Former Trump Intel Official Cliff Sims Calls Out Big Tech, Wall Street for Aiding Communist China's Rise

Kristina WongJanuary 4, 2022

Former senior Trump intelligence official Cliff Sims in a recent interview called out Big Tech companies and Wall Street for aiding Communist China’s rise at the expense of America.

Sims, in an exclusive interview with SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday, criticized companies like Apple for tying their future profits to China, where foreign businesses must abide by the Chinese Communist Party’s rules — which are aimed at China’s domination of the world economy.

“China is far and away our number one national security threat, issue, challenge that we have to tackle. They aspire to dominate the world, technologically, militarily, economically, culturally, across the board, he told host and Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle.

Sims, who served as U.S. deputy director of national intelligence for strategy and communications, said as the Trump administration confronted the threat of China, one of the recurring challenges was that American companies were funding the rise of China’s economy.

For example, he cited Apple CEO Tim Cook, who secretly struck a more than $275 billion deal with China wherein he promised that Apple would “do its part to develop China’s economy and technological prowess through investments, business deals, and worker training,” according to an exposé by The Information. Sims continued:

Tim Cook was the one who was credited internally at Apple as the one who really opened Apple up into China. He bet on China big before he was even CEO, he’s doubled down on it since being CEO. And so he’s got a lot of reputational and financial stuff wrapped up in this as well. So this is a guy who has made quotes in the past about human rights, it’s about treating people with dignity and respect…but you haven’t heard a peep, not a single peep out of Tim Cook and Apple about the CCP’s mass surveillance state inside of China, about the ongoing genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

They don’t say a word about these things. And the reason is Tim Cook has made Apple’s business a hostage to China. They are so dependent on China for their manufacturing capacity, their supply chain, all of these different things. At this point, if he said a word about that and China snapped their finger and shut that down, Apple would be in serious, serious trouble. They would not be able to get you an iPhone or any of these things anymore because they’re so dependent on China.

This is a case study. And what is happening with, with other businesses, China is an authoritarian state. Anyone who says otherwise is misguided or completely full of crap. There is no such thing as a private company in China, all of them by law are required to assist the surveillance state, the national security state there, and to serve the CCPs ends.

Sims said it is not just Apple that is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, but other businesses and Wall Street leaders as well.

Sims said Trump introduced the idea of reciprocity in the trade relationship with China, and he criticized the Biden administration for destroying leverage built by the Trump administration.

“When the Biden administration came in well, right off the bat they go up and meet with them in Alaska and [our] diplomats get embarrassed. They get confronted very aggressively by the Chinese. And it really kind of put a marker down that China was going to reassert…its historical primacy in the U.S. China relationship. And so it is unfortunate to see some of that having eroded here, and it really comes down to an unwillingness to acknowledge that the U.S. China conflict is, at its core, an ideological struggle,” he said.

He said the Biden administration wants to focus on “economic competition” with China.

“No, no, no, no. This is an ideological struggle, struggle as you put it, Matt, for what the future of the world is going to look like. And the Cold War was an ideological struggle too, but the difference was U.S. and global economies were not quite as intertwined with the Soviet Union as they are with China,” he said.

Sims said it will be important to elect leaders who understand the China threat — potentially Trump again in 2024.

“There’s no one that I would rather have sitting in the Oval Office negotiating with Xi Jinping, negotiating with the CCP, positioning America for success, economically, technologically, militarily,” he said.

Tesla has recently come under criticism from Republicans and human rights groups for opening a showroom in Xinjiang.

“Nationless corporations are helping the Chinese Communist Party cover up genocide and slave labor in the region,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) tweeted on Monday.

Right after President Biden signed Sen. Rubio’s Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act into law, @Tesla opened a store in #Xinjiang. Nationless corporations are helping the Chinese Communist Party cover up genocide and slave labor in the region. https://t.co/2yWBTQSLbM

— Senator Rubio Press (@SenRubioPress) January 3, 2022