by bodies in seats and you end up with four people bumping into each other for two days to produce what one highly engaged person finishes before lunch. SpaceX figured out how to recruit and keep the engaged ones. That is the real moat.

The same cultural gap explains why the space economy is going to generate most of its new wealth inside the United States rather than in China, Russia, or the European Union. Property rights, residual claimancy, and the ability to keep the upside of risk are not optional extras. They are the operating system. Zitelmann is clear on this point: without the ability to own, buy, sell, and profit from what is built off-world, private capital will never flood into the frontier the way it flooded into every previous frontier. Government programs can demonstrate capability. Only capitalism compounds it. That is why Starship production is being scaled toward rates that sound insane until you remember that the same people already turned Falcon 9 into a high-tempo airline. Musk has talked openly about the long-term goal of building ships at aircraft volumes. The Gigabay and the other production infrastructure at Starbase are not theater. They are the physical expression of a belief that the limiting factor is no longer physics but the rate at which you can turn steel and labor into reliable vehicles.⁶

I keep hearing the money managers on Wall Street talk as if they understand this because they read the same research notes everyone else reads. Most of them are still pricing SpaceX as if it is a conventional aerospace contractor with a flashy CEO. They are looking at the wrong variable. The variable that matters is the compounding of learning rate under a producer culture. Once the catch of both stages is routine and the vehicles are turning around in days rather than months, the cost curve drops into territory that changes every other industry that depends on mass to orbit. That is when the millionaires get made, and not just among the early employees. The people who understand that the real product is not the rocket but the industrial metabolism that builds and flies the rocket will do very well. The people who keep treating it as a government-adjacent science project will wonder why the returns never arrived.

Look back at why we stalled after Apollo and the pattern is obvious. Kennedy started it. Nixon finished the landings and then watched the program lose political oxygen. Reagan talked about the Strategic Defense Initiative and commercial space but never forced the institutional change. The Bushes treated it as a budget line. Obama treated it as a photo opportunity. Only under Trump did the commercial providers get the contracting environment that let fixed-price risk-sharing replace cost-plus stagnation. The conspiracy theories about why we never went back are mostly noise. The practical explanation is simpler and more damning: once the political class decided space was a discretionary prestige item rather than an industrial frontier, the producer culture was starved and the looter culture took over the process. Every time a new administration tried to restart the engine it discovered that the institutional memory of how to move fast had been replaced by the institutional memory of how to manage risk into paralysis.

That is the same dynamic we see today when people claim China will simply copy Starship and undercut the market. They can copy the geometry. They cannot copy the willingness to destroy vehicles in public so the next one is better. They cannot copy the high-engagement talent pool that treats a scrubbed launch as a personal failure rather than a bureaucratic delay. Two decades is an optimistic timeline for them to close that gap, and even then they will be chasing a target that is still accelerating. Sabotage through capital markets and media narratives is the more realistic short-term threat, which is why the ownership structures and the narrative discipline matter. The IPO that finally brought SpaceX public is not just a liquidity event. It is the moment the capital markets have to price a culture instead of a set of contracts. Get that price right and the rest of the space economy follows. Get it wrong and the same people who missed the internet will miss the orbital economy.⁷

I want more people to be capitalists rather than spectators. The path is not mysterious. Read the book. Watch the flight tests with the eyes of someone who understands that every successful landing is a data point on a learning curve that is still steep. Understand that the producers are the ones who stay late, drive the spare part across the state, and treat the schedule as a promise rather than a suggestion. The looters will always be waiting for someone else to finish the hard part so they can claim a share of the result. Space capitalism works because it keeps the residual claim with the people who actually do the work. That is why the wealth is going to concentrate where the culture of engagement is strongest. And that is why the next decade is going to look very different from the last one.

Footnotes:

¹ Rainer Zitelmann, New Space Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars, with a contribution by Newt Gingrich (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2026). The book argues that secure property rights and entrepreneurial residual claimancy, not government programs, are the decisive conditions for turning space into a functioning economy.

² SpaceX, “Starship’s Thirteenth Flight Test,” July 24, 2026, https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-13. The vehicle executed a landing flip, landing burn, and soft splashdown, remaining intact in the Indian Ocean and providing the first clear views of an intact heat shield after reentry.

³ Reporting from CCTV, Reuters, and BBC, July 10, 2026. The Long March 10B first stage was recovered on an offshore platform using a net system, China’s first successful controlled recovery of an orbital-class booster.

⁴ Wikipedia, “List of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches,” data current through July 30, 2026. Falcon family boosters recorded 639 successful landings in 652 attempts (98.01 percent). Individual boosters have reached 36 flights.

⁵ BryceTech 2025 Global Space Launch Report, summarized in Via Satellite, April 10, 2026. SpaceX completed 165 orbital launches in 2025, approximately 51 percent of the global total, and launched roughly 85 percent of all satellites that year. U.S. providers overall accounted for nearly 60 percent of global launches.

⁶ Elon Musk statements and SpaceX production disclosures regarding the Gigabay facility at Starbase and long-term Starship production targets measured in hundreds to thousands of vehicles per year. See also SpaceNews and Teslarati coverage of high-rate launch site and manufacturing infrastructure, 2025–2026.

⁷ SpaceX IPO filings and contemporaneous reporting from CNBC, Reuters, and Bloomberg, June 2026. The offering priced at approximately $135 per share for a valuation in the $1.75–1.8 trillion range, the largest IPO in history by capital raised.

Bibliography

BryceTech. 2025 Global Space Launch Report. April 2026.

Musk, Elon. Public statements on X regarding Starship Flight 14 tower-catch plans and production scaling, July 2026.

SpaceX. “Starship’s Thirteenth Flight Test.” Official mission summary, July 24, 2026. https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-13.

Wikipedia. “List of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches.” Continuously updated launch and recovery statistics through July 2026.

Zitelmann, Rainer. New Space Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars. Contribution by Newt Gingrich. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2026.

Additional reading that sharpens the same themes:

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (for the producer/looter distinction that maps directly onto the engagement cultures described here);

Walter A. McDougall, …the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age;

John Logsdon’s multi-volume histories of the post-Apollo policy environment;

and Zitelmann’s earlier works on the power of capitalism. 

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.

Getting ‘The Right Stuff’ Again in American Manufacturing: NASA needs a lot more than bold talk to beat China to the Moon

The recent interview between Fox News host Jesse Watters and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, which aired amid the high-stakes momentum of the Artemis program, captured more than just technical difficulties with an earpiece that briefly cut out audio during a live segment. It encapsulated a deeper tension roiling American aerospace ambitions: the urgent race to establish a permanent lunar presence before China, set against decades of bureaucratic drift, cultural shifts in the workforce, and policy choices that prioritized social engineering over raw engineering excellence. Isaacman, the billionaire entrepreneur and commercial astronaut who assumed the role of NASA’s 15th administrator in December 2025 after President Trump’s nomination and swift Senate confirmation, has injected a dose of private-sector urgency into the agency. Yet the exchange with Watters—where questions about beating China to a sustained moon base prompted the glitch—sparked immediate online speculation about whether it was a genuine malfunction or narrative control. Those who follow space policy closely understand the subtext: the United States holds a lead today, but sustaining it demands confronting uncomfortable truths about how DEI-driven mandates, union-influenced work cultures, and regulatory bloat have eroded the very foundations that once propelled America to the moon in under a decade during the Apollo era. 

To appreciate the stakes, one must revisit NASA’s trajectory since the glory days of Apollo 11 in 1969. That achievement, born of Cold War necessity and a national commitment to excellence under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, saw the agency operate with a singular focus: land humans on the moon and return them safely. The program succeeded through relentless innovation, round-the-clock engineering, and a workforce ethos that tolerated risk in pursuit of national objectives. By contrast, the post-Apollo decades brought complacency, budget constraints, and the rise of the Space Shuttle and International Space Station as routine operations rather than frontier-pushing endeavors. Human spaceflight stagnated, with the shuttle program ending in 2011 after the Columbia and Challenger tragedies highlighted safety concerns but also exposed layers of bureaucracy. Enter the Obama administration in 2009, which inherited a Constellation program already strained but pivoted sharply. In a 2010 Al Jazeera interview, then-NASA Administrator Charles Bolden articulated what he described as one of President Obama’s top priorities for the agency: reaching out to the Muslim world to highlight historic contributions to science, math, and engineering. The White House quickly clarified that this was not NASA’s foremost mission—emphasizing inspiration for children and international partnerships instead—but the remark crystallized a broader reorientation. Funding for human exploration was curtailed in favor of commercial partnerships and Earth science, while SLS (Space Launch System) development, mandated by Congress as a jobs program across multiple states, ballooned in cost and timeline. By 2012-2013, as the administration emphasized diversity and inclusion initiatives across federal agencies, NASA and its contractors began integrating DEI frameworks into hiring, training, and performance evaluations. Executive performance plans incorporated DEI metrics, and contractors faced pressure to align with equity action plans that emphasized demographic targets over merit-based selection. 

These policies did not emerge in isolation. Across aerospace and manufacturing sectors, similar mandates proliferated, often tied to federal contracts worth billions. NASA’s 2022 Equity Action Plan, for instance, embedded DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) requirements into mission leadership selection, mentorship programs, and supplier diversity goals. While proponents argued that diverse teams foster innovation—as evidenced by claims about the Mars Curiosity rover mission, where varied perspectives allegedly enhanced problem-solving—critics pointed to measurable performance drag. OpenTheBooks analyses from the period revealed NASA allocating tens of millions to DEI-specific contracts and training between fiscal years 2021 and 2024, even as core programs like Artemis faced delays. Boeing and SpaceX, major NASA partners, navigated these pressures amid their own unionized workforces and supplier chains, where compliance sometimes trumped speed. The result? Extended timelines and cost overruns that dwarfed Apollo’s efficiency. Artemis I, the uncrewed SLS test flight, finally launched in 2022 after years of slippage; Artemis II, the crewed lunar flyby, occurred in early 2026 following further postponements linked to technical issues, hydrogen leaks, and integration challenges. Cumulative costs for the program through 2025 exceeded $93 billion according to NASA’s Office of Inspector General, with SLS launches now priced at around $4 billion each—far beyond initial projections of $500 million. These figures reflect not just inflation or complexity but systemic inefficiencies: multilayered oversight, “safety-first” cultures that sometimes masked risk aversion, and a workforce environment where political correctness and work-from-home mandates during COVID exacerbated disconnects between salaried administrators and shop-floor technicians. 

From an insider’s perspective in aerospace manufacturing—where physical hardware must meet unforgiving tolerances for flight—the cultural erosion becomes glaring. Large primes and their tiered suppliers adopted elements of the Toyota Production System (TPS) in the 1980s and 1990s, inspired by Japan’s post-war industrial miracle. Taiichi Ohno’s lean principles emphasized waste elimination, just-in-time inventory, and the Andon cord: a mechanism empowering any line worker to halt production upon spotting a defect, triggering immediate problem-solving by cross-functional teams. In Japanese facilities, this system thrived on a cultural bedrock of exceptional work ethic—deep bows at convenience stores, meticulous attention to detail in every task, and a societal emphasis on collective diligence rooted in post-war reconstruction values. Workers viewed line stops as a matter of quality and the customer, not as excuses for downtime. NUMMI, the 1984 Toyota-GM joint venture in Fremont, California, demonstrated that these principles could be transplanted to American soil, transforming a dysfunctional GM plant into a high-performing operation through rigorous training, respect for workers, and a kaizen (continuous improvement) mindset. Yet scaling this across U.S. aerospace proved elusive, largely due to entrenched differences in labor culture. 

American manufacturing, particularly in union-heavy sectors like aerospace and autos, evolved differently. Labor unions, while securing wages and protections, often fostered adversarial dynamics that prioritized job security and grievance processes over rapid resolution. The United Auto Workers (UAW), for example, navigated the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler in 2009, yet patterns persisted: when issues arose—defective parts, process deviations—responses frequently involved slowdowns, Netflix viewing on phones during waits, or leveraging downtime for personal pursuits rather than pursuing aggressive root-cause fixes. This contrasts sharply with TPS’s “stop to fix” ethos, where Japanese teams swarm problems relentlessly. In aerospace, where suppliers cascade behaviors from primes like Boeing or Lockheed, the ripple effects compound. During the COVID-era mandates, remote work for administrators clashed with the impossibility of “building stuff” from home, revealing the fragility of cultures detached from physical production. Safety protocols, essential after historical tragedies, sometimes became pretexts for caution that bordered on paralysis, inflating costs and timelines. A recent tour of NASA facilities underscored this: late on a Saturday night, parking lots sat half-empty, with activity levels insufficient for the compressed schedules needed to outpace rivals. Contrast this with SpaceX’s Hawthorne and Boca Chica operations, where engineers and technicians work extended shifts, holidays included, driven by founder Elon Musk’s “hardcore” ethos of iteration and urgency. The Falcon and Starship programs demonstrate that meritocratic, high-engagement cultures can deliver reusable hardware at a fraction of traditional costs, pressuring NASA and legacy contractors to adapt. 

The geopolitical dimension amplifies these internal frailties. China’s lunar ambitions are no secret and proceed with authoritarian efficiency. Having landed robotic missions on the far side of the moon and established the Tiangong space station, Beijing aims to achieve a crewed landing by 2030 using the Long March 10 rocket, Mengzhou spacecraft, and Lanyue lander. Follow-on plans include an International Lunar Research Station (with Russia) by 2035, featuring habitats, resource utilization, and sustained presence near the south pole. Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar program, has outlined aggressive resource-development goals, unhindered by the democratic debates or union negotiations that constrain the U.S. As of April 2026, NASA’s Artemis architecture—post-Isaacman’s overhaul—targets crewed landings in 2028 via Artemis III or IV, pivoting from the canceled Lunar Gateway to direct south pole infrastructure: habitats, pressurized rovers, nuclear power, and ISRU (in-situ resource utilization) for oxygen and construction. NASA’s Ignition event in March 2026 laid out a $20-30 billion, multi-phase plan over seven to ten years for a base that supports month-long crew stays, leveraging commercial partners like SpaceX and Blue Origin. Yet without cultural acceleration, China’s state-directed workforce—operating under conditions that Americans might deem “unhealthy” but that yield results—could close the gap. The lead is “too great” only if maintained; hesitation invites reversal. 

Isaacman’s leadership signals a potential inflection. A veteran of the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn missions, he brings entrepreneurial grit, having overseen infrastructure demolitions at the Marshall Space Flight Center to modernize for Trump-era goals. The Watters interview, despite the glitch (deemed technical by most accounts, not evasion), highlighted Artemis II’s successes and Mars-forward experiments. But sustaining momentum requires a broader resurrection of the American manufacturing base. This means rejecting leniency toward policies that dilute merit—hiring, promotions, and evaluations rooted in competence rather than quotas. It demands seven-day operations, holiday shifts without complaint, and full parking lots at 3 a.m. Safety must remain paramount, but not as a shield for disengagement; engaged teams, as SpaceX proves, reduce errors through vigilance rather than bureaucracy. Unions supporting political shifts (many backed Trump in recent cycles) face a reckoning: adapt to competitive realities or risk irrelevance as smaller, agile players—Firefly, Blue Origin, and commercial upstarts—overtake sluggish giants. Suppliers must follow suit, cascading urgency downward rather than mirroring top-down complacency. 

Historical parallels abound. The original space race demanded Apollo-era grit: engineers sleeping under desks, welders iterating prototypes until flawless, a nation unified against Soviet threats. Today’s competition, while economic and scientific rather than purely military, carries strategic weight. Lunar resources—helium-3 for fusion, water ice for propellant, regolith for construction—could dictate cislunar dominance, influencing satellite networks, planetary defense, and future Mars missions. An American flag on the first sustained base is not symbolism but necessity, setting norms for celestial governance amid rising multipolarity. Sacrificing lives recklessly is unacceptable, yet charging forward with calculated risk mirrors historical precedents: D-Day assaults or Pacific island-hopping campaigns where objectives justified intensity. NASA’s suppliers, from avionics to propulsion, must internalize this; half-asleep workers awaiting problem resolution or LinkedIn job-hunting administrators undermine the mission.

My book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business (2021), anticipated these manufacturing and cultural crossroads. Hard-learned truths from COVID—when intent behind policies crystallized as micromanagement and reduced output—demand a return to basics: merit over mandates, engagement over entitlement, innovation over regulation. Trump’s second term, with Isaacman at the helm, has already accelerated Artemis restructuring, but longevity matters. Republican continuity post-2028 ensures that policies endure beyond a single administration, preventing a reversion to pre-2025 drift. This is not partisan rhetoric but pragmatic necessity for a workforce revival that dusts off “the right stuff”—the toughness, curiosity, and dedication that defined mid-20th-century America.

In aerospace, where atmospheric or orbital flight shares the same adventurous DNA, success hinges on compressing timelines rather than extending them. Japan’s lean techniques succeeded not through rote imitation but cultural alignment; America must forge its hybrid, leveraging individual initiative within disciplined systems. Parasite-like drags—DEI overhead, union-enabled slowdowns, safety-as-excuse—must yield to vitality. Recent conferences with major manufacturers reveal lingering Toyota envy without the execution; presentations touting incremental lean gains ignore root cultural mismatches. Smaller innovators will force adaptation, as they already do via commercial crew and cargo.

Ultimately, the moon base vision—sustainable habitats and a continuous presence akin to the ISS but extraterrestrial—demands more than hardware. It requires human capital aligned with purpose: passionate, grid-tough teams working around the clock because the frontier calls. China pushes aggressively, accepting trade-offs for primacy; the U.S. can lead by reclaiming its edge without mirroring authoritarianism, simply by unleashing latent American ingenuity. The Watters-Isaacman moment, glitch and all, reminds us that the stakes are real. With policies favoring merit, excellence, and intelligence (MEI) supplanting prior frameworks, and commercial pressure from SpaceX et al., NASA can reclaim leadership. The American manufacturing base, long crippled by self-inflicted wounds, stands poised for resurrection—if leaders and workers alike embrace the grind. This is the undercurrent of the current space drama: not mere technical hurdles, but a call to cultural renewal. Sustaining it ensures not just lunar victory but a broader renaissance, where adventure, innovation, and unapologetic excellence propel humanity outward. The 2030 deadline looms; meeting it—and beyond—restores what decades of deviation nearly forfeited. The right stuff awaits rediscovery, and the time is now. 

Bibliography and Footnotes for Further Reading

1.  NASA Office of Inspector General. Artemis Program Cost and Schedule Overruns. 2025-2026 reports detailing $93 billion+ expenditures through FY2025.

2.  Bolden, Charles. Al Jazeera Interview (July 2010), as documented in Reuters and CBS News archives on NASA outreach priorities. 

3.  Isaacman, Jared. NASA Official Biography and Confirmation Records (December 2025). NASA.gov. 

4.  Planetary Society. Cost Analysis of SLS/Orion Programs. Updated 2026.

5.  Ohno, Taiichi. Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. Productivity Press, 1988 (foundational TPS text, including Andon system).

6.  Adler, Paul S. “Cultural Transformation at NUMMI.” MIT Sloan Management Review, 1994. 

7.  OpenTheBooks. “NASA’s One Giant Leap Toward DEI.” Substack analysis of FY2021-2024 spending. 

8.  Reuters. “China’s Crewed Lunar Program Eyes Astronaut Landing by 2030.” April 2026. 

9.  NASA. Artemis Ignition Event and Moon Base Plan. March 2026 announcements. 

10.  Hoffman, Rich. Gunfight Guide to Business (2021). Self-published insights on manufacturing resilience and cultural factors in industry.

11.  National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Advancing DEIA in Competed Space Missions. 2022 report (context for pre-2025 policies). 

12.  U.S. Government Accountability Office. Audits on NASA project overruns, 2025.

13.  JETRO Surveys on U.S.-Japan manufacturing challenges (labor and workforce data).

14.  Nature. “China Planning Lunar Landing and Base.” April 2026. 

15.  Fox News Archives. Watters-Isaacman Interview Transcripts and Clips (April 2026). 

16.  Lean Blog. Analyses of Andon cord and Japanese vs. Western implementation. 

17.  CSIS. Reports on U.S.-Japan economic ties and workforce development (2026).

18.  Additional historical: Logsdon, John. John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 (Apollo context).

19.  Musk, Elon, and SpaceX public updates on operational culture (various 2020s interviews).

20.  Trump Administration Executive Orders on Ending DEI Programs (January 2025 onward). 

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.

He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.

Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.

The Bad Guys Deserve Punishment: Destroying Iran to free people from tyranny

I’ve been watching everything unfold in real time. It feels good to see some real aggression from the top, finally. Everybody’s talking about how Trump’s inspiration is driving this new level of toughness—hitting Iran hard, taking out Maduro in Venezuela, and setting up hemispheric shielding through Kristi Noem’s new gig as Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas. It’s exactly what we needed. We’ve lived through a very dangerous time, and we had to have justice for what was done to us. So when people whine, “Why are you being so aggressive? Why treat Venezuela like this? Why talk so tough on Iran, China, the cartels?”—I point to the big picture. We tried playing nice when we could, making deals, but the bad actors never stopped scheming in the background. Iran’s always been problematic, bragging about nuclear warheads and funding terrorists. Trump couldn’t walk away from negotiations with them, thumbing their nose at honest attempts at peace in the Middle East. If they’re going to keep sponsoring terror, you cut the head off the snake. That’s what’s happening now, and it had to happen.

Obviously, the Democrats support that kind of insurrection—they want the downfall of the United States. Peel back the layers, and you see China behind so much of it: property acquisitions here, buying up media companies to steer narratives their way. It’s been ugly, nasty, nasty, nasty. After what they did with COVID, the lockdowns, the global economic sabotage—Bill Gates, the whole crew—people get mad if they’re not in jail or tied up somewhere. They have too much money; they buy courts, buy freedom. They don’t get in trouble. And yeah, I still think Jeffrey Epstein’s alive out there. He’s too rich to die that way. Body double, bought-off guards, elements of law enforcement—it’s not hard with that kind of cash.

Trump doesn’t have the constitutional power to round them all up and jail them—he can’t do it directly—but he can attack their mechanisms of evil. The way bad guys use countries like Iran, Venezuela, Mexican drug cartels, North Korea, and even Russia, stirring up Ukraine—they hustle agents, cause chaos, turn everybody in the wrong direction. But Trump’s clear: no boots on the ground for forever wars. We never should’ve been doing that. I joke about it half-seriously, but what was the Iraq war really about? Oil? Securing prices and American interests? Weapons of mass destruction, they never found? Or was it about raiding the Baghdad Museum right after the invasion, grabbing ancient DNA or artifacts from Gilgamesh’s era to mess with human genetics, or hide giants like in Kandahar? Those conspiracy theories floated around podcasts after retirees started talking. People have lost faith in institutions, in the nightly news narrative: “We’re going to war to save people from communism,” or whatever. Yet the bad guys propped up maniacs for decades—Fidel Castro, the Iranian Revolution in the late ’70s as a Marxist movement hidden behind religion, so you couldn’t criticize it without attacking Islam. That’s how they sold it here: don’t criticize our communities, even as they shuffled in socialism, lined people up for food stamps and welfare, turning dependency into modern slavery to the government instead of plantations.

The same thing’s happening with radical Islam—thorny alliances everywhere, causing needless harm—cartels in Mexico, Venezuelan aggression, and China behind it all. China was built by the deep state; they never would’ve had the money without investment firms funneling stolen Federal Reserve wealth, Wall Street manipulations, modern monetary theory tricks at Jackson Hole conferences. It sounds wild because the media calls it crazy, but listen to those talks—it’s out there.

That’s why everybody’s upset about these moves. Iran’s economy is a dying fallout on the couch—they can’t fight a real war. No ships, no missiles, no planes of any worth. They’ve been de-industrialized by sanctions. Trump bombed them because they poked the bear with radical Islam and ideology issues tied to the Democrat party, which clearly represents America’s destruction in so many ways. Obama gave them billions to keep their economy afloat so they could buy terrorist toys; now Trump’s taking it all away. As an elected official, we put him in office to do this job; he’s doing it. We don’t want radical losers causing trouble worldwide. We don’t want cartels running Mexico—pulling people over for bribes, corruption everywhere. We want to vacation or do business there without fear. We don’t want Venezuela screwing our energy markets. We don’t want Iran sponsoring terrorism. We want peace in the Middle East—Jews, Christians, everybody getting along, building lives.

This is what Kristi Noem’s Shield of the Americas is about—stabilization in the hemisphere. She’s moved from DHS to Special Envoy, focusing on dismantling cartels, securing the Western Hemisphere, working with Rubio and Hegseth. It’s hemispheric shielding: choke off the bad guys economically and militarily without endless occupations. Trump’s not putting boots everywhere; he sends precision strikes, missiles as compliments of capitalism—paid for by the best system in the world. That’s how you win now.

All these characters in the background—COVID planners, great reset pushers, China feeders—they used distractions like Iran to usher agendas through while we fought shadows. Peel back the onion: destroy the disguises, pull off the masks. That’s happening in Iran right now, Venezuela (Maduro captured in January, U.S. overseeing oil rebuild), and Mexico (cartel disruptions). It’s great. I highly support what Trump’s doing—I want to see a whole lot more. He’s actually being too nice in some ways. The world deserves this reckoning for 2020: stolen elections, COVID as a weapon, great reset leashed to lockdowns, all attached to global control plots. Epstein, Gates, Russian honeypots, Chinese labs—it’s out there.

If you think that’s all a conspiracy, it’s in the open now. The people crying loudest about Iran are the ones who used these characters to cause trouble. Forget the courts, UN nonsense, and treaties that neutralized America so bad guys could thrive. Time for punishment. Show the world it happens. Use capitalism for upper mobility, freedom in Hong Kong, Venezuela, Mexico, England, and Europe. Lead by example: take away the hostiles causing trouble. Iran had no other intention but trouble since the late ’70s Marxist infusion feeding communism, China, Russia, socialist Latin America—all anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-upward mobility. They played their part in lockdowns, freedom theft, and using COVID to destroy economies into a great reset.

This isn’t theory anymore; it’s action. Trump’s crushing them economically, stripping them of their covers, exposing them. The attacks on Iran neutralize them as a threat—they tried rational peace, but they’re hostile. Venezuela’s aggression, Mexico’s cartels—all choked off. No more hiding. Democrats and the media cry because Iran was their Marxist disguise, a haven, a proxy to break America down. Now excuses stripped away, masks off—nowhere to hide. They don’t like it, but too bad. It’s great, the bad guys needed to be punished.  And now they are.

Footnotes

1.  On Operation Epic Fury and Khamenei’s death: Strikes targeted nuclear sites, missiles, navy; civilian casualties reported (e.g., girls’ school in Minab). Trump urged regime change without full occupation.

2.  Maduro capture in January 2026: U.S. raid framed as anti-narco-terrorism; plans for long-term oil oversight and revenue split.

3.  Kristi Noem’s role: Appointed Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas (Western Hemisphere) in March 2026, focusing on cartel dismantlement and border security partnerships.

4.  Iran’s 1979 Revolution: Marxist influences blended with Shia Islamism to avoid direct criticism of leftist elements.

5.  Iraq Museum looting: Over 15,000 artifacts stolen post-invasion; fringe theories link to ancient DNA/Gilgamesh,/giants myths.

6.  Kandahar giants: Persistent online legend from alleged U.S. military encounters; widely debunked but symbolic of institutional distrust.

7.  China-media investments: Documented stakes in U.S. outlets; fentanyl precursor supply to Mexican cartels well-reported.

8.  Obama’s Iran payment: $1.7 billion settlement for pre-1979 arms deal, not direct “terror funding” per official accounts.

9.  COVID/Great Reset conspiracies: WEF initiative twisted into global control narratives; Gates-Epstein links fueled speculation.

10.  Epstein “alive” theories: Persistent despite official ruling; tied to elite protections.

Bibliography

•  White House Fact Sheet on Iran (2026). https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-addresses-threats-to-the-united-states-by-the-government-of-iran

•  DHS Announcement on Noem’s Role (March 5, 2026). https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/03/05/thanks-president-trump-and-secretary-noem-america-safer

•  TIME on Shield of the Americas (2026). https://time.com/7382975/kristi-noem-new-job-shield-of-americas

•  Marxist.com on the Iranian Revolution (historical analysis).

•  Various: Axios, Politico, The Hill, CNN reports on 2026 operations in Iran/Venezuela.

•  Reuters Institute on Chinese media influence.

•  BBC on Great Reset conspiracies.

•  Brookings on Obama-Iran cash transfer.

•  CSIS/NBC on China-cartel connections.

Rich Hoffman

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The Cannibals of China and their Democrat Party Friends: Collectivists literally want to eat the living

The recent shooting of National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., allegedly by an Afghan national with ties to intelligence networks, underscores a profound ideological divide in American politics. The incident was not merely an act of violence; it became a prism through which competing visions of governance and societal order were revealed. While some sought to frame the tragedy as a consequence of deploying the National Guard—a measure implemented to restore law and order—others attempted to deflect responsibility by invoking narratives of provocation and systemic grievance. This rhetorical maneuver, blaming the presence of security forces for inciting violence, reflects a deeper philosophical orientation rooted in collectivist ideologies that have historically justified chaos as a means to consolidate power.  Democrats, like Mark Kelly, who have recently found themselves in a lot of trouble due to attempts at seditious behavior against President Trump’s administration, are showing a much deeper problem with their entire political ideology that traces to ideological roots from the home country of their movement, Chinese communism.  And the cannibalistic nature of that country and its general philosophy of life, compared to the West. 

Empirical evidence demonstrates that the deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., during periods of heightened unrest significantly reduced crime rates. Under Trump’s administration, violent crime in the District fell by approximately 35% between 2023 and 2024, with homicides declining from a peak of 274—the highest since 2005—to markedly lower levels in subsequent years. Even in 2025, violent crime decreased by an additional 26% compared to the previous year, signaling the deterrent effect of a visible security presence.¹ These figures stand in stark contrast to earlier trends under Democratic leadership, where policy emphasis on police defunding and social work interventions coincided with escalating urban violence.²

The paradox of Democrat lawmakers advocating stringent gun control while privately securing concealed carry permits further illustrates the inconsistency of their position. Representative Anna Paulina Luna recently highlighted that numerous members of Congress, including those who champion restrictive firearm legislation, have obtained permits to carry weapons in the District.³ This duality—publicly opposing individual self-defense while privately embracing it—reveals a pragmatic concession to the realities of urban crime, even as ideological commitments demand the perpetuation of vulnerability among the populace.

To comprehend this contradiction, one must examine the intellectual lineage of collectivist thought. Marxist theory, which informs much of the progressive agenda, posits that individual identity is subordinate to the collective good.⁴ Within this framework, personal sacrifice is valorized as a moral imperative, and systemic inequities are construed as justifications for redistributive violence. The logic underpinning such views is evident in the rhetorical claim that the Afghan assailant’s actions were provoked by the presence of the National Guard—a formulation that shifts culpability from the perpetrator to the state apparatus tasked with maintaining order. This inversion of responsibility is not incidental; it is symptomatic of a worldview that privileges structural explanations over individual accountability.

Historical analogues amplify the gravity of this ideological orientation. During the Great Chinese Famine (1959–1961), precipitated by Mao Zedong’s collectivist policies, an estimated 15 to 55 million people perished.⁵ The obliteration of market mechanisms and private property rights engendered conditions so dire that cannibalism became a widespread survival strategy.⁶ Archival records and eyewitness testimonies recount instances where families consumed the flesh of deceased relatives, and concubines reportedly volunteered for slaughter to sustain their households.⁷ These macabre episodes were not aberrations; they were logical extensions of a system that negated individual sanctity in favor of an abstract communal ideal. The psychological residue of such practices persists in cultural norms that valorize self-abnegation, reinforcing the collectivist axiom that the organism of society supersedes the autonomy of its constituent cells.

The resonance of these historical patterns in contemporary American discourse is disquieting. When policymakers suggest that victims of crime should acquiesce to dispossession for the sake of social harmony, they echo the same moral calculus that sanctioned atrocities under communist regimes. The proposition that one’s property—or even life—may be forfeited to appease the grievances of the marginalized is not merely a policy stance; it is a philosophical commitment to the erasure of individuality. In this schema, the Afghan shooter is transfigured from a culpable agent into a symptom of systemic dysfunction, and the act of violence becomes an indictment of order rather than chaos.

Such reasoning is inimical to the principles of a constitutional republic. The sanctity of individual rights, enshrined in the American political tradition, is antithetical to the collectivist dogma that animates these apologetics. To capitulate to narratives that rationalize violence as a byproduct of structural inequity is to invite the dissolution of civil society. The deployment of the National Guard, far from constituting a provocation, represented an affirmation of the state’s obligation to safeguard its citizens—a function that cannot be abdicated without imperiling the very foundations of governance.

The Afghan shooter incident is not an isolated tragedy; it is a harbinger of the ideological contest that will define the trajectory of American democracy. The attempt to reframe culpability, the oscillation between public disarmament and private armament, and the invocation of systemic grievance as exculpation—all bespeak a worldview that esteems the collective over the individual. History admonishes us that such a worldview, when operationalized, engenders not utopia but barbarism. The cannibalistic horrors of Maoist China are not relics of a distant past; they are cautionary tales inscribed in the ledger of human folly. To ignore these lessons is to court a future in which the logic of sacrifice metastasizes from metaphor to corporeal reality.  And that is what Democrats are proposing for our society when they speak of defunding the police, or yielding to crime with chaos, and in suggesting that gun control should be a priority when crime is used to perpetuate their power through fear by the ruthless and aggressive.  They want the crime because they literally feed off it. 

I was eating with some friends the other day at a nice Chinese restaurant buffet in West Chester, Ohio, that had a lot of great options.  I reminded everyone that all this nice food would not be typical in China.  In China, they actually eat just about anything that moves: dogs, cats, turtles, moms and dads, and body parts.  In most places in the world, where collectivist politics reside, the food is not as sanitized from the violence behind death as you will find in Chinese restaurants in the United States.  The standard of individualized thought is enough to affect how we eat.  Let alone process government functions.  But make no mistake about it, if it were up to the Mark Kellys of the world and their seditious function as communist insurgents, they would drive a society into cannibalism because that is the unspoken party platform.  They represent in America the Great Leap Forward that all academic leftists in the world, and especially in America, have been yearning for.  They aren’t trying to preserve society.  They are trying to eat it and gain the power of their enemies from the literal consumption of flesh and the destruction of the living.  And the Afghan terrorist, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who shot the two D.C. National Guard members just a block away from the White House, serves their aims at the destruction of society for the consumption of its contents, just as their home country of China would be very proud of.

—

Footnotes

1. Metropolitan Police Department, “Annual Crime Report,” Washington, D.C., 2024–2025.

2. U.S. Department of Justice, “Crime Trends in Urban Centers,” 2023.

3. Luna, A.P., Congressional Briefing on Security Measures, 2025.

4. Marx, K., Critique of the Gotha Program, 1875.

5. Dikötter, F., Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 2010.

6. Yang, Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962, 2012.

7. Chinese State Archives, Oral Histories of the Great Leap Forward, 1961.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Success of Operation Midway Blitz: Pushing communism under the door with illegal immigration

Happy to report that Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago has been very successful, with over 1500 arrests since the start of September.  The Department of Homeland Security has been targeting alleged criminals like pedophiles and gang members with some of the arrests spilling over outside of Illinois.  ICE agents have been very successful in removing the criminal elements that have been deliberately put in place by Democrats to serve progressive causes, and it has the radical left very upset, which is good.  That’s what happens when you start solving problems that want to exist so they can exert power over all society.  The high crime in Chicago was deliberately placed and left alone, and it’s time to clean up that city, even if the mayor, Brandon Johnson, and Governor J.B. Pritzker have been doing everything they can to facilitate the continuation of the high crime.  Why, because they know, as all Democrats do, that the key to their insurrection party is illegal immigration, who bring with it criminal elements to destabilize society in detrimental ways and convince people to turn to big government for safety and security.  Governor Pritzker has to have high crime to justify the kind of personal intrusions and government growth that the Democratic Party intends.  Otherwise, the whole premise of their existence falls apart. Trump pushing for Operation Midway Blitz exposed this strategy for what it was, and it has now been very successful.  Crime is down, and that started before the blitz because caution was in the air as criminals realized the game was up and their free roam of the city streets was at an end.  There is more going on with Chicago than just this latest issue; it was built to be a progressive invasion in America, and if we want that to stop, the city itself and its politics have to be attacked.  So this is more than a symbolic exercise; it’s a strategy that should have been implemented long ago.

Chicago is one of the great American cities, located in the heart of the Midwest.  I interact with Chicago a lot, and it has been part of my story for many years.  Not that I meant to, but I worked for several organized crime groups early in my life, who were centered out of Chicago, for one, the Chinese mob.  And the second was a money-laundering outfit that operated car dealerships to launder money.  I started in these enterprises through the usual application process: getting a job and earning money straight away.  But because of my personality, I was quickly sought out to do the things other people are scared to do, and I learned, up close and personal, how the life of crime worked, always in the background.  I did not become a criminal, but I did get into a lot of entanglements, some of which were very violent and dangerous.  But let’s just say I have first-hand knowledge of the kind of world Governor Pritzker is trying to protect and maintain.  I was so outraged by everything I learned that I have dedicated my life to eradicating that evil, which is why I do many of the things I do for free.  I don’t like evil, and I really don’t like crime that spawns from it.  And with all that said, I am thrilled Trump has declared war against this terrible tyranny always looming in the background.  Chicago wasn’t always the crime-ridden pit that it is today.  It was made that way on purpose, and we should all be insulted by the intention, which is now finally being corrected.

If you fly into O’Hara, you’ll see miles and miles of communist style apartment complexes where people have been stacked on top of each other for as far as the eye can see.  There is quite an attempt right now to show China as the example of what communism can bring, with its centrally planned efforts producing great architecture and technology, all the while in America using that same centralized management approach to depress Americans away from free markets and free enterprise.  Even the positive effects of a supposedly democratic system, where people pick their representatives in a republic-style government.  In both cases, centralized governments used their power to prop up one international standard over the other.  Globalist elites drove the push toward Chinese communism.  And it has been they who have shaped Chicago into the crime-ridden hell-hole that it is.  The downtown areas are not too bad —deliberately so —especially around McCormick Place and Soldier Field.  The northside isn’t too bad once you get well past the city.  But to the south and west of downtown, it’s pretty rough.  If you get gas anywhere in those zones, you can expect an engagement with crime, and all that is on purpose.  Crime doesn’t just happen; in this case, it was invited in with the purpose of illegal immigration.  And the Democrat party knows they need crime and illegal immigration to fulfill their communist plans of pushing people away from capitalism and into outright Chinese communism.  Chicago and its crime were always part of the plan of suppression.  To save the great American city, the push was for America to adopt more Chinese communism so we could be more like their shining example. 

The way that Chicago set up its neighborhoods tells the whole story of why they have crime now; it was always meant to.  Free enterprise was never part of how the modern city was put together; it was meant to bring in and hide illegal immigrants who would funnel the drug trade in behind the chaos and destabilize polite society from behind a political firewall.  While society was debating the proper pay for women in the workplace and abortion, criminals were undercutting one of the great American cities with grotesque violence occurring every day to the point where it was normalized, and people expected a suppressed environment.  It wasn’t just about Chicago; it was about pushing communism under the door of the Midwest and bringing down America from the inside out.  Poisoning the highway system to all the other big cities with crime, and those destabilizing attempts started with illegal immigration hidden in the apartment slums of west Chicago, to the point where the crime spilled over into the outside world to destroy the American dream like a Trojan Horse in the middle of the night, to slit all our throats while we slept.  That is why Democrats are so upset about Operation Midway Blitz.  And why it’s so good to see it succeed, no matter how long it continues.  Democrats need illegal immigration to pull off their communist scam.  And instead of just accepting that, as we have for many decades —essentially an entire century —we are fighting back and taking Chicago away from the criminal elements, which is leaving Democrats in a panic as to what to do next.  Pritzker, unable to shake Trump off the trail, turned to gambling to pump up his already deflated image.  But his political hopes are being cleaned away, too, in all this.  He took a stand to protect illegal immigration, and Trump is ripping that away, leaving Democrats helpless as a result.  And for the first time in many decades, the truth about Chicago is finally being seen.  And a lot of people will live, who usually would have been sacrificed to the need for crime by Democrats who have been cheerleading communism all along.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

China Got Caught Tampering with the 2020 Election: How communism takes over countries

Well, it’s official now.  During June of 2025 FBI Director Kash Patel declassified documents showing the Chinese Communist Party scheme to interfere in the 2020 election to mass produce fake U.S. driver’s licenses and ship them to the U.S. to facilitate fraudulent mail-in ballots in favor of Joe Biden, these fake IDs were intended to create voter identities for Chinese residents in the U.S. to cast illegal votes.  The documents are now in the hands of Chuck Grassley in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and it is also noted that former FBI Director Christopher Wray recalled the initial report, as he was aware of the implications.  That means that when we look at the margins of victory of Joe Biden in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, the total votes that Biden won by were less than 45,000. Biden won by only 20,682 in Wisconsin, by 154,188 in Michigan, and by 11,799 in Georgia.  Arizona was won by only 10,457 votes.  So that’s how close it was.  In Pennsylvania, the winning amount was 80,555.  And that’s obviously why Christopher Wray didn’t want that report out, because it shows with evidence what the Chinese were up to in order to get just enough votes over the top to elect Joe Biden.  We are now aware of several other methods of voter fraud that involve the use of mail-in ballots.  But this driver’s license scam is complex, irrefutable proof of how China planned to install Biden over Trump for their self-interest.  And looking back on it now, the reason the election took weeks to resolve is that those swing states were allowed to continue counting mail-in ballots until Joe Biden had just enough votes, as shown, to be declared the winner.  This raises numerous significant legal issues. 

Even worse, this same method of election tampering has also occurred in presidential and congressional races.  Most of the close races that we have been watching over the last decade could be attributed to the same kind of election tampering.  Even in states like Kentucky, between Matt Bevin and Andy Beshear, the total vote difference was 5,136 out of over 704,000 votes, less than 0.37 percentage points in 2019.  And when they got away with it, the opposition parties connected to communist governments around the world, for which China is, they expanded it in a mass way during the 2020 election using the bioweapon of Covid as the cover story for mass election fraud.  Everyone needs to get this through their thick skulls.  The 2020 election cycle was a major crime against the United States that killed people and installed a puppet government from a hostile foreign actor, and many accomplices.  So, as we go out and buy fireworks for American freedom and celebrate all the significant military engagements that were put forth to make America victorious in the fights for freedom, understand that our elections have been under attack by lots of foreign actors who have been quite explicit in funding our destruction.  And in 2020, they were successful, and they got caught.  And they have to be punished.  It’s not a question of if, but to what degree.  Additionally, what this means is that Joe Biden’s entire presidency was illegal, meaning that everything he signed, or that others signed for him with an autopen, was also unlawful, including the DEI hire of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court in 2022.  A lot of people were asleep at the wheel, and the bad guys in the world were tampering with our elections, putting Democrats in important seats, in the Senate, in Governor roles, in the House, and certainly in the White House.  The government we have today is essentially not the government we voted for; it’s the constructs of election fraud on a mass scale, with this Chinese scam being just one of them. 

In the first half of 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized nearly 20,000 counterfeit driver’s licenses coming from China and Hong Kong with the apparent intention of laying the foundation for election fraud.  Given the size of this discovery, the operation was much larger than what they actually caught and easily falls within the voter total that Biden won the election by in 2020, all by itself.  When you add all this to the other known election fraud methods, it is easy to see why Joe Biden won in 2020, and that once election fraud was more difficult to conduct in 2024 because everyone was watching carefully, Democrats could not repeat the 2020 performance.  Because many of the election fraud methods were incredibly frustrating.  In 2024, Trump received 77.3 million votes, while Harris received only 74.9 million after many weeks of counting, falling short of the 2020 totals by 7 million votes.  Simply put, the crackdown on the mail-in illegal votes was the difference in the gap.  Add to that all the voting machine irregularities, that also traced back to China, and we have significant problems in our elections, and it would not be hard to prove that many of the tight races that made the House and Senate so close along party lines are that way through similar forms of election fraud, in all close races where Democrats won by a slim margin, election fraud, like the election between Matt Bevin and Andy Beshear in 2019 took place. 

The reluctance to admit it, and the reason the declassification of the report by Kash Patel is so essential, is that it reveals the complicity of many people domestically in facilitating the tampering of a foreign government in American elections, as they benefited from the chaos.  So they let it happen, and those same idiots will be out buying fireworks and flying the American flag on July 4th just like everyone else, even though what they did was treasonous and overt acts of legal sedition.  And they were caught with hard evidence.  No, don’t kid yourself, America has also participated in election tampering through the CIA and other means in other countries around the world.  So when China does it, they do so for their own interests, and we were the dummies who let them do it to us.  We should expect hostile countries to try to topple us.  We are not all friends.  The lesson here is that many of our elections have been tampered with, and that the government we have had was not the one we chose through free elections.  The kind of House and Senate majorities that we have had were not actually as close as we have been led to believe.  And this evidence is very inconvenient to those who have allowed it to happen, because the blood is literally on their hands.  As we approach the next election in 2026, we need to tighten our election laws and make it significantly harder for China and other countries to exert influence over our elections.  If we do that, many Democrats will not be able to beat their Republican rivals because Americans do not like communists.  And communism is what the left has on the menu.  And they want to infiltrate the world in any way possible.  For them, stealing elections is much less violent than military engagement.  It’s what just happened in South Korea, where we fought against the spread of communism there half a century ago.  And now, people just had an election where the communist party sunk deeper roots into running that country.  And they want to do it in America, and have been getting away with it, until now.  Now we have the proof.  But what we do with it will decide the fate of all our futures, for better or worse.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Putting Out the Fires of War: No, there won’t be a World War III

You have to see the big picture here and understand the motivations that are being exposed, as we speak.  I was surprised that Benjamin Netanyahu was so bullish on attacking Iran’s nuclear capability and taking out the heads of the Iranian revolutionary forces.  In the chess game of war, it’s a pretty bold one, and when you add to that the antics of Ukraine and Russia, and China moving in on Taiwan, there is a lot of talk about World War III.  And about the United States getting dragged into it.  But lurking in the background of all this chaos are the forces of globalism, who are starting these fires to cover up their many crimes.  And they are looking for a diversion.  All these characters didn’t just get these warlike ideas on their own as single-minded personalities.  Numerous factors are at play in the background, and many global crimes are being brought to light for consideration.  So the hope here is that wars, even if it means World War III and mass casualties everywhere, can’t be avoided. Suppose the bad guys out there can start a war and destroy the world to cover their many, vast crimes.  You can bet that they will do it in a New York minute.  We are dealing with a vast evil that is as malicious as the human imagination could consider.  And it has always hidden itself through death and violence.  So, while there is a lot of concern about America getting pulled into a war, remember, this is just another Covid story, an attempt to derail the news cycle and hide the perpetrators of evil who move the mouths of the characters involved.  And hope that nobody notices.  But of course we do see, and are onto the truth of the matter.

In Israel’s case, I don’t feel that enough revenge has been put in place for the malicious attack that occurred against Israel at that music festival.  The way they were attacked was reprehensible, and to say that America can’t get dragged into a Holy War is ridiculously insufficient.  Globalism is a layered topic in this case because Israel was a creation of globalism, of the forces being realigned after World War II.  There are forces of the western world who want to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem and the ancient fight with the residents of the Land of Canaan, and of the Mesopotamian Valley feel they are fulfilling a prophesy the same as Jesus riding a donkey into the ancient city as the Son of God to be the King of Kings to a chosen people.   There is no peace in this process because there are more than terrestrial forces at play, blowing on the winds of war that have been present for many tens of thousands of years, if not millions.  Not to become distracted here, but you have to understand the level of evil in the Middle East that we are discussing, which has been chronicled in literature as long as humans have been able to record their observations and thoughts.  So with all that in mind, I love Israel, I love the Jewish people, and I think that it’s essential to understand why that part of the world was chosen to be a Promised Land.  There is no way to appease the Iranians and their history against the Jewish people, going back to the beginning.  To have peace with them, they will have to be destroyed.  And they showed those fangs when they attacked all those kids at that music festival, and raped all those poor girls, and tortured those family members.  We can’t tolerate that kind of evil in a world of mass communication, where people have a responsibility to be aware of these things.  We can’t turn away from evil, and I tend to think that the Jewish people should rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem for the third time. 

However, we are also discussing the majority of the known world being in a perilous circumstance, from Russia to China, which threatens to disrupt chip manufacturing and, in turn, impact the American economy.  Trump has done a great job getting on the phone with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and maintaining a relationship with them that would make waging war difficult in their minds with free justification.  The winds of war were being blown on by globalist forces trying to hide their crimes as Trump took away the embers with diffusing telephone calls that only a top executive would understand how to do.  Thank goodness Trump is in the White House because I don’t see World War III happening in the way that most people fear it will, with a ground war and mass casualties all over the earth.  As I look at it, the world can’t afford to be at war.  The world is broke, and they can’t maintain war as it is traditionally viewed.  All they can afford to do is sponsor various elements of terrorism.  Russia is broke.  China is only propped up with globalist money, trying to hide itself behind a wall of communism.  And in Iran, they hide Marxism behind Islamic Fundamentalism, but the truth is that they are the top sponsor in the world of terrorism.  Or as they define it, “revolutionary support.”  When they talk about revolution, they are talking about the fight of indigenous people to push out the Western world from their ancient practices that go back to the time of the Tower of Babel.  And they will never stop.  But they have also been propped up by globalism, remember all the cases of money that Obama left on runways during his administration to sponsor the terrorism of that region against the Western World.  Against the Christianized West. 

However, none of those countries can afford to go to war; what we are seeing on the news are the attempted fires of those forces hiding within the policy of those places, trying to throw everyone off the scent.  But without globalist money, Iran can’t maintain its regime.  The Ukraine War falls apart.  And China can’t do anything as they are completely attached to the greedy hands of the World Economic Forum as their government of choice for corporate manipulation.  And America doesn’t need to get pulled into any war.  It’s perfectly fine to shoot down the missiles going into Israel and to run Iran dry.  And let the people rise and overthrow the Revolutionary forces there in Iran, and install a new government.  America doesn’t need to lift a finger, only to support the fight against evil wherever it shows itself.  However, a ground war is not in the cards, as it’s not necessary.  Trump has already discharged the steam, leaving the globalist forces exposed and desperate.  And we have to realize that’s what is going on.  The world that doesn’t want peace is losing its hiding places, and they know that America is going to outpace globalism and make them irrelevant.  All the talk show pundits are getting the war talk wrong because they don’t want to admit the economics of the situation.  There isn’t money for the kind of war they fear, due to the way globalism has entangled so many forces.  They can’t afford such a fight. Instead, the bad guys have been stripped naked, and their marionettes have found themselves talking peacefully to Trump, putting out the fires faster than they can be started.  Leaving them all exposed without any hiding places, in full view of a public waking up massively, perhaps for the first time, in the history of this world.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Let’s Be Clear, Elon Musk Did Not Win the Election for Trump: The tempers of a dejected woman

Let’s get something straight: Elon Musk did not win the election for President Trump.  I like Elon Musk, and I want his companies to succeed.  But he’s a political lightweight who still has a lot to learn.  The money he spent, primarily on President Trump, around $290 million, was in his own best interest. If Trump had lost, it would have essentially cost Elon Musk many billions of dollars in lost opportunity cost.  So this big head idea he has that he won the election for President Trump, and that he put a Republican House and Senate into the majority, is ridiculously wrong.  I have a news flash for Elon Musk.  Trump was going to win, and so were those majorities going to happen, with or without Elon Musk.  We don’t owe him anything.  We welcomed his help.  But we were going to win regardless.  Trump was poised to win as far back as 2022, and I said so all the way.  Everyone knew what the internals were saying; Trump was never going to lose.  And I hate to say it, but that money Musk spent was mainly worthless.   People had already made up their minds about Trump, and they wanted him, because election fraud was the problem in 2020.  Elon Musk was a Democrat who helped other Democrats feel like they could switch over to the MAGA base and be a part of it.  However, the numbers were already in place long before Elon Musk became involved.  And to whatever degree Elon Musk has deluded himself with a power play to turn against Trump in the way he did, which will have a permanent impact on the rest of his life, it’s essential to clarify the truth of the matter.  President Trump would have won the 2024 election with or without help. 

There is a part of me, and it might yet be somewhat true that the calls for war that China and Russia have been beating on, making negotiations very difficult, were why Trump and Musk went into a tag team kind of Big Time Wrestling event where the world was temporarily distracted by the most powerful person in the world getting into a fight with the world’s richest person.  Trump has done that kind of thing with Vince McMahon before.  Those kinds of acts are what WWF wrestling is all about, and off stage, all the guys are friends.  But I think Trump is legitimately hurt by what Elon Musk did, and that what happened was a permanent condition.  I would place it among the stories of Omarosa, Michael Cohen, and Anthony Scaramucci, people who were once close to Trump but fell away in disgrace.  That’s a whole topic of its own, but in this case, it takes courage to stand by a person like President Trump, and some people just don’t have it.  Is it President Trump’s fault that there are so many people like that in his life, and extending well into the past?  No, I would say that influential people attract people who want to be near power.  And as people of their own, they have fantasies of being able to manipulate influential people into doing things they want, because they lack the courage to do it themselves.  So they fly too close to the sun, their wings melt, and they fall back to earth.  Elon Musk is just the latest to experience that. 

As it looks, Steve Bannon was probably more right than wrong about Musk being a Chinese asset.  China is Tesla’s second-largest market, behind the United States, with sales growing by 8.8% in 2024.  And state-controlled banks in China gave Tesla a $1.6 billion loan from Chinese state-owned banks in 2019 to build their gigafactory there, with a reduced 15% corporate tax rate.  I think the pressure on Elon Musk to exit politics was significant due to his numerous entanglements.  I was amazed that he was able to do as much as he did.  Like a lot of people, Elon Musk got caught up in seeing the extreme wrong behind the assassination attempt of Trump, and he joined the crusade out of a moral imperative, like so many others did.  But China has been using globalist money to buy people with leverage for many years, including most of our current government.  And they are trying to undermine Trump, as they did when they released the COVID-19 virus during an election year.  We cannot ignore the role China played in election fraud in America, but also in other places, such as Brazil, and most recently in South Korea.  Doing business with China is a tricky proposition; they can and will hold everything over your head if they decide to call in a loan.  That seems to be a common practice in the world these days, so I can certainly understand the pressure on Musk to distance himself from the White House and return to running his companies, which, unfortunately, involves being a political chameleon.  Most businesspeople have to adapt their approach depending on the country they are dealing with, and with a company like Tesla, China holds significant influence.  It’s nice that it’s an American car company and that it represents a necessary export.  But at what cost? Usually, it means that at the very least, the CEO of the company can’t have political opinions that work against the country they are building and selling cars to, when they are effectively a communist run enterprise hell bent on authority control over mass society.

I think the pressure got to him. There are a lot of leftists who work in executive positions at Musk’s companies, and they weren’t happy that he was suddenly one of the key Republicans in Washington D.C., attached so intimately to the Trump administration with direct, and open friendship.  For Trump’s part, it was good to have Musk as a friend.  In business, you keep your friends close, and if you can, you keep your enemies closer.  If you have your arm around them, it’s hard for them to stick a knife in your back, because your arm can control their movements to a greater extent.  But for people like Musk, and the long line of individuals who have tried to be close to Trump, to control him in some way, and then found out things didn’t go the way they wanted, it’s like the woman who marries a man to change him.  And after all the sex and laughing at his dumb jokes, he still doesn’t willingly cut the grass on Sunday, the woman feels dejected and angry.  And I think Elon Musk is like so many women who try such a thing only to realize they weren’t able to change the man they married, leaving them embarrassed and regretful.  And Musk wanted to make a clean break to get his companies back on track by using the protest against this Big Beautiful Bill as an excuse.  Because if you did want to help the Chinese stay in power, you would like to stop the Trump campaign bill from passing the Senate.  Passing the bill, as expensive as it is, essentially reduces China’s influence over American politics.  That’s why it’s so costly.  Debt can be leveraged to advantage.  But to make it work, you have to have something valuable to work with.  China has been trying to destroy that value, so this Big Beautiful Bill of Trump’s is all about leverage.  Not actual debt.  And Elon Musk found himself caught between those two worlds, and he had to pick.  And I don’t blame him.  It takes a lot of guts to stick to these kinds of things.  And it’s challenging at best, especially if you have a substantial amount of money and want to maintain it.  But let’s be clear, Musk didn’t win the election for Trump.  He was just lucky to have been a part of history.  He certainly didn’t make it.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707