Scott Powell: Grand Forks, North Dakota: Profound Lessons for America’s National Security

Editor’s Note: This column was co-authored and edited by Lori Hinz.

One of the most important stories of America’s current troubled times is how a small number of patriotic citizens from North Dakota stood up against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and defeated them. The backstory.

Since the beginning of history, the struggle between good versus evil has been ongoing. In varying degrees, that struggle is also manifest in the relations between governments and the people—often understood as a struggle between elites preoccupied with money and power, and people grounded in more timeless relational priorities. 

The U.S. is open and free, so enemies can freely enter our borders and operate without any interference. Today, the Chinese Communist Party is the main enemy. It draws on the military strategy playbook of Sun Tzu (5^Th century B.C., who believes in defeating the enemy without firing any shots. CCP has been stealing American technology secrets since decades. CCP-backed businesses and proxies started purchasing American companies around 10 years ago. More recently, large amounts of U.S. farmland was purchased by CCP-backed proxies. The CCP also identified U.S. missile sites and bases where land or businesses could be bought in close proximity to the U.S. military bases for surveillance or sabotage.                                     

A prize target U.S. Air Force Base is located just outside Grand Forks in North Dakota. The CCP wanted to purchase property there for military surveillance and signal intelligence gathering. 

The Grand Forks Air Force Base (GFAFB) plays a central role in America’s defense, home to The 319^th Air Base Wing—the only Air Mobility Command to have remotely piloted aircraft systems, such as RQ-4 Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicles that contain the military’s most sophisticated drone technology. GFAFB was also chosen to become the home of the Space Development Agency’s Networking Center (which will become part of the new U.S. Space Force later this year). That agency’s primary mission is to support a new low-Earth satellite orbit mission, which will serve as the “backbone for all U.S. military communications across the globe.” 

The Chinese would be able to access this location to intercept and gather digital uplinks, downlinks and data inherent in drones and unmanned aerial systems as well as their interaction with space-based resources. Access to the low-earth satellite network that is the backbone for all U.S. global military communications would be a coup-de-grace and ensure Chinese victory over the United States.

The most disturbing thing is that the CCP almost managed to pull this off through Fufeng USA, a subsidiary company of the Fufeng Group. Fufeng’s CEO, Li Xuechun, was a leader in the People’s Congress, which meant he was CCP member and would be required to direct his company and its subsidiaries to carry out orders from Xi Jinping or his Beijing subordinates.  

Fufeng USA was the ideal Trojan horse. It would seem both innocent and reliable because it was a food biproducts business. But there were two signs that this was a CCP political-military operation rather than business operation: First, Fufeng USA overpaid by three to four times for the land to construct the plant—$29, 262 per acre vs. the going comparable sales price range of $5,500-9,500 per acre. The second was the location of the corn milling plant in question, which is far north than traditional corn-growing areas. 

Distrust from Grand Forks residents toward city government officials—notably Mayor Bochenski and City Administrator Feland—stemmed from their meeting with Fufeng USA in October 2020 to discuss site selection, but then chose to keep that secret from citizens of Grand Forks. The governing city elite referred to it by a decoy code name—Project Peony—for over a year before informing the public. 

The locals were upset from being blindsided by the city’s fait accompli on the largest plant ever to be built in Grand Forks, undertaken by a Chinese company without any public input. Word of mouth passed quickly in Grand Forks, and residents began showing up at City Council meetings starting on February 6, 2022, criticizing city officials for being dishonest about when they learned of the project’s ownership and country of origin. And that began a steady stream of people—self-identifying as the “Concerned Citizens of Fufeng Group”—showing up at the City Council meetings every other Monday for months. 

When the City Council couldn’t reconcile the Fufeng corn mill project with the national security risks implicit with close proximity to Air Force Base, more people began showing up. Their love and patriotism for their community was astounding. The passionate—sometimes rough and sometimes tearful—testimony about the dangers of communism from diverse Concerned Citizens provided a portrait of sharp contrast with stone-faced City Council members more focused on deflecting and defending the Fufeng project than to the life and death concerns of the locals. Gleichzeitig, Concerned Citizens was the target of a vicious social media attack. 

Five of the seven City Council Members favored Fufeng, with Dana Sande, City Council President, being the most outspoken and prominent advocate. CCP officials clearly knew Sande, who had been on many trips to China over the course of ten years. These trips were made under the auspices of University of North Dakota Aerospace Foundation, and Topflight, their recruiting contractor. Topflight enlisted to recruit Chinese applicants for their pilot training program. The CCP advances their agenda in the United States primarily by “elite capture,” wherein Americans get compromised—most often through money—to help advance the CCP agenda. Elite capture is not limited to high-ranking officials in the U.S. government like the Joe Biden clan. It could be used at a local level in Grand Forks. 

Concerned Citizens initiated a petition to put the Fufeng project up for a vote, in accordance with city bylaws. After collecting 47 percent more signatures than needed, city officials began to disqualify petition signatures. They also enlisted the help of the police to contact the weak and force them to resign. The FBI even showed Up at the door of Concerned Citizens’ founder. The petition was denied by the city attorney on legal grounds that were not clear. 

The City Council showed little inclination to apply for a national security review by Washington’s Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) until midsummer when pressure mounted from Concerned Citizens. That review was completed in December 2022, concluding CFIUS did not have jurisdiction over Fufeng’s land purchase. 

Concerned citizens entered 2023 feeling demoralized after having fought so hard against different elites for over a year. Heavy equipment could still be seen moving dirt around Fufeng’s property with heavy equipment. Concerned Citizens’ faithful compared their situation to Paul’s letter to the Philippians in Rome, where what appears to be defeat is actually victory.

And so… a surprise decision came to pass from an unexpected source, an Air Force Major from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada whose training in cryptology and intelligence prompted him to study the Grand Forks-Fufeng controversy.  He concluded it would be more effective to write a memo from the people’s perspective as a citizen rather than as an Air Force officer. His conclusion was clear: “Allowing the Fufeng project to stand would present a costly national security risk causing grave damage to the United States strategic advantage.” The   memo went viral within the Air Force and came back to Grand Forks to end the Fufeng project and crush the CCP.

Grand Forks, North Dakota has a timeless lesson that is applicable across the country and can save America. It is that if average people persist for what is right, they can defeat corrupt elites both domestic and foreign. 

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Scott Powell As a senior fellow at Discovery Institute and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger China, he is also a member on the Committee on the Present Danger China. His most recent book is Rediscovering America was #1 new release in history for eight straight weeks at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637581599). Reach him at [email protected]

Lori Hinz Are You the Host? “No Apologies” The inspiration for the series was on BEK TV, North Dakota “China Conquest: Inside Job.”

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