By Rick Manning
A Chinese company now owns access to the personal online information of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military and civilian Department of Defense personnel and their families.
What could go wrong?
The Department of Defense offers tutoring and other free educational services to servicemembers in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and Reserve families along with deployed civilians through tutor.com, which describes itself as a service of The Princeton Review.
Sounds like a great benefit for those who serve our nation.
But in a world of incredible ineptitude, the Biden administration has cleared the sale of The Princeton Review and its tutor.com subsidiary to a Chinese investment firm, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Melissa Korn writing on May 8.
At a time when China is increasingly engaged in sabre rattling and threatening America around the world, they now have a database of a significant percentage of the U.S. military, reservists, civilian DOD employees and their families. What’s more is that they are contracted to help educate them on a wide variety of subjects. What’s more Tutor.com also trains teachers and brags of webinars like “Leveraging Data to Promote Equity in K-12 Classrooms Nationwide” and “Insights to Action: K-12 Trends to Know for the Year Ahead.”
While these subjects are subject to dispute within the U.S., the Biden administration outsourcing this type of forward looking influence over our national education system to a country dedicated to our subjugation reflects either the current U.S. administration’s lack of awareness or outright acquiescence to Chinese domination.
As far as our military and deployed DOD civilians are concerned, log-ins to this system will allow the Chinese intelligence agencies to pinpoint the location of our troops, naval vessels and deployed civilians all around the world. What’s more, it opens a portal directly into the computers and attached systems used to access the education services, providing the Chinese, at best, an open door into the household computers of military members and their families and at worse, the ability to compromise our military communications networks around the globe.
Yet, the Biden officials tasked with preventing this exact kind of direct, actionable intelligence failed to stop the sale of Princeton Review and tutor.com from a South Korean company to a Chinese one.
Let’s be clear. There are no private companies in China. China uses its business sector as nothing more than an extension of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese military. The fact that those entrusted in the Biden administration in stopping this exact kind of sale failed in their duty to protect our nation’s military, their families and America as a whole shouldn’t stun me, as it is consistent with other mind-boggling decisions.
Yet, when I learned of this sale being allowed to go through, it still shocked my senses.
How could our federal government allow the Chinese a major influencer role over our education system, while also giving them access to private data and tactical locations of our men, women and families in the military?
Just another question Congress needs to ask, this increasingly inept or corrupt administration.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
