In the fifth century BC, Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

In his new book, Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans, bestselling author Peter Schweizer warns that America needs to pay close attention to this proverb. Over the last few decades, China has been killing Americans by the millions without firing a single shot. And the political leaders who should be protecting us? When they act at all, it’s to protect China and their own pocketbooks, not the American people.

China’s weapons are quiet but deadly.

Unrestricted Warfare

Weapon Number One: Beijing is involved “in every step of the cartel operations responsible for the U.S. fentanyl crisis,” Schweizer writes. The nation partners with Mexican drug cartels by shipping fentanyl ingredients to Mexican ports, where it is synthesized and pressed into pills before being smuggled into the U.S.

In 2023 alone, fentanyl killed more than 112,000 Americans — 37 times more than the number of people killed on 9/11. Most of those who die ingest fentanyl unintentionally; it’s often laced into other drugs, including “harmless” ones like marijuana.

Meanwhile, Communist officials screen every letter and package sent to or from China — which means they could end the fentanyl crisis overnight; they just don’t want to. Clearly, Schweizer writes, China is “weaponizing fentanyl against the United States.”

Weapon Number Two: During the COVID pandemic, Chinese leaders acted to maximize the number of worldwide deaths from the virus through their lies, policies, and actions. For instance, Beijing “blocked flights from Wuhan to the rest of China but allowed flights to leave it for the rest of the world,” Schweizer observes. China also bought up huge quantities of masks and other protective gear medical professionals needed from around the globe while denying the danger of human-to-human transmission of COVID. When California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a $1 billion, no-bid contract with a Chinese company for masks and other medical equipment, China sent substandard, unsafe masks that federal inspectors were forced to reject.

Beijing also claimed respirators would save lives, but American doctors swiftly realized that the opposite was true; they were killing patients by the thousands.

Apparently delighted with the worldwide death toll his country had caused, Chinese President Xi Jinping bragged that his nation would “exploit the pandemic” to increase China’s power around the world.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to date, China has killed nearly 1.2 million Americans by weaponizing COVID. Nevertheless, “Our political leaders have overwhelmingly remained silent in the grim aftermath of the pandemic, having been outmaneuvered by Beijing,” Schweizer writes.

Undue Influence

Weapon Number Three: China is arming American criminals. It illegally ships thousands of auto sear switches to gangs, felons, and extremist groups, allowing them to convert their Glocks into illegal automatic weapons. The result? A tragic increase in mass shootings in America’s cities. It’s part of China’s strategy to worsen America’s existing social disorders, Schweizer says. “What are our leaders doing to counter this? The answer is: nothing.”

Weapon Number Four is Hollywood. Today, China invests in and coproduces films at virtually every major American studio. This means Communist Party leaders get to decide which messages go into films (messaging designed to advance their interests), and which must be kept out (anything critical of China). Kung Fu Panda 3 is one example of how “collective Eastern values” are slowly replacing more individualistic Western values, Schweitzer writes.

China’s influence also means that certain films don’t get made at all. My friend Reggie Littlejohn, founder of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers and a fierce critic of China’s forced-abortion policies, wrote an award-winning screenplay about a pregnant woman fleeing China’s Family Planning police. Each time Littlejohn got close to getting the film financed, investors backed away, afraid of offending China.

Weapon Number Five is TikTok. The most popular social media platform in the U.S. is controlled by the Chinese government.

“It is highly sophisticated, designed to influence the brains of the younger generation, with profound effects,” Schweizer writes. TikTok’s algorithm pushes “highly addictive, personalized content,” determining what “America’s children see, and thus how their brains are conditioned.”

TikTok, by the way, is banned in China.

Historic Hatred

Why do Chinese leaders hate us so? They blame the West for the destructive opium trade forced on Imperial China by nineteenth-century British merchants, leading to a quarter of the Chinese population becoming either users or addicts, which did tremendous damage to the country’s economy. China has never forgotten this, and today it teaches its children to avenge the Opium Wars by destroying the West.

Tragically, the Chinese government is doing this with help from America’s greedy politicians and celebrities. Schweizer is not afraid to name those who enjoy financial ties with China and make them reluctant to do anything to annoy its leaders. They include California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former NIH immunologist Anthony Fauci, talk show hosts Jimmy Fallon and Ellen DeGeneres, director Steven Spielberg, U.S. Representatives Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), billionaire Neville Singham, outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, President Joe Biden, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and many more.

Americans need to educate ourselves regarding China’s efforts to quietly subdue us, and hold our leaders’ feet to the fire regarding its war on the U.S.and what they plan to do about it. When politicians ask for our votes, we need to dig deep to learn what connections, if any, they have to China’s corrupting cash and destructive products.

Blood Money is well-researched and thoroughly documented. It may well be the most important book you will read this year — and read it you should, if you value your family’s and our nation’s future.

Anne Morse is a freelance writer who lives in Maryland with her husband. She is the author or coauthor of ten books.